Almas Sightings

A Soviet forestry worker near the Altai Republic reported a close-range encounter with a stocky, hair-covered figure on a logging road at dusk. The figure stood approximately 6 feet tall, had long arms that swung noticeably below the knee, and stared at the witness for several seconds before retreating into dense spruce forest. The account was submitted to cryptozoologist Igor Burtsev, who collected similar reports from the Altai region throughout the 1960s.

Source: Igor Burtsev field records; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_(folklore)

Naturalist Alexander Varenchikov documented a series of fresh footprints and eyewitness accounts from Chechen and Ingush shepherds describing encounters with tall, hair-covered bipedal figures in the high alpine zones. Porshnev's 1958 Soviet Academy expedition to the broader Caucasus region collected over 150 independent testimonies consistent in morphology, including this cluster near the central range, and concluded the reports could not be attributed to bears or known primates.

Source: Boris Porshnev, Soviet Academy of Sciences expedition report, 1958; https://www.iflscience.com/this-historian-believed-sightings-of-a-soviet-sasquatch-were-living-neanderthals-78312

Lieutenant Colonel Vargen Karapetyan, a medical officer with a Red Army detachment, was brought to examine a captured 'wild man' held in a shed near the village. The subject was approximately 5'9", covered in fine dark hair on the chest, back, and shoulders, with bare palms and soles. He was unable or unwilling to speak, blinked frequently, and sweated so profusely in a warm room that he had to be kept outside in winter cold. Karapetyan concluded the man was neither impersonating a Neanderthal nor mentally defective. The captive was subsequently shot by the unit as a suspected German spy.

Source: Lt. Col. Vargen Karapetyan testimony, cited in Boris Porshnev's Soviet Academy investigation; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_(folklore)

A female Almas reportedly captured in the Abkhazian mountains was kept by locals who called her Zana. She was described as covered in reddish-black hair with a large muscular build, prominent brow ridges, and fingers and toes longer than those of humans. She refused clothing and cooked food for years. Villagers documented that she bore at least four surviving children fathered by local men, described as exceptionally strong with unusually dark complexions. Researcher Boris Porshnev later collected testimony from multiple witnesses and her descendant Khwit.

Source: Boris Porshnev fieldwork; https://www.hangar1publishing.com/blogs/cryptids/the-almasty-of-the-caucasus-mountains