Nguoi Rung’s “Wild Woman” Is Feral Again
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 5th, 2007
The “feral woman” said to have been seen with a hairy wild man, a Nguoi Rung, the wild forest people of Indochina, has decided she’s had enough of civilization. She has escaped back into the Indochinese rainforest.
A woman who lived in the jungle for 18 years has run away from her family and returned to the wilderness ten months after being found.
Ro Cham H’pnhieng, 27, was discovered on the edge of the Cambodian jungle in January after she was caught trying to steal food left under a tree.
Despite being able to speak only three words – mother, father and stomachache – she was identified as a local village girl who had disappeared aged eight.
Her father Sa Lou had not seen her since 1989 but says he instantly recognised her from a childhood scar.
He had thought his daughter had been killed by wild animals after she went missing herding buffalo.
Earlier this year, her mother, Rochom Soy, said Ro had found it difficult adjusting to life with humans.
“Our biggest fear is that she will escape back to the jungle,” she said. “She is clearly baffled by her surroundings. She hardly sleeps and mostly sits in a corner looking quickly from left and right.
“She can’t speak more than a few grunts and she still walks hunched like an animal.”
Mr Lou, a village policeman in Rattanakiri province, northern Cambodia, where the family live, said his daughter had tried to escape several times but relatives had always been able to stop her.
He also warned Ro may have run away to find “her wild man”. When she was captured, some witnesses claimed to have seen a naked, ape-like man who managed to slip away into the undergrowth.
“This time, she has got away,” said Mr Lou. “We know where she’s gone – she’s gone back to the jungle. Perhaps she has gone to find the wild man who was living with her.”“Rescued jungle girl finally escapes and returns to the wild,”October 5, 2007, Daily Mail.
One drawing of how the Nguoi Rung reportedly shows itself to locals in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (Kampuchea).
This woman was herself at first thought to be a “Forest Person,” a Nguoi Rung. One individual said they had seen a “naked human being, who looked like a jungle person.”
And then she was captured.
As you may recall at the time, the first descriptions noted her wildness: “She is like half-human and half-animal,” said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district in Rattanakiri province. “She’s weird. She sleeps during the day and stays up at night.”
For more info on the Nguoi Rung, click here.
See also my first blog on her, as well as the followups, “Second ‘Wild Person’ Seen” and “Wild Man”, on January 20, 2007.
During those earlier events The Guardian for January 20, 2007, said that the “search [is] on for [a] ‘feral man’ as mystery deepens over woman lost in jungle.”
Some “intriguing reports emerged of a mysterious naked man who had been spotted with the woman but ran off when challenged,” said reporter Ian MacKinnon.
It now appears the young woman has returned to the Forest People, from whence she most recently came. The woman has escaped back into the rainforest, choosing to be with other “wild people,” instead of living the life of a villager.
On some level, can’t we all understand?
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.
Are there any tribes in the area like in the Amazon? Also are the wild people described as people, or somthing else?
How can we forget? I wish she was made to wear a radio colar so that she could be tracked and with her the other “wild people” as well.
A radio collar? she’s a human being, not an animal, I find your comments inhumane to say the least.
Just a thought…if the sighting of another male is real/truth, what are the possibilities of them having children? As described by her parents, she is more willing to go back to the jungle than with her parents, hmm….there must be something more important for her in the woods. Perhaps her own family.
@poodpood
That’s your choice. I don’t find my comments inhumane. What I find inhumane is the way animals get treated by humans.
It is too bad they didn’t see this coming and set up some sort of tracking system. Not necessarily to bring her back, but at least to know she is alive and possibly find out if she is with anyone/thing else. This might have answered the question of whether these “wild men” are actually human or a type of big foot.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t the “wild man” she was seen with have a sword and tattoos? I’d say this points more to a hermit of some sort rather than to a Nguoi Rung.
Well, all I can say is that in the first photo (with someone holding her by the wrist) her eyes look really sad.
I say leave her alone. Let her live where she want’s. She is an adult. She’s know’s where she want’s to be. She survived a long long time in the jungle. And maybe, just maybe. The comment’s by YETI aren’t so far fetched. Maybe she does have children with the wild guy or hermit or what ever was seen with her.
Perhaps she is now a disturbed adult.
Good story, I’m not familiar with this story about this feral woman but the wild man I heard of. Well if they do exist I think maybe some hunters should go out and attempt to capture one, not many people will agree with this theory but science needs a body, to prove that wildmen exist.