Second “Wild Person” Seen

Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 20th, 2007

Cambodian Feral Human

As I speculated in my first blog about this case on January 18th, when the news broke of a “feral woman” being found (or captured in some accounts), there has got to be a more involved story here. I wondered, could, perhaps, this little girl have been kidnapped by a Nguoi Rung (“Forest Person”) – the unknown hominids who are reported from along the (Kampuchean) Cambodian-Vietnamese border? Indeed, every early indication was that she had lived nocturnally, as reports of the Forest People have noted in the past.

Boing Boing buddy David Pescovitz posted on the story earlier too, and had acknowledged our interest over here. The story is getting weirder, but then some of us knew it would become more so, if we weren’t afraid to look beyond the mainstream headlines.

nguoi 2

Now comes word from The Guardian for January 20, 2007, that the “search [is] on for [a] ‘feral man’ as mystery deepens over woman lost in jungle.”

I am not surprised.

Guardian reporter Ian MacKinnon writes, in part:

When they found her last week, her father said, she was “bare-bones skinny” and shaking, scuttling like a monkey along the ground to snatch up grains of rice, her eyes “red like tigers’ eyes”. So when the first pictures of Rochom P’ngieng, the woman supposedly lost in the jungle for 18 years, emerged yesterday showing a calm and apparently healthy young woman rather than an emaciated, feral beast, the mystery surrounding her remarkable story deepened.

Sal Lou, 45, a policeman from a remote village on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, told a local newspaper on Thursday that his daughter, who disappeared, aged eight, in 1988 while tending a buffalo herd, had mysteriously re-emerged from the Cambodian jungle. She was naked and unable to speak any intelligible language but unquestionably, he insisted, she was his lost daughter Rochom P’ngieng.

Yesterday, however, as further intriguing reports emerged of a mysterious naked man who had been spotted with the woman but ran off when challenged (emphasis added – LC), the family began to close ranks. They have withdrawn permission to take DNA samples to confirm the woman’s identity, and police have thrown a cordon around their isolated home, in an effort to keep at bay curious neighbors and the world’s media.

Other details of various visitors and the global news circus are given in the article, but then it is surprisingly revealed that this woman disappeared along with her younger sister in 1988.

There is no clue to the fate of the second daughter, Chan Boeung, who was six when she disappeared on the same day. Their father said he had believed them both to have been devoured by wild animals in the forest and had long since given them up for dead.

More and more questions are surfacing, of course, and now the hunt is on for this “feral man” who was sighted. And what of the second daughter? The mystery does deepen. But then, the rainforests in this part of the world, as readers of Cryptomundo know, hide many secrets.

January 20, 2007: Here are breaking new details about the “Wild Man” and the search for him.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.


18 Responses to “Second “Wild Person” Seen”

  1. alanborky responds:

    Loren, a lot of people of my acquaintance from a variety of third world countries have often surprised me by their obsession with how ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ their countries ‘look’ in the eyes of the Western World’s media.

    It’s possible, then, the undisheveled girl depicted in yesterday’s pic wasn’t actually the ‘feral girl’ herself but a ‘deputy’ intended to reflect a better image of the country internationally.

    As for the ‘naked’ guy, whoever ‘saw’ him must have been pretty close up to him to be certain he WAS naked, because if he had have been an Nguoi Rung, surely he would’ve been covered from top to toe in fur; and if he had have been a feral human, surely he would have been coated all over in extremely thick black body grease, like some long term homeless of my acquaintance.

    There’s definite signs of a media circus building up there: in which case if there’s even the slightest hint of money to be made from this poor girl, then more people will probably start coming forward to claim she’s in fact a member of THEIR family.

  2. lastensugle responds:

    I’ve just returned home after spending a few weeks in the jungle of Thailand, and I can certainly see how a creature such as the Nguoi Rung could exist in these parts of the world, without getting discovered! However, and I know Loren just mentioned this himself, that this girl could have been kidnapped by one, is just speculation. Interesting idea, though, and an interesting story. I hope this girl is allowed to live in peace, or even to return to the forest if that’s what she chooses.

  3. Ceroill responds:

    Alanborky’s comments brought to mind the comments in the earlier editions of this story about how the woman’s skin was ‘blackened’. Very interesting, Loren, thanks for keeping us apprised on this item.

  4. youcantryreachingme responds:

    good point lastensugle – the idea that she should be allowed to choose to live in the jungle again.

    Can you imagine the stories she will have to tell once communcation is fairly reliably established?

    This is truly a Greystoke tale. But a true one.

    Chris.

  5. daledrinnon responds:

    My informants from Vietnam ALWAYS speak of “an ape” but there is obviously more than one unknown hairy humanoid in the area. The thing is, when I contacted Heuvelmans and Loofs-Wissowa with my information, they always assumed it was the Nguoi Rung and that it was the same as the Iceman. That was not what my informants (American military and Vietnamese nationals) described, nor was it the name they used. What they described actually sounded more like a jungle Yeti and they called it Da Nhan (sorry, exact characters to spell that are not on my keyboard).

  6. Paul78 responds:

    When I read the first news post about how she could of survived so long and could it of been with the help of Nguoi Rungs, my first thought was what if she is a Nguoi Rung and they’ve gone and shaved it. I know sounds silly.

  7. busterggi responds:

    I guess big cities in the US aren’t the only places with a homeless problem.

    Seriously, if she lived on the edges of towns, roadways etc, and kept most of her activities nocturnal, I don’t see why any cryptid needs to be brought into this matter. Feral children happen without kidnappings by cryptids.

    Which is NOT an attempt to discredit the possibility of the Nugoi Rung. It’s just that they aren’t needed to explain any of this.

  8. Loren Coleman responds:

    Yep, busterggi, of course, no one needs to think outside the lines to explain anything, but that’s part of why I exist, right? I could have explored homelessness, the slave trade, parent abuse, sexual abuse of minors by old men, and a wide variety of other alternatives, but, hey, someone has to speak up about the Nguoi Rung trying to increase their gene pool, correct? 🙂

    How many records are there of a young girl eight years old and her even younger sister disappearing and showing up 19 years later without some kind of outside intervention during the “lost years”?

    Why would they both “leave”? Or “disappear”?

    And who was this “forest man” that was sighted with the young woman who has returned (or was captured or rescued, depending on your point of view) from the wild?

  9. sschaper responds:

    The ‘guy’ could also turn out to be a G.I. from the war, recalling Japanese hold-outs in the Pacific into the 1980s. Or even a rebel group holding out after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

  10. Loren Coleman responds:

    January 20, 2007: Here are breaking new details about the “Wild Man” and the search for him.

  11. shovethenos responds:

    Does anyone know if they will be able to recover her language skills? If she was only 8 when she got lost or abducted and she hasn’t spoken in 19 years isn’t there a real possibility that she lost her language skills?

  12. bill green responds:

    hey loren & everyone this is a wonderful new discovery of a new primative wild person or wildman. i saw a small segment about this on my local news this afternoon. very interesting indeed. thank you bill.please keep me updated .

  13. mystery_man responds:

    The paper I got out here in Japan said that there were scars around her wrists suggesting that she could have been someone’s captive for at least some of the time she was missing. Has anyone else heard this detail or was the paper doing some embellishing?

  14. kittenz responds:

    I am dismayed that the girl’s family has withdrawn permission for DNA testing, which would conclusively prove whether or not she is indeed their missing daughter. That casts an unwelcome pall of suspicion over the whole story.

  15. daledrinnon responds:

    I would tend to suspect the “naked man that ran away” was a fellow refugee–a HUMAN one: the body hair would be hard to miss if it was a Ngoui Rung, and its absence in the report makes it sound as if he were an otherwise normal Homo sapiens.

    When Mystery Man says the Japanese paper indicates that her hands had been bound for a long time, that does suggest slavery and escape with a fellow captive might seem like a reasonable scenario.

  16. rudderpull responds:

    Mental health can indeed be ‘primitive’ in some places of the world.

    People can sometimes be left to their own means, protected and helped by others more fortunate as regards to food and whatever they will accept.

    Such people can indeed look and act wild, but being human, still socialise and interact according to their own wishes. This is also true in 1st world countries where there is enough space and thus privacy, for people to ‘do their own thing’.

  17. daledrinnon responds:

    Incidentally, I see you’ve done Cryptomundo over. Nice job!

  18. skeptik responds:

    rudderpull; true enough.

    For quite some years there was a man living in a cave he’d dug outside the university of Oslo. He had some kind of self-made cosmic religion.

    After a while he was banned from lectures since he was foul smelling, and eventually he was brought into an institution since his leg got all crippled. This was notably after he’d won a trial which underlined his right to practice his so-called religion.

    But of course, this doesn’t come close to the story at hand in any aspect.

Sorry. Comments have been closed.

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