Giants: Do They Really Exist?

Stories abound of gigantic human skeletons or other remains unearthed in various parts of North America. In November 1856, for instance, several local newspapers included detailed accounts of a decayed human skeleton claimed by eyewitness to be 3.28 meters tall, which had been exposed by some laborers while ploughing Sheriff Wickham’s vineyard in East Wheeling, now in West Virginia. It was soon dismissed as a hoax, however, one of the newspapers announced that three bullets had been found in its skull. Yet these bullets were not described; hence they might simply have been lead or copper pellets. And there is still the identity of the giant bones themselves to consider. Sadly, however, the final resting place of this earthly giant is unknown, so we are unlikely to discover the truth.

The skeleton of a 3.6 meter tall goliath was revealed at Lompock Rancho, California, in 1833 by soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine. This specimen was further distinguished by its remarkable double row of teeth and by the abundance of huge stones axes, carved shells, and porphyry blocks bearing abstruse symbols associated with it. The skeleton and artifacts were secretly reburied, and their locality lost, when locals began venerating them.

In 1911, several mummified remains of mysterious red-haired humans ranging from 2-2.5 meters tall were disinterred in Lovelock Cave, 112 kilometers north-east of Reno, Nevada, by a guano mining operation. These substantiated the local Piute Indians’ legends of such people, which they called the Si-Te-Cahs. Yet scientists proved oddly reluctant to investigate these remains and eventually most of the bones were simply discarded by the miners. What was left was salvaged by various local people, only for most of it to be destroyed in a fire. Happily, however, one of the giant Lovelock skulls, almost 30cm tall, is preserved with some related bones and artifacts at the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada, and various Lovelock artifacts are also held at the Nevada State Historical Society’s museum at Reno.

The most distinctive American giants, however, were found in the 1880s at Tioga Point, near Sayre in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, as Robert Lyman recounted in Forbidden Land:

Dr G.P. Donehoo, State Historian and a former minister of the Presbyterian Church in Coudersport, together with Prof.A.B. Skinner of the American Investigating Museum, and Prof.W.K. Morehead of Phillips Andover Academy, uncovered an Indian mound. They found the bones of 68 men which were believed to have been buried about the year 1200. The average height of these men was seven feet, while many were much taller. One some of the skulls, two inches above the perfectly formed forehead, were protuberances of bone, evidently horns that had been there since birth. Some of the specimens were sent to the American Investigating Museum.

One might expect that giant human skeletons with horned skulls could not be overlooked or forgotten. Yet according to Jim Brandon’s book Weird America, no one at the museum has any knowledge of these specimens – which must surely rate as something of a mystery in itself!