An article from Valentin Sapunov's book "Secrets of the Bigfoot: Between Man and the Beast" and was written on behalf of the author of the book, a researcher of the problem of finding Bigfoot.
1989 year. Big White
In October 1989, a bell rang at the editorial office of the Smena newspaper. Senior lieutenant of the medical service Igor Igorevich Vadimov said that for several months a huge hairy beast or man had been wandering around their unit, located on the Karelian Isthmus. The editorial office of the newspaper appeals to me, and now I am at the scene of the incident, in the construction part of the Leningrad district, talking with eyewitnesses.
The events began at the end of February 1989. The soldiers began to observe in the forests surrounding the unit, a light gray figure 2 5-3 m tall, outlines similar to a human. The mysterious visitor wandered along the fence of the unit, approached the dining room, the library.
Once at night I looked through the window of the barracks. Those who saw his face stuttered for a week after that. This incident helped to determine the height of the mysterious visitor: having memorized the position of the face relative to the frame, they calculated that the height was 2 m 75 cm. The local term arose - the Big White Man.
Once he showed up straight for an evening check. The foreman ordered to line up. When the unit complied with the order, a huge white figure appeared at the edge of the parade ground and slowly moved past, not paying attention to the people. The valiant warriors scattered with a cry and hid in the barracks.
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Lieutenant Voronkov, seeing a huge figure from the headquarters window, developed a version of what was happening in a purely officer's spirit: “Probably three soldiers sat on each other, wrapped in a sheet and scared the soldiers of the construction battalions.”
The lieutenant took a club and ran to the parade ground to engage in educational work. When a huge humanoid hairy figure stood in front of him, the club itself fell out of his hands, and the fearless officer rushed back to headquarters with all his might.
The mysterious creature left behind traces, broken branches, so that it could not relate to the spirit world. The dogs living on the territory of the unit became shy, howled, looking into the thickets, did not dare to step away from the barracks. The Big White Man was not only observed by the military. Traffic police inspectors, residents of neighboring villages, members of gardening told about the meetings.
We realized that the case was worth taking seriously. Together with my colleagues from the Cryptobiology scientific association, we have drawn up a program of work to study the phenomenon. The first point was: do not take any action that could harm the creature. The following points provided for regular duty in the area of the military unit, inspection of the nearest territory in order to collect any traces of his life and witness information, ideally - an attempt at domestication.
A large team joined the work. The soldiers and officers of the unit unselfishly offered and rendered great help. They provided us with a base for constant observation, equipment. The university, research institute, television, zoo, Sanitary and Hygienic Institute, Institute of Physiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences were connected. The Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of Youth at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant offered financial assistance.
Regular night shifts began. Once, when the historian Yevgeny Kulakov was on duty at the observation post, a huge light figure flashed through the eyepieces of the night vision device. Couldn't be filmed.
One evening I was on duty with the soldier Vladimir Serym. He saw the wild man six times, and they made a kind of contact. “White and Gray are friends,” said the soldiers.
- I feel he's close, - says Volodya.
About 30 meters away from us, branches crunched under heavy feet … I still cannot forget this sound: a terrible whistle turning into a growl. It reflects off the trees, amplifies. Hair stands on end. This is unlike any other sound from the night forests of the Leningrad region.
Something similar is published by large male baboons. But this one is lower and scarier. There is a primal formidable force in him. Who knows, maybe this whistle gave rise to the legends about the nightingale the robber? We run with flashlights and cameras into the forest. Ahead - only the heavy tread of rapidly leaving bare feet.
The creature, sensing that they were interested, began to behave more cautiously. But the soldiers met him as before. A strange and unpleasant consequence of the meetings was that the whole day after that the soldiers complained of headaches and fever. It turned out that the search for the Big White Man is fraught with some dangers (although he never showed direct aggression). However, this did not diminish the enthusiasm.
When inspecting the paths along which Bely was moving, we were able to find strange feces. They have been collected and studied in detail at the Department of Epidemiology of the Sanitary-Hygienic Institute by Ph. D. F. I. Mezhazakis. It turned out that the feces did not belong to any large animal known in the Leningrad region, and not to a thinking person.
An analysis of the parasite fauna suggested that we are talking about an animal that is not at all characteristic of our nature, about someone unique, most likely, who came from other places. The diet was omnivorous, consistent with the diet of a bear or wild boar.
Analysis of the footprints and stories of witnesses clearly showed that two individuals roam on the isthmus: one is male, the other is female. The latter was slightly smaller (height - 2.2 m), had noticeable mammary glands. However, she was met much less often. Apparently she spent most of her time in the hideout.
We spent a lot of time on trips around the Leningrad Region, came into contact with gamekeepers, foresters, and other people who often visit the forest. It turned out that Bigfoot had been met in these parts for many years, his appearance in 1989 is not at all some kind of miracle.
We found evidence from 1982 and 1987, apparently there were other cases. Previously, under the conditions of Official skepticism, such cases were not made public. Some witnesses were afraid to report their sightings, so as not to earn a reputation for being crazy. However, in this period of publicity, when we abandon a simplified picture of the world, devoid of secrets, eyewitnesses begin to behave more confidently.
The area with evidence of amazing encounters was limited. It was about a strip running north of Leningrad, about 30 km wide. The westernmost points are the villages of Roshchino, Ilyichevo, Ushkovo. Eastern - Matoxa, Voloyarvi. Further, the strip bends to the north, along the coast of Ladoga, goes through the closed zone, along the Priozerskoe highway, then to the north, near the Finnish border.
The Big White Man is not a figment of a fantasy, not a mass hallucination, but an objective reality. This is clear from the processing of testimony alone (and there are several hundred of them) using the methods of applied mathematics, the theory of testimony and other sections of modern science.
Not an alien from space, but a creature of our world, one of the elements of the Earth's biosphere. Just like the Tien Shan Kiik-Adam, American Sesquach, Australian Yahu. Research in such a relatively accessible region as the Karelian Isthmus has made it possible to significantly supplement knowledge about the biology of this rare species.
The Leningrad region cannot be considered as a typical caveman habitat. It is clear that there can be no self-sustaining population here. Most likely, the discovered individuals come here occasionally and by accident. The nearest, truly remote place, from where information about wild people comes constantly - the forests of Karelia, north of the city of Petrozavodsk.
From there, individual animals can migrate, reaching the suburbs of Leningrad. A possible route is along the northern shore of Lake Ladoga. The places there are so deserted that Bigfoot can move almost without fear of unwanted encounters. What reasons make them migrate is unknown.
1990 year. Vedlozero
In March 1990, the Big White Man disappeared, apparently moving north. After a while, indeed, an obscure message came from the area of the town of Sortovala about a meeting with someone resembling a Bigfoot. Of course, looking in the vast expanses of Karelia is a hopeless business. Nevertheless, we decided to start collecting material from this region as well.
And then, by the way, another event occurred that finally pushed us to the need to direct our feet to the north. In March 1990, I met with the staff of one of the closed Leningrad (St. Petersburg) organizations for the study of anomalous phenomena. The organization's affiliation with the Ministry of Defense today still does not allow giving its full name.
Their main profile - the study of unidentified flying objects - had nothing to do with me. However, they also showed interest in the mysteries of biology, in connection with which I came to ask them for a helicopter for a more effective search for the Big White Man. They did not give me a helicopter, arguing their refusal by the fact that in the conditions of dense forests it is impossible to look for a cautious animal using a helicopter. They immediately made me a counter-offer.
“In November 1928,” Ufologist Yu. P. Zubkov told me, “a large body fell in Vedlozero (100 km west of Petrozavodsk), broke through thin early ice and disappeared into the abyss of waters. After the fall, amazing things began to happen.
Hairy people sometimes began to appear from the lake and go back into the water. We do not know if there is a connection between these two events, added the ufologist, but it is reasonable to focus joint efforts on a comprehensive study of the lake. The water ones are yours, the plate is ours."
The available data on the possible connection of the troglodyte (Bigfoot) with water is very uncertain. There is no serious data on his connection with a UFO at all. Nevertheless, legends about the existence of such connections continue to exist, and they cannot be completely dismissed.
So we decided to go to Vedlozero as part of a small group of five people. I took over the scientific supervision of the work, the engineer-hydrologist O. V. Sharov - the technical guidance. The expedition "for gobies, for water animals and a little for aliens" began to prepare well in advance.
A lot of preparatory work was done during the spring and early summer. Materials on Vedlozero were collected. At the same time, employees of the State Hydrological Institute (Leningrad) and the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters (Borok, Yaroslavl Region) rendered great assistance to us. In the course of the work, one stroke was revealed that is not of scientific significance, but funny. The size of Vedlozero exactly matched the size of Loch Ness in Scotland.
A preliminary ecological-mathematical model of Vedlozero showed that the existence of a population of large animals weighing 50-100 kg is possible. The lake would feed them. I reread the book of the Russian scientist-folklorist Sergei Vasilievich Maksimov (1831 - 1901) "Unclean, Unknown and Cross Power", published in St. Petersburg in 1903.
It indicated that the center of aquatic life is the south of Karelia and the Olonets province, where Vedlozero is located. Maximov did not associate aquatic animals with real biological objects. But his data indirectly confirmed the truth of the messages about the mysterious inhabitants of the lake and questioned their connection with the falling of a flying body into the lake, since it was about observations of the last century.
And here we - five residents of St. Petersburg - arrived in Petrozavodsk. Dean of the Faculty of Biology of Petrozavodsk University E. V. Ivanter confidently answered our questions that there cannot be any large vertebrates unknown to science in Karelia. The staff of the Institute of Biology of the Karelian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences were not so categorical.
They told us this story. In April 1990, pensioner V. G. Oparin from the village of Pryazha (in the middle between Vedlozero and Petrozavodsk) saw a huge light gray humanoid figure covered with hair on the shore of Lake Pryazha.
I was struck by the coincidence of the description with the appearance of the Big White Man from the Leningrad Region. And the timing (disappearing near Leningrad in March and appearing here in April) gave rise to certain reflections. Employees of the Institute of Biology went to the scene, but found no traces.
With regard to aquatic, we received information about eight observations, the last one was in 1990. Actually, there were three messages on Vedlozero: 1934, 1937 and 1938. Egorov Fedor Petrovich, 72-year-old resident of the village of Vedlozero, says:
“I am an elderly person, I would like to have time to tell scientists about what I saw. Maybe it matters for science. I was sailing on the lake in a boat in the summer of 1934, when I suddenly saw a creature on a rock. It seems like a person - and not a person.
Height - one and a half meters, round head without a neck, long hair, brown body, arms and legs - long, white. I see him waving his arms, sort of combing his long hair. I swam closer - it plunged into the water and never showed up."
- Couldn't it be a seal? - I ask. - They sometimes come to the lakes of Karelia from the White Sea.
- What do you mean, I can see it well. What arms and legs can a seal have?
Other evidence of the "aquatic" outlined the same appearance of the mysterious creature. We heard a message about how a lake resident tried to turn the boat over with his hand. When he got the paddle on his fingers, the usual red blood came out.
How can these stories be explained? We have no right to blame everything on the inventions of illiterate people. None of the witnesses gave the impression of visionaries. The coincidence of the testimony given by independent witnesses, too, cannot be accidental.
1991 year
At the end of February 1991, two schoolgirls from Zelenogorsk decided to go skiing, taking advantage of the last fine winter days. The ski trail led them to the edge of the city, to Khvoinaya Street, which turns into a forest-park zone. Here one of the girls hesitated a little, the other drove forward.
Suddenly a huge brown hairy figure flashed through the trees. A second later, the figure came out from behind the trees, stood up to its full almost three-meter height. The girl - her name was Olya - managed to see the red eyes. The figure stepped forward. Olya, and then her friend, rushed to run, but soon stopped, realizing that there was no particular reason to be afraid: the middle of the day, people were nearby.
The girls came back to the scene with adults and found deep footprints in the snow. When we arrived, we saw them with our own eyes. The gait pattern was typical for Bigfoot. The tracks - each about 40 centimeters long - followed exactly one line. The length of the stride was about 140 cm. When the stride was shortened (Bigfoot began to stomp), the legs immediately spread wide. It is practically impossible to forge such a trace, so Oli's message did not cause any doubts.
In a conversation with her, I tried to find at least some inaccuracies, contradictions. There were none. Sometimes in such a conversation, one word is of fundamental importance. And here Olya said something that completely removed doubts: "He seemed to float …" Indeed, the movement of a wild man with his gigantic muscle strength occurs quickly and at the same time smoothly, which immediately brings to mind an analogy with a swimmer.
This time the funniest thing was that everything took place on the territory subordinated to the Leningrad City Executive Committee, in other words, Bigfoot appeared directly on the territory of Leningrad-Petersburg. If this goes on, he will soon appear on Nevsky Prospect.
Until the spring of 1990, Bigfoot was observed mainly between the Verkhnevyborgskoye and Priozerskoye highways. Since the spring of 1990, they began to meet him there less and less. But messages began to arrive from areas adjacent to the Gulf of Finland. Thus, the case in Zelenogorsk fell into a common row with other observations. It is curious that a brown specimen was seen here. So, besides Big White, there is also Big Brown.
Bely, on the other hand, was seen with his girlfriend near the village of Molodezhnoe. It was there, apparently, that the calf appeared. Comparing all the reports about "a hairy woman with a belly", "a hairy woman with a big belly" and about a baby, it was possible to roughly calculate the gestational age, which turned out, as expected, a little longer than that of a Homo sapiens.
Most of the evidence on the Karelian Isthmus relates to the areas of the preserved Finnish fortifications: the Mainerheim and VT lines. So our next route is exactly there. We reach the platform "63 km" in the Vyborg direction, go straight through the forest to the zone around which the observation points of the Bigfoot are grouped.
Near the village of Roshchino we find a tree with characteristic gnaws up to a height of 3.5 m. Perhaps our object is close. We go to a remote farm, built by the Finns. We ask the old man: "Do you have a goblin here?"
“What are you guys with regards? - the farmer is surprised. "There were no goblin here when they were born." After a moment's thought, he adds: “Bigfoot is another matter. It is, so it runs through the forest. And there are no devil at all!"
A local guy, interested, puts us in the boat. We float on the lake, trying to find unusual footprints or gnaws near the water. Nothing yet.
During the day we go through continuous swamps along the BT line. Anti-tank blocks were laid for many kilometers. We reach the most remote sections of the isthmus. There are some surviving Finnish bunkers that could theoretically be home to Bigfoot. The bins are made in the shape of a perfect hemisphere. They say they were built using this express method. A balloon was inflated, reinforcement and a thin layer of concrete were placed on it. As it solidified, more and more layers were applied. Simple and fast.
The shells bounced off the spherical surface. However, even the most reliable fortifications did not help the Finns to keep the isthmus. Many people died in the battles for the line. We were warned: do not sleep in the bunkers, nightmares have nightmares: the souls of the dead do not give rest. But it turns out that neither we nor Bigfoot can sleep here: the bunkers are flooded.
We make the next exit by car. Village Krasnoselskoe, Vyborgsky district. Our interlocutor is a young guy who has just graduated from school, Yura Zhelobov. He leads us to a bathhouse on the edge of the village, begins the story: “It was about 10 pm. I was walking with a group of kids. Suddenly we see: here on the hill is a huge figure. Growth under three meters, shoulder width - more than a meter. All covered with hair. He saw us, turned around and went into the forest."
I, as always, pay attention to small details. For example, Yura talks about the pointed shape of the head. The same feature of Bigfoot is reported by witnesses from other parts of the world.
We sit down in the car again and drive along the road connecting the villages of Krasnoselskoe and Loevo. We talk with hunters, old-timers. Potts is nothing interesting. We pass Priozersk - Köxholm, heading to the border zone. Barbed wire, barrier. Border within the country. We show the passes, cross the border strip, start a conversation with the border guards:
- Are there any unusual animals here?
- It's a strange thing, - the guys say, - in the last months in the woods, either an animal or a person has wound up. You stand at the post at night, suddenly - a terrible cry, similar to an owl, but more piercing and creepy. Then there was some muttering and another scream."
Judging by the description, we can talk about Bigfoot. Along the way, we find out an important state secret. The barbed wire here only stretches for a kilometer. In other places, animals (and people) can safely cross the border zone. The state border is another matter. There the wire is solid. Only moose can jump over it.
Sasquatch can't jump high. This means that he must walk along a narrow strip between Lake Ladoga and the border. It is this strip that is to be examined. We call on the hunting bases, to the foresters, rangers. We can easily find the information we are interested in. We met our friend here. Almost all meetings are under similar circumstances. The witnesses are drivers. Late in the evening, passing by car, we saw a Bigfoot by the road. The meeting place is near the settlements of Kurkiyoki, Lahdenpohja, Sortavala.
It is on the same line equidistant from Ladoga and the state border. North of Sortavala we drive into the forest, stop at the place where our friend may appear. On the one hand, there are the Ladoga fiords. On the other, there are granite rocks, between which clear lakes turn blue. White nights facilitate round-the-clock surveillance. The camera is ready, but the object does not appear …