Minnesota Iceman Hoax

[Huntster]

I get the impression from reading advocate postings that certainty resides in the mind of the believer, not the doubter.

It's not "certainty". It's acceptance that resides in the mind of the believer, doubt in the mind of the skeptic, and denial in the mind of the denialist.

With regard to the Iceman, I'm a skeptic.

[Huntster]

There are any number of words you could search for that won't turn up -- 'carburetor', for example

That is correct. One would not likely find the word "carburetor" on a state fish and game department website, but one could expect to find it in an automotive website, huh?

Imagine that!

but that doesn't mean professional wildlife managers haven't heard of them.

That's true. They might just want to pretend that they haven't heard of them.

Imagine that!

You might want to try 'sasquatch' in the Alaskan DFG search engine again, I got a hit in .03 seconds.

Here's the page.

I've been corrected. I did get that hit. It likens the existence of mountain lions in Alaska to reports of sasquatch, huh?:

"We get sporadic reports, maybe two or three a year," said state wildlife biologist Rich Lowell of Petersburg. "Usually there's one report, then word gets out and there's a rash of sightings that are not substantiated. It's almost like sasquatch."

Funny thing is, mountain lions have been recently established to exist in small numbers in the southeastern corner of the state.

Imagine that!

Huntster, it's not whether they're silent on the issue, it's whether or not they recognize/are familiar with the term 'sasquatch'.

Actually, Ray, their silence says as much as unfamiliarity. IOW, they either know all about the issue, or they're intentionally silent on the issue.

Which do you think it is, Ray?

You honestly think Hajicek had never heard of bigfoot/sasquatch in the early 90's?

I wouldn't know. If he says he hadn't, I have no reason to disbelieve him.

Got some proof otherwise, Oh Skeptical One? I'm open to review your investigative powers (as unimpressed with them as I am..........)

[Guest]

It's not "certainty". It's acceptance that resides in the mind of the believer, doubt in the mind of the skeptic, and denial in the mind of the denialist.

With regard to the Iceman, I'm a skeptic.

Huntster,

Thanks for the clarifying remarks.

The problem in a nutshell: every single piece of evidence that is claimed to favor the existence of Bigfoot is open to interpretation because all such evidence is inconclusive. Have you accepted this inconclusive body of evidence (generally) as if it were conclusive? If your (or any-one's) acceptance is openly provisional--- great. If it has moved over from the provisional and towards the embrace of certitude--- not so great.

[Guest RayG]

IOW, they either know all about the issue, or they're intentionally silent on the issue.

Which do you think it is, Ray?

I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. There's no requirement for them to fall into either camp. Having an awareness of something doesn't mean you have to support it or remain silent on it. If memory serves me correctly, the Alaskan wildlife professional I spoke with on the phone a few months ago said that sasquatch wasn't listed in the hunting regulations because sasquatch wasn't a recognized species. He didn't say anything about being unfamiliar with it. I'm guessing they extended that line of thinking to their website as well -- they're not a recognized species so they decided not to waste space on the server by adding them to the website. It doesn't mean they've never heard of sasquatch or are unfamiliar with the sasquatch phenomenon.

Got some proof otherwise, Oh Skeptical One? I'm open to review your investigative powers (as unimpressed with them as I am..........)

Nope, that's why it's one of those things that make me go hmmmmmmmmmm... just seems a little puzzling that a nature film producer would be unfamiliar with bigfoot in the early 90's. Maybe those guys you won't talk to, those professional wildlife managers, got their mitts on him and swore him to silence.

RayG

[Huntster]

The problem in a nutshell: every single piece of evidence that is claimed to favor the existence of Bigfoot is open to interpretation because all such evidence is inconclusive.

That is correct, because if the evidence is "conclusive", it becomes proof. Then there is no further question.

Have you accepted this inconclusive body of evidence (generally) as if it were conclusive?

No, but I have accepted the inconclusive body of evidence enough to invest into. That investment may be time arguing on an internet forum, it might include money, it might include time, and it might include other consideration. But I have accepted that body of evidence to one extent or another.

If your (or any-one's) acceptance is openly provisional--- great. If it has moved over from the provisional and towards the embrace of certitude--- not so great.

Says who?

It's my investment, right? Who's to say whether or not it's "great" or "not so great"? None of us know whether sasquatches exist or existed recently.

[Huntster]

Huntster, on 08 May 2011 - 11:51 AM, said:

IOW, they either know all about the issue, or they're intentionally silent on the issue.

Which do you think it is, Ray?

I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. There's no requirement for them to fall into either camp.

Actually, they (as the official wildlife management agencies) have a responsibility to at least issue a policy statement on the issue.

Having an awareness of something doesn't mean you have to support it or remain silent on it.

As the official wildlife management agencies, they are responsible to at least issue a statement of policy.

If memory serves me correctly, the Alaskan wildlife professional I spoke with on the phone a few months ago said that sasquatch wasn't listed in the hunting regulations because sasquatch wasn't a recognized species.

[

Your memory is great, and I don't doubt it (IOW, I believe you), but I'd like that in writing, please. Official like.....

He didn't say anything about being unfamiliar with it.

I'd like to administer an exam of his familiarity with the issue.

Got a name?

I'm guessing they extended that line of thinking to their website as well -- they're not a recognized species so they decided not to waste space on the server by adding them to the website.

Neat guess. The problem with science and officialdom is that guessing doesn't count.

just seems a little puzzling that a nature film producer would be unfamiliar with bigfoot in the early 90's.

Not me. Probably associated it with a cartoon or something until he actually saw prints for himself.

Maybe those guys you won't talk to, those professional wildlife managers, got their mitts on him and swore him to silence.

That's unlikely. My experience with professional wildlife managers is that they're damned near as anonymous as I am, and they like it that way.

[Guest LAL]

Haven't most frozen animal finds been flat as a pancake?

Like this?

Siberian mammoths were frozen for thousands of years and they weren't quick frozen.

According to Langdon when Little Irvy the Whale accidentally thawed out he was found to be freeze dried. Apparently he didn't become flat as a pancake during the years he was frozen. This story gives a different version of where he came from than Langdon gave (harpooned instead of sick). There were doubters about Irvy, too:

"Drunkenly scrutinizing the advertising come-on plastered across the front of the side-show attraction, the wino bellows to all within earshot. "Isha fake!" he says, unable to believe that the 40-foot trailer parked outside the shopping center actually contains a giant 20-ton whale captured in the Pacific. "Isha ******* fake, I tell ya! Fake! Fake! Fake!" Staggering away from the gleaming, chrome-and-blue tractor-trailer allegedly housing the object of his disbelief--a 20-ton sperm whale named Little Irvy--the snockered consumer reporter is unable to resist offering one last warning to the handful of curiosity seekers about to shell out a dollar apiece for the privilege of viewing the beached behemoth."

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1995-04-20/news/thar-she-froze-refrigerated-whale-to-chill-out-in-the-arizona-desert-after-30-years-on-show-biz-road/

[Guest LAL]

Doesn't matter if I agree or not with Langdon on the Patterson film, his work experience qualifies him to offer an expert opinion. Sure he could be wrong about the PGF, but it doesn't matter what his opinion was, he was not wrong about him and Chambers being approached by Hansen. Hansen admits he contacted Chambers, advised to go to Howard Ball, Chambers confirms it, Langdon confirms it, Napier confirms it.

And I haven't questioned there was at least one model made. Napier never examined it, model or otherwise.

He said:

"In the meanwhile George Berklacy of the Public Relations Office of the Smithsonian and I had been doing a little digging on our own. Berklacy after an exhausting and dangerous mission on the telephone tracked down a commercial organization on the West Coast that claimed to have made the Iceman for Frank Hansen out of latex rubber and hair in April 1967 (the year it went out on the first tour of the circus midways).

The name Pete Corrall was mentioned in connection with the model. Berklacy and I decided against releasing this name at the time, but since Hansen mentions Pete Corrall in the Saga Magazine article as the man who put the hairs into the Iceman model, there seems no special reason why it shouldn't be mentioned now. Of course there is no proof that the story Berklacy was given was true -in fact Sanderson told me later that he has been in contact with at least two other organizations which claim the same honor, but at the time it seemed to confirm my steadily growing conviction that the Iceman was a model and always had been a model. On my advice, the Smithsonian Institution issued a press release withdrawing its interest in the Iceman, much, I think, to the relief of all concerned, who were understandably jittery at the prospect of press headlines proclaiming 'Smithsonian Scientists Fooled by Carnival Exhibit'.

The official disclaimer by no means ended my personal interest in the affair but it seemed to me that in view of what we had learned, it was only proper that the Smithsonian should be taken off the hook before it was too late. Indeed, there was some danger that it was already too late since Hansen had by then opened his new season by displaying the Iceman in a shopping precinct in St Paul, Minnesota, and was attracting scientific customers from nearby universities. It is not without relevance with regard to Hansen's motivation that as a crowning touch he had by now added to his display boards bearing the title “the Near-Man, the Siberskoye Creature,†the words 'Investigated by the F.B.I.' (Siberskoye is an artificial word, roughly translated “Siberskoye man meaning man from Siberia).

The Smithsonian's 'withdrawal of interest' statement provided a spate of wild rumors, notably that the Smithsonian, and probably Ivan Sanderson as well since he was known to be working in close association with us, had somehow got their hands on the corpse and found it to be genuine. As the announcement of a missing link would be embarrassing for the established scientific view, the Smithsonian were suppressing the facts!"

There's no mention of Chambers there. Hansen said the L.A. County museum sent him to Howard Ball.

Would you say Langdon was wrong when he said Sandersonson and Heuvelmans should have told them to give them some DNA and Hansen, as a loyal American should have given it to them? DNA typing was a couple of decades in the future.

Other saw the fake and thought it was real as well.

Teenagers as Atomic Mystery Monster said on his blog? Terry Cullen wasn't a teenager. He was trained in zoology as were Sanderson and Heuvelmans.

Naturally the most likely scenario in one of these situations is that it was fake. He admits it, it's confirmed, and his claims of it being real all contradict each other. He's not making a cover story, to keep him out of legal trouble. He's saying it is real. He didn't have legal trouble, he made that part up too. It was all controversy he created to get the rubes to come in and see it.

In your opinion. It seems he was protecting someone - the owner? His Air Force buddies? Himself? If all it was was a fake it doesn't make sense he would let two zoologists examine it at all and if he was trying to fool them, why would he tell them he'd had a model made? If he didn't actually have legal trouble it's apparent he thought he could - for transporting a body across state lines, for possessing a possible murdered human or, if he was involved in smuggling or in receiving illegal goods, for that.

"Perhaps the real puzzle that arises from this theoretical reconstruction is how two experienced zoologists like Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans could have been misled. I have already indicated a possible explanation in terms of the psychological pressures that they experienced at the time. But is this enough? I fear it is the weakest link in my reconstruction.

Both these scientists will undoubtedly refute both my analysis of the events and the imputation that they were the victims of brain~ washing, and insist that what they saw was the real thing. They have already provided the reasons for their beliefs. I repeat that my reconstruction is purely speculative, inasmuch as I can offer no kind of proof for my suggestions, which are simply the result of intuitive reasoning..."

http://www.bigfooten.../napiertake.htm

I now have Napier's book. I'm going to read it again while I wait for Heuvelmans'.

Hansen had no way of knowing Heuvelmans would accidentally crack the glass, so why add entrails as Haijcek suggested? I don't see how anyone could smell rubber and mistake it for rotting flesh as Tchernine suggested even if a rubber model (not vinyl?) was deteriorated because of the ice. Sanderson lay on top of the case to get his measurements. How could he possibly have missed Barbie doll hair at that range if it was evident to a casual viewer? He was close enough to see the agouti pattern.

There were differences; Napier detailed some of them.

"After St Paul, the exhibit moved on to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Time-Life Inc filmed it. This film, together with the color pictures taken by Cordon Yeager at the press conference, make it quite clear that the creature in the ice is not identical with the one that Sanderson and Heuvelmans drew and photographed in December 1968.

For example according to Bernard Heuvelmans the mouth was 'slightly open and one can see a yellowish tooth...' In Yeager's photographs the mouth is agape and at least four teeth can be dearly seen. Moreover the left big toe, which was firmly apposed to the toes in the ‘original’, was now quite widely separated from them.

Other minor differences were apparent to me. Ivan Sanderson claimed categorically that this exhibit was not the one that he and Heuvelmans had examined. On the face of it, therefore, there was a good case for believing that a 'model', a ringer, had been switched for the 'original' at some time; in fact Frank Hansen in his letter to the Smithsonian six weeks earlier stated as much. But there is still no certainty that the 'original' was any more 'real' than the substitute model."

Oh then you agree with Meldrum that the Onion Mtn. cast exhibits casting artifacts.

I see no reason a cast can't have artifacts and dermatoglyphics, but we were talking about Freeman's casts, not Green's. Let me know when Meldrum decides the PGF was a crummy suit.

Your kidding, right? Lal, can you offer anything to confirm what Hansen claimed for the reality of the Iceman? You just got done talking about Langdon and his opinion on the PFG could be wrong, guess what? That applies to Heuvelmans and Sanderson as well. What makes Langdon's statements about the Iceman being a fake carry more weight than Sandersons and Heuvelmans? The fact that Hansen admitted it, Chambers confirmed it, Napier confirmed it. You even said yourself it wasn't an issue. That part remains solid, It is the part of it being real that falls apart, because the stories are so drastically different. If it was real why not just stick with one story? He never did.

See above. If he thought the thing could have been a fabrication he couldn't have shot it in Minnesota, could he? I suspect the tabloid story inspired that one. It bears a remarkable similarity to Matt Moneymaker's story but I'm not saying one inspired the other. Eliminating Minnesota as the origin leaves Asia - Vietnam, China, Russian trawler, Tokyo - take your pick.

For your scenario to work Sanderson and Heuvelmans had to have been wrong. They didn't think they were. Both were convinced enough it was real to publish. In the absence of the original their reports will have to suffice.

Hansen himself claimed in 2002 he didn't know what it was so what would it take to confirm that?

[Guest RayG]

Actually, they (as the official wildlife management agencies) have a responsibility to at least issue a policy statement on the issue.

As the official wildlife management agencies, they are responsible to at least issue a statement of policy.

Says who? Should they issue statements about all unrecognized species, or just the ones you think they should make statements about?

Your memory is great, and I don't doubt it (IOW, I believe you), but I'd like that in writing, please. Official like.....

I'd like to administer an exam of his familiarity with the issue.

Got a name?

Sadly, the writeup I made about my phone call has gone the way of the BFF 1.0, a mass of dissipated electrons that we might never recover. However, that wildlife professional is in Alaska, the state you live in, quite easy to confirm for yourself if you truly wanted to. In fact, I seem to recall trying to encourage you to engage the wildlife professionals in your neck of the woods, but that old adage about leading horses to water comes to mind...

RayG

[Guest]

That is correct, because if the evidence is "conclusive", it becomes proof. Then there is no further question.

No, but I have accepted the inconclusive body of evidence enough to invest into. That investment may be time arguing on an internet forum, it might include money, it might include time, and it might include other consideration. But I have accepted that body of evidence to one extent or another.

Says who?

It's my investment, right? Who's to say whether or not it's "great" or "not so great"? None of us know whether sasquatches exist or existed recently.

Huntster,

Pardon my unclear post.

What I meant was that it is "not so great" from a knowledge point of view to accept "the inconclusive body of evidence" for Bigfoot as if it were conclusive. I agree that "none of us know whether sasquatches exist or existed recently", however many Bigfooters are seriously positive (certain) that they do exist.

[Guest LAL]

I just found this - possible confirmation of a Vietnamese origin beginning @ 3:43 (also Lloyd Pye's view and @ 6:28 a retired police detective's statement on Hansen's harassment and the charges he might have faced):

[Guest Blackdog]

That isn't even close to confirmation, just more of the same stories and speculation.

I would think the South Vietnamese soldiers would be much more worried about the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong than hauling a live ape out of the jungle just because it was cool. Do you know what was going on there in 1965?

Lloyd Pye is the Star Child guy right? 'Nuff said....

If the FBI was involved that information should be available via the FOIA. If you feel so strongly about this I suggest you request that information. That would be a hell of a lot better information than some podunk detective repeating old stories without an iota of verification.

[Guest LAL]

The report Loofs-Wissowa referred to was from 1966. It said US Marines had shot and killed a big ape. Maybe it was some other large ape, but that's one story Hansen didn't tell. 1966 was the year Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart was there. Hansen's unit was stationed in Da Nang. BTW, I'm from the sixties. <grabs flit gun>

I've already mentioned Pye and the Star Child and that I don't agree the original was a juvenile sasquatch.

You read the articles I've linked to, right? Here it is again. Odette Tchernine wrote:

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C. have been good enough to advise me that they have no information to send me regarding the "Iceman." Quote: "Nor has this Bureau taken any part in investigation in connection with this case." Unquote. The letter is written at the highest level, and the signature represents a living and legendary name."

http://www.bigfooten...les/hansen2.htm

"The Smithsonian Institution was reportedly briefly interested in the iceman, asking Dr. John Napier to investigate, then suggesting the FBI investigate, due to reports that the creature had been shot and killed. The head of the FBI, then J. Edgar Hoover, declined, pointing out there was no law violated if the beast was indeed a non-human. (The incident did give Hansen the opportunity to add a sign labeled "The near-Man ... Investigated by the FBI" when the exhibit went back on the road.)"

http://www.unknownex...esotaiceman.php

I suppose he wasn't detained at the Canadian border, either. Whether or not Hansen was actually harassed it appears he became upset and nervous - or would you prefer to believe Bob Smith didn't actually talk with Frank?

I'm interested in what led Heuvelmans to think it was smuggled out of Vietnam. I'm not interested in the FBI.

Edited May 10, 2011 by LAL

[Guest LAL]

Even at the height of the war-

"Professor Viet and some other Vietnamese scientists believe that this region, the so called 'three borders' region where the borders of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos converge, is the centre of reports of the Vietnamese 'wildman'. So common were reports that in 1974, during the height of war, General Hoang Minh Thao commander of Northern forces in the Central Highlands, requested a scientific survey of the region north of Kontum for 'Nguoi Rung'. Scientists who were part of this dangerous expedition included Professors Vo Quy and Le Vu Khoi from Hanoi University and Professor Hoang Xuan Chinh from the Institute of Archaeology in Hanoi. No Nguoi Rung were found - though the expedition returned North with a couple new elephants for the circus. "

http://istina.rin.ru/eng/ufo/text/188.html

[Guest 127]

LAL: Pye claims to have seen the "real" iceman on display. He also claimed that this real iceman had "tendrils of blood" coming up from the body to the surface of the ice. According to him, absolutely the real thing.

The only problem with this is, blood sinks in water. Some costume blood floats. Even by his own description of the "real" iceman, he has debunked it as a fake.