Strange Beasts of the Vietnam War
Posted by: Nick Redfern on November 29th, 2012
In a new post at Mysterious Universe, Micah Hanks begins:
“There are few periods in World History that become murkier than those during which conflict erupts. Within this already darkened jurisdiction of past studies, perhaps no era is quite so strange and troubling as those years during which the infamous Vietnam conflict had been waged.
“Falling between the final years of the 1960s, the United States became embroiled in the conflict with the intention of aiding South Vietnam, and of course, to bolster the ongoing effort toward the spread of democracy in parts of the world still riddled by Communism. So far as historic periods of conflict are concerned, Vietnam is indeed remembered as one of the darker periods in history; and within its shadows of obscurity, there are nonetheless a number of curious accounts and seldom-spoken mysteries which have prevailed over the years, begging questions as to what kinds of odd operations might have been taking place ‘behind the scenes,’ so to speak.”
And here’s what else Micah has to say, much of it on matters of a cryptozoological nature.
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
The last story concerning the “glowing humanoids” is total BS. Martin Caidin has written some excellent books on aviation like his book on the P-38 Lightning but that humanoid story has some obvious BS to it. First look at the date December 1974 – all of operations in Vietnam (let me say fighting against North Vietnam) ceased January 27, 1973. There was still some bombing going on in the Laos and Cambodia areas until about the summer of 1973 but that is when everything was shut down. The second big problem is the 5th Special Forces were a US Army organization not USMC. This so called Marine named Gower says they were using weapons that had long since disappeared from the USMC’s inventory in 1974. This is a like story straight out of “Stolen Valor”. I guess this belongs to the “Super Natural” part of the title it is from. The other stories were interesting and with the number of crypto to new spiecies found in Vietnam there is a lot of interesting stuff in that part of the world to see.
Not sayin’ these things didn’t occur, yet we should remember that the stress of warfare is well known to produce psychoses from time to time…
Lyall M: to the best of my knowledge, your chronology is correct. If the devil is, as they say, in the details, you just ferreted Ol’ Scratch out.
Lyall M,
I always remember reading that 3rd story from that book and it freaked me out–seemed too bizarre to be true, but crazy details that left you wondering…but after all, it can be relegated to a horror story instead of Forteana…
It is well documented that the US military experimented with a variety of chemical and biological weapons. They also experimented with hallucinogens. I would not be surprised if a weaponized hallucinogen was used/ experimented on the battlefield in Vietnam. That could explain many of these sitings. Glowing flying humanoids seem right in the wheelhouse of a drug induced hallucination.
The nguoi rung, that may be real. The flying winged lady…um, I’m gonna need a sighting database for those, and I might add that this occurred during the Golden Age of Illicit Hallucinogens.
Note that I’m not talking about alcohol or driving late at night, things that many skeptics think are hallucinogens. (Or weed, which isn’t either.)
Two thoughts:
Isn’t the alleged Ropen, of New Guinea, frequently described as black, with bat-like wings and exhibiting some type of bioluminescent glow?
Also, no mention of Rock Apes…?
P.S. @ mandors: I think you’re right on the money, here.
Mandors: experiments were indeed done on troops in ‘Nam, with the powerful hallucinogen BZ. This was alluded to in the fictional Tim Robbins film Jacob’s Ladder (1990).
Several years ago, a subject like this came up about the crypto-beasts, here on Cryptomundo, that inhabited Vietnam. They were reported during the war. I’ll write a similar response to the one I wrote back then.
My buddy was involved in several “search and destroy” missions during the Vietnam war. These missions frequently occurred deep within the jungles of Vietnam and elsewhere.
On many of these occasions, the unit had encountered, what they called, “rock apes.” These were bipedal ape-like creatures that threw rocks at the unit as it passed through the rock-apes territory. The rock-apes gained their name because when a unit of the military was in their presence, the apes literally pelted the unit with rocks.
Initially, they thought that the apes were VC, or Viet Cong, as they became known, and actually attempted to engage them in actual combat. The rock-apes always fled into the jungle, and even the best trackers in that unit could never follow them.
As this happened more and more frequently, the rock apes would begin to show themselves as they rained down rocks on his unit. Many of the soldiers wanted to kill the apes because they were a nuisance, but the strictest silence had to be observed, less any errant discharge of weapons give away the units position. So all of these soldiers had to endure the bombardment of rocks thrown by the apes until they had passed through their territory. After all, they did not want to give their positions away to the enemy.
He told me that on virtually every patrol out into the bush, they would encounter these rock throwing apes, and because they were so common, no one ever thought to get a picture of them or whatever. At least that he knew of, anyway. They all assumed that these apes were well known to science because they were everywhere.
Whether this is true or not, I do not know. I can only relay the story from a Vietnam vet, who thought very little of the presence of rock-apes because, in his words, “Everyone knew about them.”
This is one Crypto story that I have always been interested in, and if anyone can give me any insight into this phenomenon, I would love to hear about it.
And so it goes!