Tag Archives | Yeti

The U.S. Government’s 1959 Memo On Yeti Encounters

By on March 4, 2013 in News 2

Could the improper discovery or killing of a Yeti in Nepal have provoked an international incident? Slate writes:

Titled “Regulations Governing Mountain Climbing Expeditions in Nepal—Relating to Yeti,” this Foreign Service memo was issued from the American Embassy in Kathmandu on November 30, 1959. Did the U.S. government believe in the Yeti, as some cryptozoologists took the memo to mean?

The memo came at the end of a decade of strenuous Yeti-hunting. In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest, and reported seeing large tracks. In 1954, the Daily Mail funded a sixteen-week “Snowman Expedition” to Everest to look for clues. And in the late 1950s, American oil millionaire Tom Slick bankrolled a number of Himalayan expeditions in search of the creature.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 2

Bigfoot DNA Hunters Push For Yeti Rights

By on February 18, 2013 in News 17

Via Discovery News, a social movement is born:

A team of researchers led by Melba Ketchum, a Texas veterinarian, claims to have not only conclusively proven the existence of Bigfoot through genetic testing, but also that the mysterious monster is a half-human hybrid, the result of mating with modern human females about 15,000 years ago.

Ketchum sees her research as an important first step in obtaining legal status for Bigfoot, which she believes are an undiscovered Native American population. Ketchum issued a statement demanding that the “Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a ‘license’ to hunt, trap, or kill them.”

Ketchum believes that “The Sasquatch people are more like us than they are different. The Sasquatch people have their own language, traditions, and rituals.”

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 17

Yeti Theme Park Planned In Siberian Mountains

By on January 27, 2013 in News 4

Your plans for next Christmas vacation? How does cryptozoology-themed family fun on a remote Russian mountain sound? Via TwoCrowsParanormal:

Sunny Siberia is adding a new attraction: a theme park devoted to the legendary Yeti. Hoping to cash in on interest in the search for the beast, officials have dedicated a portion of land and launched plans to construct a park centered on the Yeti. Initial plans for the park include a hotel and a themed children’s playground, all built at the Sheregesh ski resort resting in the Shoria Mountain area. The region claims to have a high number of Yeti sightings.

The brainchild behind the park, Sheregesh adminstrator Igor Idimeshev, says that the people of Shoria refer to the creatures as “Big Men” and that everyone in the region is aware of their existence. Believing it unlucky to speak too much about the encounters, the Big Men are only mentioned in conversation briefly.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 4

Siberia Experiences Spate Of Yeti Sightings

By on September 30, 2012 in News 8

Furry creatures which walk human-style on two legs are being spotted left and right by residents in Siberia, oddly coinciding with the timing of a Bigfoot conference set to take place next month. The Siberian Times reports:

Yetis have been ‘sighted’ recently in three different remote areas in Kemerovo region, according to local reports. Russia is to host a conference and expedition in search of the yeti next month.

One was spotted this month by an unnamed state inspector in the Shorsky National Park, says local government official Sergei Adlyakov. ‘The creature did not look like a bear and quickly disappeared after breaking some branches. Earlier in August, fisherman Vitaly Vershinin saw two creatures near Myski village, according to a local Siberian newspaper. It was reported that several days after this sighting ‘local people saw a strange creature one more time’.

Officials in Kuzbass, Kemerovo region, told of another alleged sighting.’We were sailing in a boat without an engine.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 8

Visiting The International Museum Of Cryptozoology

By on August 31, 2012 in News 1

When I have children someday, our weekend afternoon trips will be to the other zoo. Atlas Obscura on your new favorite cultural institution, the Portland, Maine-based Cryptozoology Museum, which offers Bigfoot poop, among other attractions:

Loren Coleman started pursuing unusual, often inexplicable animals in 1960, and has since become one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of cryptozoology. The discipline, as defined by the master himself, “is the study of hidden or unknown animals. Zoological species that, to-date, remain unverified by science, such as Yetis, Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, and Sea Serpents, as well as hundreds of other yet-to-be-found animals (cryptids) worldwide. It also encompasses the study of animals of recent discovery, such as the coelacanth, okapi, megamouth shark, giant panda, and mountain gorilla.”

Coleman has amassed an unrivaled collection of specimens, replicas, and artifacts relating to famous and lesser-known cryptids, including the eight-and-a-half foot tall, 300-pound “Crookston Bigfoot,” a life-size coelacanth, P.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 1

Committee for Scientific Inquiry on Chinese Ape-Men

By on July 24, 2012 in News 0

The Committee for Scientific Inquiry has a great article about the hunt for the Yeren, the Chinese ape-man, including a humorous anecdote in which a hirsute westerner is mistaken for the legendary beast:

Some have suggested that the wild man is some human throwback—neither Giganto­pithecus nor Peking Man surely but possibly some oddity like those sometimes exhibited in carnival sideshows (Nickell 2005, 150–58, 202–208). A “monkey baby,” for instance, that lived in Xhin Xhan County of Hubei Province, was simply an unfortunate individual with genetic deficiencies who “walked with a shuffling gait, had a slouched back, had a low misshapen forehead, could only make sounds with no articulate speech, and grinned constantly” (Poirier et al. 1983, 30). Yeren researcher Frank E. Poirier—only a normally hairy westerner who is about five feet eleven inches tall—frightened some local children who “ran away horrified at their encounter with what they screamed to others was the Wildman in their midst” (Poirier et al.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

Famed Yeti Finger From Nepal Revealed To Be Human

By on January 4, 2012 in News 3

yeti-fingerThe BBC reports some deeply disappointing news:

Scientists from Edinburgh Zoo have solved the riddle of a yeti finger taken from a Nepalese monastery half a century ago. The mummified remains have been held in the Royal College of Surgeons museum in London since the 1950s.

A DNA sample analysed by the zoo’s genetic expert Dr Rob Ogden has finally revealed the finger’s true origins — following DNA tests it has found to be human bone.

The yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman, is a legendary giant ape-like creature said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal and Tibet. Despite the lack of evidence of its existence, the yeti myth retains a strong appeal in both Nepal and the west, where it became popular in the 19th century.

The finger, which was said to be from a yeti, was taken from a Nepalese monastery by an American explorer in the 1950s.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 3

Scientists Say Mythical Monster The Yeti Is Real, Lives In Siberia

By on October 24, 2011 in News 18

103770942The existence of a giant, apelike monster, alternately known as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, et cetera, has long been scoffed at and dismissed as a hoax. However, an international team of scientists say the mythical beast is real and roaming the furthest reaches of Russia. Via TIME:

Scientists and yeti enthusiasts believe there may finally be solid evidence that the apelike creature roams the vast Siberian tundra.

A team of a dozen-plus experts from as far afield as Canada and Sweden have proclaimed themselves 95% certain of the mythical animal’s existence after a daylong conference in the town of Tashtagol in the Kemerovo region, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow. In recent years, locals there have reported sightings of the yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.

The Kemerovo government announced on Oct. 10 that a two-day expedition the previous weekend to the region’s Azassky cave and Karatag peak “collected irrefutable evidence” of yetis’ existence on the wintry plateau.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 18

Yeti Hand Returned To Remote Mt. Everest Monastery

By on May 4, 2011 in News 2

_52390062_photo-3Jimmy Stewart, a monastery hidden in the snow capped mountains of Nepal, and the disappearance of an unexplainable, hideous clawed hand. BBC News reports:

A pilot from New Zealand is in Nepal to return a replica of what some believe is the hand of a yeti to a remote monastery in the Everest region. Mike Allsop will fly from Kathmandu to Pangboche Monastery, which sits at 13,123ft.

The originals were stolen from the monastery in the 1990s. They first came to light in the 1950s when an expedition to find the mythical yeti came upon the monastery. Peter Byrne, the leader of the 1950s expedition to find the abominable snowman, said that the hand did not match the skeleton of a human or a primate.

Mr Byrne managed to take one of the bones from the hand out of Nepal to his friend, the Hollywood actor James Stewart, who was on holiday at the time with his wife in Calcutta.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 2

Russia Sets Up University Institute To Study Yeti Sightings

By on March 27, 2011 in News 7

WampaKevin Makice writes on Wired:

As geeks, we are encouraged to suspend our disbelief while simultaneously challenging everything we see and hear. In the words of Agent Mulder, we want to believe, but our geek roots are firmly planted in the scientific method.

That tension is possibly being resolved on one front. The Russians are establishing a scientific institute on the study of yetis, hairy ape-like creatures rumored to inhabit the Himalayas.

Officials in coal-mining region of Kemerovo Oblast announced plans today to open a Yeti Institute at the Kemerovo State University, a 38-year-old higher education entity in western Siberia. KSU boasts 31,000 students and is best known for reviving regional languages, like Shor. Yeti researcher Igor Burtsev reportedly claimed that 30 Russian scientists are currently studying yetis, or Abominable Snowmen, and the Institute could allow them to better collaborate.

Continue Reading · 7