Sixty one years ago in a remote stretch of road in the Arcadia region in Greece, thirty two year-old George Psychoyos found himself driving alone on a desolate country road late that frigid January night. He was driving back to his home village of Achladokambos when he encountered something truly terrifying that would forever change his life.

As his car traversed the rough road that night in 1964, the headlights suddenly illuminated something bizarre on the side of the road. As he got closer, Mr. Psychoyos realized what he was looking at and it made no sense: A giant humanoid being towering on the side of the road, standing still in complete and total darkness. Among the olive groves and tall grass stood an unimaginable being that Mr. Psychoyos estimated to be taller than five meters (16.4 ft). A “Giant Humanoid“, is what the news article printed a few days later. According to the rest of the story, the giant being stood for a second before crossing the road in one huge step, only to completely dissolve once it crossed to the other side. This story was printed in the book Achladokambos Folklore (1985), by Ioannis Anagnostopoulos. Greek writer and researcher, Thanassis Vembos, included the translated version of this story in his blog as part of a collection of humanoid creatures in Greece.

It’s a great possibility that the story of the giant humanoid came from a local newspaper article that received little to no attention from any major press outlets. We must remember that back in 1964 Greece had just climbed out of the ruins of WWII and its own Civil War in the mid 1940s. Regions like the Peloponnese were swiftly overtaken by the invading armies as there was a severe lack of social infrastructure like telecommunications, military, or even public transport. Villages communicating via radios were living the high-tech life compared to the rest. But by the mid 1960s, Greece was starting to grow economically and technically with the rest of the world. So a story so wild, so unbelievable like that of Mr. Psychoyos would have more than likely be printed on several Greek newspapers. Allowing Mr. Ioannis Anagnostopoulos to preserve and compile that story along with other in his Achladokambos Folklore book.

However we’ll probably never know if this story came from an actual police report or if was just made up sensationalism to sell newspapers. We then come to the familiar crux that haunts paranormal investigations: It all comes down to how believable the witness is and how solid the evidence is. We don’t know for sure if on that dark January night Mr. George Psychoyos came across an almost twenty foot tall humanoid. We don’t even know if Psychoyos is a real person but it does make for a terrifying and fascinating story doesn’t it?

But was it just a story?

A story like that of Mr. Psychoyos would be faintly remembered over time as just that…a story. Something to add to the folklore of the area for centuries to come. However what if Mr. Psychoyos had with him a small camera? Something handy that he could’ve whipped out last minute to capture what he had just laid eyes upon. What then?

His story would go from folklore to sharing the spotlight with other classics in the paranormal zeitgeist. Like the infamous picture of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, or the Borley Rectory brick photo. Mr. Psychoyos’ photograph would probably be just as ambiguous and fascinating as the rest of them. I could see it now: A blurry photograph off-center probably severely underexposed. Maybe showing what looked like two cement pillars on the side of the road. The picture being taken from inside his car, maybe from behind the windscreen or maybe he stuck his camera out the driver’s side window for a dramatic shot.

The point is that Mr. Psychoyos did not do any of that, since he had no camera with him. Negating the rest of us that crucial thing his story needed: Evidence. However fast-forward twenty five years later and several hundred kilometers to the north, a eleven year-old girl would finally avenge Mr. Psychoyos, so to speak.

About seven hundred kilometers north of Achladokambos, as the crow flies, is the village of Chrysopetra, situated in the Kilkis region of Northern Greece. It was there on a Thursday morning of June 29th, 1989. Two and a half decades after Mr. Psychoyos’ claim, sixty three year-old grandmother Triandafylia Kaloyanni was outside her home watering her plants that day when a couple of loud bangs reverberated across her property. Loud and strong enough to send a jolt through the ground, shaking her small and modest home. Assuming that something bad happened, she rushed to her grandchildren who were playing in the front of the house.

She ran into eleven year-old Evvi Sottiropoulou and her ten year-old brother, Constandinos, crying out in terror. “Grandma! I saw an enormous white cloud…like a man! I heard a bang and the man disappeared immediately!”

Mrs. Kaloyanni did not know what to make of the children’s claims, however it was clear that whatever they saw and caused that loud sound was real enough to put both her grandchildren in state of panic. She went to inspect the spot where her granddaughter had seen the giant white cloud, finding a set of two gigantic footprints on the soft sandy road. According to the news article, one of the prints measured 3.6 ft x 1.1 ft. while the other print measured 3.4 ft x 1 ft. The prints both had a visible heel, arch and the imprints of what appeared to be five distinct toes. The news article stated: “Both prints were in such position that they gave the impression that a giant human or humanoid stood there only for a moment, and then vanished into thin air.”

The children’s father telephoned the local police department about what his children had seen that day. Apparently the children and grandmother were disturbed enough that the man’s only solution was to call the authorities and ask for help. Once the police arrived, they questioned the children to get a detailed account of what they had seen. Evvi reported to them that the being was a “deformed giant, 8 meters high with his legs seemingly dissolved.”

“He was apparently made of, or enshrouded in, white smoke.” wrote Mr. Vembos in his 1989 article. “The police arrived and found the giant footprints in front of Mrs. Kaloyanni’s house. They tried to protect them by putting bricks around them, but one of the footprints was partly damaged by a passing car.”

By that time, the local police from Kilkis sent a message to the Greek Police Headquarters in Athens. Which according to Vembos’ article, the Chief of Police in Athens sent order to keep the “extraterrestrial visit” a secret. While also ordering the local police in Kilkis to keep guard of the prints until scientists from the Aristotle University of Salonica had a chance to study them. The university’s rector sent meteorologist Theodore Karrakostas and the assistant professor of Meteorology, Charalambos Sachsamanoglou to investigate the claim. Vembos reported that the scientists main job was to pacify the residents and stop the extraterrestrial talk. Which coincides with most UFO cases involving authorities.

President of the nearby community of Mandres village, Mr. Kostas Vasdravanidis was at the scene. When he was asked by Mr. Vembos’ colleague to comment about the event, he has this to say: “Surely there was an extraterrestrial who, being in another dimension, apparently entered our world, so he became visible and left the footprints…”

According to one of the meteorologist, a dust devil could have possibly formed the prints. However upon further examination, they grew more and more puzzled…abandoning the idea of an artistic whirlwind. Mr. Charalambos Sachsamanoglou had the following to say:

“From the scientific point of view, we can explain the cloud and the noise [bang], but there is a gap: the giant humanlike footprints. Whirlwinds in this specific area are a quite common phenomenon, and they are of short duration. We cannot exclude the possibility of a whirlwind so powerful as to be able to lift various heavy objects, creating bangs. But if it was a whirlwind passing by, even a short one, it would have eliminated any kind of prints. This is the fact I can’t explain…”

No one, it seems, has been able to explain Evvi’s account of the giant humanoid and the mysterious footprints it left behind. Just like no one has been able to explain Mr. Psychoyos account that frightful night in 1964. Yet some writers and researchers find it necessary to preserve these stories so that they don’t get lost in time. They’ll use their own resources, like time and money, to travel across the country and interview these witnesses who are your ordinary normal citizen. Who just happened to come across something so wonderful yet terrorizing that it completely changes their ontological beliefs.

One sunny September afternoon I met with Mr. Vembos in a cafe in Athens. I asked him: “What do you make of all of this? Do you believe these stories, like what happened in Chrysopetra in ’89?”

Shrugging his shoulders before taking a hot sip, he said: “What can we make of it? In Chrysopetra…I remember…I was the only reporter that had translated the story from Greek to English. I didn’t go there myself, a colleague of mine went. Back in 1989, I didn’t have a car so I couldn’t make the trip up north.” He took a sip of his coffee

“And your colleague…what was his impression on interviewing the witnesses and speaking to with the local police? Did they sound credible?” I asked.

“You have to remember, back then…in that part of Greece people were seeing all kinds of strange lights in the sky. Remember the UFO flap of the 50s here in Greece? That’s what it was like up there at that time…the people of the area had been reported UFOs and strangeness days before this incident.”

His words reminded of John Keel’s work in The Mothman Prophecies. Where Keel himself went to West Virginia to investigate a rash of paranormal incidents that haunted several small towns and a UFO flap that was a prelude to the actual sightings of a winged being. Just like in West Virginia, there was a wave of UFO sightings in the 1950s all over Greece. Just like there definitely was several reported sightings of lights above the small villages of the Kilkis region in 1989. Like in Keel’s scenario, all of these reports happening before the sighting of a terrifying humanoid being.

“The guy himself…you know, he was a reporter. A colleague of mine that had access to the area.” Mr. Vembos continued. “He said that all the witnesses sounded sincere and that there definitely were a set of giant footprints on the road. They had tried to preserve them the best they could, but I think some car ran over them at first. They did make those casts though.”

“Yeah, I saw the pictures online. I’d be interested to know if the casts were still around. Maybe stored in some monastery, long forgotten over the years?”

“Naw, not likely.” Mr. Vembos answered. “They are probably broken, lost to time, you know?…”

A few things stand out from this case, one of them being the similarities in other stories of strange tracks in the wild that come to an abrupt end. There’s the famous Ape Canyon Incident of 1924, where prospectors had come under attack by large humanoid (Sasquatch) creatures in the High Sierras. The prospectors had reported days prior to the attack that they had found and followed a set of humongous tracks by a riverbed. After a bit of tracking, they came to a sand bar where the tracks simply stopped. As if the big-footed creature had just been plucked into the sky.

 “They described the tracks to being nineteen inches long, four inches deep in the sand. However, upon inspection of the area, the men noticed that those were the only two foot prints in the sand and they were in the middle of the sand bar. As if whatever had made those prints, had taken a huge, 160 foot step on to the middle of the bank. Hank stated “No human being could have made these tracks, and there’s only one way they could be made, something dropped from the sky and went back up.” The men were under the impression that whatever large creature made the prints, it seemed to have appeared and disappeared into thin air.” – Attack On Ape Canyon.

Whatever landed in the small village of Chrysopetra that day left its impressions on the dirt road. Appearing and disappearing out of our reality within a blink of an eye. I had proposed that maybe next spring we could do a road trip up to the village to further research the case. However we both knew that the possibilities of the casts being kept stored in a safe location after all these years were close to nil.

I sat there drinking my coffee and listening to the many stories Mr. Vembos has researched and translated throughout the decades, definitely a labor of love. He looked at his phone, took another sip of his coffee and said: “You know, those aren’t the only cases of giant humanoids. Back in 1978, in Helis…some remote part…another colleague of mine investigated this one, he told me of a story about a man [Antonis Coulouris] that claimed to have seen giant humanoids…tall…like the others. He told me that the man was driving one night and had suddenly come across a couple of giants that were illuminated by his truck’s headlights.”

“What? what else did he report?” I asked.

“That’s it! The guy saw the beings, he was terrified and put his truck in reverse…he said his truck stopped working momentarily…”

The report is in Mr. Vembos’ blog. It states that the incident took place on August 6th, 1978 in the country road between Agia Mavra and Lefkohori villages. The witness, Antonis Coulouris, was trying to flee for his life when his truck suddenly stopped about 60 meters away from the giant beings. He then stated that his truck began to shake (vibrate). Once the shaking stopped, Mr. Coulouris was able to start the engine and speed away as fast as possible.

“This happened so long ago. I didn’t get to go out and investigate this one, my friend did. There wasn’t much more to this story. The man was driving and then he came across these giant beings that vanished right away. He told me that the poor man was terrified and that he had definitely seen something out there…”

We sat that September afternoon in a coffee shop in Athens, exchanging stories and pleasantries. I had reached out to Mr. Vembos since I had spend the summer reading his many stories of strange humanoid creatures in Greece. He’s a writer with a keen interest in the paranormal and the unexplained and is well connected in the local UFO community. Since the 1980s, he’s been combing through and archiving old Greek newspapers, searching for those strange stories that time has forgotten. Stories that he feels need to be told and shared with the world.

“Like I said, what can we make of this?” he continued. “I get people showing me things all the time. I had a guy come to me the other day. He was so excited to show me the ‘UFO’ he had captured. He then showed me a picture of some blurry lights in the sky.”

“What did the lights look like?”

“Just lights…just random lights on a black screen…what do I do with that? He claims it was a UFO but how can I tell? And what should I do with that information?”

It’s true. Why do we go out there and make an effort to gather these types of stories? Why interview witnesses that are claiming to see these fantastical things without a single shred of evidence that backs up their stories? Like agent Mulder, we keep going down this labyrinth of strangeness, trying to make sense of the unexplained in order to answer our own questions pertaining to the paranormal.

A few years ago, when I interviewed the father and son who had been “chased” down a country road by a UFO I saw real fear and confusion in both their eyes. They recounted their story to me with much detail and emotions that there wasn’t room for doubt about what they had seen. It was obvious to me that they had seen something unusual in the sky that night, something that truly terrified and unnerved them. The father had asked me for any explanation that would calm him and his son: “Tell me…you study these things, you have contacts in the field…in America…what were these lights? Why us?” – Mr. Tarsinos.

What do we make of stories like that of little Evvi’s encounter? Most people will dismiss it as a fabrication of the child’s imagination, or something that was caused by natural phenomena. However Mr. Vembos mentioned that his colleague reported that the children were genuinely terrified and were showing signs of trauma. What do we say to those children? That whatever horrific thing they happened to have seen was nothing more than a product of a gust of wind?

I guess that we don’t say anything. Because we ourselves do not understand what it is we’re dealing with. So instead, we listen with empathy and careful attention. Because more than likely, ours will be the only open ears that will listen to their encounter without judgement. We’re only there to ask questions, listen, observe, and notate. Because after having such an impactful experience, the witnesses are left drifting alone in dark waters. They have to navigate through a storm of emotions and accusations that follow such events. Researchers willing to meet them to listen to their stories are the lighthouses that guide them home after a rough storm at sea. By listening and being compassionate, we somehow help put the witness at ease, gently bringing their souls back to the shores of our own reality.

It took me over an hour to get home that day and the sun had set as I was driving through the mountain roads. I live outside of Athens, in the Peloponnese region of Greece. Out there where apparently giants and UFOs roam the isolated country roads, waiting to reveal themselves to the lonely and unsuspecting driver at night, like that fateful night in 1964 to a certain George Psychoyos. However, unlike Mr. Psychoyos, the advancement in technology afforded me a false sense of security as I glanced at my smartphone and its easy to access camera…just in case.