Bigfoot
Bigfoot
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"Ape-like animal" spotted in central China.
WUHAN, June 30 (Xinhua)
An investigation is underway after apparent sightings of a mysterious "ape-like" animal in Shennongjia Nature Reserve in
central China's Hubei Province Sunday afternoon.
The animal was reported to have been seen by six people, including a reporter from the local broadcasting station. The grayish "mythical ape-like animal", suspected by locals to be a "Bigfoot", was reported as 1.65-meters tall with shoulder-length black hair. The witnesses have reported the sighting to the local government and an investigation is in full swing.
Shang Zhengmin, the reporter, was on the way back to Songbai Town from an interview in Muyu town with five local people. When the vehicle they were in took a left turn along the mountain road, four people in the vehicle saw an ape-like animal moving fast on the road. By the time the vehicle finished the turn, the animal had disappeared. The passengers got out of the vehicle and found several 30
centimeter-long footprints and newly broken branches in the jungle near the road.
On the road where the animal was spotted, they claimed to have discovered a three-meter-long patch of foul smelling urine-like liquid.
Hundreds of local people have reported "Bigfoot" sightings over the past decades in the Shennongjia area. China has organized several high-profile searches for the unidentified animal through the 1980s and 1990s, but no hard evidence has been found.
Source: XINHUA NEWS AGENCY BULLETIN 30/06/2003
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R. SITTAMPARAM
March 4:
The Bigfoot story has its fair share of sceptics and believers. But Vincent Chow, a biodiversity researcher and Bigfoot enthusiast, is one person who is steadfast in his belief that the creature does exist. He speaks to R. SITTAMPARAM.
Q: What is your response to being dubbed by the Bigfoot Research Organisation (BFRO) as the man who successfully lobbied the Johor Government to take Bigfoot sightings in the State seriously and speak openly about them?
A: It is a one-sided view. This opening for Bigfoot research in Johor is due to the fact that we have a very responsive Menteri Besar who sees beyond the Bigfoot phenomena in safeguarding and promoting Johor's rich biodiversity. Given his academic background Abdul Ghani Othman could see the potential of the Bigfoot phenomena which is part of Johor's unique fauna, in putting the State on the world map.
Q: Do you personally believe that the Johor Bigfoot exists?
A: Yes, based on my personal experience as a young boy when I have seen enough Bigfoot footprints and had a frightening close encounter with the creature.
It was during an evening hunting trip with my father and his friends at the edge of the jungle near my hometown in Kluang, when I was 13 years' old. We suddenly saw the trees shaking as if something big was passing through the area. An old and experienced hunter I knew as Panjang told me it was not any common mammal like the elephant.
The following day on checking the area where the movement was seen we found evidence like broken twigs and branches that showed something big had passed through. Since then I have always been curious.
I have followed my father who was also fascinated by the Bigfoot to check out several sightings in the early 60s in Air Hitam, Machap, Simpang Renggam and Kulai and saw giant footprints. The older generation in these towns can remember these sightings.
Q: Can you clear the air on the confusion over the Mawas and Bigfoot?
A: I think the confusion was caused due to the adoption of the name Mawas for the Bigfoot by early settlers from Indonesia, where the orang utan is called Mawas. So when the settlers, especially at Kota Tinggi, saw the Bigfoot they thought it was some type of orang utan and even named their village Kampung Mawas which later came to be known as Kampung Mawai.
Q: What is your answer to the cynics who say that the Bigfoot story is pure fiction and that the Bigfoot was actually an orang utan?
A: Again it is due to the confusion caused by the name, Mawas. Village people who have sighted Bigfoot refer to it as Mawas but the description they give does not fit that of the orang utan.
Yesterday I talked to an old man at Kampung Mawai where many of the recent Bigfoot sightings have occurred. He told me that he saw a hairy creature of about two metres tall, catching fish at a swamp just like a human being. It was upright all the time.
The old man said he was about 40m away and could see the orange coloured hair, upturned nose and slight hunch of the creature which I believe to be a juvenile Bigfoot.
This cannot be an orang utan which are tree dwellers and walk on all fours. Their footprints would also not be so big and deep.
Q: What do you feel about the wide foreign interest in the Johor Bigfoot?
A: It will benefit Johor but we have to screen foreign groups who arrive here to look for the Bigfoot to see where their interest lies. We should not entertain those with doubtful reasons especially those who come to take scientific evidence back to their countries to claim as their own finding. That kind of ownership must go to Malaysia.
The foreign media who arrived here so far including the British Broadcasting Corporation, have only made short documentaries based on interviews with eye witnesses and the creature's footprints in secondary jungles.
However a blanket ban would not be conducive for the State's eco-tourism.
Q: Based on the evidence so far, can the Johor Bigfoot be found soon?
A: A full-scale scientific expedition with scientists equipped with state-of-the-art equipment will have a good chance of capturing its sounds or visuals but they have to be very stealthy as from what we know of the creature, it is intelligent enough to evade humans.
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Saturday/National/20060304075713/Article/index_html
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200 years of Richmond history
Aug. 31, 1948: Final Varmint Update!
Steve Martin
Palladium-Item - Richmond, Ind.
August 31, 2006
Wayne County's version of Bigfoot plagued residents during the month of August 1948. A mysterious beast was sighted by scores of people in Wayne, Union, Preble and Darke counties. Some were certain at least one wild varmint -- and possibly two -- stalked the area.
Fountain City residents first heard the call of a wild beast at night that made cattle, sheep and horses skittish.
Richmond police officer Louis Danels and family all saw "a peculiarly shaped monster" on a road southwest of Centerville.
Dorten Moore, a Fountain City farmer, had several hogs murdered and "the hearts and livers" devoured.
A bull was slain near Liberty and a conservation officer there attempted to kill an animal resembling a mountain lion.
Wayne County sheriff's officers received numerous reports of strange creatures lurking south of Richmond. Sightings of varmints came in daily ... and expanded to neighboring counties.
Numerous people saw "a lion and panther" along Clear Creek.
In Penville, James Leo spied a brute eating potato chips his children left on the back porch.
Russell Eggers saw a scary animal in the vicinity of the sewage disposal plant on Test Road.
Farmers in the Middleboro area north of Richmond spied "a large black animal" and fired shots. Robert Martin said, "I fired twice. At the second charge, the animal reared up and then fled through a gate leading away from the yard. I know I wounded it."
A Brookville man was attacked from the rear; his clothes were torn and he was scratched.
At the same time, hunts went on in New Westville, New Madison, Hollansburg, Palestine, and Morning Sun, Ohio.
Everybody was seeing varmints!
The only beast actually found was a four-foot blacksnake shaken from a tree limb when a sheriff's deputy grabbed the limb to climb a bank in the Whitewater Gorge. The lawman not only lost his footing, he lost his bladder as he shook the snake off himself.
A German shepherd with a beastly haircut and a mane attached to its neck was discerned as a hoax in Greens Fork.
The final varmint story came out on Aug. 31, 1948 when a Centerville man reported hearing "a panther scream" in the middle of the night.
Wayne County's version of Bigfoot -- or the varmint -- has never been satisfactorily explained. Richmond photographer Roy Hirshburg wrote an ode to "The Varmint."
To keep the varmint from growing dormant
Let's write it up in verse.
Do you wish to catch it? -- then use a hatchet!
Or you're flirtin' with a hearse.
These times inspire great balls of fire
And flying saucer hooey:
But this leaping panda propaganda
Has made us almost screwy!
Loch Ness had Nessie, the Pacific Northwest had Bigfoot, and Wayne County had the varmint in August 1948.
Ten years later, in July 1959, a similar varmint resurfaced in the hilly area around Elkhorn Creek, and was seen by a handful of men and some children, but that was the last of it.
C.D. Emerick wrote in the Palladium: "Coming generations will gape in wonder at the days in Richmond and Wayne County ... back in 1948 when the varmint roamed the land."
True words, but not in the way he thought.
http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060831/NEWS01/608310310/1008
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25Apr2001 MALAYSIA:
Big-foot sightings.
By Sager Ahmad.
THERE has been some reported sightings of hantu jarang gigi or big-foot in the vast Endau-Rompin park in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The shy, hairy and harmless creature is said to reside in the 40,197ha park but so far no image of it has been captured.
Orang Asli who live in the forest and officers from the Forestry Department, Rela members and some campers have reported of sightings of the big-foot from a distance or finding its footprint in wet soil.
The "creature" as described has dark brown hair covering its whole body, is about three meters tall and its footprint is about 45cm in size - about twice the size of an adult shoeless foot.
One area where sightings have taken place is Sungai Kencin, a tributary of the Endau River and reports include fish bones scattered on the ground as if big-foot just had its meal. Orang Asli living in the area believe that there are only three of them - a male, a female and their child.
Pahang State Women's Affair, Culture, Arts and Tourism Committee chairman Maznah Mazlan while launching a 4WD event in the forest reserve recently said the big-foot has a keen sense of smell and would run away from humans. She says it is believed that one way of seeing the big-foot is by not taking a bath for two weeks! There has been several sightings in the forest near Lubuk China, Malacca
and locals call the creature Ensut-Ensut. Its foot is inverted. Ghazali Yaacob, a surveyor, says villagers have reported having come face-to-face with the creature. The last sighting is of the creature running
out of a burning jungle with its young one in search of shelter.
In all the sightings, no one has reported of being threatened by big-foot in any way.
(c) 2001 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad.
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26 May 2000 China:
Tourists Visit Location of "Bigfoot" in Fall
Wuhan, May 26 (Xinhua) - Guided tours on the periphery of Shennongjia Nature Reserve, believed home to the "Bigfoot," will be provided in the Fall, said Wang Zhenyou, mayor of Yichang City where the Three Gorges Project is under construction. "They will be able to visit the roads where local residents have reportedly seen 'Bigfoot,' but tourists will not be allowed to go further into the Nature Reserve," Wang said. The guided tours is a part of the Yangtze Three Gorges International Tourism Festival in Yichang City, central China's Hubei Province from September 30 to October 30. A team of paleoanthropologists from Beijing, local researchers and reporters have discovered 40-cm-long footprints, brown hair and chewed corn cobs in Shennongjia last October. The possibility that it was a bear has been ruled out by Yuan Zhenxin, a well-known paleoanthropologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( CAS). Life science professor Pan Wenshi from Beijing University visited the Nature Reserve several years ago. He believed that it was not an ideal living environment for quadrumana because of frequent human activities and shortage of broad-leaved trees and berries in the forest. Wang Fangchen, head of the Committee for Search for Rare Animals and Plants, said that repeated attempts to track down " Bigfoot" have been disappointing. However, a few scientists do believe the possibility that such a half-man, half-ape creature still exists in the forest. It is reported that there have been sightings of "Bigfoot" in Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China.