Can we stop for a moment to talk about giants?
Yes, you heard me right, I said giants. We all love a good giant. Of course naturally, I’m not talking about the Michael Jordan or The Mountain from Game of Thrones kind. I’m talking about real giants that may or may not still be around today, hidden in the vast cave networks dotted throughout the world.
It’s of course no secret that there have been some pretty tall people in the world. Robert Wadlow for example, god rest his soul, was a whopping 8’11. As is the case however with many people who suffer from gigantism, which is caused by an over-production of hormones in the growth gland, and often results in health problems in the circulatory and skeletal system, Robert died very young at the age of 22 after a blister on his foot became infected and went unnoticed due to him having no feeling in his feet.
Perhaps a more familiar face is the beloved Andre the Giant, a wrestler and actor from the 80’s and 90’s era. Andre died at 46 of congestive heart failure.
Whilst these men (and women) are impressively tall, they stir only a feeling of wonder and amazement. We are not frightened by these ordinary, just super tall, people. We don’t run in fear from them. We don’t expect them to eat our babies and cannibalise our flesh.
Stories from folklore however, tell of man-eating giants who are much, much bigger than 8’11 and, for lack of a better term, built like a brick shithouse. They were by-far the top of the food chain and the Alpha race on Earth. They’re even mentioned quite a bit in the Bible (a trustworthy resource if any – exceptional competition for the Daily Star, The Mirror and The Sun newspapers at best).
We hear fairy-tales featuring giants, such as the famous Jack and the Beanstalk, where Jack narrowly escapes with his life. Giants are terrifying, fearless and brutal beings that cannibalise anything in their paths and must be avoided at all costs.
But of course, those kind of giants aren’t real. Are they?
Well, there are some interesting tales out there from across the world; most infamously the Giant of Kandahar, which was first told on Coast to Coast Radio and details a group of American soldiers in 2002 who were fighting in Afghanistan (Mr Ballen tells this best so I will link to his channel and this story here) and came across a massive, red haired giant who attacked their group, resulting in an epic battle and several deaths, one of which was the giant, which was swiftly airlifted away and never seen again.
As the aforementioned Daily Star will tell you, army soldiers have told of their fellow soldiers mysteriously disappearing in the mountains of Afghanistan “in the early 2000s, only to find their gear in a mysterious cave with no soldiers to be found anywhere”.
There is also a story about a giant with two rows of teeth who speared an unfortunate soldier who happened upon him in a cave
All US intelligence forces vehemently denied any knowledge of this story when questioned by well-known fake-news outing website Snopes. The story however does tell that the soldiers were forced to sign NDAs so that they could never discuss what they saw and the government then hence covered the whole thing up.
And true, that’s all it could be. A story. In fact, it’s incredibly most likely to be a tall tale (quite literally!). However, there are people native to places all across the world, including the Comanches and Navajo who tell of their tribes historically being stalked and killed by races of giants. The people are often described as red-headed.
What’s more, we have newspaper articles from the 1900s which talk of archaeologists finding giant skeletons and mummified remains in New Mexico.
We also have this very interesting picture, although after doing a bit digging I can find absolutely nowhere which can say for sure if it’s real or a fake. It could entirely be a very tall human being, just like Robert Wadlow, rather than an actual “giant” per-se. Who knows, but I can’t deny it’s intriguing.
No one can say for sure that there isn’t a race of colossus-sized people living in the vast cave networks of the world. After all, there are thousands of miles of unexplored Earth underground and we do hear about people going missing in and around caves and mountains all the time.
It would also be hubris of us to write-off the stories from the native American tribes – a culture through which their history is only told by oral tale and therefore it is of the utmost importance that the tales are handed down in accurate detail.
Of course on the other hand, Michael Jordan is a giant to me, but an entirely regular sized person to Andre the Giant. Could it just be the native peoples were really short?
The tales sound fantastical and we also, on a finishing note, have a more recent giant encounter which went viral last year on TikTok after being posted by Andrew Dawson. Andrew claimed to have seen and taken a video of a giant which he then uploaded to TikTok. Shortly afterwards, he claimed that black cars were constantly seen following him around and parked outside his house.
He later posted a follow-up video which seemed very rushed and in which he was constantly looking off to the side as if he was being watched or coerced into making the video, saying that the whole thing had been a fake and he was sorry.
Shortly after that he posted a further two videos saying that he was afraid that something was going to happen to him and that the original was indeed real. His last video was posted on 18 May 2022 and he has never been heard from since…
Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
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