SASQUATCH: MYSTERY AND LEGEND by Richard Smedley

Did a prospector's shovel expose the secret of Bigfoot's tomb? Writer Richard Smedley combines two classic "lost giant" hoaxes, the 1895 Martindale Mummies and the Calaveras Skull of 1866, with modern Bigfoot in this article for Probe the Unknown magazine. The 1800s hoaxes are marshaled as evidence for an ancient race of Sasquatch people, the timid remnants of which may still stalk the woods, in an interesting blend of lost giant/lost white race pseudoarchaeology and modern pseudoscience Bigfootery. If you've noticed people talking about Bigfoot and the Nephilim online nowadays, it just goes to show that everything old is new again in the paranormal.

The Patterson-Gimlin Film and Bigfoot hunter Robert Morgan are also name checked. Tom Mattison, the "discoverer" of the Calaveras Skull, also has his name spelled as Matteson in some accounts.

Full artwork spread

Tom Wright's artwork for Smedley's article is yet another example of a Bigfoot/Yeti traced from Frank Frazetta's piece titled Neanderthals, from 1966.

This article is available to read and download at archive dot org, and the entire March, 1975 issue of Probe the Unknown magazine is also available at the Luminist Archives.

Dare you probe the other mysteries within?