To this day, Bigfoot and the so-called De Loys Ape are central figures in cryptozoology. Illustration by Marco Heer — **To this day, Bigfoot and the so-called *De Loys Ape* are central figures in cryptozoology. Illustration by Marco Heer**

Swiss monster hunters

What do an orphan from Lucerne and a geologist from Western Switzerland have in common? A fascination with mysterious creatures. René Dahinden and François de Loys both made a name for themselves in the field of cryptozoology.

Christoph Kummer

Christoph Kummer is a historian and freelance journalist who is interested in people and events that have been consigned to the margins of our collective memory.

Creatures like the Yeti in the Himalayas, the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and Bigfoot in North America have long held a fascination for us humans. Despite scepticism among the scientific community, enthusiasts the world over have devoted themselves to the study of these ‘hidden animals’, commonly referred to as cryptozoology. A few Swiss have been involved in the search for mythical beasts, making their mark in a field often branded as pseudoscience by uncovering evidence that gained both fame and notoriety. One of the most famous was Lucerne-born René Dahinden, who set off into the Canadian forests in the mid-20th century on the trail of the legendary Bigfoot. He acquired the rights to the Patterson-Gimlin film, which is still considered to be the primary piece of evidence for the existence of the North American ape-man.

Patterson-Gimlin film: is that really Bigfoot we see walking through the woods? YouTube

Another contribution to cryptozoology came from François de Loys, a geologist from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He photographed an unusual ape in Venezuela in 1920. This picture is still used today to back up claims that unknown anthropoid apes exist in South America. Both the Patterson-Gimlin film and the De Loys photo have featured in numerous books, television programmes and websites. Although each became an important figure in the field of cryptozoology, these two men and their journey through life could hardly have been more different.

To Canada via Sweden

René Dahinden was born in Lucerne in 1930. As a child born out of wedlock, he had a difficult upbringing. Initially placed in an orphanage, he was adopted one year later by an older couple. When his adoptive father remarried following the early death of his wife, René was sent to boarding school. It was there that he learned, as he later said, that “nobody wanted him”. These formative experiences led to his developing an independent streak. He was reunited with his birth mother at the age of 13, but she rejected him again after just a few months. René was then sent to live on a farm, where he was put to hard work. When finally able to leave at age 15, he set out to make his own way in the world. The young man wandered across Europe, taking on all manner of jobs. Just a few months after meeting his future wife, Wanja Twan, in Sweden in 1952, René decided to emigrate to Canada. On arrival there, he found work on a farm near Calgary. That was where he first heard talk of the Abominable Snowman and learned of a similar creature reported to live in British Columbia. These tales piqued his curiosity and marked the beginning of a lifelong interest in the hunt for Sasquatch, Canada’s very own version of Bigfoot.

**Dahinden moved to Calgary in the early 1950s.** Internet Archive

Dahinden moved to Williams Lake in British Columbia in 1955. When not working in the local sawmill, he began devoting all his free time to researching the Sasquatch phenomenon. Wanja followed him to Canada, and the couple married in 1956. They went on to have two sons together, Erik and Martin. But René’s growing passion and devotion to the quest to find Sasquatch put a great strain on family life, and the marriage finally came to an end in 1967. Dahinden was to become one of the main figures involved in the search for Bigfoot. He played a key role in important events, including the analysis of the famed Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967. The shaky 35-mm footage shot in Northern California purports to show a Bigfoot walking through a clearing in the trees. For many today, it remains the most solid proof of the creature’s existence.

Film about Dahinden’s lifelong search for Sasquatch. YouTube

Dahinden set off on a worldwide tour with the Patterson-Gimlin film in 1971, hoping to win scientists over to his cause. He showed the movie in the Soviet Union, among other places, and did everything he could to generate the attention he felt it deserved from the scientific community. Dahinden’s dogged persistence, and not least his pronounced Swiss accent, made him one-of-a-kind – an unmistakable character both within and outside the field of cryptozoology. He was interviewed on television on numerous occasions and even made a TV commercial for a Canadian beer in the 1990s.

Article about René Dahinden in the Walliser Volksfreund newspaper, February 1972. — **Article about René Dahinden in the *Walliser Volksfreund* newspaper, February 1972.** e-newspaperarchives

In the years leading up to his death, Dahinden acquired the rights to the individual frames of the Patterson-Gimlin film, which led to him becoming embroiled in lengthy lawsuits. He remained an active member of the Bigfoot research community until late in his life. But he died in 2001 without ever having seen a Bigfoot face to face.

Expedition in Venezuela

Unlike René Dahinden, François de Loys became involved in the world of cryptozoology more or less by chance. Born into a well-to-do family in Western Switzerland in 1892, he began attending the University of Lausanne in 1912, graduating with a PhD in geology in 1917. That same year, de Loys was hired by the Dutch petroleum company to conduct geological surveys in Venezuela. The region in which he was sent to work was largely unexplored at the time, full of inaccessible terrain, rife with tropical diseases and home to hostile indigenous peoples. In 1920, during an expedition to the remote Río Tarra area, François de Loys allegedly came across two strange animals. He reported having encountered two large apes, covered with reddish fur, on the banks of the Tarra River. Remarkably, these creatures walked upright. De Loys later went on record as saying that, although visibly irritated, they approached the expedition party, shouting, waving their arms around and lobbing their own excrement at the frightened men. In desperation, the expedition members decided to fire shots in the direction of the apes ‒ and ended up killing the female. De Loys took a photo of the slain animal. The image shows a dead monkey sitting on a transport crate, its strange-looking head propped up by a stick. The picture of the so-called Ameranthropoides loysi became a source of controversy.

Picture from an article in the Illustrated London News of 15 June 1929 about the so-called De Loys’ ape. — **Picture from an article in the *Illustrated London News* of 15 June 1929 about the so-called *De Loys’ ape*.** Internet Archive

Following its rediscovery by Georges Montandon, a French-Swiss anthropologist, De Loys’ photo featured in an article in the Journal de la société des américanistes in 1929. Montandon believed that the picture helped to prove his theory of evolution, in which he postulated that humans on different continents had evolved from entirely different species. He also had an affinity with National Socialism, as can be seen in his racist eugenics theories. These views influenced his assessment of the de Loys’ photo: he saw the discovery of a South American primate as confirmation of his ideas. The man credited with making the actual “discovery” also published an article about the ape, in the Illustrated London News, in June that same year. Ranked against them were a large number of eminent zoologists, including US primatologist Philip Hershkovitz, who vehemently refuted de Loys’ claims. Himself familiar with the Río Tarra area, where he could find no trace of the existence of such an ape, Hershkovitz branded the find a fraud. He condemned de Loys as an unsound scientist, believing the “discovery” to be based either on a misunderstanding, i.e. the failure to identify a known local monkey species, or on a deliberate deception.

**Portrait of François de Loys, 1920s.** e-periodica

Meantime, no further pointers to the existence of Ameranthropoides loysi have emerged. Quite the opposite: in 1962, a certain Dr Enrique Tejera stumbled upon an article about the de Loys’ ape in The Universal magazine and promptly wrote to the author. His letter, which would later be published, presented an altogether different version of how the photo came to be taken. Tejera stated that he had worked alongside de Loys in Venezuela for an oil company. The ape was in reality an indigenous spider monkey that had been given to de Loys. The animal had had an injured tail, which was then amputated. When the ape died shortly afterwards, de Loys seized the opportunity to stage the photo. We will probably never find out which of these stories is true. Following his Venezuelan adventure, de Loys continued to work as a geologist. He carved out a career in the oil industry, especially with the Turkish Petroleum Company, spending many years in the Middle East, where he passed away in 1935 due to illness. The two Swiss René Dahinden and François de Loys each left their mark on cryptozoology. However, the most influential figure in the field was probably Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001), who is considered the father of this pseudoscience. On his death in 1999 he left his entire collection of documents to the Natural History Museum of the Canton of Vaud in Lausanne, where it is now held in a large archive.

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