A famous hoax


Hey! I vividly remember this cover, the May 1969 issue of Argosy magazine!

My father’s family was fond of some of these weird men’s magazines of that time, which often featured macho masculine heroic men battling ferocious creatures in the wilderness, or going fishing. I walked off with a copy, and kept it in the attic of my grandmother’s house, which I’d adopted as my workshop for building model airplanes. I spent many afternoons up there and browsed this, and a few copies of National Lampoon, while I was waiting for the glue or dope to dry. This was a particularly memorable issue, since it featured a cryptid with photos and reconstructions. I can still picture it lying on the desk in that room, where it rested for several years.

It was a hoax, a spectacularly graphic bloody hoax. Here’s a recent video series that traced the history of the Minnesota Iceman, summarizing the controversy. The story changed so many times that it is definitely unbelievable.

It’s still around. It was sold to a place called The Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas. I’d love to see it someday.

It’s often called the Minnesota Iceman, but some people resent that and say it was a Wisconsin Iceman: How a Wisconsin Bigfoot Became the Minnesota Iceman. Wisconsin can have it, I don’t mind.

Comments

  1. Militant Agnostic says

    I remember it being at the Calgary Stampede. I did not pay to look at it.. Even then I knew it was hoax.

  2. Akira MacKenzie says

    Wisconsin can have it, I don’t mind.

    Is there any way we can give it to Illinois?

  3. Pierce R. Butler says

    Would it be more scientifically relevant if they found the original Minnesota Nice Man?

  4. profpedant says

    The Ben G. Thomas channel, and it’s sibling Seven Days of Science, are excellent Youtube channels. Highly recommended!!!!!

  5. says

    Yeah but did you ever go visit the Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe down on the Seattle waterfront? It was a Summer ritual for us kids. CREEPY as fuck! All hail Sylvester!

  6. mordred says

    Wasn’t Argosy the magazine which printed the original Bermuda Triangle story?

    The story only became well known with Berlitz books many years later, but IIRC Argosy printed the article inventing the term and supernatural bullshit.

  7. John Morales says

    mordred, I just took a look: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-bermuda-triangle-what-science-can-tell-us-about-the-mysterious-ocean

    Why Is It Called the Bermuda Triangle?

    The Bermuda Triangle got its name from a 1964 article in the pulp magazine Argosy, which linked together a few disappearances in the region. “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” didn’t offer up any explanations for the occurrences, though it did heavily emphasize the mysterious nature of the area. The article features the disappearance of the U.S.S Cyclops, a Navy supply ship, in 1918, and the loss of a flight of bombers during a practice run in 1945, as well as one of the search and rescue planes sent out after them.

  8. chrislawson says

    chigau@1–

    At its peak, Argosy was one of the best pulp magazines published. Unfortunately, its lifespan was much longer than its peak.

  9. says

    I’m boggling at this part:
    “Hansen himself eventually admitted that the story of the Minnesota Iceman was a hoax – It wasn’t the missing link in human evolution, and it wasn’t discovered in the seas of Siberia. It wasn’t even from Minnesota.
    Hansen said he had actually encountered the creature alive in the woods of Wisconsin while he was hunting. He promptly shot it dead and invented the whole story.”

    Hansen admits to unaliving a bigfoot, and the site’s editor seems to agree the thing was a hoax, but bigfoot is real and it’s OK to do that to them???

  10. Owlmirror says

    I think that should rather be parsed as, Hansen killed a human being with some sort of physical and craniofacial differences and oddities (possibly acromegaly and hypertrichosis, and maybe some others), and rather than give the guy a decent burial, Hansen decided that he could make a lot of money displaying the body while ginning up a sensationalistic story.

    If the shooting story holds any credence, that is.

    WikiP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Iceman ) says:

    Napier, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, made preliminary investigations of Hansen’s affairs and said he found that Hansen had commissioned the creation of the Iceman from a West Coast company in 1967, leading Napier to quickly conclude there was only ever one Iceman latex model that he theorized was repositioned and refrozen between appearances. Napier stated that “The Smithsonian Institution…is satisfied that the creature is simply a carnival exhibit made of latex rubber and hair…the ‘original’ model and the present so-called ‘substitute’ are one and the same.

  11. John Morales says

    “… and rather than give the guy a decent burial, Hansen decided that he could make a lot of money displaying the body while ginning up a sensationalistic story.”

    Good on Hansen. The guy didn’t mind, after his death. A decent burial made zero difference to anyone.

  12. Owlmirror says

    The claim that Hansen shot the being that would become the Iceman wasn’t some off-the-cuff remark; it was part a long, vivid, lurid story published in the magazine Saga in July 1970.

    https://www.museumoftheweird.com/2013/06/30/frank-hansens-story-of-the-minnesota-iceman/

    It beggars belief that someone who claims, in the story, to have concerns about the legality of committing possible homicide and mistreatment of a corpse, would ever publish the story that details this commission of possible homicide and mistreatment of a corpse, even if he coyly ends with:

    There will surely be skeptics that will brand this story a complete fabrication. Possibly it is, I am not under oath and, should the situation dictate, I will deny every word of it. But then no one can be completely certain unless my conditions of amnesty are met. In the meantime I will continue to exhibit a “hairy specimen” that I have publicly acknowledged to be a “fabricated illusion,” and leave the final judgment to the viewers. If one should detect a rotting odor coming from a corner of the coffin, it is only your imagination. A new seal has been placed under the glass and the coffin is airtight.

    There’s a bit of a rambling last word here, by a True Bigfoot believer, which clarifies nothing.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20121122000320if_/https://jevningresearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/dmitri-bayanov-update-on-minnesota.html

  13. says

    Isn’t the “missing link” between humans and other great apes the resemblance between our chromosome 2 and the others’ chromosomes 2 and 3, and the presence of retroviral signatures consistent with a common ancestor?

    I mean, it’s not quite as sexy as a preserved specimen of a half-human, half-something-else creature; but that’s not even what anyone who understands any science would expect anyway.

  14. Owlmirror says

    Isn’t the “missing link” between humans and other great apes the resemblance between our chromosome 2 and the others’ chromosomes 2 and 3, and the presence of retroviral signatures consistent with a common ancestor?

    While there’s plenty of genetic evidence for humans being related to apes, it is also true that genes affect growth and development, including the growth and development of bones. And when the bones of different hominids are examined, it is found, as expected, transitional features between apes and early and late human ancestors.

    I mean, it’s not quite as sexy as a preserved specimen of a half-human, half-something-else creature; but that’s not even what anyone who understands any science would expect anyway.

    Well, it kinda is? Depending on what “half” means.

    To put it another way, there is disagreement and controversy on whether hominids from the transition of late Australopithecus and early Homo should be classified as Australopithecus or as Homo — that is, they often have bones that have features that belong more-or-less to Australopithecus and also features that belong more-or-less to Homo.

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