“Wild Men” May Be Lurking in North America’s Remote Woodlands

“I thought it was a feral human,” Mike Wooley recalls of the incident, arguably the strangest to occur during his time as an outdoorsmen. “I had heard about them, and done some reading about them.” Recalling the events of that December day in 1981, Wooley soberly tells of something frightening that occurred in the Louisiana backwoods that changed his life.

You can read the story from the source link:
mysteriousuniverse.org...

Feral humans aren't discussed as often as Big Foot in North America. Science doesn't accept the existence of Big Foot being real just yet. But there is some compelling evidence and supporting data on the subject of feral humans existing in remote areas of North America.

In what led to the authorship of the Missing 411 book series, author and retired law enforcement officer David Paulides had begun researching strange disappearances in National Parks (which, it should be noted, he does not view in direct correlation with things like Bigfoot reports, instead taking a more objective, statistical approach to his investigations). However, one of the most compelling cases Paulides began to study early on had been the disappearance of a young boy, Dennis Martin, who vanished from within sight of his father in the summer of 1969 near Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

One of the most striking details of the case (and one which National Park Service documents pertaining to Martin’s disappearance failed to note) had involved a strange observation made shortly after Dennis Martin went missing, a short distance away near the area of Rowans Creek. Mr. Harold Key and his family had been walking a trail in the area looking for wildlife–in particular, any sign of black bears nearby–when they heard “an enormous, sickening scream.” Within moments, Key’s son pointed out a bear nearby, located up the ridge from them. Mr. Key, upon observing the “bear” his son had spotted, determined this to be not a bear, but a “dark figured, rough-looking man” attempting to remain concealed behind a thicket.

The man, which Key didn’t manage to view in clear detail, had purportedly been carrying something over his shoulder; Harold Key, unaware of Dennis Martin’s disappearance earlier that afternoon, supposed that the figure might have been a moonshiner who had trying to hide from them. Upon learning days later of the search for Dennis Martin, Harold Key notified the FBI about what he and his family had seen the same afternoon Dennis went missing.

This is a very interesting article, and quite scary for me, because this is where I live!!


Could Big Foot be responsible for all the missing cases that arise of people being lost in the mountains? Do they raise young children as their own, to grow up as Feral Humans?!
This is a serious situation, if this is true!!
Read the article, then let's see what you think?

MODS, I wasn't sure where to post this. Please move to Cryptozoology, if need be.

a reply to: sled735
I wrote a paper at university that was called "The feral human project" I think it ended up evolving into an actual program teaching bushcraft. Survival and self reliance were the focus of the paper and I went around and interviewed a lot of people for the paper. Interesting subject to me.

a reply to: sourcecontroller

Interesting to me too.

If you still have your papers, I would love to hear some of what you discovered.

a reply to: sled735

This is more a way to scare the average person of people who live in the wilderness, completely off the grid.

a reply to: OpinionatedB

Well, those people would be my neighbors. Way too close for comfort.

I know there are "things" in the woods. I've heard them myself. We had a tall creature walk by the bathroom window when I was living at home with my parents. It had to be close to 9 ft. because the window was high off the ground, and it's head was past the top.
Yep, they're out there!!

originally posted by: OpinionatedB
a reply to: sled735

This is more a way to scare the average person of people who live in the wilderness, completely off the grid.

May be. I've heard of feral children, but...

My bearded friend and his, um, hairy girlfriend live off the grid in Montana and love it.

They've invited hikers to come for dinner, offered tips on the hidden hazards in the area, etc., though at first sight --out of the blue in middle of a hike -- they may have made the hikers think ....????!!
Gentlest and and well-read people I know.

When they have come to visit me, sometimes even in the city of nutjobs they get wild-eyed looks.

Here is a link to Unsolved Disappearances in the Great Smoky Mountains at Amazon.
There is a reference to the Dennis Lloyd Martin case. I have the book, but haven't finished reading it.

a reply to: sled735

I have often wondered how many bigfoot sightings are just humans out living rough. I'm from Montana and from an area where there are reclusive folks that may not be that far off from a "feral" human. I don't feel like I have anything to fear from them however. I suppose that perhaps a percentage of these reported wildfolk may be suffering from mental illness but they would also still need to be coherent enough to function and survive in a challenging environment. If they have the appropriate skillset it may be safer in the woods than on the streets though. Interesting all the same.

a reply to: Chamberf=6

I've seen some shows on t.v. where people say they have witnessed some really weird creatures in the wilderness.
After seeing and hearing all those stories, I don't think I could live off the grid. Those places are usually in dense forested areas where all these creatures are said to live too.

No Thanks.

originally posted by: butcherguy
Here is a link to Unsolved Disappearances in the Great Smoky Mountains at Amazon.
There is a reference to the Dennis Lloyd Martin case. I have the book, but haven't finished reading it.

Thank you for the link. I remember a thread that was up last year about that. I look forward to checking out the book.

a reply to: redhorse

Ha! That sounds like some of the older people in the area where I grew up!

Mountain Folks.

honestly, i wish i could lend you my copies of paulides 411 books. recently, i heard him speak on coast to coast for the first time and i was hooked by the stories he was telling. soon after listening to a couple more interviews i went out and bought his western and eastern united states books and i must say... it was mind blowing.

hundreds and hundreds of cases that he sifted through and ruled out all natural causes. so what he was left with was the most unexplainable disappearances. everything mundane has already been ruled out as an explanation. these aren't people who have run away, they weren't attacked by bears or mountain lions, they weren't abducted or kidnapped by people and they aren't just lost in the wilderness. david in the book doesn't directly say that he thinks its bigfoot but you definitely get that sense after reading just a few chapters. it really becomes obvious and it's the only logical conclusion left. also there are running threads of common factors for each case which make them unique from other regular missing persons cases.

in nearly every case bloodhounds and tracking dogs refuse to track the person scent. they'll sit down or refuse to follow the scent. now if it were just a regular animal attack the dogs would just track whatever it was, bear, mountain lion, whatever. the parks dept has dogs that are specifically trained to track dangerous wildlife. also there is never any blood or evidence of a struggle or attack by an animal like there would be if a bear attacked someone. not to mention bears hibernate in winter when a lot of these attacks happen, plus bears or mountain lions don't carry away and consume whole bodies.

also in nearly every case the disappearance is immediately followed by inclement weather. torrential down pours or heavy snow fall which impedes the search effort. tracks are rare in most of these cases because of this reason and if by chance a track is found the trail often stops without any trace of it picking up again. bodies of water also play a large role in these cases and it seems as though these bigfoot use rivers to travel and eliminate possible tracks.

when a body is actually found (in most cases a body is never found at all), its nearly always found in a place that was already searched by search and rescue or in a place that is abnormally outside of the search perimeter for the given persons age. for example, a 2 year old goes missing, search and rescue guidelines say that 95% of the time a kid 2 and under will be found within "x" amount of miles from where they went missing given a certain amount of time. but, they are found double, triple or quadruple that distance away. and not just further down a trail, we're talking about rough back country, rough terrain, over mountain ridges, past rivers etc. the same happens with those who go missing that are elderly.

in nearly every case if the person's body is found it's found further up in the mountains while it's a persons natural response to walk down hill when lost, not further up. the path of least resistance, not thousands of feet uphill over boulder fields, swamps etc.

it's also extremely common for people when found to be found missing clothes and with scratches all over their body. missing shoes, socks, pants, shirts, hats, jackets etc. some completely naked, some in their underwear only. and the thing is these missing persons supposedly traveled long distances without shoes or socks but, their feet are never dirty or scratched, just their upper body. and sometimes people are even found in places it would be impossible for them to get to by themselves. for example a toddler found in the middle of a dense swamp with water four feet deep sitting on top of a rock in the middle the water, with again their feet bare, dry and clean. in one of the weirder cases a man's pants and shoes were found with several bones in the shoe and pant leg, like a couple toes and a tibia, all clean bone, nothing else. like the person dropped their pants and vanished except for a few of their bones.

i can go on about these books for hours, they are so interesting and it's really mind blowing what's going on in our national parks that they don't want us to know. there are so many more unique characteristics to these cases that i could mention. if people had any idea about all of these missing persons and the conditions that they are found in it would change the way the people in the US view our national parks. and it's obvious from the correspondences david had with the parks department that they are aware of the problem but don't want it going public. after all they claim that the parks department keeps no record of missings persons from their parks and he ran into a lot of red tape filing FOIA requests.

i would definitely recommend getting at least one of the books from david's site directly as its twice as expensive to order it from other people on amazon.

David Paulides Missing 411 Website

go to his site and check it out, lots and lots of info.

a reply to: sled735

I lived in Guam when I was a kid and use to go in the boonies (jungle) and explore. They were out there.. lol!! When we arrive in Guam we went through a long indoctrination on all aspects of such things to watch out for ..left over bombs, poison shells not to pick up and all kinds of scary stuff that can kill you. They never mention that there were possibly Japanese soldiers that never surrendered hiding in the jungle.

Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese imperial army straggler who lived in the jungles of Guam for 28 years after World War II ended, died at 5:07 pm Monday Sept 22, 1997 of heart failure at JR Tokai General Hospital in Nagoya Japan. He was 82. Yokoi lived in a tunnel-like, underground cave in a bamboo grove until Jan 24, 1972, when he was discovered near the Talofofo River by hunters. Yokoi, who had been a tailor's apprentice before being drafted in 1941, made clothing from the fibers of wild hibiscus plants and survived on a diet of coconuts, breadfruit, papayas, snails, eels and rats. "We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive," Yokoi said in 1972. "The only thing that gave me the strength and will to survive was my faith in myself and that as a soldier of Japan, it was not a disgrace to continue on living," Yokoi said in 1986. No one in the history of humanity, except stragglers later discovered in Philippines, has equaled his record.

link to story ns.gov.gu...

Humans degenerate to a feral state rather quickly. Even our so-called great and modern society if deprived of modern technology would be a savage land in no time.

a reply to: sled735

I am not stateside of the pond but even over here we have heard of veterans of the vietnam confilct retreating to the wilderness to avoid people, now most of these obviously suffered PTS but it does prove that it is possible for people to live wild even in the twentieth and twenty first century america.
I do not know what happened to that child and it is sad as I suspect foul play and the man had abducted him, now weather that was a wild man is another matter but a quick trawl of google brought up these results and given the size of the forrests of north america and canada it is possible that even today there may be some people and perhaps native whom do not want contact with the modern society or new people, certainly I believe the native american tribes had such legend's of wild men.
endlesscancun.blogspot.co.uk...
listverse.com...
And of course there are story's similar from other part's of the world such as siberia.
People are ingenius at finding means to survive and over the age's many smaller tribes chose hiding over conflict with larger more dangerous neighbours, or they could even be a modern sect.

Like Romulus and Remus, two ferals that supposedly were raised by wolves and founded Rome, which became the civilisation that set the marker for all


:0

I have seen and talked to one of these men. He was a gentle creature, as big as a big foot and could easily snap a dears neck. He was in a national park too. Oregon. He had the language skills of a 2 year old and was Very harry. I could easily see how someone would have mistaken him for a wild animal. A good many people would have pulled a gun and shot him out of fear, but up close he was very docile and courteous. I will never forget the experience.

a reply to: CallmeRaskolnikov

Thank you. Interesting stories! You have piqued my interest, for sure!
I guess all those other books I have on my wish list will have to wait. This one is next!!

originally posted by: dashen
Humans degenerate to a feral state rather quickly. Even our so-called great and modern society if deprived of modern technology would be a savage land in no time.

I wouldn't say "savage", but I'd say the younger people would go bonkers without their smart phones. What in the world would they do with their thumbs?

a reply to: RUFFREADY

Thank you for the link. Sounds like another interesting read.