#weta workshop made a replica scalp and hand for the monastery in 2011 after the originals were stolen

[thestuffedalligator]

I’ve talked about this before but I feel obligated every now and then to talk about the time Jimmy Stewart smuggled a yeti finger from a Nepalese Buddhist monastery to America.

The Pangboche Hand was the skeletal hand of a yeti who was a disciple of Lama Sangwa Dorje, and the finger of the hand was stolen in 1959 by a Bigfoot researcher named Peter C. Byrne after the monks refused to let him take the hand for research. Once Byrne got the finger into India, “It’s A Wonderful Life” star Jimmy Stewart, James “Anatomy of a Murder” Stewart, smuggled the finger out of India and to the States by — allegedly — hiding it in his wife’s lingerie case, because no gentleman would ever check a woman's lingerie case.

Byrne, by the way, was hired to steal the finger by eccentric millionaire oil tycoon Tom Slick, who spent the ‘50s obsessed with cryptozoology before dying in a plane crash in Montana. Not important for the story, important to me personally that you know this.

And I tell you this because “Jimmy Stewart smuggled a yeti finger in his wife’s lingerie case” is a fun collection of words and also to remind you that cryptozoology is awash with colonial assholes who will step over other cultures to find the “proof” they feel entitled to.

#i met peter c byrne before he passed. fascinatingly pompous man #anyways the story has kind of a happy ending #weta workshop made a replica scalp and hand for the monastery in 2011 after the originals were stolen #so. yay #cryptozoology #yeti