The Wildman Of The Pyrénées

[Paul_Exeter]

You will need Google translate for this one:

"These reports include Hairy Man type creatures familiar enough with human shelters to understand doorknobs and other means of access into dwellings. No injuries or any kind of damage occurred, indicative of search for food only, and perhaps an unhealthy familiarity with humans"

https://strangereality.blog/2023/12/05/temoignages-lhomme-sauvage-des-pyrenees/

 

[Frideswide]

You will need Google translate for this one:

"These reports include Hairy Man type creatures familiar enough with human shelters to understand doorknobs and other means of access into dwellings. No injuries or any kind of damage occurred, indicative of search for food only, and perhaps an unhealthy familiarity with humans"

https://strangereality.blog/2023/12/05/temoignages-lhomme-sauvage-des-pyrenees/

nice!

Although our cats understand doorknobs/handles and other means of access into dwellings.

 

[Benzie]

In the 90's Nicholas Crane walked from the Atlantic to the Black Sea via the Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathians. The resulting book, "Clear Waters Rising" is a straight account of his walk (18 months, I think) over 360 odd pages.

However, there is one Fortean Event (which just about chimes with this thread) on one page, reported in a very matter of fact manner. He was walking through the Vercors from Valence to Grenoble.

"I had the sensation that I was being followed; there was a presence, not animal but human."

He entered a clearing, 2 kilometres long, surrounded by a rim of black pines.

"Uncharacteristically I felt spooked by being alone up here. I waited behind a pine for 10 minutes."

Walking back into the open there was no-one there.

"Instead, the air reverberated with a strange drone. Later that evening, while collecting wood, I heard the sounds again."

Three kilometres later he made an overnight stop at an isolated hut in the forest. It had an oil drum full of rainwater under the gutter.

"During the 3 hours or so spent preparing a meal, I was interrupted periodically by the drone and once by footfalls approaching the door. I froze, waiting. Nobody tried to open the door; neither did the footsteps recede. I picked up the hut's shovel and peered outside, but only moon-shadows moved in the glade. For the rest of the evening, I took the shovel with me each time I visited the oil drum."

The area he described as extremely remote with no habitation or people. He was never spooked before or after this incident on his epic walk.

 

[lordmongrove]

The almasty has been seen in Russia, close to the border with inland. There are rare accounts from northern Sweden and Lapland. I think that the legends of trolls are based on old encounters with almasties when they ranged further into Europe.

 

[Kondoru]

The accounts of the Almasty seem to clearly describe a creature once widespread that is now locally extinct.

 

[PeteByrdie]

Our last discussion of Pyrenean wildmen wasn't very productive, but it may as well be linked here.

Yeti in Spain

 

[Spookdaddy]

Our last discussion of Pyrenean wildmen wasn't very productive, but it may as well be linked here.

Yeti in Spain

Looks like that thread completely passed me by. However, I have mentioned Basajaun myself a couple of times. For instance, on the There Is Something In The Woods thread (at #36):

...Some of the deepest, darkest woods I've come across were in Galicia and the Basque country of northern Spain. They really did look like brooding leviathans at night - pitch black and glowering over the villages, as if waiting to pour in when everyone is asleep. I think the atmosphere is partly emphasised by the fact that people don't really seem to use the countryside in the same way as we do in the UK (and it's generally less populated anyway) - so much of it seems utterly pathless and inaccessible, even when relatively close to human habitation.

And the Basques have their own bigfoot - Basajaun; utter nonsense of course, until you're up there on your own at night - and then definitely hiding behind a bloody big tree...

The limestone landscape of the Vercors - mentioned in @Benzie's post above - is not dissimilar to the limestone sections of the Cantabrian Mountain range of northern Spain. I noticed, in the Basque section, that what you might call the abrupt nature of many limestone outcrops seems to create odd aural phenomena, or maybe simply exaggerate one common to all mountain landscapes - and I wonder if this can affect our moods and perceptions.

(The mention of footsteps in the post about the Vercors immediately reminded me of the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui. A very different mountain landscape, but still - I wonder how much of the subsequent oddness is about the human response to unusual environmental conditions.)

 

[Who me]

Michael portillo did a piece on the wild man when he walked the pilgrim route through france and spain!!
I think

 

[Velvet monkey]

Said wildman may have caught a glimpse and gone scampering back to the family lair trembling in fear, muttering incoherently: ‘ghastly! ghastly! It had a pink trousers and a lime green blazer!..’

 

[Spookdaddy]

Michael portillo did a piece on the wild man when he walked the pilgrim route through france and spain!!
I think

One of the frustrating things about the folklore of northern Spain is that it's very hard to find sources – at least in English form - that have not been influenced to the point of obfuscation by the overlaying of formal religion. I know this is not really an uncommon factor universally, but the effect seems particularly, and frustratingly, noticeable in this region. Paradoxically, it may even be a reflection of the power of those underlying myths – the Catholic authorities having, over the centuries, gone to extreme efforts (extreme even for them) to suppress the independent thought of this more Celtic than Mediterranean region, with its mists and forests and mountains, and - at night time - a true country darkness. (There is in Vitoria-Gasteiz the capital of Euskadi / the Basque Country, a bar called Cerveceria Rivendell. Not being a massive LOTR fan – I have to say that’s it’s one place that the name really seems somehow not in the least out of place.)

What makes it doubly frustrating is that I think that it's there - but just not as accessible as, in the era of the internet, we tend to believe all information is. Sources tend to be either somewhat bare in detail, or strangled by formal religion. I'm hoping there are books in Spanish and Basque which simply haven't made it to translation yet - and when I was living in Barcelona for a few months some time back I regularly checked the bookshops for anything that looked likely, with no real success.*

In popular culture, there are tantalizing clues in Dolores Redondo’s popular Baztan Trilogy of novels (the movie versions were available on Netflix last time I was subscribed). And a few years back there was the movie Errementari - which was kind of okay, but nor really what I was looking for.

I can’t help feeling, that in a world with books on everything, we’re still waiting for a thorough examination of the folklore of northern Spain.

*On an aside, I'd recommend a visit to the bookshop Altaïr, on Gran Via (de les Corts Catalanes, to give it it's full if largely unused name), to anyone visiting Barcelona. Fabulous place. They also publish their own stuff.