Jevning - The Minnesota Iceman

The Minnesota Iceman

WILLIAM JEVNING

Copyright 2016 William Jevning

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 10:1492926516

ISBN-13:978-1492926513

DEDICATION

To the worlds mysteries yet to be solved.

WILLIAM JEVNING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Bobbie Short, Doug Tarrant and Dmitri Bayanov. Steve Edwards for editing and all those who helped along the way.

In 1969, just two years after Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin made history by filming a Sasquatch in Northern California, this story appeared in the May issue of Argosy magazine. To introduce the subject, I will quote the entire article here. This story had so many twists and turns, that it became largely ignored by those investigating the subject of Bigfoot at the time. Today it remains a complete mystery, and is still rarely discussed with any seriousness.

The cover above mistakenly states Found in Wisconsin, when the incident took place in Minnesota. Lets begin our examination of this story by reading what was first published in Argosy magazine, written by Ivan Sanderson:

First presentation to the public

Is this the creature that bridges the gap between man and ape? If so, hes the greatest anthropological find in history and he was alive less than five years ago! I must admit that even I, who have spent most of my life in this search, I am filled with wonder as I report the following: There is a comparatively fresh corpse, preserved in ice, of a specimen of at least one kind of ultra-primitive, fully-haired man-thing, that displays so many heretofore unexpected and non-human characters as to warrant our dubbing it a missing link. Here is the amazing story of this historic find: Early in January of this year, I was sitting at my typewriter just staring at nothing. And the staff and two visiting students from Chicago were busily working away, when the phone rang.

The caller was a Minneapolis man who introduced himself as a zoologist and owner of an animal import-export business specializing in reptiles. He gave as credentials, references to two new species of iguana lizard that he discovered in the Caribbean. This may sound rather peculiar, but in the animal business, it is much better than giving a bank reference. After a general chat, this fellow told me he had just returned from Chicago where he had visited the famous annual Stock Fair. While there, he had inspected a sideshow, which consisted of a single large coffin in a trailer-truck. In this coffin, which was glass-covered and brightly lit with strip lights, there was a huge block of ice, about half of it as clear as the air in the room, the rest frosty or darkly opaque.

In the ice was the corpse of a large, powerfully built man, or man-thing, completely clothed in dark, stiff hair about three inches long. My informant urged me to go take a look at it, since him, being a real student of what we call ABSMery (abominable-snowman related information) and having read everything available on the subject, felt that it was the real thing, despite its being billed as a mystery. I receive stories like this almost every day, although they dont usually come in by phone. We give every one as careful consideration as is possible because we long ago realized that nothing, however peculiar it may sound at first, is impossible. But after more than thirty years of scientific appraising, police intelligence training and professional reporting, we have become rather agile and we dont go off half-cocked. Moreover, we just cant afford to go charging off after every hare that is put up, even by those who sound eminently sensible and whose stories make basic sense. As a mere item, this call from Minneapolis should have gone into our hopper and been subjected to what one may call due process, since giant human bodies and skeletons, and phony corpses of pygmies, and Cardiff Giants made of wood or plaster roll in at a steady clip. This is not to say that we do not routinely inspect as many carnival, midway, sports and other exhibits as we can, because there are still some extraordinary specimens languishing in these somewhat neglected backwaters. On this occasion, however, that little bell rang inside me as it used to when I discovered a new animal while collecting professionally for zoos and museums. I started packing one of our station wagons with my traveling office and recording equipment.

It happened that working quietly away in his own room at the other end of the house was just about the only man in the world fully qualified to pronounce upon such an item as this. Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of his native Belgium, and author of, among others, a book entitled On the Track of Unknown Animals . In this, he reviewed the whole Asiatic and South American field of so-called Abominable Snowmen and other manlike creatures. He has spent the last twenty years collecting further data on the subject, traveling the world and corresponding with all the great scientists who have taken this matter seriously such as Professors Porshev and Shmakoff of Russia; Academician Rinchen of Mongolia; Drs. Osman-Hill and John Napier of England; Professors Carleton S. Coon and George Agogino in this country; Dr. Biswas of India; Professor Teizo Ogawa of Japan, and others.

I am not going to pinpoint just where we went at this time, other than to say that it was west of the Mississippi, because I know only too well what publicity can do, so I respect the plea of the gentleman in whose care this exhibit is stored during the winter season especially because it is on his private property.

Turning into a motel and ensconcing ourselves, I rang the gentleman concerned and he invited us up the next morning. We got there by back-tracking and using a compass, and eventually barreled into a beautiful snow-covered garden surrounded by a grove of planted conifers. And there stood a lovely ranch-type house on the one hand and a large trailer truck on the other. We were most graciously received, and, in fact, invited to stay as house guests. Our host turned out to be in one of my old businesses and so we spoke the same language. Knowing why we had come, he soon got around to donning a parka, and we tottered out to the trailer to look at the Thing.

Now, supposing you had spent your entire adult life searching for the sarcophagus of, say, Saint Francis of Assisi, and finally found it. Then you discovered that the body of the Saint himself was preserved therein. How would you feel?

Looking at the body of a descendant of one of my possible ancestors especially since it looked as I had always expected it would really shook me up. We spent the afternoon photographing it. I held the lights and things for Bernard while he tried to get shots in under the opaque parts of the ice. We left at sundown.

The next day, we got down to the gritty part. Getting in added equipment, we drove back up the mountain and moved in on our charming host and hostess. It was really freezing cold by that time, but we went to work right away. Armed with rules and such, we carried on all that evening and again the next morning.

On the whole, Bozo, as we nicknamed him, is a sturdy, approximately six-foot-tall human, covered with two- to four-inch, stiff, but thickly growing hair, except on the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, his penis and his face. He has nails, not claws or overgrown nails, on both his hands and feet. He has practically no neck, the muscles from the side of his head forming a great triangle that flows into his shoulders, which are very wide and constructed like those of a powerful human wrestler. His torso is what is commonly called barrel-shaped and it tapers down not to a waist, but to rather narrow hips. His legs are actually about the standard length for a six-foot man, but his arms are longer than the average. His most outstanding features and those which strike one first, are his hands. These are enormous, rather spatulate, but of entirely human proportions except for one feature. This is the thumb, which is slender and excessively long, reaching, it seems, almost to the last joint of the first or index finger. The feet are more than ten inches wide, measured across the toes. The toes are larger and both stubby and tubby, and the little toe is almost as big as the others. The feet and the toes are covered with many long hairs that appear to be very stiff and curve down. Most significant, however, is the fact that the big toe lies alongside the next one, as it does in us (it is what is called apposed, as distinct from the big toe of the apes which is opposed like our thumb.) This is the one and almost only clear distinction between men (Hominids) and apes (Pongids).