Sightings of hominids in Europe are rare but obtainable nonetheless. There is an account from Croatia in the Bigfoot Field Guide dated around the late 1880s. A contact from Yugoslavia recently emailed me a list of lake monster sightings from within the region and amongst them is an apparent hominid sighting though unfortunately no date is given: Aleksandar Sasha Trivich writes: "I have searched for the possible reports or sightings of humanoid-like creatures but found nothing even in the folklore there seems to be nothing which could be interpreted as a bigfoot-type sighting.

However a friend of mine pointed out to me one book, which deals with legends, folklore and strange happenings in which I have found one testimony that is quite interesting and believable.

The books name is ''Taj Drugi Svijet'' (In English: ''That Other World'') and was written by a folklorist Mr. Vujica Ognjenoviæ.

"While traveling in remote parts of Montenegro collecting stories and beliefs from the local people he came across a man who had actually claimed to have seen hairy human-like creature many years ago in the near by mountains. The man's name was Bozo Radoviæ who was a peasant and a sheep watcher. Radoviæ told how many years ago he had been gathering firewood on one cold winter morning on the Mratinjski Hills near the village Babiæi in the western part of Montenegro. While he was gathering wood, he had noticed huge tracks that reminded him of human footprints but were much wider. He was immediately stunned by the thought how could someone walk around barefoot in such harsh winter coldness. He decided to follow the footprints and so after about 15 minutes of walking he stopped before a cave where the tracks entered. When he stepped inside he was paralyzed - for there was a large and muscular man-like beast with long arms and covered by long hair standing in the middle of a cave. Radovic was so shocked that he started coughing and calfing (sic) making very loud noise in fact such a loud noise that the strange creature jumped and hurled out of the cave climbing the stones nearby and was soon out of site. This fast movement of the beast sent chills down the spine, said Radoviæ, in order to describe how scared he felt. He could not believe how can anyone move so quickly and climb the uphill like a wild-sheep. Radoviæ never saw the creature again and there were no other reports in that or other regions in Yugoslavia. Maybe there were but no one have published them in fact maybe the peasants in the remote mountain regions had similar encounters but were never asked about them nor did they try to report them to anyone."

Report Credit Nick Sucik On Sunday, 29 September 2002