It’s one of the most talked-about pieces of clothing in recent history.
It evokes images of horror, of pain, of hell-raising madness, but what is it?
That is a great mystery that today we’re going to try to solve.
At first glance, you might think it was designed by a strict parent so
that no one could make advances on their yet-to-be-married daughter.
That’s a long shot, but hey, back in the Middle Ages, women wore chastity belts,
so it’s not totally inconceivable someone went the whole hog and wore an entire don’t-touch-me suit.
Still, historians now doubt women actually wore chastity belts.
A few years ago, an image of the full-length Pinhead suit appeared on the internet,
and the strangest thing is, people just didn’t know where it came from. They started sharing
it on Reddit, when it appeared with the words, “A Siberian bear-hunting armor from the 1800s.”
We’ll just tell you now. It’s real. It’s not just an image. The physical thing is
in this world as you watch this. People on Reddit were curious,
but not so many folks believed it was an actual bear-hunting suit. But if not, what was it?
Some folks joked, saying it was a lawn aeration suit. Another guy said it was for death hugs, and
another poster said it would be a good piece of clothing should the zombie apocalypse ever happen.
Not so many people thought that it would work as bear armor.
Let’s look into that. First of all, it probably would protect a person
if a bear should decide to attack them. The hard, wooden spikes would hurt the paws of the bear, and
it might, just might, retreat. But given a large bear could send a person flying through the air,
it would be a foolish thing even with the suit on to challenge, say, a grizzly or a polar bear.
If the bear was mad enough, it could penetrate the suit and kill the occupant.
As for the hunter being able to do very much in the suit, that would pose a problem.
Think about it. It’s made of thick leather and studded with nails. That itself would
profoundly affect dexterity. The helmet is made of iron and also studded with nails.
Talk about carrying around a weight on your head. Are we supposed to believe that a person wearing
this suit back in the 1800s would have been able to go bear hunting in it? Ask any hunter,
even with today’s advanced weapons, hunting wild, roaming animals isn’t exactly easy.
You need to be dexterous, sometimes fast, and quiet. That suit would not be ideal at all.
That’s why some people have said the more sensible thing and called the suit possibly
a piece of clothing worn by human, bear bait. In this scenario, two guys go out hunting bears,
and no one wants to get hurt. One person acts as bait since bears have been known to attack people,
while the hunter hides nearby. The person acting as bait is at least kind of safe as
the hunter tries to get off his shot. Then again, hunting bears in Siberia
would usually take a lot of walking. Can we believe that someone could walk
for miles inside of one of those things? Someone from the Foundation of the American
Institute for Conservation looked at the picture and came to the same conclusion. They said:
“I suspect it is more likely to be for bear baiting than hunting, since I can’t imagine
anyone could run around the woods in it. It consists of leather pants and jacket (and an iron
helmet) studded all over with 1-inch iron nails about 3/4 in. apart. The nails are held in place
by a second layer of leather lining the whole thing and quilted into place between the nails.”
Even though the photograph circulating on the internet looks to be an old picture,
it isn’t. After some investigation, it was discovered that the photo was taken by a
well-known US-based photographer named Malcolm Kirk. Representatives of his confirmed that
he had indeed taken the picture, but they didn’t expand on the mystery of the suit.
Back then, it was part of a private collection of pieces, and right now, you can find it in
the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. This is a museum of artifacts owned by
the wealthy French-American de Menil family. It stands in a rather macabre-looking room.
Just below the suit is a plaque, and that reads: “‘Wildman’ costume, 18th or 19th century,
Germany or Switzerland. Two-piece leather hunting suit with wood spikes and iron chain.”
So, we don’t know why it was ever called Siberian. This is a serious exhibition,
and the artifacts in there have been verified. The suit is not a piece of modern surrealist art.
It’s part of an exhibition called “Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision”. But all that means is the suit
looks surreal. The exhibition states the pieces are, “Ritual and everyday objects, primarily from
the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands and the Americas—which the Surrealists believed
to be ‘witnesses’ to the universality of their own visual and literary artistic practices.”
This is saying they are real artifacts that are in line with the strange things
surrealist artists come up with. That’s all well and good,
but it doesn’t explain who the hell wore this suit back then and why they wore it.
Then someone stepped in and tried to solve the mystery once and for all. Her name was Kristen
Strange, and while at Arizona State University, she wrote a long paper about that exhibition.
She doesn’t say much about “Wildman”, the paper is more about the museum’s relationship
to surrealism, but on page 66, she states that the artifact has become “notorious”.
As we know, that is thanks in part to thousands of people talking about it on Reddit.
She writes, “The Wildman, an essential object in the early planning stages of the exhibition,
was referred to as the “porcupine man” in correspondence between Dominique de Menil
and Edmund Carpenter.” The latter was a famous American anthropologist known for his work on
tribal art. He started the museum with de Menil. Carpenter apparently loved the suit,
and before he gave it to the museum, he kept it in his office. “There has been
some uncertainty over this object’s culture of origin and its originally intended purpose,”
writes Strange, which we’ll just state here is a fabulously apt surname for this show.
She said it’s possible that the suit relates to the Vogel Gryff Festival in Basel, Switzerland.
In this traditional festival, a lion, a griffin,
and a savage holding a pine tree march through the streets.
The festival goes back to the Middle Ages. The three figures represent three
things. The Wild Man, the savage, represents fertility. The lion represents power and fire,
and the griffin represents spirit. So, maybe back in the day, the Wild Man was the spike suit guy.
Maybe the nails represented the needles on the pine tree.
Strange says that’s only one possibility, and the suit could have been used for hunting.
She also tells us something new. She said on December 6, 1974,
it was auctioned at the Palais Galliera and bought by Adelaide de Menil and Mr. Carpenter.
She said the suit came with a little note that said it was previously owned by a person named
Adamson “someone “who gave their name to surreal seashells.” Adamson was apparently a naturalist.
In 1970, it appeared as an illustration in something called the “Connaissance
des Arts” when it was owned by Beurdeley & Cie and kept in the Paris Gallery.
Unfortunately, that’s where her investigation ends into the suit. What’s important is “Wild Man’ was
called just that back in the 70s. It first started being called a bear hunting suit two decades
later, and God knows who brought up Siberia. Our conclusion is you’d have to be crazy to
try and hunt a bear with that thing on, and if someone asked you to be the bait in it,
you’d be a fool to accept the challenge. In all likelihood, the suit was the Wild
Man for that festival sometime in the 1800s. Today it would serve you well when posting
something about politics on Twitter. Now you need to watch “Missing People
Mystery - Why Haven't They Been Found?” Or, have a look at...