In 1826 an expedition led by John Crawfurd visited the court of Ava, a province in Burma. In his published account of the visit, Crawfurd described meeting a wolf man named Shew-Maong. The account was the first documented encounter with hypertrichosis since Petrus Gonzales. At the age of five, Shwe-Maong was given to the…
Stefan Bibrowski was born in 1890 in Warsaw. He was discovered by a unknown German showman at the age of four and, with the permission of his parents, he began his exhibition career in 1895. He was given the name Lionel The Lion-Faced Boy and a back story involving his mother witnessing his father…
In 1873, Europe became acquainted with a wolf man. A 55 year old Russian man named Adrian Jefticheiev, covered in hair, began to appear at various exhibitions. He was accompanied by his equally hairy illegitimate son. The ‘Wild Man from the Kostroma Forest’ was billed as being the product of an affair between a bear…
Darwin’s theory of evolution – and man’s implied ascendancy from an ape-like creatures – is controversial. When it was first introduced to the public, most people though the idea was preposterous. Until the apparent ‘missing link’ between man and ape appeared in a Philadelphia dime museum. Krao was born is Siam, modern day Thailand, in…
The prodigious Julia Pastrana was known by many monikers during her life and perhaps just as many names in death.Both her life and her death are rather sad tales, but they hold a very special place in sideshow history because, for a time, she was not considered a member of the human race. Julia’s origins…