Nothing's better than feeling comfortable in your own shoes. Maybe you're a parent raising a little rock star, or a tech nomad working from anywhere. All Birds wants you to be comfortable in your actual shoes too. They're wool runners, pipers, and loungers are so cozy you might forget you're wearing them, and they're crafted from natural materials that tread lightly on our planet. So get comfortable in your shoes. Get to know the wool runners, pipers and loungers at Alberts dot com.
That's ALLLBI rds dot com. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Tales from the Cryptid, we heard the unnerving story of a group of prospectives who claim to have been attacked by a number of strange, apelike creatures in the Cascade Mountains back in the summer of nineteen
twenty four. In nineteen sixty seven, one of the group, Fred Beck, and his son Ronald, published a full account of the apparent episode in a book titled I Fought the ape Men of Mount Saint Helen's, Washington. Though no conclusive evidence was ever found to confirm Beck's account, the story remains one of the most loved accounts of an
apparent encounter with Bigfoot in the annals of Cryptozoology. The story was, however, given a slight air of credibility after the mysterious disappearance of a man in nineteen fifty not far from where Beck and his team had been working. Jim Carter was part of a twenty member strong skiing party enjoying the last of the year's snow at the top of Mount Saint Helen's when he volunteered to take some photographs of the group making their way down to
the bottom. Carter told the group to wait thirty minutes before they set off to give him time to set up his equipment, and then promptly skied away. Having watched Carter disappear behind a rocky outcrop, the group waited the agreed thirty minutes, then one by one shot off down the mountain, but Carter never arrived to meet them all
at the bottom. A search team later found Carter's tracks and traced them to the rocky outcrop where he'd last been seen, where they found a discarded film container and another set of ski tracks pointing straight down the mountain.
Bob Lee, a member of the Seattle Mountain Search and Rescue team that searched for Carter, recounted years later that Carter appeared to have set off at an astonishing taking chances that no skier of his caliber would take unless something was terribly wrong or he was being pursued, even jumping over two or three large crevasses in the process.
The search team eventually traced Carter's ski tracks to the edge of the gorge where fred Beck's group had apparently had their terrifying encounter, astonished to find that they continued straight down into the canyon. Despite a two week search, no sign of Carter was ever found. For Bob Lee, it was one of the strangest rescue operations he'd ever participated in. As he said, it was as though somebody was watching me the whole time. I could feel the
hair on my neck standing up. It was eerie. I was unarmed except for my ice ACKs, and believe me, I never let go of it. Almost every culture, it seems as a story of wild mythical creatures living out in the woods and mountains, from Bigfoot to Sasquatch, to the Yetty and the Yawi. These ape like creatures seem to supersede folklore, and sometimes they even break out from the myth to be apparently captured on film, recorded on audio, and seen in real life, and in eighteen fifty one
was even said to have been caught. The mountainous regions of the Caucuses and Pamir in Central Asia and the Altai Range in Mongolia are said to be home to a group of creatures known locally as the Almas or the Almasty, loosely translated to English from Mongolian to mean wild, and the Almasty are believed to be half human half ape, walking upright like a human, but looking much more like a primate with wild, dark hair, a thick set skull,
and low, stooping brow. In eighteen fifty, in the region of Abcacia, an area in the South Caucuses that lies between present day Georgia and Russia, it was claimed that one such wild creature stalked the woods in the snow covered foothills of a local mountain range. Incredibly, the creature was eventually tracked down, where it was then set upon by a group of men who forcibly bound it to a log and placed a felt gag in its mouth
before carrying it back to a nearby village. There, the creature was kept locked up where locals could come and gorpet it, trading stories about how it could run as fast as a horn and even swimmed the freezing rivers at high tide. The creature was described as having dark skin and was covered head to toe in coarse red hair. Tall and muscular at six foot six inches, with a thick low brow, it was simply like nothing any of
the villagers had ever seen before. After being examined by a doctor, the creature was declared to be female and given the name Zana. As a subject of intense interest, Zana was traded between a number of people until she was apparently bought by a local businessman named Edgi Gannaba, who took her home to his estate in nearby Tequina. There, she was kept shackled in a cage while Gannaba tried to figure out what exactly he should do with her.
There something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. Better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. Sign up today and start communicating in less than forty eight hours. You'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room. You can also log into your account any time to send a message
to your counselor. Better Help is not a crisis line nor self help. It is professional counseling done securely online, with a broad range of expertise available, and with better helps commitment to facilitating great therapeutic matches, they make it especially easy and free to change counselors to help you find the right fit. This podcast is sponsored by better Help and Unexplained. Listeners get ten percent off their first month at better help dot com. Forward slash unexplained, that's
better help dot com. Forward slash unexplained Join the over one million people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. Better Help wants you to start living a happier life today over time. Having realized that Zana was not hostile, Guanaba had her removed from the cage and placed an a fenced in enclosure outside instead, where she was given more freedom and space
to roam about. Attempts were then made to tame Zana by giving her clothes and teaching her how to speak. Although she learned to respond to her name, she rejected the clothes and proved uninterested in learning words, and despite having the opportunity to sleep indoors, she always preferred to sleep outside in a pit that she dug for herself in the ground. When it was found that Zanna could understand simple instructions, she was then incorporated into Naba's workforce
and forced to carry out various manual labor jobs. At some point, some of the local men on the estate started coming to Zarah at night, then plied her with alcohol and raped her. After falling pregnant and then giving birth to a healthy daughter, Zana is said to have taken her baby and washed it in the near freezing waters of a local river, whereupon it died in her arms.
When the same thing happened again, some of the women from the local community soon realized it was simply because she didn't know that the cold waters would kill them. It is said that Zana would go on to have a further four children, with each of them being removed from her care and adopted by local families. After twenty years, enslaved on Gonaba's estate, Zanna died. Little else is known about her. All four of her children were believed to
have integrated well and been accepted into local society. The Almusty hunters of Russia continued to believe after Zana's death that she was either a genuine example of the mythical almasty or some kind of subset of Neanderthal that had somehow survived undiscovered in the snowy foothills of the South Caucuses while humanity evolved around them. The truth, however, was
far more tragic. In June twenty twenty one, as Shot Margarian, a scientist specializing in the field of ancient human population genomics, headed a paper titled the Genomic Origin of Zana of Abkhazia, which stated although the exact location of Zanna's burial site was unknown, the grave of her son Quit was identified in nineteen seventy one. The genomes of Quit and the
alleged Zana skeleton were sequenced using ancient DNA techniques. The identical mitochondrial DNA and the parent offspring relationship between the two indicated that the unknown woman was indeed Zana. Population genomic analysis demonstrated that Zana's immediate genetic ancestry can likely be traced to present day East African populations. We speculate that Zana might have had a genetic disorder such as congenital generalized hypertrichosis, which could partially explain her strange behavior,
lack of speech, and long body hair. In July twenty twenty one, Zana's origins were narrowed down even further by molecular anthropologist doctor Miguel Villa of the University of Maryland. After analyzing her DNA data, Phila concluded that she was likely related to the Dinka pastoralist people from South Sadan, describing them as a marginalized group known to be above average in height and body size. In short, the so called Zana wild Woman of the Forest wasn't Almusty at all,
but simply a human of East Central African descent. This episode was co written by Donna McKay smith. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now do so via Patreon to receive access to add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
the show, is now of ailable to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast