The Chuchunaa

Lately, I’ve spent a little time reading some old accounts of Bigfoot-like creatures from the former Soviet Union. One candidate is the Chuchunaa, a Russian wild man of sorts.

Tales of “wild men” have always fascinated me. Old newspaper reports, especially from the 1800s, tell of wild men running around on the outskirts of towns. Oftentimes, these wild men are naked and covered in thick hair. Some researchers think these tales point to early Sasquatch sightings. Others think they might indicate there are pockets of “feral humans.”

Behind the Iron Curtain

Equally fascinating to me as the old wild man stories are strange tales from the former Soviet Union. As a kid growing up in the 80s, I always wondered what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. What were the average people like? Not the high-ranking military personnel and politicians that I saw one television, but ordinary folks—how were their daily lives? The Iron Curtain hid a mysterious world from the West. I often lost myself in thoughts of it.

As I got older, I learned that the Soviets had their own versions of the unexplained phenomena that we experienced in the West. They had UFOs flying over their skies. Also, lake monsters swam in the murky depths of their cold lakes. Even Bigfoot had a counterpart in the Soviet Union.

The journal Nature published an article titled “Sighting the Yeti’s Relatives” in 1978. It tells of the aforementioned Chuchunaa. The following text is the article in its entirety:

Sighting the Yeti’s Relatives

“Following reports of a possible "Loch Ness" monster in Lake Kos Kol, Soviet scholars have postulated a possible "relation" of the Yeti. The Institute of Language, Literature, and History of the Yakut Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR has collected numerous accounts of sightings of a creature known locally as the "Chuchunaa", a name which apparently is connected with the Yakut word for "fugitive" or "outcast".

“According to informants, the Chuchunaa is over 2m tall, wearing deerskin, and is unable to talk, uttering only a piercing whistle. He is described as a meat-eater, and is said to have the habit of creeping up to settlements and stealing food. When the Chuchunaa sights a hunter or reindeer-herder, he usually takes flight, but on occasion, it is said, will pick a fight. (No data have been released as to the outcome of such encounters.)

“According to Semen Nikolaev, a senior staff member of the Yakut Branch of the Academy, "almost all witnesses speak of the Chuchunaa as a reality without the fantastic detail so characteristic of legends."(To a Westerner, the above description seems very much the stuff of which legends are made—and one cannot help wondering whatever Nikolaev would classify as "fantastic." Baba Yaga riding on her pestle, maybe?). Since the details of many sitings coincide, Nikolaev and his colleagues seem willing to admit the postulate that the Chuchunaa represents the last surviving remnant of the "Palaeoasiatic aborigines" of Siberia, who have retreated to a last refuge in the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka rivers. Indeed, since the last reliable sighting dates from the 1950s, some of the more pessimistic experts think that the Chuchunaa may have died out during the last two decades.”

—Nature, 271:603, 1978.


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