Gawkers eye huge skeletons on museum display.
GIANT HOAX? Bay County's Huge Skeletons Part of National Mystery Probe
December 20, 2014
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By: Dave Rogers
The much-debated report that giant skeletons were found in Indian burial mounds in Bay County is now part of a lively national discussion on the Internet.
My book "Ghosts, Crimes and Urban Legends of Bay City, Michigan," explored the report by pioneer settler James McCormick and speculated whether the Paul Bunyan legend (see Paul Bunyan: How A Terrible Timber Feller Became a Legend) sprang from such archaeological finds.
The latest outbreak of media hysteria over the alleged giants concerns a false report in a questionable publication called World News Daily.
The WND story tells that the Supreme Court ordered the Smithsonian Institute to disclose that it destroyed several giant skeletons in the early 1900s to preserve the mainstream narrative of evolution.
Snopes.com branded the story false.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/giantcoverup.asp#2JrIJ6xUVdPiq6sk.99
In addition to the giant skeleton hoax, World News Daily Report's repertoire of fake news articles includes a claim that logger's cut down the world's oldest tree, another stating that an eyewitness account of Jesus' miracles was recently uncovered, and yet another that evidence of a prehistoric giant shark had been unearthed.
The story of giant skeletons goes back even before the First World War.
First reported in the 4 May 1912 issue of the New York Times is the tale of 18 skeletons found by the Peterson brothers on Lake Lawn Farm in southwest Wisconsin that exhibited several strange and freakish features.
Their heights ranged between 7.6 ft and 10 feet and their skulls...
"presumably those of men, are much larger than the heads of any race which inhabit America to-day."
They tend to have a double row of teeth, 6 fingers, 6 toes and like humans came in different races. The teeth in the front of the jaw are regular molars. Heads usually found are elongated believed due to longer than normal life span.
See more at: http://humansarefree.com/2014/09/the-great-smithsonian-cover-up-18-giant.html#sthash.8v52cwjy.dpuf
Of course the double row of teeth relates to the story of Fabian "Saginaw Joe" Fournier, who was said to have a double row of teeth. Lumber era writers like Stewart Holbrook in his best-selling "Holy Old Mackinaw: A Natural History of the American Lumberjack" told of Fournier's favorite trick, biting a chuck out of bar in a saloon and growling "Joe Fournier dat hees mark!"
The "Bay City Hauntings" book recounts that James McCormick had plowed two large burial mounds at 24th and Water. In excavating for the cellar of the Bay City Brewery at 22nd and Water McCormick reported finding the remains of
"a more ancient race, of an entirely different formation of skull, with high cheek bones and receding forehead. One skeleton was found in a sitting position, facing west; it had a very narrow head, and long, as if it had been compressed."
The late Dr. Earl Prahl, a Michigan State University archaeologist who came here in 1967 to work at the Fletcher Site, was interested in the Adena people, a tribe that dated to 1,000 to 2,000 B.C.
Males of the Adena tribe were said to be about seven feet tall and females about six feet. The Adena had skulls with receding foreheads (much like the McCormick find at the Bay City Brewery site).
Dave Rogers
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Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read, respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City. (Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)
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