Charlie Sheen Cryptozoologist and Kushtaka Hunter

Chalie Sheen is in the Cryptozoology business

TMZ reports That Chalie Sheen is interested in Cryptids including the Loch Ness Monster and more recently the Kushtaka from Alaska.

Read the full report below.

Barely a month after his Loch Ness monster mission failed, Charlie Sheen is back on the hunt for crazy mythological creatures ... this time in snowy, snowy Alaska ... Charlie's favorite.

Charlie tells TMZ, he flew up to Sitka, AK on his private jet last week in search of the mythic Kushtaka, which loosely translates to "Land otter man."

Stories about the elusive Kushtaka originated among natives in Southeastern Alaska ... and according to Charlie, it's "a shape-shifting trickster who is half man, half otter. It lures one away from the campsite with the mimicked sounds of a crying baby, then kills you, takes on YOUR form, and returns to the scene for more suckers or prey."

Charlie says he embarked into the wilderness with some friends in order to find the creature ... but just like on his Nessie mission, he returned empty-handed. Sheen has since flown back to civilization.

Charlie tells us, "It obviously knew our group was far too skilled to be snowed in this fashion so it stayed hidden like a sissy."

Yeah, that's what happened.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2013/08/28/charlie-sheen-half-otter-man-alaska-kooshdakhaa-kushtaka/#ixzz2dxb8HpnC 

The best part is TMZ used a Kushtaka illustration from this very site:

Click to enlarge

Family Witness Bigfoot in Alaska, Is it the Kushtaka?

The Kushtaka is normally found in the areas of  Kasigluk

The Alaskan news source, "The Delta Discovery" reports a story about a mother and two sons witnessing a Bigfoot. Most Bigfoot sightingings in Alaska are recorded in the southern region. This report in Kasigluk is no different, in fact this is the region where most of the Tlingit Indians have seen Kushtaka. Alaska has multiple names for Bigfoot, besides Kushtaka, The Den'aina Indians of South central have Nant'ina and the Eskimos of southwest Alaska call it "Urayuli" or "Hairy man."

Sketch of Bigfoot witnessed in Alaska.

Read the encounter reported by The Delta Discovery below:

 family out egg hunting last spring near their village of Kasigluk came upon an incredible sight – a large, dark, hairy creature walking upright was heading towards them.
They – two teenaged brothers and their mom - were on the outskirts of the village riding their 4-wheeler when they saw it. It was approximately around 3pm, and the weather was beautiful, although slightly cloudy. School was out for the summer and the date was May
29th, 2012.

Could it have been the elusive Bigfoot?
“We came across it by the lagoon here in Kasigluk,” said one the eyewitnesses. “It was back there southeast of Fox Lake.”

While they were out that day, the three family members saw other people who coming home from egg hunting. So at first they thought the creature was a person.

“After it passed, we looked at each other and thought, ‘we just saw Bigfoot’,” the eyewitness said.

The creature was very tall and dark. Its long arms hung below its knees. It was approximately 75 yards away. The family watched it for about 2 minutes.

“It was walking towards us and then once it saw us it turned and started going to the other side of the hill,” said the witness.

When it disappeared into the bushes, the family headed towards where they last saw it but it was nowhere to be seen.

They didn’t hear about anyone else seeing the mysterious creature.

The following is the firsthand account about the sighting written by the mother of the two boys, one of the eyewitnesses.

“I wanted to go egg hunting, but didn’t want to go alone so I had my two sons follow me since I didn’t want to go alone. My oldest son said he knew of a place where we could go check so off we went towards the lagoon where there is flat land to the east.

“Upon reaching the lagoon my older son got off the four wheeler and ran off to see if anybody was in that area. He ran to the edge of the hill and soon ran back saying that somebody was already there. So we decided to go check somewhere else when that “somebody” started running at an incredible amount of speed. No human person would have gone from down there by that flat land to already towards us up the hill.

“That “somebody” was all black from top to bottom, kind of hunchbacked, like it had no neck and its head was cone-shaped. Its long arms went past its knees and it was incredibly tall.

“At first we all asked each other, “Who is that?” Then after about 10 seconds as it was walking with long strides it would occasionally look towards us. The way it walked was fast and no human could cover that amount of tundra in the same amount of time.

I asked, “WHAT is that?”

“All that time we were awestruck and dumbfounded to what we were witnessing. Then as it was going to disappear from our view finally I said, “I think we just saw Bigfoot!” As it passed in our full view it had covered the whole entire hill in a matter of about a minute. It seemed to be just walking but with big strides.

“We went up to the top of the hill but we didn’t see it anywhere so we went straight home feeling kind of excited.

“That’s my account. It looked exactly like the Patterson footage of Bigfoot if you’ve ever seen it.”

Big Foot or Hairy Man sightings are not unheard of in the Yukon Kuskokwim delta region. Last summer there were reports of a number of sightings in the Johnson River area and other locations.

SRC: The Delta Discovery 

Alaska's Urayuli and Kushtaka added to AKA Bigfoot World Map

View AKA Bigfoot World Map in a larger map

Below is an exerpt from a page on Bigfoot Encounters titled "Many Names, Alaska's Bigfoot" which contains an article written by Mary J. Barry, author of Alaska's Ghosts, Enigmas, Outlaws and Things That Go Bump!

It should be noted that the Kustaka is more generally described as an otter-like creature. In fact according to Wikipedia,  Loosely translated, kushtaka means, "land otter man". The monkey-like description below is unique to Mary J. Barry's article. To learn about the classic version of the Kushtaka, please read the Wikipedia Page.

John Active, a Yup'ik storyteller from Bethel, has gathered a large number of accounts told by the Yup'ik people of Southwest Alaska concerning their encounters with Urayuli. This being was described as standing ten feet tall, covered with hair, with glowing eyes. Its arms were so long, they reached to the creature's ankles. It was said to roam the tundra and cry out its loneliness with a voice resembling that of a loon. Although its appearance terrified the persons confronting it, the Urayuli never harmed anyone, according to the accounts gathered by Active. However, legendary accounts lore has it that children who disappear while in the woods are transformed into Urayuli.

The Southeastern Kushtaka has a less benevolent reputation. The Natives feared the creature and avoided its habitat. Harry D. Colp described a miner's encounter with the Kushtaka, in an account, which was later published as "The Strangest Story Ever Told."

Colp and three other prospectors teamed up in 1900 at Wrangell. They sent Charlie, one of the four, to Thomas Bay to look over a gold prospect, while the others sought grubstakes to pay their expenses. Charlie went about 50 miles up the coast to this location. There the rains kept him confined to his tent for several days. He then went out, trying to locate the landmarks given to him by an Indian.

By chance, he found a gold-flecked quartz ledge and loosened a piece with his gun, breaking his gunstock in the process. As he was taking his bearings, he said, a troupe of creatures he called "devils," that looked like both men and monkeys, swarmed after him. These shaggy beasts, with long, coarse hair, stinking and covered with sores, pursued him back to his canoe. During the chase, they screamed and scraped his back with "long claw like fingers."

RELATED LINKS (all are at Bigfoot Encounters)
1993 Alaska Hairy Man Article
Many names, Alaska'a Bigfoot
2005: Alaska's Bigfoot: Creature of Lore or Reality?