The Ingushetia "Female Yeti"

Late December 2011. The Republic of Ingushetia, in Russia's North Caucasus. That autumn, Russia had already been buzzing with yeti talk. In Kemerovo, a conference and expedition had claimed "95% evidence" of the creature, before an anthropologist said local officials had staged it for publicity. Then, on 28 December, Interfax carried a new headline. In the mountains of Ingushetia, border guards had caught a creature resembling a "snowman."

It began, the reports said, a few days earlier. In the Dzheyrakh district, the mountain district of Ingushetia, a local hunter saw what he took for a bear. It grabbed a ram. He fired. The animal rose onto two legs. It "jumped up on two legs and disappeared into the forest."

Border guards were said to have found it later during a sweep, in a small hollow. One participant in the "operation" was quoted by RIA Novosti: "At first I thought it was a bear, but it isn't a bear."

Almost every description came from one man. Bagaudin Marshani, Ingushetia's Minister of Labour and Social Development. He described an animal almost two metres tall. It looked like a gorilla but stood fully upright, "vertically, like a human being." Its forelimbs were much shorter than a gorilla's. It roared. It did not speak, but made incomprehensible sounds. It ate meat and plants. RIA reported that it understood human speech.

"We believe it's a female, but she is really big," Marshani said. "Honestly, I've never seen anything like it." To him it looked less like an animal and more like a human. "Some say it's a Yeti, others say it's a large ape," ran one translation. Another had him say "Some say it is Bigfoot." She went on display at a "zoo" in Surkhakhi, in the Nazran district. Pravda placed it on the grounds of a holiday hotel. RIA Novosti said a veterans' home. Tourists arrived in crowds. A special flight would bring scientists from Moscow. Local television filmed the figure clutching the fence while a man gave an interview.

29 December 2011. The FSB Border Directorate for Ingushetia spoke through Interfax. "News agencies distributed the information without checking the facts. It's a hoax."

Marshani retracted the same day. Reporters had misread him, he said. "That was a life-size puppet that we are going to use for New Year holidays." RIA Novosti went further. The ministry called it a pre-New Year joke and promotional stunt, meant to raise money for orphans in children's homes and for children from low-income families. Visitors had been asked to donate. The flight for scientists was part of the joke. No specialists ever came. No examination took place.

The stories of who played the creature never quite matched. Alex Boese, writing on the Museum of Hoaxes weblog, said it was an Ingush hotel worker in an ape suit. Staff at the veterans' home told RIA a colleague had played the snowman. Marshani spoke of a puppet. No performer was ever named. Whether the hunter's encounter was invented too, no source says, though the RIA account suggests the whole sequence belonged to the stunt. Some early English reports added confusion of their own, turning "almost two metres" into "two feet."

The case lives on in Wikipedia's Yeti page and across cryptozoology blogs, among them Cryptomundo and The Crypto Crew. One Hoaxes.org commenter noted that the Caucasus has its own wild man tradition, the Alma or Kaptar. In that light, "yeti" was always a borrowed name. A charity joke, in the end. But for a few days in December, Ingushetia had its own captive giant.