On the afternoon of May 21st, 1974, a 39-year-old man named Polar Gomez was walking through a dense forest in Argentina. In one hand, he carried a machete, and in the other, an axe. As he made his way through the underbrush, he used the machete to clear the path ahead. Eventually, he came upon a massive tree. Setting the machete down, he gripped the axe and prepared to chop it down.
However, just before taking his first swing, Polar looked up—and what he saw made him freeze. High up on the tree were deep, wide claw marks gouged into the bark. At first, he thought they must have come from a bear. But the more he studied them, the more he realized just how large the creature must have been to leave marks like that. These weren’t the scratches of an ordinary bear.
Polar was no stranger to the forest. A professional lumberjack, he actually lived on this plot of land. His cabin stood just a few yards away. He was used to encountering wildlife, including bears, and never felt particularly threatened. Despite the isolation—his nearest neighbors were miles away—Polar enjoyed the solitude. He had no phone, no car, and lived completely alone.
Friends and family thought he was crazy, not just for living so remotely, but also because of the forest’s reputation. Local legends claimed the woods were haunted—home to unnatural, enormous creatures that preyed on people. But Polar dismissed those stories as nonsense. As he examined the claw marks, he reminded himself: it had to be a bear. Nothing else made sense.
Brushing off the unease, Polar began chopping the tree. As it crashed to the ground with a thunderous boom, a deep growl suddenly echoed behind him. He whipped around, expecting to see a wild animal—but there was nothing. Just the quiet forest. He scanned the trees, searching for movement, but saw none.
“Maybe I imagined it,” he thought. “Maybe it was just the tree hitting the ground.” Still, the memory of the claw marks and the eerie silence clung to him. Shaking off the feeling, Polar got back to work. For the next few hours, he chopped the tree into smaller pieces, carrying them back to his cabin and stacking the logs beside it.
As the sun set and darkness began to settle, Polar returned to his cabin and realized he was hungry. He decided to eat outside, as he usually did, enjoying the night air and the sound of crickets. He grabbed some leftover stew and went to his outdoor setup. A table sat just beside the cabin, and a little further out was his wood-burning stove.
He got the fire going, set the stew on the stove to heat, and sat at the table, waiting. As he relaxed, he suddenly noticed something unsettling: the crickets had gone silent. The entire forest was quiet—unnaturally so. Polar immediately thought of predators. The woods only ever became this silent when something dangerous was nearby.
His mind flashed back to the claw marks. Maybe the bear had returned.
Polar scanned the treeline. Nothing moved. Just darkness and silence. Uneasy, he decided to eat inside instead. He stood up and walked toward his cabin—but then remembered the stew still warming on the stove. With a quick glance at the forest, he hurried over to the stove to shut the vents and retrieve his meal.
That’s when it hit him.
A powerful force slammed into his back, knocking the wind out of him. Gasping, Polar looked down and saw a massive, furry arm with sharp claws reaching around his torso. He thrashed and stumbled forward, desperate to escape. Nearby, on the ground, was his machete. He grabbed it and turned to strike.
But when he faced the creature, he stopped cold.
It wasn’t a bear.
It was covered in black fur, at least six feet tall, and had enormous claws—but its face was human.
Terrified, Polar instinctively turned and ran toward the pile of lumber he had stacked earlier. As he scrambled up the pile, he heard the creature charging after him. Then—another blow. This time to the side of his head. Dizzy and bleeding, he pushed himself up the lumber and onto the roof of his cabin.
He spun around, machete in hand, bracing for another attack.
But the creature was gone.
The forest was silent again. Completely still.
Polar touched the side of his head—his ear was missing. The creature had torn it off.
He remained on the roof all night, scanning the forest, waiting. But the creature never returned. Eventually, the sun rose, and the forest came back to life with the sounds of birds and insects.
Dizzy from blood loss, Polar knew he had to get help. He climbed down and ran a mile to the nearest building—a woodworking shop. When the people there saw his condition, they didn’t need an explanation. They rushed him to the hospital.
After being stabilized and treated, Polar recounted everything to the police: the claw marks, the eerie growl, and the nighttime attack. He told them about the creature—the bear-like body and the human face.
One officer took notes diligently—until Polar mentioned the human face. At that point, the officer stopped writing and told Polar plainly: “That can’t be true. Bears don’t have human faces.”
But Polar stood by his story. He knew what he had seen.
The police, unconvinced, filed the case as a standard bear attack and closed it.
Yet, since that day, more than 30 people have come forward claiming to have seen—or been attacked by—the same strange creature: a bear-like beast with a human face. The locals have even given it a name.
They call it the Ukumar.
To this day, no one knows what it is—or if it will return.