Malaysia Media Promotes Web Mania

Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 13th, 2006

According to the Malaysia Star of Thursday July 13, 2006’s article, “Big draw for Bigfoot site,” it’s all about the numbers first, and the hominids second.

In the piece by Nelson Benjamin of The Star, dateline Johor Baru, the reporter writes:

A website dedicated to the Malaysian version of Bigfoot has created a buzz among enthusiasts of the enigmatic creature worldwide. The site (www.johorhominid.org), which has sketches of a ape-like beast and a hairy paw, has attracted some 16,000 hits. 

Vincent Chow, a Johor branch member of the Malaysian Nature Society, one of the two persons who developed the website, said the sketches were authentic reproductions made from a picture taken of the creature. 

Vincent Chow

The article, which contains no images of the illustrations or the photographs mentioned, goes on:

“I have seen the image but the owner of the picture does not want it to be out yet. So I have only been able to draw a sketch of the creature,” he said, adding that his partner Sean Ang, a palaoanthropologist (one who studies extinct members Homo sapiens genus) was also convinced after seeing the pictures. 

Sean Ang

As comments and discussions at Cryptomundo about Ang’s and Chow’s website have noted for days, the sketches, not the photos, are the only images being shown. Benjamin mentions that the site has…

…a sketch that was purportedly made from an actual picture captioned JH001: Joman (Johor Man) depicted a hairy paw with short fingernails. 

The article curiously quotes Vincent Chow as saying “that the picture would be shown when the time was right.”  No details or clarification is given on that timing.

The article concludes:

“We do not own it. The owner is worried that people may hunt this creature down or what could happen to it if captured,” he said, adding that it was the only website in Johor dedicated for discussions and to promote awareness on Bigfoot.

Vincent Chow

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.


9 Responses to “Malaysia Media Promotes Web Mania”

  1. jjames1 responds:

    Well, that helps explain why the chat room area was disabled on the site. I’m assuming Chow and Ang wanted more control over what was being said on the site, since their site traffic is up significantly after the article.

    You can actually see their site statistics if you click on a link on the right side of the home page. Even this early in the day, they’ve already gotten more than twice as many visitors as they get during an average 24-hour period.

    More hype, with nothing new…With every passing day, I question more and more what they’re even trying to accomplish. If they’re scammers, they’re doing it poorly. If they truly are what they say they are–then they’re still handling the situation poorly. 🙂

  2. dtart responds:

    I find it interesting that both Chow and Ang have their eyes shifted to the side while commenting on the pictures.

    Human nature dictates that a person is usually lying when their eyes are focused to the side as if they were looking at their ears. It would be more convincing if they were looking up or down as this is a better indication that they are trying to remember what they saw or held in their hands.

  3. Trevor Markwart responds:

    Look, these guys are trying to sell a book that’s to come! They have no real budget for promotion, they’ve got no multi-media megacorporation backing them (yet), and they have no access to mainstream media outside of, er, Malaysia.

    In hours after they publish, any photos in it will no doubt pop up on the net and then they will be worthless from a publishing standpoint. Good luck at stopping up that dam!

    It would be stupid of them to release any of these photos (real or fake) until the book is published. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense to invite a whole bunch of self-proclaimed experts to look at them before hand, or even accredited biologists or Hollywood effect guys to offer critiques. They can vary all over the place in their opinions and be right or wrong based only on a few photos. And real experts won’t stick their neck on the line in the positive with certainty anyways without conclusive, exhaustive evidence. It is way safer to give it a soft shadow of doubt. Which does nothing for book sales except hurt them.

    It’s all about book pre-orders and intial orders with something like this.

  4. voodoochild responds:

    I just hope that in the end, there really is something to all of this. Whether it turns out to be a new (or previously unknown) species of ape, or whether it turns out to be our evolutionary long lost cousin, or Malaysia’s Sasquatch. Whatever this being is, I hope that it is something previously unknown to exist. As to the ongoing debate over the release of the photos, I’ve been keeping track of all of the comments, and I have to say, I would rather have not known about any of it until they were ready to release the actual photos. They (Chow & Ang) should not have said anything about the photos at all unless they could display them for all to see.

  5. youcantryreachingme responds:

    jjames1 (1) – I can’t recall if it was the homepage comment box, or the FAQs (although it’s not in the FAQs now), but they answered the question about allowing all the negative comments to continue – they basically said it gave them a reality check to remember they have to get this right.

    dtart(2) – don’t place too much emphasis on their expressions in the photos; take a look at any newspaper for media images of people they want to depict in good or bad light and compare the photos they choose to use.

  6. youcantryreachingme responds:

    I just found this gem of a quote from Sean Ang in the discussion about movie stills:

    Please dont throw sh*t at us if everything turned out to be a hoax.

    Cheers..

    Sean Ang

    There seemed to be no further discussion relating to that comment.

  7. twblack responds:

    I for one hope all this is the real deal. But I also think this is starting to smell like a hoax/tourists trap kinda of thing. And to think after all this being in the media that no one else has been in these parts with a camera and got a pic or 2 by now. I am starting to lose my faith in these 2 and their is no pics or they themselves have been duped.

  8. shumway10973 responds:

    I just had a thought, have they ever mentioned the area in which they are searching for johr? I mean I can see why they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to any of these (if there are any) creatures, especially seeing how we know nothing about them. I do hope that there is something there to wake up the conventional evolutionary world into realizing that what they have been taught and clinging to might not quite be fact (the way the conventional evolutionists have been going lately it almost sounds like a religion).

  9. jjames1 responds:

    Shumway: Ang and Chow haven’t said what area they’re searching in Johor because A) they’re not searching anywhere, and B) as has been mentioned previously, they don’t even know where the pictures were taken.

Sorry. Comments have been closed.

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