Photos of a "man left over from the Ice Age" [Minnesota Iceman]



This morning, Loren Coleman posted some photos of "The Minnesota Iceman" taken from a 2011 book by Rick West, Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows. According to Coleman, these photos have been making rounds and has appeared on several skeptical and sideshow websites.



Here's a little background story about the Minnesota Iceman and how it came to be:

In 1968 two cryptozoologists, Ivan Sanderson, a science writer, and Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, a Belgian naturalist, thought they'd made the find of the century.

Heuvelmans had been a house guest of Sanderson when the two of them heard about creature, not quite human and very hairy, that was preserved in a block of ice. The creature had been shown in carnivals and fairs across the mid-western United States. Its exhibitor, Frank Hansen, had claimed that it was a "man left over from the Ice Age" and charged 25 cents for a peek at the thing in its refrigerated, glass coffin.

Sanderson and Heuvelmans drove to Hansen's farm where the thing had been stored for the winter. In a cramped trailer they examined the creature and became convinced that they had found a Neanderthal Man, Bigfoot or something similar.

After three days of study Heuvelmans believed the beast was authentic. The doctor even smelled the putrefaction where some of the flesh had been exposed from the melted ice. They also discovered that the thing had apparently been shot through the eye. Heuvelmans guessed that the creature had been murdered in Vietnam during the war and smuggled into the United States in a "body bag."

Heuvelmans wrote a paper about the beast for the Institute of Natural Sciences in Belgium entitled, "Preliminary Note on a Specimen Preserved in Ice; Unknown Living Hominid." Sanderson wrote an article, called "Living Fossil," on the same subject for Argosy Magazine.

The Smithsonian Institution got involved when Sanderson approached Dr. John Napier about scientifically examining the creature. The Smithsonian, though, found out about the murder theory and asked the FBI to investigate. The head of the agency, 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.)

An additional twist to the murder story occurred when the tabloid, the National Bulletin, ran a story in which a woman, named Helen Westring, claimed she'd killed the creature. According to the story Westring had been hunting near Bemidji, Minnesota, in 1966 when the thing had attacked her. She had dispatched it with a shot through the right eye.

At about the same time a Hollywood special effects firm claimed that they had made the "Iceman" in 1967. Howard Ball, who made figures for Disneyland with his son, Kenneth, had modeled the fake in rubber trying to make it look like "an artist's conception of Cro-Magnon man" with "a broken skull with one eye popped out."

Hansen never clearly confirmed or denied that the original creature was a model and, saying that the creature was really owned by a mysterious millionaire, then declined to have it examined further. The Smithsonian lost interest in studying it as they became wary of looking like they had been taken in by a hoax.

Sanderson and Heuvelmans, clearly embarrassed, backed off from their original claims about the creature.

As for the "Iceman" himself, Hansen removed it from exhibition for a while and even reported destroying it, but rumors are it still shows up at carnivals every once in a while.

[via www.cryptomundo.com via www.unmuseum.org]

Comments

  1. I think theses are replicas ..right? I mean the photos...these are not of the original iceman are they?

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  2. This is an interesting story around a long time, but the color photos I have not seen. No detail in article to tell me if genuine photos, so a trip to Crypto :)
    A wax bust would not "mold," but paper and wood do readily. Materials with less cellulose tend to be consumed by bacteria rather than fungi and one would more likely say "decomposing" if flesh, even mummified? Painstaking hair placement though and quite in keeping with many witness accounts of Bigfoots.
    But, 1968 is in the middle of the Bigfoot craze. This will be a book I am sure we'll hear more about.
    If one accepts Bigfoots this could be one, but it could be a fake too. The time of still fuzzy photos in yellowing newspapers, or glimmering online, is hopefully over soon.

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  3. The photos are captivating and I now see a detail I find compelling: the pads on the finger tips,I don't know how bodies dehydrate over time but this is something I would not expect from a carnival show fake. Also, I believe BF's have certain difficulties with grip we don't have...could just be fine motor/experience, but it seems this thumb is slightly set back, just slightly, and perhaps hasn't the same power with opposition to the fingers we have. It would explain their more limited material culture. Hummm, interesting. If fake, it might be one of the better interpretations of a Bigfoot I have seen (sans the troubling death and posture).
    Hard to let go of Harry H.

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  4. Reminds me of "The Thing" in the desert gift shop near Tucson. So, Dyer's BF in a freezer fiasco wasn't even that original, huh?

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  5. I don't want shawn to think I'm just ripping his followers off or anything but I have some old pictures of the MN on our facebook page..
    you might want to look at them as well.
    http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.264070516988573.64723.263899730338985&type=3

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  6. If it's fake, like some wrongly say about Patty in the Patterson film, then it's a good fake. So how is it that around the same time, two very detailed Bigfoot fakes should appear, yet Hollywood movie costumes at the time all looked extremely crude and cheap compared? Indeed they still do today. The usual ape and Bigfoot suits had and have long uniformed hair, this one clearly shows skin like Patty, just like these beings are supposed to look according to witnesses. Food for thought.

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    Replies
    1. Good point. I was thinking of those mermaid hoaxes with the monkey body, but this is really not what you would expect. We all think ape and have a picture in our mind or we think man and we have another picture in mind, but this has some interesting details. I really wish that it wasn't lost for study. If it was a hoax, we might learn a lot about how a good hoax is put together for future reference since apparently Biscardi can't tell one from shit.

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  7. I have tried freezing Nestlé Drumsticks® for long periods to research their rate of decomposition. Alas, the ice cream novelties are so delicious they make it nary a day before I consume them.

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  8. That's not a fake guys. The story goes back in the 60s after a card game Grandpa Joe dropped some Acid and they bet him he wouldn't run through the woods naked! The problem is Grandpa Joe who was a very hairy dude I was told he saw a women in the woods and tried to do the Minnesota mating dance (which involves a case of PBR and the song Bad Moon Rising) long story short my mom never heard from her papa Joe again.

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  9. The iceman is looking good. The chest, the abs, this guy was jacked.

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  10. I read somewhere that the millionaire owner was a collector of curiosities, but also a devout christian. He gave the body to Hansen as an experiment, to find out what the public would say about it. The millionaire owner feared it would fuel criticism of the bible's version of creation. When the interests got too high, he took the MN Iceman back. Rumors say it is still frozen somewhere.

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  11. It doesn't look like the creature in the Patterson footage.

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  12. I was just reading about this the other day. Here is the article that was published in the Argosy magazine at that time.

    http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/argosy2.htm

    ReplyDelete
  13. If this was a replica it fooled the two scientists as they smelled human decomposition.

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  14. Thanks Blondie,it was a good read.
    There were plenty of details and it appears that they covered everything.
    If this an authentic specimen,why the sideshow?
    When was this specimen last seen and who has it now,if it's not destroyed?
    I'm not asking you personally,just thinking out loud.

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  15. Found it!
    This is the guy's story who exhibited it and killed the being. He kept it in his basement for a long time.

    http:www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/hansen.htm

    This is a recorded report of someone who actually viewed the frozen fellow,
    http://www.oregonbigfoot.com/report_detail.php?id=00999

    Enjoy, there was another article that stated eventually some unknown rich person, collector of unique curiosities,bought the original hairy frozen being later in Hansen's life and at that point it disappeared. Can't find that one at all.

    I get stuck on some of this stuff and read everything I can find on the subject for days but don't keep up with the links as well as I should. I feel this is definitely hominid, possibly our Bigfoot but also similar to a Neanderthal. I believe that it was a primitive human being.

    As you will see in Mr. Hanson's recounting of his story above; his lawyer's advice that if this "thing" was proven to be human, he could be charged with murder. This fear and his lawyer's recommendations dictated a lot of his actions. Perhaps a lesson that some should consider in this day and time.

    Thank goodness there are still mysteries in this world.

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  16. It is in Austin Texas on 6th Street now, seen it, it looks like the pic's but in ice.

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