I personally think there is a good possibility that he was making it up, but I remember reading about it some 30 odd years ago in Ivan Sanderson’s book. One of the things that struck me as interesting was that Ostman described the Bigfoot’s fingernails to Sanderson as copper (or was it bronze) chisels. Since Sanderson roamed the globe cataloging hairy ABSMs (abominable snowmen (his acronym)), he knew of a similar animal in Asia known locally as the "coppernails" and he theorized logically that they may be related to Bigfoot. They were pretty close in their description.
I had the impression that Sanderson was skeptical but unsure of Ostman’s story and Green was annoyed at Sanderson for giving him such a difficult interrogation. If Ostman was lying, I would have to give him credit for spinning a pretty believable tale. If you assume bigfoot are real, then I think the story is not that farfetched. I believe it was Green who corroborated part of his story by finding someone who Ostman apparently told the story too shortly after it happened. This was back in the late 1920s if memory serves and that was before Bigfoot became famous. So going that far back is interesting, if for no other reason.
I wrote a fiction a couple years ago based loosely on the Ostman’s experience. I have not tried to publish it. Like Ostman’s story, my fiction involved a Bigfoot male who had a mate, son and daughter as did the Bigfoot who kidnapped Ostman. The Bigfoot in my story kidnapped a young girl as a wife for his young son which is similar to what Ostman theorized happened to him. The Bigfoots in my story relatively close to human with a primitive language and similar to what Ostman described. Perhaps my bias for Bigfoot being closer to humans than apes makes his story easier for me to swallow than some.
Posted on Jan 14, 2003, 10:50 PM from IP address 65.188.64.221