The Pixy mummy of San Pedro

As someone with an interest in folklore - particularly that of the indigenous 'little people', I found this article most interesting. It appears that two gold prospectors in the early 1930's discovered the mummified corpse of what was described as 'pixie-like'. Unfortunately the corpse itself has long gone, but photographs of it still exist.



In 1932 two men, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, spent a few weeks digging for gold in the San Pedro Mountains of Wyoming. After working a rich vein which seemed to keep continuing into the rock, they decided to use dynamite to blast a huge section of the mountainside off and save some time getting at more of the gold.

After the dust from the blast cleared, they found that the rock face they had been chipping into led to a small cavern about 15 feet long and 4 feet high (4.5m x 1.2m). It had been totally sealed off from the outside world by a thick wall of rock, with no visible entrance or even small crack leading into it. Inside this cavern was a small ledge on which a pixie-like creature sat, cross-legged. It turned out to be a tiny mummy about 7" high (18 cm) with a total height of 14" (35 cm) ...

The Shoshone Nation of Wyoming have legends of the Nimerigar, a small race of people who it is said would attack them with tiny bows and poisoned arrows.

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[Edited on 14-4-2004 by Pisky]

He is one ugly little shyte ain't he? A face only a mother could love.

Is he one of those fairies or something? Maybe he is an elf? Certainly a different kind of alien that's for sure.

The old legends of Britain, particularly those of the pixies, fascinate me, which is why I found this discovery so interesting.

What is a pixy?

Maybe I should begin by saying what a pixy is not. Despite the insistence of Hollywood to the contrary, pixies are not tiny gossamer-winged faeries that flit around the woodlands and flower beds in the style of Tinkerbell. That particular type of fae is not a pixy, but a Pillywiggin or Flower faery. As well as appearing in Disney's "Peter Pan", they have most recently been seen in the movie "Fairytale", which purports to explain the story of the "Cottingley Fairies". However, Pillywiggins are not the reason for this essay, being mentioned here merely in order to explain that despite current trends, they are not the same as pixies.

The word "Pixie" is often used incorrectly as a generic term for all British and American faery folk, with books, movies and even computer games compounding the error - just enter the words "Pixy" or "Pixie" in an internet search engine and see what you get. Actually, the name should be spelt "Pixy", with the plural being "Pixies", although it has now become commonplace to spell it either way. In Cornwall, the word Pisky is used, which is a corruption of "Pixy". In the rest of the West Country of England, as in most of the English-speaking world, the word Pixy is used, although they are sometimes called Grigs or Dusters in East Anglia. Pixies are sometimes also known as Pisgies, Pechts, Pechs, and Pickers.

The usual description of a Pixy is similar to that seen on Cornish charms, where a little humanoid figure is depicted sitting on a toadstool, with his hands wrapped around his knees. He is usually dressed in green, although some pixies wear rags or in some instances, nothing at all. The pixy is usually envisaged as being small, although some are known to possess certain shapeshifting abilities resulting in a height range of between eighteen inches to the size of a fully-grown human adult. They are also believed to take the form of hedgehogs, in which shape they are known as Urchins.

The original pixies were the little aboriginal folk who inhabited the barrows and cromlechs, and whose cunning - their only effective weapon against the strength of the Aryan invader - earned them a reputation for magical powers. Over the years these peoples also became linked with the pagan belief in nature sprites, and the two beliefs merged, giving us the pixy we know today. Remains of ancient dwellings, half sunken in the ground give us an idea as to why the pixies were believed to live in the underworld, when you consider that when fully built, they resembled a small hill. When seeing a pixy entering and leaving from the smoke hole in the roof, it is understandable how a passing traveller could mistake them as beings from the underworld. In fact the word "Pixy" is believed to derive from "Pict" - early inhabitants of Scotland who lived in similar dwellings.

Legends say that during the Roman conquest of Britain, the Fatae, Italian faeries, accompanied the Romans and at first lived in relative peace with the pixies. However as the Romans expanded their control of the country, the pixies became concerned and war broke out. Eventually the pixies drove the Fatae out of the West Country (Cornwall, Devon and Somerset) and everything west of the river Parret became Pixyland. I believe that part of this legend is a retelling of the Roman invasion itself, with the Romans unable to progress through Scotland due to the attacks of the Picts. Eventually the invaders were forced to build artificial borders in the forms of the Hadrian and Antonine walls and the area they were unable to conquer received the name "Pictland". Of course, given that the West Country of England is as far away from the Highlands of Scotland as you can get, it is also possible that a similar defensive posture was made by the denizens of that area.

The character of Peter Pan, companion of the aforementioned Tinkerbell, is a pixy, as is Puck of Pook's Hill, and in fact Kipling's Puck is described as "a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face". This certainly sounds like a pixy to me. He also speaks of himself as "the oldest Old Thing in England", and explains his uniqueness in that he is not affected by "Salt, or Horse-shoes over a door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the sound of Church Bells". All of which are supposed to dissuade pixies from their mischievous antics, although I know of many who enjoy the sound of bells and swimming in the river.

No discussion on the pixy would be complete without mention of their mischievous activities. They regularly make nocturnal visits to fields where horses are kept and race the animals around until dawn. These Pixy Ridden horses are discovered the next day, to be tired and drawn as if they have been racing around all night. Which of course they have. And at night the pixies revel in causing people to become Pixy-led, in which, taken unaware by mist which makes even familiar objects distorted and unrecognisable, people lose all sense of direction and wander around in circles.

Of course the pixies can be helpful as well as mischievous, and many a farmer has woken in the morning to discover work he planned for the next day has been done by the pixies in gratitude for food and milk left for them earlier in the evening. However, if a pixy is rewarded by a gift of clothes, he is likely to happily skip away wearing his new suit, and never be seen again. In fact the inclusion of "Dobby the House Elf" in the Harry Potter series of novels, is based on this very legend.

There are many stories of the pixies, some of which have been collected in anthologies such as Enys Tregarthen's "Piskey Folk" and Henry Jenner's "Piskies : a Folk-lore Study". Many have been transcribed and uploaded onto the internet

Pixy legends

This is Pedro the mountain mummy. He is cursed!

I thought his name was Beto?

hahahaha that's great, too bad I haven't seen anymore about this. It would be interesting to read up on the x-ray report.

odd....maybe it is one of those things from the Shoshone legend....Pixy or some kind of humanoid alien thing whatever it may be...If it isn't a Pixy...then they could have come across it's grave, who knows...but it is deffintly real!

it seems like these mummified creatures have been appearing a lot lately. there was a case similar to this in russia not to long ago. i saw it on atsnn... and there was something like this is south america a while ago too.

This was found in the mountains of Wyoming in a small cave. Small mummies are rumored to be in the Superstition mountains of Arizona as well. Nobody wanted this mummy because bad things happened to those who owned him. I would not be surprised if one of his owners had him cremated.

He COULD be cursed. After all, no one knows where he is.

There was jelly like stuff on his head that was said to be brain tissue and congealed blood! The Little People legends of Native Americans say they killed their old when they got too old. Pedro was supposed to be 65!

The sight of him is disturbing. So weird.

I saw it on Unsolved Myteries when I was younger. Scared me to death.

You know, there's no evidence that this is the corpse of an adult.

In fact, the features and the ... lack of bone structure suggest a child or infant. Notice how the skin doesn't reveal strong skeletal features? That would be consistant with a newborn or a child (as would the odd formation of the head, because the skull bones don't grow together fully until you're an adult. It suggests the collapse of the skull.)

Good find, quite scary though LOL. It shows that they could still exist today, their is no reason to beleive that they don't exist...

Originally posted by Byrd
You know, there's no evidence that this is the corpse of an adult.

In fact, the features and the ... lack of bone structure suggest a child or infant. Notice how the skin doesn't reveal strong skeletal features? That would be consistant with a newborn or a child (as would the odd formation of the head, because the skull bones don't grow together fully until you're an adult. It suggests the collapse of the skull.)

Actually th earticle points out that the fontanels, the skull bones you mention, had grown together to the extent that age could be estimated at around 65.

In the latest issue of the Fortean times theres a very brief article, with pictures, on 'pod women', very similar things, allegedly being found on trees, and upon x ray being shown to have a similar bone structure. Somewhere in south america I think, I'll put up more details when I can remember them.

WOW ......this is really interesting!!! What were they shooting at with little bows and poison arrows? The big peoples ankles? They don't seem like a real friendly lot. I remember there was a *Twilight Zone* story on a mean tiny human-like creature. He had a really sharp dagger and was going after some old lady. He was hiding under her bed.

I believe there's lots of things out there we don't know about.

Hmmm Interesting...alltho I do agree with Byrd, but then the question is, if it was just a baby, why bother making it in a kneeling position and seeling off the cave so no one would notice it, unless it was a very special person but even then they would have alot of valuables there, all in all I dont think any of us could find the answer to this no matter how hard we tried

Hmm, that little mummy looks about as the pictue of the mummyfied mermaid I saw that turned out to be a mummyfied monkey torso sewn together with the tail of a fish. Looked real, but was a total fraud. Also, the arcticle lacks pictures of the cave the miners supposedly found the mummy in, which makes me wonder if they found it in the ground at all.

Does anyone here in the UK remember a morning show called "The Big Breakfast"?

If memory served there was a little person as a special guest or special feature one week on this show, he stood about a foot tall as a fully grown man (in his 30s i think) and took baths in a sink/ washbasin.

No sh/t.

Anyone else remember him?




V

Just a thought. Maybe he was one of those kids that aged too quickly.
He would be very small, but all else would suggest an old man. If it happens now most likely it happened in the past also. Its very rare, probably why they never found groups of the mummies, or even one other one. They used to use Egyptian mummies as firewood and train fuel. Something like that would create a mystical and scary setting to build some unorthidox types of burials. Thats my theory.

I feel that it is a mummified foetus, one born prematurely? People could have felt that because it was born early that is was "cursed". This could also be the reason for the ritual type burial.

Great story, Pisky. Thanks.

Unfortunately not all Pixies are cute, like you.