The Bear Girl
The story of the Bear Girl was told by George Maranz in 1937 when he described his experience visiting a lunatic asylum in Bursa, Turkey. Maranz said he met the Bear Girl on this visit and that she had been living with bears for a long time before she was captured. She was captured when hunters hunting nearby had shot a female bear, and the Bear Girl attacked them. At first, they called her a “wood spirit” and said her physique, voice, and habits were all bear-like.
However, she was just a human girl. The Bear Girl was taken to the asylum because she refused to eat cooked food and slept on a mattress in the darkest corner of the room she was given. When looking into local history, it is said that a two-year-old girl had gone missing in a small Turkish village 14 years before the Bear Girl was found. Everyone assumed that the bear had found the missing girl and adopted her.
