The Cryptid Beast of the Dark Forest

By George Appel

This short treatise on the illusive creature commonly called Bigfoot is a thrilling adventure the reader will find exhilarating and informative. The history of the beast is covered thoroughly, and current sightings and events are set forth in an exciting, swift-moving, and easily readable style. The Author relates various hoaxes and also the scientific cases of others that find the existence of this famous cryptid possible. In the end, the author leaves you to decide this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662449024

Book preview

Chapter 1

Something Is Out There

Cryptozoology is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the search for animals whose existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the Loch Ness Monster. Cryptids are these disputed animals. Hominology, coined in 1973 in the English jargon, is the term used in cryptozoology to denote the study of undiscovered apelike creatures. This science was officially established by Bernard Heuvelmans in 1959.

Despite its unacceptance as a traditional scientific discipline by the aristocracy ruling several rigid-minded universities, cryptozoology can still be called a science, a new science. It uses scientific means of investigation and experimentation by credentialed scientists in the fields of zoology, paleontology, anthropology, biology, and anatomy. Their investigative research has discovered some remarkable facts about our natural world that traditionally established science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have failed to discover. (A later chapter herein will discuss these many discoveries in the natural order, revealing a multitude of animal species one thought long extinct, to the surprise of close-minded skeptics.) Thus cryptozoology, once derided and scorned by the arrogant and smug elitists of the academic community, is now quickly becoming a recognized discipline in its own right.

Physicist Brian Greene, in his The Elegant Universe, reminds us that scientific history teaches many lessons, one being that just when we think we have it right, nature suddenly surprises us. This results in many revisions of our presently established thinking. New facts supplant older erroneous assumptions. And Linda S. Godfrey in American Monsters echoes the same truth: no one knows just how the universe works, and we must expect new data now and then to overthrow the fallacious. She adds that new data might someday include monsters we currently assume nonexistent.

One example of this is a recent archeological discovery in Britain, resulting in the revision of the appearance of the original inhabitants of that island nation. Britain’s so-called Cheddar Man is the oldest known complete human skeleton, about ten thousand years old. DNA testing on this skeleton showed a drastically different-looking Brit of prehistoric times than present-day English people. Cheddar Man had very dark skin, dark curly hair, and blue eyes. The assumption that the early inhabitants of Britain were Celtic or Anglo-Saxon was demolished. (The view now held is that Celts were early invaders who supplanted the Cheddar race, and that the Anglo-Saxon came from the European continent later to dominate the Celts.) The earlier studies that falsely concluded that Cheddar Man had lighter skin was dismissed in 2018. (Cheddar Man was so-called because his skeleton was discovered in an area where cheddar cheese was first processed.)¹

Another surprise in 2016 came from Flores, Indonesia, where human adult skeletons, no more than two feet tall or less, were unearthed. This extinct pygmy race of prehistoric times were entitled hobbits, after the fantasy creatures in fictional writer J. R. R. Tolkien’s book series Lord of the Rings. These little humans, and they aren’t apelike, are an extinct race of prehistoric man.

The natives of the Republic of Congo have recounted continuous tales of a giant ape known as the Bondo. (This creature is probably extinct today, as it couldn’t remain too elusive in the sparse yet well-known forested terrain of that land.) Primatologist Shelley Williams of the Jane Goodall Institute relates how she claims to have seen face-to-face this Bondo, also known as Bili ape.

The Bondo has large feet, a very large physical build, larger than the mountain gorilla. Its face is flat, the jaw wide, brows protruding, and its fur gray in color. Dr. Williams says she saw four of them running through the bush.

The Congolese call Bondo lion killers, so they must be very powerful animals. The indigenous peoples in this area of Africa fear them and few venture into their domain (except for the unbelieving).

Whether we can believe these tales or not is inconsequential. Dr. Williams does, based upon her sighting. And she is a credentialed scientist who would not risk her reputation on a lie—not in this case!² At least it gives us something to think about.

Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark have noted that.

Today, from the internet to the corner newsstand, cryptozoology has become an integral part of our culture. Mainstream magazines such as BBC Wildlife now regularly carry articles on hidden animals, and numerous documentaries on PBS, Discovery, A&E, and other television networks treat the subject seriously.³

Bigfoot is perhaps the most controversial animal cryptozoology has dwelt with. Yet the universal tales and unexplained mysteries so widespread over the globe has a need for study and investigation. This phenomenon cannot be ignored.

The Bigfoot beast and his far-flung relatives go by many names worldwide. In Guatemala, Central America, this mysterious beast of the jungle was legendary among the native peoples long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans relates in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals various tales of a creature known as El Sisimite. Described as part-ape, part-man, it is extremely tall, hairy, bipedal, as well as physically powerful. El Sisimite is feared and venerated by the local inhabitants who have had descriptions of him as very vicious and dangerous. A similar animal of the same semblance is known in Brazil, South America, called the Mapinguary, a seven-foot-tall bipedal apelike creature sporting thick dark hair over its entire body and emitting a pungent, foul odor. Its strength is pronounced, tearing limbs off trees and hurling large rocks. (These attributes are similar to the Bigfoot beast farther north in the Pacific Northwest wilderness of North America.)

The secluded Andes mountains of Chili, South America, hold tales as well of this hairy beast that has been passed down from generation to generation and is called the Didi. Large, apelike, sinewy, and red-fur-covered, it seldom is seen and avoids humans.

Another South American nation, Guyana (formerly Guiana), had stories of the hairy Didi. In 1597, Sir Walter Raleigh and Lawrence Keymis were exploring the area and made notes about this creature from tales by the local natives. And in 1910, the magistrate of British Guiana, a man named Haines, saw two Didi on a beach. He mistook them at first sight for men, but on further examination declared they were apish.

On the other side of the world, the Far East had similar tales—even in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia! In Vietnam, they have their Bigfoot version, known as Nguoi Rung which translates to wildman of the forest. In Loas and adjacent nations, a gorilla-resembling creature is called Teh-Ima and Briau. In West Indonesia’s Sumatra, the orangutan ape is well-known. It was supposedly seen by Marco Polo, the medieval European explorer in AD 1295. Some have mistaken the orangutan as an ape-man, but it’s only an ape animal. (Orangutan means creature of the woods.) Yet there is another woodland creature in Sumatra’s ancient traditions more manlike yet simian in shape, known as Orang Pendek, meaning man creature. It has been seen on the island by many who describe it as being five feet tall, bipedal, and with short dark hair. Some scientists have even seen it and think it is an unknown species of ape yet undiscovered. None to date, though, have been captured. This area of the world has jungle so dense it is hard to penetrate, and much of the island is even unexplored to this day. Not to mention, few people live there. A few hair samples have been retrieved from the jungles, and studies conclude they might be from Orang Pendek, but they are confirmed to be of no known primate. Many respectable scientists place some credence in this one and believe it is an undiscovered ape species. (The local natives believe otherwise.)

In southern Malaysia, this creature is known as Orang Dalam. Said to be over ten feet tall, this creature exudes a horrible and repugnant smell (which is identical to the Sasquatch in the Pacific Northwest of the US).

Farther south in the Pacific Ocean lies the massive continent-nation of Australia, which contains vast and remote wastelands called the outbacks. The indigenous natives, called Aborigines, have passed down tales of a hairy manlike creature for generations, and it is called Wakki (also Yowie in other regions).

Australian Wakki (Yowie), author’s rendition

In Central Asia, Pakistan’s northern region of Chitral has its version of wild men and are known as Barmanu (big hairy one), and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India the Nittaewo (or primitive people). These completely hair-covered beings were believed to be an aboriginal race predating the Pakistanis and Indians, very savage, and now extinct. Other parts of India called them Mande Burung.

Western man heard of these Asia entities as far back as Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer at the beginning of the Christian era. In addition, these humanlike bestial tales became known to the Greeks when Alexander the Great extended his empire to the borders of India.

In 1887, the British explorer Hugh Nevill wrote of an old legend about an Indian warfare between the tribal Vedda people and these hairy Nittaewo people, who were depicted as short in stature, bodies strongly amplified and covered in red hair. Some have speculated that they might simply have been monkeys, but humans having warfare with monkeys pretty much rules this out. Primatologist W. C. Osmond Hill went so far as to speculate that the Nittaewo might be the so-called Java ape men, or Homo erectus. But this too has been dismissed since the Nittaewo were of ancient history, not the prehistoric.⁴

As for the Mande Burung, meaning forest man, many sightings have been reported up to this date. When supposed hair samples of the Mande Burung were DNA tested, they simply turned out to be from the goral goat. Skeptics, of course, were quick to use this analysis to dismiss the Mande Burung as myth. However, these samples of the goat from the tests don’t dismiss the reality of Mande Burung; they simply proved the hair samples in this instance were mistaken for the creature.

Mande Burung could have existed as another ape species. No one knows because hard evidence has never been found. Perhaps the day may come in which proof for or against the reality of such an animal will be found. The important thing is to keep the mind open until such proof, and not let emotional bias blind us to the possibility.

Now let us venture farther north in Asia to the cold land of Siberia. Here a rich trove of stories about another hairy animal of the Bigfoot family abounds. It is called the Mecheny (or Mech for short), and the term means marked one, so it definitely stands out from all other natural creatures. It has a height of seven feet, a powerful body completely covered with thick brown fur with patches of white, and feet measuring fourteen inches. The head is neckless and its appearance frightful.

One Russian scientist, Maya Bykova, claimed to have seen a Mech in 1987, though the local inhabitants have known of the Mech for centuries. In the 1950s, some young campers were its victims.

One particular member of the Siberian Mech species is the Chuchunaa, meaning the wild man among the Tungus and Yakut people. Anthropologists believe that Native Americans are descended from Siberians crossing the land bridge to America in Alaska’s Bering Sea. When the land bridge disappeared, they were trapped in North America and eventually spread throughout the North and South American continents. And they brought with them the legend of the hairy creature. (Incidentally, the word Sasquatch means wild man also among the Pacific Northwest Native Americans.) These wild simian things have an aversion to dogs, the Mechs throwing them around and killing them. (Sasquatch has a propensity toward dogs also.) They really love cold northern temperatures and thrive in the abundant wildlife in the deep mountain forests. Some scientists think these unknown animals are now extinct, if indeed they ever existed (or as far as they know).

Then there is China, where their Bigfoot type is called the Yeren (which translates into—you guessed it—wild man). The vast number of sightings comes from the central part of the nation, deep in the huge Daba Mountains of Wudang and the lengthy Yangtze River basin. Yeren stands eight to ten feet in height and is covered from head to foot in long hair, either white or somewhat darker. For centuries, even longer, the Chinese handed down the legend of the live hairy men. They shun humans, loving their privacy with a primitive passion. They eat small animals like rabbits, and raid farmers’ livestock on the outskirts of civilization. They too detest dogs, hunting them down and killing them with a savage fury. The facial features are narrow with deep-set eyes; less hair grows on their faces as well. Cheekbones are wide, and the lips protruded. Fur colors range anywhere from light brown to dark red to even black, but to reiterate, the majority of sightings have them sporting white or a slightly darker hue. They are quick, moving fast with great agility, and their shuddering, screeching howl can be heard afar in the wild, causing the hearer to freeze with terror.