Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

North America
Bigfoot; Cannibal Giants; Giant Human
Skeletons; Gilyuk; Pitt L ake G i ant; Talle gwi
Siberia
Chuchunaa; Kheyak; Kiltanya; Kul; Mecheny;
Mirygdy; Pikelian; Tungu; Zem lem er
Giant Human Skeletons
Subfossil bones, skulls, and skeletons of humans
or Giant Hominids of North America and
Europe.
Physical description: Height, 8 feet or more.
Variant name: Tallegwi.
Distribution: Paleo-Indian mounds in the
eastern United States and other sites in North
America; scattered sites in Europe.
A partial list of places where Giant human
skeletons have been reported follows:
Arizona—Fort Crittenden, Winslow.
British Columbia, Canada—Neskain Island.
California—Cascade Mountains, Lompoc,
Minarets Wilderness, Santa Rosa Island.
England—Gateshead, Durham; Repton, Derbyshire;
Rotherhithe, Greater London; St. Bees,
Cumbria.
France—Angers, Rouen, Soyons.
Greece—Aléa.
Indiana—Brewersville, Potato Creek, Walkerton.
Ireland—Donadea, Leixlip.
Italy—Mazzarino.
Kentucky—Allen County, Carroll County,
Christian County, Holly Creek.
Mexico—Río Baluarte in Sinaloa State.
Minnesota—Chatfield, Clearwater, Dresbach,
Koronis Lake, LaCrescent, McKinstry Mounds,
Moose Island, Pine City, Rainy River, Sauk
Rapids, Warren.
Montana—Fish Creek.
Nevada—Spring Valley.
New York—East Randolph, Tug Hill Plateau.
Ohio—Zanesville.
Pennsylvania—Bedford County, Bradford,
Ellisburg, Gastonville, Greensburg, Hanover,
Sayre, Sterling Run, West Hickory.
Switzerland—Luzern.
Tennessee—White County.
West Virginia—Salem.
Significant sightings: The earliest known discovery
of giant’s bones was near Aléa, Arcadia,
Greece, about 560 b.c., when a blacksmith uncovered
a 10-foot-long coffin containing a huge
skeleton. Hailed as the bones of the Spartan
hero Orestes, they were reburied in that city
with great honor. Some scholars think they were
the fossil remains of large animals, discovered
and interred in a coffin at a much earlier time.
Adrienne Major calls Herodotus’s account of
this event the earliest fossil measurement ever
recorded.
In 1509, some workers digging ditches near
Rouen, France, uncovered a stone tomb that
contained the skeleton of a man of enormous
size. The skull was large enough to hold a bushel
of corn, and the shinbone measured 4 feet in
length; from this, the full height was estimated
at 17 feet. On the tomb was a copper plate that
identified the body as Chevalier Ricon de Vallemont.
From the 1860s to the 1880s, settlers in Minnesota
digging into Indian mounds excavated
human skeletons 7–8 feet tall. In December
1868, quarry workers at Sauk Rapids found a
petrified skeleton 10 feet 9.5 inches tall in a
grave chamber capped by a limestone slab about
7 feet below the surface. The skull was flat on
the top and measured 31.5 inches in circumference.
The femur was 26.25 inches long, and the
fibula was 25.5 inches.
A skeleton measuring 8 feet in length was discovered
by George B. Dresbach Jr. while leveling
an earthwork near Dresbach, Minnesota, in
the nineteenth century.
Four skeletons of men 7–9 feet tall were unearthed
in two mounds near Salem, West Virginia,
in 1930. However, by the time anthropologist
D. T. Stewart reached the site, most of
the bones had disintegrated or become lost. The
few remaining bones were considered to be only
average size.
In 1965, Kenneth White dug up a perfectly
preserved skeleton under a rock ledge near
Holly Creek, Kentucky, that was 8 feet 9 inches
tall when reassembled. Its arms were relatively
long, its hands large, and its feet relatively small.
The skull was 30 inches in circumference. The
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