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Another relevant narrative is that of a most curious little book entitled The Strangest Story Ever Told, privately published in 1953 in New York by a Miss Virginia Colp, in the name of her father, Harry D. Colp.
In the preface, Miss Colp explains that this manuscript was found by her mother among the possessions of her late father, then some years deceased. The slim volume, only 46 pages in length and divided into seven chapters, presents a straightforward story, starting in the year 1900 and ending in 1925.
Harry Colp at that time was a resident of Wrangell, Alaska, where he apparently worked for a small sawmill. In the manuscript's first chapter Harry tells that one of his partners in prospecting enterprises, a man reffered to only as Charlie, left in early May on his own in a prospecting expedition and returned a month later entirely dispossessed but for his canoe, a paddle, and the clothes he wore. He brought a piece of quartz, shot through with gold flecks. He refused to discuss his trip and borrowed money to take a ship out of Alaska for good. Before leaving, however, he told Colp his story.
Apparently subsequent to having climbed a tree on a hill to get his bearings after some days of prospecting, Charlie saw a band of humanoid creatures, covered in thick hair, rushing towards him up a slope. He described them as "the most hideous creatures. I couldn't call them anything but devils, as they were neither men nor monkeys, yet looked like both. They were entirely sexless (no visible genitalia or mammary glands) their bodies covered with long coarse hair, except where scabs and running sores replaced it." Charlie recounted that he had slid down the tree, thrown his already damaged gun at the first assailant, and then run for his canoe, apparently most closely pursued by the creatures. He was unable to give a clear account of what followed but he finally found himself adrift, in the bottom of his boat, after dark, and managed to row back to Wrangell.
The small book goes on telling other stories and adventures unrelated to this peculiar narrative, but it is on the last chapter that things get weird again. Apparently another acquaintance, this time a friendly trapper, penetrated the same area but up the Muddy River from the south, this in 1925. The trapper had laid a line of traps up to one of two odd-shaped small lakes previously described by Charlie in his eerie encounter many years ago, but had had to take up this line because all the traps along it were sprung by some creature that left foot-tracks of a nature that this trapper had never encountered before in a lifetime in that general area. He tried to trap the creature itself but failed; and then, one night, his dog vanished after alarmed barking and a disturbance. Following its tracks he found them paralleled by the unknown's and then, at some distance, those of the dog stopped abruptly. The trapper followed the unknown's but discovered in time that it was just ahead of him for it made two complete circles back to the point where it had presumably picked up the dog!
The trapper described the tracks as being for distances bipedal but then — alternating with these stretches — quadrupedal. The hind prints he describes as "about seven inches long and looked as if they were a cross between a two-year-old bear's and a small barefooted man's tracks. You could see claw marks at the ends of the toes, toe pads and heavy heel marks; between toe-pad marks and heel marks was a short space where the foot did not bear so heavily on the ground, as if the foot were slightly hollowed or had an instep. The front set looked like a big raccoon's tracks, only larger."
The trapper is stated to have returned to his camp but, after relaying the story to other trappers, he left the next morning and was never seen again. His effects were found three weeks later, and a number of his traps were sprung.
One of the most extraordinary accounts about these creatures can also be found in a book entitled True North, by Elliott Merrick, and it concerns events occurred near Goose Bay, Labrador:
"About twenty years ago one of the little girls was playing in an open grassy clearing one autumn afternoon when she saw come out of the woods a huge hairy thing with low hanging arms. It was about seven feet tall when it stood erect, but sometimes it dropped to all fours. Across the top of its head was a white mane. She said it grinned at her and she could see its white teeth. When it beckoned to her she ran screaming to the house. Its tracks were everywhere in the mud and sand, and later in the snow. They measured the tracks and cut out paper patterns of them, which they still keep. It is a strange-looking foot, about twelve inches long, narrow at the heel and forking at the front into two broad, round-ended toes. Sometimes its print was so deep it looked to weigh 500 pounds. At other times the beast's mark looked no deeper than a man's track. They set bear traps for it but it would never go near them. It ripped the bark off trees and rooted up huge rotten logs as though it were looking for grubs. They organized hunts for it and the lumbermen who were then at Mud Lake came with their rifles and lay out all night by the paths watching, but with no success. A dozen people have told me they saw its track with their own eyes and it was unlike anything ever seen or heard of. One afternoon one of the children saw it peeping in the window. She yelled and old Mrs. Michelin grabbed a gun and ran for the door. She just saw the top of its head disappearing into a clump of willows. She fired where she saw the bushes moving and thinks she wounded it. She says too that it had a ruff of white across the top of its head. At night they used to bar the door with a stout birch beam and sleep upstairs, taking guns and axes with them. The dogs knew it was there too, for the family would bear them growl and snarl when it approached. Often it must have driven them into the river, for they would be soaking wet in the morning. One night the dogs faced the thing and it lashed at them with a stick or club, which hit a corner of the house with such force it made the beams tremble. The old man and boys carried guns wherever they went, but never got a shot at it. For two winters it was there. They believe to this day it was one of the devil's agents or more likely 'the old feller' himself."
Legends about the Na'in, specially those of the northern Athabascan Gwich'in people, tell of men who were ostracized from the group for disobeying tribal rules. These rejected men, and occasionally women, would find themselves slipping into the guise of a Na'in, hovering behind bushes spying on people. If lonely, they tried to kidnap a person of the opposite gender, and sometimes succeeded.
Others stories tell of Brushmen as nonhuman entities, but with human appearance and magical powers. For instance, the Brushman would posses the ability to use mind power to lull you to sleep and then kidnap your loved one.
In Search Of... The Abominable Snowman (part 1 of 3)
Sources: (1) Anderson, Ivan T., Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life,Adventures Unlimited Press; (2) Scherman, Katharine, Spring on an Arctic Island, Brown Little; (3) Anderson, Ivan T., Things,Pyramid Books; (4) Colp, Virginia, The Strangest Story Ever Told, Privately Published; (5) Merrick, Elliott, True North, Brompton Books.
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