“I was kidnapped by Bigfoot.” It is an absurd statement that seems practically synonymous with bad tabloid headlines, cranks, and kooks. Yet in the pantheon of the countless Bigfoot and hairy hominid reports that have come in from all corners of the globe there can be found a surprisingly high number of accounts that indeed claim exactly this. It is a phenomenon that can almost be considered its own subspecies of weird Bigfoot reports, and these seemingly ludicrous tales serve to not only merely entertain, but also to provoke thought and open up a line of inquiry into a rather potentially bizarre scenario. If Bigfoot and other hairy humanoid beasts are indeed real, then do they on occasion abduct humans, and if so how would such a situation play out? Here we will look at cases that may hold the answers to these questions. These are among the weirdest reports of Bigfoot kidnappings that I have come across, and whether they are real or not, they are damn strange all the same.

By far the most well-known and talked about alleged Bigfoot kidnapping, as well as one of the strangest, concerns the Canadian prospector and lumberjack Albert Ostman. In 1924, Ostman went on vacation to the rugged wilderness near Toba Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. One of his purposes at the time was to try and find what he claimed to be a long lost gold mine that he was convinced existed out there in the dense forests, which is already odd and intriguing enough as it is but would be overshadowed by the bizarreness of what would purportedly happen to him during his trip.

While on his journey into these remote badlands, Ostman’s Indian guide told him that the man who had allegedly originally found the lost gold mine was rumored to have been killed by a Sasquatch, which was according to Ostman the first time he had ever heard of such creatures, despite having long been a hardened outdoorsman. The Indian explained about the large, hairy man-like beasts they called the Sasquatch and told of the large footprints they left behind, but Ostman at the time did not believe a word of it, instead chalking it up to crazy old Native legends. Not long after this, the two made camp and Ostman headed out on his own with some supplies in a pack and armed with his rifle and a knife to investigate a pass through the mountains that he had seen, as well as to do some prospecting.

After a few days of camping alone out in the wilderness, some rather odd things were noticed by Ostman. One morning he found that some of the items in his camp had been moved around, although nothing had been taken, and Ostman slept that night with his rifle within easy reach, thinking that perhaps a porcupine or other animal had come and picked through his camp. The following morning, he found his back pack had been emptied out but was still oddly hanging from where he had left it, and that this time some things were missing, such as a half-pound pack of prunes and all of his pancake flour. The only thing that hadn’t been touched was his bag of salt. An examination of the camp turned up no footprints, and the intrusion did not seem to be the work of animals since nothing had been torn apart or haphazardly ransacked or strewn about. For 3 nights in a row the mysterious intruder visited the camp unseen, and all efforts by Ostman to stake out the camp to find the trespasser in the act were to no avail.

On the 4th night of these strange incidents, Ostman went to bed fully clothed, with both his knife and rifle within easy reach, and this time he had intended to stay awake all night in order to catch the trespasser, but he eventually fell into a deep sleep. At some point, he claims he was awoken by something picking him up, sleeping bag and all, and he groggily thought it might be a snow slide, although there was no snow in the area at the time. He said that he then felt as if he had been put up on horseback, and that whatever was carrying him was walking. He couldn’t see anything, as he was wrapped up in his sleeping bag, and he desperately grabbed for his rifle as he tried to figure out who or what was carrying him along. Unable to move and with various equipment sticking into him uncomfortably, Ostman could only wait there in the encroaching dark and see where he was being taken. Whatever had captured him seemed to be taking Ostman uphill, as he could feel each step lifting upwards, and he began to notice that the thing was breathing heavily, as well as occasionally letting out coughing noises and strange chattering sounds.

For 3 hours Ostman was carried like this through the wilderness, when suddenly his sleeping bag was dumped onto the ground and he warily peeked outside. Although it was too dark at the time for him to clearly see what was out there, he could vaguely make out large, dark shapes and hear what sounded like several large creatures chattering unintelligibly amongst each other, and it seemed to be a family of the very hairy humanoids his old Indian guide had told him about. Ostman called out to ask what the creatures wanted and was answered with more of the chattering sounds. He thought of escape, but his legs were too badly cramped and painful for him to even walk, let alone run away.

As it got lighter outside, Ostman claims that he could finally make out four humanoid creatures, unclothed and fully covered in shaggy hair. According to him, there were two big ones, which seemed to be the father, which was a massive specimen about 8 feet tall, and the mother, as well as two smaller ones, which looked to be children, a boy and a girl, with “smaller” meaning that they were only around 6 to 7 feet tall. Ostman would later say of their appearance:

The young fellow might have been between 11-18 years old and about seven feet tall and might weight about 300 lbs. His chest would be 50-55 inches, his waist about 36-38 inches. He had wide jaws, narrow forehead, that slanted upward round at the back about four or five inches higher than the forehead. The hair on their heads was about six inches long. The hair on the rest of their body was short and thick in places. The women’s hair on the forehead had an upward turn like some women have — they call it bangs, among women’s hair-do’s. Nowadays the old lady could have been anything between 40-70 years old. She was over seven feet tall. She would be about 500-600 pounds. She had very wide hips, and a goose-like walk. She was not built for beauty or speed. Some of those lovable brassieres and uplifts would have been a great improvement on her looks and her figure. The man’s eyeteeth were longer than the rest of the teeth, but not long enough to be called tusks. The old man must have been near eight feet tall. Big barrel chest and big hump on his back — powerful shoulders, his biceps on upper arm were enormous and tapered down to his elbows. His forearms were longer than common people have, but well proportioned. His hands were wide, the palm was long and broad, and hollow like a scoop. His fingers were short in proportion to the rest of his hand. His fingernails were like chisels. The only place they had no hair was inside their hands and the soles of their feet and upper part of the nose and eyelids. I never did see their ears, they were covered with hair hanging over them.

The creatures did not seem threatening or aggressive towards Ostman at all, and indeed the young ones seemed a little frightened of him, but neither did they seem ready to let him leave. According to Ostman, for the next 6 days the family of Sasquatch forcefully kept him there, with the large male constantly nearby and sitting at the only obvious escape route. During this time, Ostman claimed that the family of creatures slept within a shelter lined and covered with bark and dry moss and that gradually the curious creatures would come closer to observe him, including the younger ones. The family of Sasquatch also offered Ostman food in the form of nuts and a type of sweet grass, which the young boy Sasquatch would deftly climb up the mountain to get. In return, Ostman would let it play with his snuff box, which it would practice opening and closing, as well as tasting the snuff inside. When the young male seemed to demand one for his sister, Ostman gave her a snuff box as well. For the most part, the adults were described as mostly resting all day while the children climbed and played.

Ostman claimed that on several occasions he had picked up his rifle and tried to walk out of there, but that the large male had stood in front of him holding his hands out and vocalizing irritably. Although Ostman had his rifle, he chose not to fire upon the creatures, as they seemed remarkably human, showed no inclination towards harming him, and he was not sure if his rifle would even hurt the massive beast, instead only serving to anger it. Considering that the younger ones seemed to like playing with the snuff boxes so much and licking at the remaining snuff within, and that the father had also shown interest in them, Ostman began to concoct a plan to incapacitate or even kill the large adult male by feeding him a full box of snuff, after which he felt confident that he would be able to escape with little resistance.

One day, Ostman opened a new box of snuff and took a dose, and at the same time the adult male had reportedly suddenly snatched it away and emptied the entire contents into his mouth, even going so far as to thoroughly lick out any remnants. As predicted, the male Sasquatch fell violently ill and Ostman made a run for it, reportedly firing his rifle over the mother’s head as she pursued him and scaring her off. After some time of slogging through the wilderness, ever wary of being followed by the family of Sasquatch, Ostman was finally rescued by some loggers and brought back to civilization. Ostman would keep his story quiet for decades, afraid of ridicule, until increasing reports of Bigfoot sightings in the 1950s persuaded him to finally come forth with his sensational tale in 1957. Albert Ostman’s amazing story has been picked apart and debated ever since, with some calling him a liar and others pointing to it as genuine evidence of Bigfoot, as well as everything in between but we may never know the truth. Whether Ostman’s account is true or the product of an active imagination, it is certainly one of the stranger and more detailed reports of Bigfoot kidnappings.

The strange abduction of Albert Ostman is certainly not the only case of an alleged kidnapping by Bigfoot, and these sorts of accounts go back a very long time and do not always take place in North America. In 1602, 17-year-old Anthoinette Culet was herding animals near the village of Naves, France, when she inexplicably vanished. No sign was found of the missing woman until later that year, when a group of lumberjacks claimed to have heard the voice of the Culet calling out to them from beyond a boulder blocking the entrance to a cave and explaining that she had been kidnapped by an ugly, hairy “monster” with superhuman strength, which regularly brought her baskets of bread and fruit. That very same night, the creature is said to have wandered into a nearby village and was shot. It was described as looking like a rather human-like bear.

The late 19th century also brought with it several other stories of abductions carried out by hairy humanoids. One such account was from a lumberjack named Bourne, who claimed to have been kidnapped by a tall, hairy humanoid around 8 feet in height, with long, brown hair, as he had been on his way to meet his fiancee in the District of Isère, in France. Bourne claimed that the creature had slung him over its shoulders and brought him to a cave populated by similar beasts, all of which chattered with each other in some strange language. Bourne claimed to have been held captive in the cave for about an hour before he was able to distract the creatures and escape.

One such bizarre kidnapping was a 17-year-old young woman named Serphine Long, who in 1871 was reportedly forcefully abducted by a large, male Bigfoot while hiking at Morris Mountain, in British Columbia, Canada. According to the victim, she was held captive by the Bigfoot and its family for around a year, during which time she claims to have been raped by the large male, before the abductor suddenly dumped her back to the place from which she had disappeared. Not long after this, it was claimed that she gave birth to a deformed baby.

Interestingly, this is not the only tale of a Bigfoot abductor seemingly looking for amorous relationships with humans. In a more modern account, one 19-year-old woman named Oksana Terletskaya was apparently kidnapped by a hairy wild man after she had become lost in the wilderness. As she stopped to pick some raspberries to eat, the young woman claimed that she had heard a chuffing noise and looked to see a strange creature that looked like an orangutan. The girl apparently screamed and passed out, after which she came to in a cave with the sounds of a stream nearby and rays of light piercing down through the darkness from above. The strange, ape-like creature was sitting next to her, with its teeth bared in a mockery of a smile. It then reportedly set upon her to rip her clothes off, after which she lost consciousness once again.

When Oksana awoke again, she realized that she was imprisoned, and that she had become the “wife” of the creature. Whenever it left the cave, it would roll an immense, heavy boulder across the entrance of the cave to prevent her escape, and would typically return with berries or raw meat for her to eat. The creature apparently showed interest in the girl’s CD player, and would listen to songs on it through the headphones. He apparently became very upset when the device inevitable ran out of batteries, and threw quite the tantrum. The creature, which Oksana had named “Tang,” then went out for awhile and came back with a fresh pack of batteries, which she surmised he had stolen from some store.

This gave hope to Oksana that perhaps the cave was not so far from civilization, giving her hope that a future escape would be possible. As the seasons changed and the weather grew colder, Tang would bring her warm clothing from some unknown source. Intriguingly, this would later be backed up by the report of a tractor driver, who bizarrely claimed to have had his clothes stolen by a wild man. When Oksana made a fire in the cave, Tang was purportedly fascinated by the flames and somewhat frightened at the same time, as if he had never seen such a thing before, although he would eventually overcome his his fear and sit next to her by the fire. When Oksana caught a cold, Tang dutifully went out into the wilderness and brought back what seemed to be medicinal roots and plants.

One day in spring, Tang left the cave on an errand and this time did not close the boulder as tightly as usual. Oksana was able to squeeze her way through the opening and make it outside, where she made a daring escape. When she made her way back to civilization, she realized that she had been held captive for about a year. Mentally unbalanced by her whole ordeal, unable to fully adjust to normal life, she was admitted to a mental hospital where she relayed her amazing story to her doctor. When no one would believe her, Oksana allegedly fell into a deep depression and then began telling people that the creature knew where she was and would come back for her. One day, the girl apparently just suddenly disappeared from her room, and other patients would purportedly claim that a large hairy beast had come to get her during the night. It is unclear just how much of this story is true, but it is certainly intriguing nevertheless.

In another report, this time from 1920, a young couple was tending animals in the Sierra Morena mountains near Lézignan, in Spain, when the woman was apparently abducted by an ape-like creature as she was washing clothes by a stream. She was then kept captive by the creature and repeatedly raped, and when she finally managed to escape and make her way back home she purportedly gave birth to a strange, hairy child who would be called Anica, and nicknamed “the daughter of the orangutan.” Apparently, the baby was deformed, with long arms, a hairy body, and an “ape-like mouth.”

There are several other accounts of Bigfoot kidnappings in the 1920s. In 1928, a Native American trapper was in British Columbia, Canada, when he claimed to have been abducted by a Sasquatch during the night while sleeping; similar to the Ostman case. According to him, he was carried an estimated 3 miles through the rugged wilderness, after which he was thrown to the ground and found that he was surrounded by a group of about 20 of the hulking creatures. Apparently there were human bones strewn about the ground around him, which led the trapper to think that the beasts meant to eat him. The creatures supposedly gathered around him to poke and pull at his clothing, which they seemed genuinely confused by. After some time of this, the beasts lost interest somewhat and the trapper made a run for it, managing to escape their clutches.

These strange cases go on far past the 1920s. In 1957, a man in a remote village in China claimed to have heard his daughter screaming out for help and had run to find an 8-foot-tall hairy hominid picking her up and carrying her away. The father bravely grabbed a stick and chased after them to start beating the creature as hard as he could. The startled beast finally dropped the daughter and tried to escape, but purportedly became bogged down in some thick mud. Other alarmed villagers appeared and proceeded to relentlessly beat the creature to death. It is unclear what ever happened to this story after that or what the creature had intended to do with its prize.

An even more recent report comes from 1987. On June 1 of that year, 16-year-old Theresa Bier and 43-year-old Russel Welch embarked on a camping trip to Sierra National Forest. The two were apparently quite attracted to the Bigfoot phenomenon, and had hoped to get a glimpse of the creature themselves. At some point, the two became separated and Theresa would vanish without a trace. Authorities would later question Welch, during which time he would claim that his companion had been abducted by Bigfoot. Dubious law enforcement officials would conduct an intense investigation into the disappearance but find no evidence of foul play, forcing them to let Welch go. Considering that Theresa’s body has never been found, it is unclear what happened here. Was she truly kidnapped by a Bigfoot, as Welch claims, or is this a simple case of foul play. It is unknown.

Yet another recent case is that of 48-year-old Jason Richardson, who was on a hike in Northern California, in South Lake Tahoe, at Mount Tallac. At one point during his trek, he claims that he heard a guttural sound reminiscent of a human “baby voice.” Thinking that it was perhaps a real baby left out alone in the wilderness, he rushed to where he had heard the noise and then claims that he lost consciousness after being bashed over the head, which was later evident by the blood he found leaking from back there. When he woke up, he says his head was bloodied and hurt badly, and that he found himself in some sort of cavern. Near him were two “bear-like creatures,” which seemed to be communicating in a series of guttural grunts, which sounded strikingly similar to what he had heard before he had lost consciousness.

Richardson claimed that the creatures were somewhat human looking, and were covered with thick, red hair, with feet that were even hairier. They stood around 8 to 10 feet in height, and the terrified Richardson wondered if he was perhaps hallucinating. As he tried to move, he realized that his hands and feet had been bound with vines or some other plant material. As the creatures approached, his description becomes ever more bizarre. Richardson would describe them thus:

Then they approached me, and I pissed my pants, literally. I am not ashamed to say this, I was so fearful I had no idea if this was it you know? That’s when I saw their heads. Their necks were hairless and they reminded me of vultures. Their heads had red hair, but also black feathers or I don’t know what it was, but it looked like feathers to me. Their eyes were dark, very dark and big as they got close to me.

The creatures then apparently got quite aggressive, dragging him across the floor and kicking him. They then went off and returned with wood and stone tools for some unknown purpose. They freed his hands and feet but he was too scared to move. The creatures picked him up and tossed him out of the cave, and at one point Richardson claimed that he could feel a rock hit him from behind. He wasted no time in running out of there as fast as his legs could carry him. When he checked his watch, 10 hours had passed since the time he had been abducted by his enigmatic captors. Was this account real, or was Richardson merely hallucinating on some substance as he had at first thought? Nobody knows.

In another report from 1962, an Ohio woman claimed to have been kidnapped by a group of Bigfoot after they had repeatedly visited her family home when she was only 12 years old. The creatures had repeatedly approached the home and gotten into the habit of whisking away the girl during the night. On some occasions, the father had barged in with his 12 gauge shotgun to shoot at the creatures, which seemed to have little effect. The biggest of the beasts was reported as being a whopping 14 feet tall. She would describe the creatures thus:

His hair was long and about the same texture as mine as I recall. The hair on all of them was about the same shade of brown, like the color of the decomposed wood layer in the forest. I could see skin around his eyes that was tanned looking and where there was facial hair it was more sparse with glimpses of skin showing through that area as well. I couldn’t make out a neck. His chin was broad, his teeth were about the size of the nail on my middle finger but they were more flat and he had a mouthful of them meaning the width of his “bite” was wide. His mouth was wide enough to show most of them. His eyes were dark with some white around them, less so than human eyes. They were kind with crows feet at the outer edge of them. His skin was weathered like anyone who spent much time outside, like a farmer. His shoulders were very broad though I did see his collar bone on one side which looked thick compared to a humans. He was muscular and heavily built but in no way fat. There was an adult female and others who were almost as big as the female but didn’t seem to be young or old.

The girl claimed that she was often taken far away from her home by the creatures, but that she did not remember what had transpired during the kidnappings. She only knew that she would be gone the whole night. At one point, things became more sinister. The girl remembers waking within a cavern or cave in which water was dripping from roots emerging from the ground above. At this point, she could see the strange beasts surrounding her as she lay upon a slab of rock. She said of the situation:

I wanted badly to scream some more but I was just too tired to do that anymore. When I relaxed they all started smiling and laughing. I thought, okay they could’ve killed me and eaten me but they didn’t. Evidently some of them are kind but then again I’ve seen cats play with mice for hours before they kill and eat them.

The girl would invariably end up back in her home and was never harmed, but this did little to put the family at ease. The strange creatures would allegedly continue to harass the house, banging on the walls and tapping on windows, as well as huffing and grunting loudly outside in the night. They would also often communicate with each other outside the home, of which the woman would say:

The sounds they made were a deep bass laughing, chortling, snickering, and sounds like someone who couldn’t pronounce words well. They communicated with these with each other and with their thoughts just as the male did with me. I had no interaction from the younger ones and the female adult only smiled or sighed heavily while looking at me.

For the longest time, the woman kept her family’s story secret for fear of being ridiculed, but finally came forth in an effort to get others to share their experiences. She would go on to say of her reasons to come forward:

I hope it brings awareness to the suffering of experiencers and witnesses and allows them to speak openly about what has happened to them. Unless we all speak the truth the world won’t know what’s been hidden and still being hidden from us. Do we want future generations to carry on living the same lie? Our world is richer and more interesting than most people could ever imagine. These are not just creatures, they are quite intelligent and resourceful enough to keep from being caught or killed.

What do we make of these strange cases? Are these just wild imaginings and fabrications, or is there something more to them? Have people really been kidnapped by wild, hairy humanoids and taken off into the wilderness, or are these tales just too crazy to be true? Whatever the case may be, there are certainly enough of these bizarre accounts to be worthy of notice, and they are intriguing enough to at least ponder. These stories lie right there within the mythos of Bigfoot and the many mysterious forms its legacy has taken. There may forever be debate as to whether the sightings and accounts of hairy hominids hold any weight, but there can be no doubt that those of people kidnapped by them deserve their own place among the strangest of the strange.