Three schoolteachers recently raised havoc in remote Quinhagak by tramping around in the snow with foot-shaped pieces of plywood to make fake Hairy Man tracks. Worried calls poured in to police. One officer called it "a bad joke." The teachers apologized and visited classrooms to show off the wooden feet and assure children there was nothing to fear. Days later, some parents were still asking for a police escort when their children went from house to house. Bethel storyteller John Active, a Yupik Eskimo, says he knows all about Hairy Man. "He's very tall, taller than a 9- or 10-foot-tall spruce tree. When he was standing, his hands could touch the ground next to his feet. He grew hair to keep warm," Active said. Hairy Man is more curious than predatory but so horrendous-looking, Active says, that people run off afraid. Active says Hairy Man's Eskimo name, "arulataq," means a creature who makes a bellowing cry. "Years ago," he said, "during World War II, there was an air raid siren in the middle of town. When it would go off, the old natives would say that is the sound the creature made. It was scary."

Alaska anthropologists say the theme of the big-footed hermit is universal — a regional equivalent of urban tales such as the vanishing hitchhiker. Phyllis Morrow, a Fairbanks cultural anthropologist who has studied the indigenous people of southwest Alaska for 15 years, says other village legends deal with people who get lost and become wild. One story talks about a boy who ran away long ago and is glimpsed today, through his shaggy hair. "These are sightings of the supernatural. That's what folklore is all about," Morrow said.

Active says he has never seen Hairy Man. But he knows he lives. "He's just as alive in our legends as if he's standing right in front of me," Active said. "He's out there because we talk about him."

© San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1993