The Giants & Other Strange Beings of Antiquity

In 1981, several members of the Enigma Project took an interest in the ancient Grave Creek burial mound (Moundsville, WV). Our curiosity was aroused by the book, Weird America (Jim Brandon, 1978), which mentioned that 19th century mound excavations yielded some interesting artifacts. Among them was a silver-dollar sized stone tablet scribed with undecipherable glyphs and a skeleton with very "unusual" dentition. In the course of our research, we discovered that a modern museum had been built on property adjacent to the mound. Reasoning that the museum would be a showcase for the mound, its builders, and recovered artifacts, we journeyed to Moundsville, WV to see the Grave Creek Mound and museum firsthand. We found the mound to be an awesome structure (see attached), but to our amazement the museum was largely empty. Part of the building did have dioramas, drawings, and a few burial artifacts of the Adena people (one ancient eastern culture credited as mound builders). However, more of the museum had been devoted to the display of an enormous ballpoint pen collection than anything related to the burial mound! Later that year, two Enigma investigators traveled to Morgantown, WV to visit the State archeologist, as we had heard that he was very knowledgeable about the Grave Creek Mound and its artifacts. What the investigators discovered was that the archeologist had multiple crates of mound artifacts from Crave Creek and other WV mounds that were being "mothballed" in a storage room adjacent to his office. When questioned about the artifacts, and asked why they weren't on display, he said that they needed to be cleaned and properly cataloged before being displayed. Curiously, many of these artifacts had been excavated decades earlier.

In 2001, we again returned to the Mound and museum and were delighted to discovered that the museum was practically filled with Adena culture and burial mound artifacts and exhibits. Mention was made of skeletons found in the Grave Creek structure. However, if there was anything unusual regarding the bones, it was not found in the museum. To out delight, they did have a small exhibit dedicated to the Grave Creek tablet. Though the original has long since been lost, when it was first found someone had the presence of mind to make rubbings and copies of it. A number of attempts have been made to translate the strange glyphs. Unfortunately, no consensus has been reached on what it says, as a number of different translations have surfaced.

I am not aware of any "giant" skeleton remains on display anywhere in the US (I've always suspected that too many finds of this nature would rock the archeological boat by contradicting some feature of mainstream scientific dogma). Who knows what happens to items that threaten the scientific status quo??

Most Fortean stories about giant skeletons unearthed in North America lack any real details. Most are being passed along second-hand (or third-, or fourth-,...). There is, however, one intriguing tale from a Kentucky folklore book written by Michael Paul Henson (1984). Henson relates how he actually examined a body dug out from under a large rock ledge along Holly Creek in east-central Kentucky. In 1965, a landowner, Kenneth White, was building cattle stalls under the ledge when he found a "perfectly preserved skeleton" which measured 8 feet, 9 inches in length when reassembled. He states "the arms were extremely long and the hands were large. By comparison, the feet were very small." The skull was "30 inches in circumference. The eye and nose sockets were slits rather than cavities, and the area where the jaw bone hinges to the skull was solid bone. It would seem that the person could not have opened his mouth." A powdery white substance covered the skeleton, but no tools, weapons, or other human implements were found with the bones. The body was buried approximately five feet underground. Henson and the farmer assumed the skeleton to be a large, deformed Indian.

Unfortunately, White reburied the bones rather than taking them to a university for examination. Henson died in 1995, and any further notes he may have had on this fascinating story are unavailable (Henson 1996). I would suggest that further investigation of this tale could produce interesting results. We do not have exact locality for this report, but Holly Creek appears to be run through both Wolfe and Breathitt Counties in Kentucky.

Certainly, the evidence for a true race of giant Amerindians is lacking, but there are certainly other possible explanations for a large bipedal human-like skeleton being found in North America.

Henson, M.P. 1984. Tragedy at Devil's Hollow and other Haunting Tales from Kentucky. Bowling Green, KY: Cockerel Corp.

Henson, M.P. 1996. More Kentucky Ghost Stories. Johnson City, TN: The Overmoutain Press.

Iscan, M.Y., and M.H. Kessel. 1997. Giant Amerindians: Fact or Fantasy? Southeastern Archaeology 16(1): 73-78.

(Source: North American BioFortean Review #1, www.herper.com/NABR.html)