BURRILLVILLE – In the Victorian time period, skeletons of giant-sized human beings were reportedly discovered: one at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., one in Cumberland, R.I., and a third in nearby Burrillville.
The Burrillville legend, perhaps long lost, is that the remains of a giant were unearthed in the town.
The tale told long ago is of a certain Captain Samuel White who was in 1836 excavating underneath his house when he happened upon a most odd find.
Captain White told his neighbors to come see the strange skeleton found in the basement.
“The bones were carefully preserved and put together, when it was found to be of extraordinary height and proportions,” wrote author Horace Keach in, “Burrillville; As it Was, and as it is” – a book published in 1856.
The body was found “lying upon the side, with arms folded up, head bent forward, and the knees drawn upward.”
After the relic was exhumed, and the pieces put together, everyone gazing upon the figure was amazed at the height.
The unusual find “excited the wonderment of all the surrounding neighborhood,” according to, “History of the State of Rhode Island with Illustrations,” printed in 1878 by Albert J. Wright.
Serendipitously, one of White’s neighbors was a physician.
Dr. Levi Eddy examined the bones, proclaiming about the deceased person, “He was a bouncer! He must have been as much as eight feet high.”
About the relic, “imagination can only conjecture him as some giant of the forest that roamed the rude wilds, long, perhaps, before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth,” wrote Keach.
At that time it was speculated the remains were that of a Native American, perhaps a ruler.
However, “tradition is silent, echo has no answer,” said Keach.
What else is silent or perhaps silenced is academic discussion of giants, according to at least one researcher.
“I have invested over 30 years researching the vast history of giants. It has, for the most part, been kept from the public. Proof of giants’ existence – their skeletal remains – has been quickly secreted away in obscure museums, when not destroyed,” explains author Steve Quayle, who writes books on many such extraordinary topics, and is known as the, “leading authority on giants,” and who lists several accounts of giants on his popular website – genesis6giants.com.
Generally, most historians and archaeologists tend to disbelieve in the antiquarian accounts found in books and newspapers, dismissing the discoveries as either fakes or misinterpretation, or the archaeological discoveries as mere anomalies. Typically, academics and other experts hold that giants did not exist, or if they did the people were just unusually large, not actual giants.
Still, interest in anomalies in archaeological finds seems to have not diminished over the years, but rather increased.
The study of anomalies is a specialty of Michael Cremo, author of, “Forbidden Archeology.”
Independent archaeological researcher Cremo, in contrary to academia experts and others, holds human beings have existed for millions of years.
Cremo’s book generated tremendous response, including some negativity towards him from evolutionist researchers and others. The book cause so much feedback that, in fact, he responded with a second book, “Forbidden Archeology’s Impact: How a Controversial New Book Shocked the Scientific Community and Became an Underground Classic.” Extensive photos of various anomalous archaeological finds – things that do not fit the dominant paradigm – are online at Cremo’s Museum of Forbidden Archeology, http://www.mcremo.com/museum.htm.
To Cremo’s critics, the museum might appear as amusing, and to others, evidence for who-knows-what wonders of supposed hidden history.
Quayle says evidence from history shows giants walked the planet, and the Bible contains a plenitude of evidence for their existence. What’s more, Quayle says the evidence points to giants returning to earth.
A part of one general argument that giants were real states that about 250 million years ago, when dinosaurs dominated the planet, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was five times greater than today, contributing to the great size of the dinosaurs – and, it is claimed, great-sized human beings.
“Giant strength of far back ancestors – of a huge unearthed,” Wilfred Harold Munro wrote of the Burrillville skeleton in his 1881 book, “Picturesque Rhode Island: Pen and Pencil Sketches.”
Whatever one believes, the topic of giants then and now has the potential to generate great enthusiasm; whether at an online museum, or in conspiratorial conversations among those curious about the unknown.
