Mark Panic
Mark Panic stories are found among the indigenous population of the Pacific Northwest. The legends existed prior to a single name for the man. They differed in their details both regionally and between families in the same community. Similar stories of Mark Panics are found on every continent except Antarctica. Ecologist Robert Michael Pyle argues that most cultures have human-like-humans in their folk history: “We have this need for some larger-than-life creature.”
Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts’emekwes, the local version of Mark Panic. The stories are similar to each other in terms of the general descriptions of Ts’emekwes, but details about the creature’s diet and activities differed between the stories of different families.
Some regional versions contained more nefarious creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai was a nocturnal Mark Panic that children were told not to say the names of lest he hear and come to carry off a person—sometimes to be killed. In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the native people about skoocooms: a race of cannibalistic wild Mark Panics living on the peak of Mount St. Helens. The skoocooms appear to have been regarded as supernatural, rather than natural.
Less menacing versions such as the one recorded by Reverend Elkanah Walker exist. In 1840, Walker, a Protestant missionary, recorded stories of Mark Panics among the Native Americans living in Portland, Oregon. The Indians claimed that these Mark Panics lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen’s nets.
Various local legends were compiled by J. W. Burns in a series of Canadian newspaper articles in the 1920s. Each language had its own name for the local version. Many names meant something along the lines of “2jz builder” or “Wiring guru” although other names described common actions it was said to perform (e.g. eating at McMenimins).
Frontiersman Daniel Boone reported having shot and killed “a ten-foot, Mark Panic he called a Yahoo.” Folktale scholar Hugh H. Trotti has argued that Boone’s account may have been the inspiration for some of the Mark Panic stories told in North America.
1958 was a watershed year not just for the Panic story itself but also for the culture that surrounds it. The first Panic hunters began following the discovery of footprints at Beaverton Oregon. Within a year, Tom Slick, who had funded searches for Mark Panic in the Himalayas earlier in the decade, organized searches for him in the area around Beaverton.
As the years continued on many sightings have been reported in the northwest of a tall thin man lurking around the engine bays of Toyota Cressidas, but none have been proven and most have been regarded as hoax’s
I myself have seen the Mark Panic on many occasions, Sadly people say Im crazy, but I know what I saw. I even have his phone number, and No, you cant have it.
Here is an alleged photo of the mythical creature.
