Newly Discovered 'Yeti-Slick Document' Causes Tom Slick’s Life Story to Get Deserved Attention

Source: Dateline Zero

Recently discovered foreign service dispatch from the Embassy of New Delhi dated April 16, 1959 reveals: “American resources in the last two years have been concentrated on efforts to capture the abominable snowman.”

Both the alternative news community and the mainstream media have been reporting on newly discovered evidence showing the government had an interest in Yeti. Government archives had been discovered showing the State Department and others had a keen interest in the Tom Slick-F. Kirk Johnson Snowman Expeditions of 1958-1959. Paul Bedard and Lauren Fox at U.S. News & World Report wrote: “Newly unearthed State Department documents confirm for the first time Uncle Sam’s belief that the Abominable Snowman roamed the mountains of Nepal in the 1950s, a finding that has shocked federal officials including the archivist who discovered the papers.”

Words like “uncovered” “shocked” and “spy” always make for a good story — and this particular story is indeed intriguing. The only way a story like might be better would be if it included “sex” and “crime.” Or better yet, “sex-crime.” And seeing as this is a story about a snow monster … um, I’ll stop right there.

Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo is a little perplexed at how this story has really taken off outside cryptozoological circles. Afterall, the msm typically ignores cryptozoology entirely. “The story even made the ‘Google Editor’s Pick.’ And one posting told of this as ‘Straight from the National Archives,’” Coleman wrote at his blog.

From the article at U.S. News:

Long written off as a myth—it was never caught or photographed—the documents provided by the National Archives show that officials in the State Department, Foreign Service, and U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, not only believed in “Yeti,” but endorsed rules for American expeditions to follow when hunting the toothy monster down.
…
Archivist Mark Murphy said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he discovered the long-ignored papers written at the end of the Eisenhower administration. “I thought I was seeing things,” he said. “These documents show that finding the Yeti was a big deal in the 1950s. It goes to show the government was taking this seriously.”

Coleman’s blog post puts this in a little more context:

Tom Slick, the Howard Hughes of cryptozoology, a Texas oil and beef millionaire, had sponsored, along with F. Kirk Johnson, another Texas millionaire, and the San Antonio Zoological Society, three separate expeditions to eastern Nepal to find the Yetis of the Himalayas and nearby region in 1957, 1958, and 1959.

During 1959, the United States government got interested probably because the Russians and Chinese took a heightened awareness of Slick’s treks to the region. While Slick was sincerely involved in the search for the Snowman, he also had intelligence connections of long-standing. Remember, it was the truly American thing to do back then, and although Slick was an advocate of world peace, he was also a patriot.

In his post, Coleman points out some errors and assumptions regarding this story being made in the blogosphere. He also points out that probably what makes the story intriguing to people not normally interested in things like Yeti is the possibility that the expedition might actually have been a spy mission. The entire Cryptomundo article is a great read, and full of links to further information for those interested in following the story with a more informed eye.

The spy angle (among other fascinating things) is something Devin Faraci jumps on at Badass Digest. His article paints a fantastic picture of the wealthy seeker, adventurer, and spy. Tom Slick’s life story is one that includes searching for oil, questing for monsters, having his father-in-law held for ransom by Machine Gun Kelly, and conspiring to smuggle a mummified Yeti hand out of a monastery in Pangboche Jimmy Stewart’s luggage. Slick was a true adventurer in the classic American sense — the sort of person who may have inspired fictional characters such as Indiana Jones, or the female French adventurer Adèle Blanc-Sec.

Full post at Dateline Zero.