From the Louisville Courier-Journal Jan. 30, 1876:
“Columbia, Ky. Two young men named White, while idly wandering in a large tract of wild, dense forest, in the south-eastern part of our county, discovered what they supposed to be a sink-hole or fox-den, and with that idea proceeded to explore it. After a little trouble in making their way through the entrance, the cave (for such it proved to be) became large enough to admit of their walking upright.
They had proceeded thus in this passage probably 150 yards, when they emerged into a large and picturesque gallery, the beauty and grandeur of which will rival that of the old Mammoth itself. The room, according to their calculations, is about 150 by 100 feet, and abounds in all the varieties of the stalactite and stalagmite.
It is not the things we naturally expect to find in caves that we wish to mention particularly, but the curious remains that we discovered therein. The Northeast corner of the first gallery, (which there are five that we will speak of) about five feet from the ground, they noticed some strange characters, or hieroglyphics, neatly carved in the wall which, upon close examination, proved to be the head-rock of a vault.
A few minutes prying served to loosen this and disclose to view the interior of an enclosure in the solid rock of about five by ten feet, which contained the remains of three skeletons which measure eight feet seven and a half inches, eight feet five inches and eight feet four and three quarter inches in length respectively. The heads were lying toward the East, each body parallel to the other. Beside them lay three huge (what looked to be) swords, but they were so decayed that, upon being touched, they crumbled to dust.
After examining the remains closely, but finding nothing that would serve to throw any light on the question as to who and from whence they are, they closed the vault, but in doing so, knocked their torch out, which they had contrived before entering, leaving them in anything but a pleasant predicament. After searching some time for their lost treasure, they concluded to try to escape by feeling their way out, but in this they made the matter worse. They stated that after leaving the first large room they struck a good-sized branch, and continued following it until forced to turn into another passage, the stream disappearing suddenly in a huge perpendicular gulch which led them into another spacious hall, the size of which they believe to be quite as large as the first.
Out of this second opening, and through what they conceived to be three others similar at least in size, their way seemed to gradually ascend, until their hearts were made glad by the discovery of light ahead, and finally emerged from their ugly confinement through a hole about midway up the cliff of Russell’s Creek, having been confined in their subterranean discovery over thirty-eight hours. The whole country thereabouts is rife with speculations concerning the interesting discovery, and numbers of citizens will visit it as soon as the Messrs. White finish their work of rendering the entrance less difficult to pass.
The above is a correct account and may be replied on, as the young men are of unimpeachable veracity. With a party from town, your correspondent will start in the morning to further explore and should new curiosities present themselves, will give you the account of an eyewitness.”
No other word about these enigmatic underground chambers, to my knowledge, has yet been divested. In fact, the whole subject seems to be a closely guarded secret.
According to the Adair Co. News, On Jan. 5th, 1858, an old Indian mound located on the farm of one Harrison Robinson was excavated and yielded giant human skeletal remains as well. The late Michael Paul Henson, well known Ky. writer and Folklorist, wrote in Tragedy at Devil’s Hollow and other Ky. Ghost Stories, (Cockrel Corp. Publishers, 1985) of another bizarre skeleton found at Holley Creek, Ky., Breathitt County in 1965 which he was personally able to examine. A man named Kenneth White, while constructing cattle stalls under a large, overhanging rock ledge near his home, came upon the perfectly preserved skeletal remains of what he, at first, took to be an Indian, as it was buried facing East, a well-known Native American custom.
Noticing some atypical aspects of the burial, White asked Henson to help further examine the strange bones, which were covered with a peculiar white powdery substance that disappeared when touched. Upon reassembling the bones the two were amazed to find that the unusual fellow, in life, had stood at least 8 feet 9 inches tall. Moreover, the arms were abnormally long with large hands while the feet of the being seemed small by comparison. The skull measured an astounding 30 inches in circumference, just 6 inches shy of a full yard! But the most unusual aspect of the skeleton was the facial structure, the likes of which neither had ever before seen or even heard of.
The eye and nose sockets were slits rather than cavities, and the area where the jaw bone hinges to the skull was solid bone.’ Seemingly, this creature had never been able to open its mouth to eat or speak. No weapons, tools or clothing remains were found in association with the bones which, according to Henson’s account, occupied a position 5 ft. below ground indicating that they had been placed there at least 300 years prior to their discovery.
Strangely, Henson related that the burial site looked only a few days old with no sign of dark colored soil usually associated with the decaying of human tissue. The two assumed the remains were those of an extraordinarily large, deformed Indian. In the same area, some 20 years prior a 60 lb. double-edged stone axe and a twenty inch flint blade were plowed up by a local farmer. White later re-buried the peculiar bones and no official examination of them was ever conducted. Henson died in March 1995 without ever disclosing the exact location of the burial site.
Colonel William F. Cody, the great Indian fighter, Buffalo Bill, learned of the giants from the Pawnee Indians while on the Kansas-Nebraska border in 1869. From, ‘An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill; Buffalo Bill’s Own Story,’ published in 1920:
“...In a few days, we set out for the Republican (river) where we learned there were plenty of Indians. At Frenchman’s Fork, we discovered a village, but did not take it by surprise for the Indians had seen us approaching and were in retreat as we reached their camping-place. we chased them down-stream and through the sand hills. While we were in the sand hills, scouting the Niobarra country, the Pawnee Indians brought into camp some very large bones, one of which the surgeon (5th Cavalry) of the expedition pronounced to be the thigh bone of a human being. The Indians said the boned were those of a race of people who long ago had lived in that country. They said these people were three times the size of a man of the present day and that they were so swift and strong they could run by the side of a buffalo, and, taking the animal in one arm, could tear off a leg and eat it as they ran...”
They live!
“...Other people once lived here. After them came savage folk. They had large bodies and immense heads. Once when I was young and out hunting near where Fort Randall (South Dakota) is now, I found a burying ground of these people and dug up many skulls. These were long and flattened at the sides...”
-Iron Eye, Omaha Chief, 1881.
So, what happened to all the giants? Did they all die out, or simply disappear? Did they reduce in size gradually, generation by generation, by mating with normal human women? If eyewitness testimony is to be believed, some of them just may have ‘devolved’ into hairy inhumanoid savages. A small percentage of hairy monster reports describe creatures which far exceed most others of their ilk in height. Some up to nearly twenty feet tall! Or, are at least some of the giants still with us today?
Also from the 19th century, a stagecoach was allegedly attacked and toppled over by a giant during a violent thunderstorm in southern Vermont one evening. It was so huge that the surrounding trees obscured the creature. It turned over the coach, then roared off into the darkness leaving behind gigantic footprints; and several petrified witnesses. The giant was also blamed for the later disappearances of several campers and hunters in the area during the 1940s.
According to the Saginaw, Michigan Courier-Herald, April 16th, 1897 edition, a strange flying contrapti
on was observed to land in a field near Howard City, Michigan at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday the 14th. More surprisingly, a naked giant then stepped out from it.
“He is about nine and a half feet tall and his talk, while musical, is not talk at all, but seems to be a repetition of bellowing. One of the farmers who was somewhat braver, attempted to go near him, and got a kick that will last him for some time, having got his hip broken. Great excitement prevails here, and lots of people are flocking here from Morley and Howard City to view the strange being at a distance, as no one dares to go near. He seems to be trying to talk to people.”
As is almost always the case, there were no follow-ups to this story, leading one to wonder if it was nothing more than a journalistic fabrication like many of the “airship” accounts from 1896-97. On the other hand, it may have been completely accurate. Stranger things have happened.
According to a 1922 edition of the Lincoln, Nebraska, Daily Star, an anonymous witness claimed that a large, round object descended from the sky and landed near his home. Then an evil-looking giant, eight feet tall, stepped out. A deeply religious man, the witness was certain that this huge being must be none other than Satan himself. Remembering his Bible teachings, he mumbled, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and turned his back on the creature.
As he turned, he noticed another disc coming down from the sky, and it hovered above him as if to protect him from the landed creature. Next the witness heard voices emanating from the airborne object, appropriately quoting Biblical texts. The creature on the ground, which the witness definitely felt was hostile in intent, became discouraged, as if the voices had a deterring effect on it. It took off on foot, rapidly disappearing. The witness tracked “the devil” to where the disk had landed.
Further adding fire to the diabolical theory was the fact that the thing left tracks similar to hoofmarks, and went through a barbed wire fence, which was “left burning hot, and severed as if it had been burned through with a welding torch.”
Another giant turned up in Oregon in 1942. Mr. Don Hunter, head of the Audio Visual Department of the University of Oregon, was vacationing with his wife at Todd Lake, Oregon in the summer of that year. The two were inside their car waiting out an afternoon rain shower when suddenly they observed an unusually tall figure walking swiftly across a meadow about a quarter-mile from the lake.
“It was not humped over, but very erect, with a military bearing,” Hunter later said. “The legs seemed very long. He did not run, he walked. “Giant strides very quickly. In getting out of the car we must have been heard because it took off for the trees with giant strides.”
A red-eyed giant with vivid red skin and only one eye reportedly descended into a garden in a suburb of Belo Horizonte, Brazil on August 28th, 1963. The entity then approached three boys, one of whom grabbed a brick and was about to hurl it when the creature shot “an orange beam” at him from a square lamp on its chest, paralyzing the boy. The giant had no ears or nose, they further recalled, and a strange-looking mouth. The boys were later interrogated by several investigators who found no reason not to believe them about their ordeal.
On September 19th, 1963, four children out playing behind a school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada reportedly watched an oval-shaped light circle in the sky overhead, then descend. A “box” then fell from the object and hovered a few feet away. As the children cautiously approached this box in curiosity, they were startled when a “man” suddenly stood up from the brush. “After that we didn’t see any box,” one of the boys, eleven-year-old, Brian Whitehead later said. The children described the man as about ten feet tall, and dressed in “clothes like a monk’s” which were “white like a crayon.” Brian also said that “sometimes I could see right through him.” The entity made a moaning sound, held out his hands and began to “float” toward the youngsters, who fled in terror. One of the girls in the group became so hysterical that she reportedly had to be hospitalized. Both the parents and the police believed the children were telling the truth.
Writing in The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings (1984), John Keel quotes the London Daily Mirror, May 16th, 1966 edition:
“A ferocious band of savages more than seven feet tall are terrorizing neighboring tribes in the Amazon jungle. The existence of the savages was revealed by a group of Brazilian air cadets who went on a course of adventure-training in the jungle. According to the cadets, the giants are known locally as the Krem-Akarore.
Peace-loving tribes of Indians on reservations in the Xingu region of Matto Grasso live in terror of them. The cadets said that they tried to make contact with the giants; but failed. Members of the friendly Calapalos tribe living on the reservation told the cadets that their tribe had captured a small Krem-Akarore boy who grew to be nearly seven and a half feet tall. But he became so strong and rebellious as he grew up that he was condemned to death by the chief and executed.
Three Britons plan an expedition next year to the area in which the giants live, to study different types of indians. The Britons, members of an Anglo-Brazilian scientific reconnaissance group, are Alistair Mackenzie, Ian Bishop and David Hunt. They are already on their way to the Amazon basin.”
A very strange incident reportedly took place outside Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on November 24th, 1967. A high-pitched whine had prompted fourteen-year-old, Carlos Alberto do Mascimento to look out the eighth-floor apartment building where he worked. He observed a brilliant metallic-looking disc-shaped object as it descended into a stand of trees. The craft reportedly brushed the top of one tree, which “seemed to explode.” Carlos called another witness to the window as the object landed in the tall grass. Both witnesses then saw three men in white coveralls emerge from the grounded saucer and walk stiffly around it, holding their arms tightly to their sides. After about five minutes the three “men” reentered the object.
The next day Carlos, along with two other witnesses, visited the place where the craft had landed. The grass was flattened where the object had been, and the tree Carlos had seen explode was bereft of leaves, the trunk burned and charred. They also discovered that the grass in that area was so high that the men disappeared when walking through it; yet the three men in coveralls appeared to be only knee-deep in this same grass. They realized that the object and the men must have been truly gigantic.
An extraordinary “tall, very dark form” walked through Berwick Nova Scotia, a small town in the Annapolis valley, in April of 1969. A local newscast reported that many residents on the outskirts of that town had seen an eighteen-foot tall inhumanoid striding about the area, moving around twenty miles per hour. After the initial reports of the “Phantom” hit the media, the local police had to assign two patrol units to the area to control the bumper-to-bumper traffic of sightseers that ensued.
On May 8th, 1977, two men walking along a marshy area of the Hainault Forest in London, England claimed they saw a giant glowing inhumanoid creature as it ran off into the trees. It stood over eight feet tall and four feet wide, they said, and was a dark blue color.
A gigantic man with long legs and exceptionally good hearing may not be so strange after all. In the fall of 1957, two hunters reportedly encountered a giant, human-like creature near Wanoga Butter, Oregon. Gary Joanis and Jim Newell had just shot a deer, they claimed, when a very tall being came out of the bushes, picked up the dead animal with one arm, and walked quickly back into the woods with tremendous strides. The creature was about nine feet tall, they said, with extremely long hair on its arms. It made a noise described as “a very strange whistling scream.”
Two years later in Rosenburg, Oregon, two boys told state police that they had twice seen a fourteen-foot-tall, man-like creature in some nearby woods in late July of 1959. They described the entity as being covered with hair, walking upright and possessing human characteristics. They had first seen it on Friday, July 24th, but didn’t tell their parents because they didn’t think anyone would believe them. They returned to the same spot in the woods again on the following
Wednesday the 29th, armed with a rifle.
To everyone’s great surprise, the entity appeared again and one of the youths alleged that he fired five shots at the creature from a range of about fifty yards. “It ran off screaming like a cat, but louder,” the boy said. The police were then led to the area where they found human-like, five-toed footprints fourteen inches long.
Giants were also seen in Newport, Oregon during a peak UFO flap in November of 1966. Several people reported to the police that they had also seen giant inhumanoid figures with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads.
From Alberta, Canada comes this report which was published in the Mid-Day Standard, of England, in August of 1960:
Giant Strides over Ravine
“Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Saturday. Three workmen at the bighorn dam site claim they have seen a humanoid figure almost three times the size of an average man.
Two of the men said they saw the figure, about fifteen feet tall, striding across a ravine. The third said he saw it watching the site from a hill. Indians believe there is a family of four of the creatures living in the area.”
Bizarre Diminutives
“Giants and fairies. We accept them, of course...Science of today, the superstition of tomorrow. Science of tomorrow; the superstition of today.”
-Charles Fort, ‘The Book of the Damned.’
Tales of unusual diminutives beings; fairies, dwarves, leprechauns and goblins, have always been with us. The Wee Folk, the Gentry, the Little People, the Nisse, the Fay, the Sidhe; ill-tempered imps all; in ages past these entities were notorious for their malevolent dispositions and capabilities to do humans great mischief, sometimes causing real harm; and even death. These are the ‘little men of old’ and their name is linked to the Latin word fatum (fate, destiny).
The Inhumanoids Page 7
