Alaskan Sasquatch Stories from Delta Discovery

 These Alaskan reports are very interesting although it seems uncertain whether the Hairy Man is a more Sasquatch-like creature as seen along the Western coast of North America, or the more inland creature also called The Bush Man, a more human-like being thought to be a Living Neanderthal by Loren Coleman and other researchers (An assessment I agree with)

Hairy Man in the Y-K Delta

January 30, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 5

Last week, we published a story of a Hairy Man being seen in Kasigluk last spring. We had been hoping to begin publishing a series of Bigfoot sightings since such sightings in the Y-K Delta seem to be more common than are told. Here in the delta, Hairy Man is the name given to the creature that others call Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
Here in the Bethel area, many people’s introduction to Hairy Man was through the creature we came to know of as “Gabriel Fox” in the 1960s. It’s the story of a young boy who ran away from the Children’s Home near Kwethluk and survived in the wilderness by turning into a Hairy Man. But big questions remain: How could a boy turn into a hairy creature that lived in the extreme wild? Was it really Gabriel Fox, and not a young Bigfoot that was starving and raiding fishcamps for food when it was caught? Why did the military and/or the US government say nothing about him after they took him away? And most importantly, why didn’t they return him home?
One can think a boy cannot survive long in the wilderness on his own, and such transformation from human-to-Hairy Man in such a short time is physiologically impossible. Even adults cannot survive for long without shelter and food in the wilderness, and it’s extremely doubtful their bodies will grow hair all over and replace the clothes they wear in order to survive in the cold. Of the humans that are reported to have become feral, the only hair that grows long is on their heads or faces while other parts of their bodies remain hairless.
So what are these creatures? How do they survive in the wilds of Alaska and elsewhere? Yet, witnesses report seeing them in winter wearing only the hair that covers their entire bodies. Or they see them in water in a time that would be dangerous for humans to be in water. Some say they are adapted to all kinds of weather just like moose and caribou are adapted. But lately, the creature is getting all kinds of attention on TV but mainly the stories are in the lower 48 states. Well, Yup’iks and other Natives in our area have seen or long known about these creatures but had rarely made any fuss about them to the point that no attention is barely made to their existence here.
Some sightings are of the creature itself. Some reports are of the tracks it leaves behind, its glowing eyes, its repugnant smell, the rocks they throw toward people, or the sounds it makes. There are stories from Chevak to Kotlik, and from Kotlik to Pilot Station. Some sightings are also along the Kuskokwim River, from McGrath area to Bethel, and up the Johnson River. But the greatest numbers of sightings are between the mouth of the Yukon River to Pilot Station, and around Tuluksak, a village that is sort of situated all by itself between Akiak and Kalskag.
People report seeing the creature in wide-open spaces and in forested areas. Others see it trying to hide from people, or fleeing from the witnesses. Some witnesses flee the creature instead. Most of the time, witnesses see a harmless or benign creature, but in one instance it appears hostile and charges a hunter, who fires at the monster but misses.
Another points a gun at the creature, but does not fire his weapon. In another story, a man kills a Hairy Man and flees, only to have other Bigfoots harass the killer in the village at night until he leaves the village for good. Another sees the Hairy Man hunting another animal. Others see it while flying in airplanes. Sometimes the sighting is so terrifying that the witnesses quit going hunting or frequenting an area where the sighting occurred.
The appearance of the Hairy Man is always the same, a cross between a man and a gorilla (what we see in pictures or movies, since we don’t have gorillas here). It’s always hairy, very large, and a fast walker. Its hair is either black, brown, auburn or white. It has almost no neck so when it turns around, it turns from its waist and not with its head like we humans do. The sightings seem always to be a natural occurrence, and not supernatural ones as in the magical Ircinraat or Little People stories.
Some in the science field are beginning to call Bigfoot or Sasquatch the North American Great Ape, due to the amount of evidence obtained by DNA, footprints, movies, photographs or otherwise. Some that want more proof need a body of a Bigfoot, yet around 30 known Bigfoot kills have been recorded in US history, several here in Alaska. Several were reportedly found dead during the big clean-up after the massive 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. They even got a live one from right here in Bethel. But every time the US government obtains a body, nothing else is heard about it afterwards, which leads us to believe that the US government is not the place where we’ll hear of official proclamation that the Hairy Man exists.
Interest in Bigfoot is getting intense. Hairy Man is getting popular. Spike TV (channel 38) is now offering $10 million to anyone of presenting irrefutable evidence that Bigfoot exists. They plan to air a few of the expeditions that look for this evidence. On Animal Planet (channel 47), we have the “Finding Bigfoot” series, which have been on the air for a couple years, but they will probably not find one on TV because their production crews in the field might be so large that they probably scare away the Bigfoots they pursue, and they also spend so little time in the areas they investigate.
Well, whether or not they will be declared a real animal is up in the air. Here at Delta Discovery we’ll just print what witnesses tell us, and we’ll publish one or two stories per issue until we have no more. We hope you enjoy the articles in the upcoming issues. And if you’re a witness or heard of a story and want to share it with our readers, send it to us at hairyman@deltadiscovery.com. Let us know if you want to remain anonymous in the story. We reserve the right to publish any account sent to us, in order to try and weed out those that seem untrue or written in jest.

The Tuluksak River Hairy Man

 

February 6, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 6

Illustration by AI

Some years ago, my brother Allen and I went moose hunting up the Tuluksak River during one weekend in late September, when moose hunting used to be 30 days long. We brought along Mitchell, a friend who worked at the Bethel Hospital as a licensed practical nurse.
It took most of a day to get way up the Tuluksak River in a 40 hp short shaft and jon boat and we camped pretty close to the Kilbucks. The next morning, we heard a bull grunting upriver inside a feeder stream, so my hunting partners went to go check on it while I went off in the opposite way, a little downstream from our camp. My brother said they could hear the bull grunt and rake brush occasionally, and despite their best efforts to coax him out, it did not show himself.
I myself had stopped on the edge of a clearing on top of high ground and hid myself in brush to watch the river and clearing for animals. Some time later, I saw something walking across the clearing but it was walking upright like a human. I first thought it was an animal, either a moose or a bear, but as it came closer, I couldn’t really figure out what it was. I saw the upper part of the body – head and shoulders – above the tall grass, and when it reached high ground it walked with a side-to-side sway of the body, like a person does when climbing a hill.
Then I thought it might be another hunter – but as far as we knew, we were the only ones in the area and we didn’t see any other hunters or camps below us. The odd thing about this “person” was that it had reddish hair all over, and the morning sun glistened off its head and shoulders. It was a couple hundred yards away or more.
Then Mitchell or my brother broke a dry stick while walking down to camp. The noise of the breaking stick was loud during the calm sunny morning and it carried far. The man-beast suddenly straightened up and froze, looking in the direction of the noise. A few moments later, it side-stepped slowly toward a couple spruce trees about 18-20 feet away and stopped between them, standing still. It watched for a long time for the source of the noise.
I also watched the animal for a time. The hairy man never moved. After a while, I realized this was not an animal that I knew and I began to feel a little uncomfortable about it, so I slipped out of my hiding place and walked quietly back to camp.
When I told my brother I’d seen some kind of animal, he got excited that I might’ve seen a moose instead. We all went to check the spot where I saw the creature but it wasn’t there anymore.
In fact, we saw nothing more during our hunt so we headed back to Bethel before dark set in, since we all had to go back to work the next day.
Author’s name has been withheld by request.
More Hairy Man stories:
http://www.deltadiscovery.com/story/2013/01/23/in-our-native-land/legendary-bigfoot-sighted-near-kasigluk/817.html
http://www.deltadiscovery.com/story/2013/01/30/speak-your-mind/hairy-man-in-the-y-k-delta/843.html

Legendary Bigfoot sighted near Kasigluk

 

January 23, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 4

Here is the original sketch of the creature witnessed on May 29, 2012, drawn by one of the primary eyewitnesses. The being was tall, dark, and covered ground with amazing speed while walking.

A family out egg hunting last spring near their village of Kasigluk came upon an incredible sight – a large, dark, hairy creature walking upright was heading towards them.
They – two teenaged brothers and their mom - were on the outskirts of the village riding their 4-wheeler when they saw it. It was approximately around 3pm, and the weather was beautiful, although slightly cloudy. School was out for the summer and the date was May 29th, 2012.
Could it have been the elusive Bigfoot?
“We came across it by the lagoon here in Kasigluk,” said one the eyewitnesses. “It was back there southeast of Fox Lake.”
While they were out that day, the three family members saw other people who coming home from egg hunting. So at first they thought the creature was a person.
“After it passed, we looked at each other and thought, ‘we just saw Bigfoot’,” the eyewitness said.
The creature was very tall and dark. Its long arms hung below its knees. It was approximately 75 yards away. The family watched it for about 2 minutes.
“It was walking towards us and then once it saw us it turned and started going to the other side of the hill,” said the witness.
When it disappeared into the bushes, the family headed towards where they last saw it but it was nowhere to be seen.
They didn’t hear about anyone else seeing the mysterious creature.
The following is the firsthand account about the sighting written by the mother of the two boys, one of the eyewitnesses.
“I wanted to go egg hunting, but didn’t want to go alone so I had my two sons follow me since I didn’t want to go alone. My oldest son said he knew of a place where we could go check so off we went towards the lagoon where there is flat land to the east.
“Upon reaching the lagoon my older son got off the four wheeler and ran off to see if anybody was in that area. He ran to the edge of the hill and soon ran back saying that somebody was already there. So we decided to go check somewhere else when that “somebody” started running at an incredible amount of speed. No human person would have gone from down there by that flat land to already towards us up the hill.
“That “somebody” was all black from top to bottom, kind of hunchbacked, like it had no neck and its head was cone-shaped. Its long arms went past its knees and it was incredibly tall.
“At first we all asked each other, “Who is that?” Then after about 10 seconds as it was walking with long strides it would occasionally look towards us. The way it walked was fast and no human could cover that amount of tundra in the same amount of time.
I asked, “WHAT is that?”
“All that time we were awestruck and dumbfounded to what we were witnessing. Then as it was going to disappear from our view finally I said, “I think we just saw Bigfoot!” As it passed in our full view it had covered the whole entire hill in a matter of about a minute. It seemed to be just walking but with big strides.
“We went up to the top of the hill but we didn’t see it anywhere so we went straight home feeling kind of excited.
“That’s my account. It looked exactly like the Patterson footage of Bigfoot if you’ve ever seen it.”
Big Foot or Hairy Man sightings are not unheard of in the Yukon Kuskokwim delta region. Last summer there were reports of a number of sightings in the Johnson River area and other locations.

Hairy Man and boy have stare-down

 

February 13, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 7

Illustration by AI

A drawing of the creature witnessed near the Kwethluk River.

by Delta Discovery staff, as told by the witness

This happened when the witness was seven-years-old. He remembers everything vividly, even his age when he saw the Hairy Man.
When he was a young boy, “John” and his family were at fishcamp near Kwethluk. One fine day, John and his friends were out swimming and playing a game of “Not-it” when he ran around a corner of a beach and brush along the river. Suddenly, John stopped running when he saw a Hairy Man standing motionless less than 100 feet away looking at him.
The creature and John stared at each other for a long moment. Then John looked back behind him to see if his friends were there and seeing the creature too, but they weren’t there. When he turned around to look at the Hairy Man again, it was gone.
John then quit playing with his friends and went instead to his family’s camp where his mother met him. She asked why he seemed so anxious, and John told her he had just seen a “carayak,” not knowing how else to call the Hairy Man. (Carayak is the Yup’ik name for “beast,” often for the brown bear.)
John’s mother then told his father what happened. Then John and his dad left to inspect what he was talking about. All they saw were these strange tracks in the grass, which appeared to have been spun around at a point where the Hairy Man was standing and ran off. John’s father followed the tracks for a short way but didn’t see what made them.
To this day, John remembers the Hairy Man as a tall creature – about 8-9 feet high – and while standing its arms extended past its knees. It was hairy all over, the color being light brown. Its face looked like a cross between an ape and a man. Its eyes were small on a grey face, and its nose seemed flat. The creature’s chest, although hairy, showed a pinkish skin color beneath it.
John said he didn’t feel any fear at the moment when he saw the Hairy Man, which it was standing just in front of the trees when he saw it. But his mother later told John he appeared pale and perplexed when he came home after that moment of seeing the animal.
To this day John, now an adult, has never seen anything like it again. However, whenever he’s out alone in the wilderness and remembers his Hairy Man encounter, the hair on the back of his neck start to stick out a little.

 

You might be interested in:

• The Tuluksak River Hairy Man
• Couple spots Hairy Man near Chevak
• Worker leaves village after seeing Hairy Man

Couple spots Hairy Man near Chevak

 

February 20, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 8

Illustration by AI

It was about mid-summer in Chevak, about salmonberry picking time, and it was somewhat drizzling that day. However, it wasn’t affecting visibility that much, as one could see out about five miles.
My girlfriend and I had just brought a granddaughter to the airport on a four-wheeler for her to catch a plane to Hooper Bay, and had just boarded her when my girlfriend spotted a large, upright figure – like a large person – walking on top of a bluff about a mile away west of the airport.
“Hey, look at that! What is that?” my girlfriend asked me. I looked and saw the human-like figure going down a bluff and behind a stand of brush about 100-150 feet wide. I watched the end of the brush expecting it to show up from there.
But the large figure then reappeared in a few moments nearer about a half-mile away or less. “Wow, it’s really huge! What is that?” we said. It was dark in color, really dark. This time it was moving south and moving fast on two legs, even though it was just walking, not running.
Then we got on our ATV and began driving toward Chevak on the road. The human-like figure seemed to keep pace or moved in the same speed as the ATV we were riding. We drove about 300-400 feet while watching it walking on the tundra.
We then stopped to just look at it, and it too, stopped to look at us. Then it turned and began walking again and disappeared over a hill.
We got off the road and tried to drive our ATV in the direction it went so we could observe it more, but we couldn’t move fast enough because of the tundra and tussocks. Because we didn’t move fast enough, we didn’t see it again.
When it first appeared, it was at least a mile away from Chevak. At that distance, we could tell what something was if it was there: If it were an ATV, we’d know. If it were an animal, we’d know. If it were a person, we’d know.
We couldn’t believe how fast it moved. It walked on the tundra faster than a human, and I figure that the distance the human-like creature walked in a few minutes an ATV couldn’t do except for maybe in 15 to 20 minutes because of the tundra.
The area where we saw it was the same area where one of my young nephews saw a large, upright person some time ago when he was fishing for tomcods.
Also in the past few years, there have been quite a few Hairy Man sightings in the Chevak-Hooper-Scammon Bay area. What we saw must have been one of these.
Author’s name withheld by request. This sighting occurred in the summer of 2011.

Worker leaves village after seeing Hairy Man

February 27, 2013 | Volume 15, Issue 8

Illustration by AI

This drawing shows a lineworker who approached this creature, mistaking it for a person wearing furs.

In these two sightings, we couldn’t determine the identities of the persons mentioned in this story, since they were both non-locals and have left or are now gone.
In 2011, a utility company installed four wind turbines in Emmonak. In addition to providing service to the village, the utility also built an 11-mile electrical intertie to serve the nearby village of Alakanuk.
During development of this intertie, one of the workers was walking along on the newly-cut corridor when he spotted someone dressed in furs, or so he thought, kneeling down along the bank of a small slough.
He then approached the person to say hello, thinking it was another worker or someone from one of the villages. When he got within 10-15 feet and spoke, the “person” suddenly stood up and glanced at him. Instead of being a person, it was a Hairy Man!
The animal quickly began to leave, crossing the small slough and walking up the other bank toward the brush. Just before he entered the woods, he turned around to look at the worker once more before finally disappearing into the forest.
The worker then left the area immediately and went back to Emmonak. Once there, he went to the airport and got on a plane and left, never to come back again.
During work on the same project, a lineman was working up on a pole along the corridor when he saw a moose fleeing from the brush and into a small opening or meadow before disappearing into the brush on the other side.
Soon after, a white-colored Hairy Man also appeared in the same place where the moose had popped up from, following the trail or chasing after the moose. It too disappeared into the woods where the moose had gone moments earlier.
It was not known if the Hairy Man caught the moose or not.