Wildmen of the Pamirs

This article helps fillin the Yeti story.  Again we havemultiple reports reporting the same creature. It is a primate and seems to have legs similar to a gorilla’s from thedescriptions.  Yet the rest tends to bemore human like although it is sporting a coat in this case similar towool.  It is certainly not a Sasquatchwhich has a human like stride.

Againwe have an arboreal population, but not necessarily overly nocturnal unlike theSasquatch.  It seems to be associatedwith the mountains, but that could easily be wrong.  The Sasquatch is a forest dweller andactually covers all of North America.

Again,they avoid humanity and in this case appear to be consuming plants.  The proximity to human operations and thelack of farm animal losses is noteworthy. Presuming the maintenance of a low profile may be the explanation forthis clever creature.

Wildmen of the Pamir Mountains

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 02:23 PM PDT

There seems to be renewed interests in the 'wildmen' of Asia...probably the best known is the Yeti. But therehave been expeditions into the more tropical areas of south central Asia as well. In this post, I want to concentrate onmountainous central Asia, specifically those hominids or 'snowmen' that aresaid to exist in the Pamir Range of Tajikistan,Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Thesehominids go by several monikers...the Barmanu, the Tajik Yeti, the Almysty, theGolub-Yavan or simply the Gul.

In August 2001, the Russian magazine Karavan + I published an article about thekilling of a wild man on the old Soviet-Afghanistan border. According to theauthor, border guards of the Kevran unit in the Pamir Mountainssaw a "Snowman" during the winter of 1967/68. They reported theirobservation to their superior, Kuzkov, the officer in charge of the unit. Hedid not, at first, pay any attention to it.

The soldiers of the next watch again saw a creature and reported the fact.Subsequently, the duty officer accompanied the soldiers to the spot andpersonally observed the creature. Kuskov informed his superior officer, acolonel in Khorog – a settlement on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. Newsabout this reached the Central Asia Commandwhere, in February 1968, a high-ranking officer gave the order, ‘Catch him or,if that isn’t possible, eliminate him!’. Thereupon, the border guards shot thecreature and took it to the border post. The body was stored in a woodshed. Asubsequent article 3) in Karavan + I in September 2001 on the happeningdisclosed that the body was taken to Moscowin great secrecy.

The magazine questioned two scientists to establish what had happened to theremains of the "Snowman". One of these was Georgy Skvorzov, directorof the programme Animals in inhabited settlements and, according to Karavan,for many years a collector of information about the ‘Snowmen’.

[Karavan:] Georgy, do you believe in the existence of the Snowmen?

[Skvorzov:] Of course. The Snowman has not only just been seen once in the mountainsof Tibet, in the Pamir Mountains,Siberia and the northern Caucasus. In recenttime these sightings have been fewer. Probably these very cautious creaturesare hiding from the advancing human civilisation.

[Karavan:] Do you know about the affair at the end of Winter 1968 when ourborder guards killed a Snowman in the Pamir Mountainsand brought his body to the capital? Did scientists get their hands on thisspecimen?

[Skvorzov:] We have slightly different information if we are talking about thesame event. According to my information the body of a Snowman was found by ashepherd in the Pamir Mountains in autumn 1968.But at that time our scientists only received pieces of the fur and theeye-teeth.

The magazine confided that their editor had been visited by an ex-border guardcalled Andrej. He had served in the Pamir Mountains during the1960s and had confirmed the killing of a "Snowman" at the placementioned. Further information about what happened to the body or about the furand eye-teeth was not given.

In the Russian Newspaper Simbirskij Kur'er (Simbirsk Courier), Arsenij Korolevreported in 2002 among others about a 1982 expedition of the Tajik Academyof Science in the Hissar Mountains in the westernPamirs. The academy was equally involved in the 'snowman' problem. According toKorolev, in the 1980s, many adventure lovers came to Tajikistan in search of snowmen.During their holidays, media workers organized themselves into groups and cameto the Hissar Mountains. A great number ofpublications followed as a result and the local press was full of storiesconcerning the Gul' He writes: “Only few, however, knew that this puzzle wouldbe solved by the scientists of the Tajik Academy of Science." TatjanaVasileva, at that time a scientist at the academy, is quoted as following:“Despite all that, the scientists were not inactive. Of course we wereinquisitive to follow the traces of the snowman, particularly so when thislegends was just close to us. But the leading stuff of the Academy was againstan official expedition. The only thing that we could do was to organize anexpedition that was dealing with soil profiles. At the same time, we could alsosearch for traces of the snowman."

Cryptozoologist George M. Eberhart's description of the 'Wildman'

At the beginning of May 1982, a ten member expedition left for the Hissar Mountains.Flora and fauna related materials were collected and examined to find possibleeyewitnesses of the snowman. The expedition team noted that the localsthemselves would reluctantly talk about the Gul. Often, they changed thesubject quite abruptly. In most cases, no personal experiences would bereported except for encounters through another person. The expedition found notraces of "Snowmen".

Furthermore, Korolev reported about an encounter with a police chief ofTadshikabad who spent the weekend with friends in the mountains: “After lunch,the friends went to the river for a bath. The policeman was tired and fellasleep. He only woke up because someone was shaking his car. He looked back andsaw a Gul beside his Shiguli. The Gul was pushing the Shiguli forward. Then,the creature placed its hands at the rear windscreen of his car. Full of fear,the policeman shot up and the Gul ran away. But the prints of his hands at therear windscreen of his car have remained. A Tajik detective has taken theseprints and has forwarded them to the police department of criminalinvestigation."

A guide Surob stakes his honor on the wild man's existence. “I saw hisfootprints, bigger than the man’s, in snow.”

The road slides upwards from Dushanbeand starts to disintegrate. Surob gestures towards a sad-looking town to ourright. “That’s town where I was born, after collapse Soviet Union, people started banging, stealing, breaking everything,proving they themselves are the Yetis.” He bristles when I suggest the Yeti maybe a peasant mirage. “They swear on the Koran. Why should they lie? They knownothing, they have nothing, they swear by Allah they have seen it.” I backdown.

We pull up at a shack for a pit stop. This is where the valley begins. I ampeckish. Soviet-style sweets are displayed in plastic bags. “What’s the bestone?” I ask in Russian. The proprietor dashes to a side room and brings me aSnickers bar. My guide wants to hurry, but an old man with an unwashed beardand one strikingly yellow tooth asks for a ride up towards his village. Surobasks him if he is from here. “He from here. Now I will gather the information.”

The peasant knows about the Yeti. “Ten years ago, I saw him. I was climbing ahill to gather firewood and I saw somebody. I go hey, hey, but then he startedrunning towards me. It was the Yeti, covered in black wool, with breasts likethe woman’s…”

I ask him to swear on the Koran that he saw the Yeti. Raising his hand toheaven the old man insists and gives me his Islamic word. “I don’t know aboutother people, but I saw it. It was shouting with anger, rarghh, I was shoutingwith fear, eeee, and I run.” The countryside changes dramatically as we talk.The road has become a dirt track. The car is swerving and sidling as it climbsup the barren gullies. The old man insists he saw the Yeti. Everyone knowssomebody who has in the nearby villages. “When I got back to the village, myfather started reading the Koran to me, as protection.”

Nature is starting to blossom in rich abundance. Cherry blossom hangs off thecrags. Shoots of wild onions sprout out of the dark earth. “Look,” says Surob.“Look at the herbals, the Yeti is eating the herbals, this is why he liveshere.” Coloured tips of wild flowers, blues, reds, purples, grow among thejagged browns, reds and greys of the mountains. Another curve. A stark, barrenriver valley. “Hey, they saw him too.” Surob stops the car and givestraditional greetings to two middle-aged men driving the traditionalclapped-out Lada.

“Yeah, I had fight with him,” says the hunter. “He has wool, black wool, andthese breasts…” And he wolf-whistles. His companion, a chubby man in a sizeableskullcap, butts in. “Oh yes, I was up in the glade, and he attacked my donkey.It was very frightening. He looked like a wild man — or a clever monkey.” Thesightings occur in the same places. Regularly.

In 1983 Dimitri Bayanov of the Darwin Museum led an expedition to Tajikistan. Hevisited the site near Lake Pairon where two women,Geliona Siforova and Dima Sizov, had reported seeing a wild woman sitting on aboulder 10 yards (9 m) from their tent. It surveyed them for a long time,making munching sounds. They did not dare to approach it, and in the morningthere were no traces of footprints or hairs.

Bayanov also visited the area of Sary Khosor and talked with Forest Serviceworkers, who said they often had reports of wild men. Two years previously, ashepherd had driven his sheep back down from the mountains two months earlybecause he had seen a big black 'gul' or wild man near his pasture. It hadfrightened his dogs and he had not dared to stay. Another Tajik had told theofficers of an encounter five years earlier with 'a giant hairy man, very broadin the shoulders, with the face like that of an ape'.

The Forest Service takes these reportsseriously enough to prohibit its employees from spending the night alone in themountains, for fear of these wild men.

Bayanov had no personal encounter with wild men, but he concluded his 1982expedition report by saying:

"The abundant signs I witnessed of local fauna, particularly omnivoressuch as bears and wild pigs, indicate enough food resources for the presumablyomnivorous hominids the year round. The 93 percent of the Tajik Republic'sterritory taken up by mountains is virtually devoid of permanent humanpopulation, so the latter poses no special danger to wild hominids. The longand continuing record of purported hominid sightings, supported by these newaccounts, leads me to the conclusion that such creatures do exist there."

The newspaper Vechernaja Kazan, from Kazan, thecapital of Tatarstan, Russian Federation, shared thefollowing in August 2001: “A hunter from the Narynsk province [Kyrgyztan]discovered tracks of an unknown being in the mountains. Scientists were able totake a photo of these tracks - length: 45 cm, width: 35 cm. Experts assume thatthe hominid (if it was one) came here from the neighboring Pamir,where Tajik rebels have caused him to shy away.”

As well in 2006, Vladimir Smeljanskij reported in the Russian newspaperRabochaja Gazeta about a business trip to Tajikistan. In the villageSary-Chashma close to the Afghani border, a teenager told him about anencounter. He claimed it happened to his father in the early 1990s. At thetime, his father was working as a cowherd. One evening, he noticed that a cowwas missing. As he was searching for the cow in the dark, he came across aravine, fell, and caught himself on a vine. He called for help. Suddenly, he hearda snort. At first he thought it was the missing cow. Then, in the light of themoon, he saw a figure: “… large head, short torso, unbelievably long arms, bentyet strong legs, and very large feet. And the entire body was covered with darkbrown fur.”

The being came to the edge, held a stick down for the man and easily hoistedhim up. The two stood there a few seconds face to face. The man saw huge handswith thick fingers, ears close against his skull, and small eyes. The being wasa little taller than 1.5 meters and with his broad shoulders seemed almostsquare. The being apparently reached for the knife on the herder’s belt andripped it away. As an exchange, he gave him his stick. The being then turnedthe man around by grabbing his shoulders and gave him a light shove. In thevillage, at first everyone was skeptical of the herder’s story. But then theelders remembered: “In the Pamirs, you really do meet these half-man,half-animal beings. Sometimes it helps the herders, who think of it as a mountainspirit. But only a few have been lucky enough to see it.”

The newspaper Vechernaja Cheljabinsk published the following report in 2001.The author was visiting locals in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan, near the border of Tajikistan. Alocal hunter, Aslanbek (his last name is not given), told the following story:

“Early in the morning, I was on the lookout for ducks in a gorge, closeto the lake. Suddenly, I felt a strong fear. It was foggy, but I felt likesomeone was close by. There was something in the wind, the fog parted, and Isaw an Almysty. He was big, about two meters, and bent over like an old man. Hewas completely covered in dark gray hair and stared at me. I stared back for afew minutes, and was afraid to move. I expected him to kill me. The elders tellhow an Almysty can kill from a distance. But this one turned around anddisappeared in the canyon after a few minutes. I ran away from there. Sincethen, I don’t want to go hunting anymore…” The encounter is said to have takenplace in 2000.

In the winter of 2002, Pakistannewspapers reported that the 'Russian UFO Digest' (Rossiskij UfologicheskijDaidjest) reported a new wildmen event in Pakistan. A 20 year-old citizen ofthe Pakistan village of Kharipur, Radschu, left his house andheard strange sounds from the bushes in front of it. Suddenly an aplike malecreature, about 1,20m high, covered with thick black coat, came out of thebushs and attacked and scratched him. Radschu cried and run bag into his house.The 'wildmen' fled from the apple garden when other men using torches began tosearch around Radschu´s house. Eyewitnesses reported about the high shrillcries of the creature. Old villagers remembered they has seen such"strangers from the mountains" many times in the past, particulary inwinter, when they came into the villages in search for food.

A another 'wild man' hominid is thought to live in portions of easternAfghanistan as well as the Shishi Kuh Valley in the Chitral region of NorthPakistan. The Barmanu, which translates as “The Hairy One”, is often thought tobe related to early hominids and descriptions generally resemble theNeanderthal. As is the case with other sightings of man like hairy hominids,accounts of this creature are often accompanied by tales of a horrible stench,a trait which is attributed to the creature’s wilderness lifestyle and haircovered body. Legends of this creature have been told by the locals forcenturies, but it was not until the early 1990’s that the legend would receiveinternational attention.

During the early 1900’s several Spanish expeditions into the Shishi Kih Valley region of North Pakistanlearned of the Barmanu through retelling of the legend by local people. Thetales of the Barmanu eventually caught the ear of zoologist Jordi Magraner whotraveled to the region with medical doctor Anne Mallasse and another teammember. Between 1992 and 1994 Magraner and his team detailed not onlyeyewitness reports but personal experiences including grunting noise thought tohave been made by a primitive voice box as well as discovering ape like footprints. Magraner was killed by one of his Pakistani guides on August 2, 2002.

Sources:

www.unknownexplorers.com
"Again the "Snowman" - Rossiskij Ufologicheskij Dajdjest(Russian UFO Digest) - January, 2003
Gurov, Boris - "Snowman Against the USSR" - Karavan + I - August 19,2001
Gurov, Boris - "On the Tracks of Snowman" - Karavan + I - October 10,2001
Khakhlov, Vitaly - "On the "Wild Men" in Central Asia" -The Commission for the Study of the "Snowman" Question - 1959
Eberhart, George M. - "Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology,Volume 1" - 2002
standpointmag.co.uk
www.andras-nagy.com
Smeljanskij, Vladimir - "Mountain Spirit" - Rabochaja Gazeta - May24, 2006
www.tajinfo.ru
Makarov, Vadim - "Atlas of the Snowman" - 2002