Transcript
Ben (0:32)
It.
Brian (1:06)
The forest dripped with stifling humidity. It was midday, but the thick canopy of leaves above gave the world beneath it an eerie feel as of a bad dream. Forest creatures grunted occasionally in the distance, and branches randomly rustled overhead from birds bouncing across them. In that dark place, though, the birds did not seem like lively things, and their songs did not lighten the hearts of the men on the ground. They seemed instead like stalking shadow figures lingering just outside of one's field of vision, informing other stalkers of where they could find prey. The men sat ragged and pouring sweat in the damp soil. Six men all leaning back onto each other and facing outwards, rifles at the ready as always. They'd been hauling their rucks through the dense jungle for two days already, behind enemy lines and free from any spot where they could make safe contact with their outpost if they needed to. Six men from the 101st Airborne. Six men sent to die for their country in the black jungles of Vietnam. For all the tension that hung as an ever present threat in the air, the forest then was peaceful for the men, but it was a deceptive peace, and they knew it. Hence the tension. Each soldier felt as though he walked through an ancient and overgrown temple of pagan worship to a wicked deity who always lusted for blood. They had walked for miles with the heavy packs and would have preferred to keep walking, but the rest was necessary. So they sat uneasy and vigilant, constantly wiping sweat that pooled around their eyes into that quiet. A clatter started to rise from a thick grove of brush some 50 yards up the hill in front of them. They leapt to their feet and spraying for what little cover the trees and deadfall could offer them. Once hidden, they glanced at each other in confusion. The Viet Cong would not make such a noise, but the Northern army would make far more noise. What, they wondered, was this new devilry? And then, almost in slow motion, something sprang from the brush towards them as if shot from a cannon. It was dark like everything else, with patches of pale making it traceable through the air. The last thoughts of girlfriends and wives and children fled the men's minds, and they watched this thing land now 15 yards before them. It uncoiled itself from its landing like a snake, and soon stood tall, bipedal and robed in thick black hair. The feet, the knees, the hands and face were all just bare skin, and in that face, the men swore they saw something more than mere beast. Perhaps not a man, but perhaps not too much. Less the look of premeditated aggression. A face of vengeance was enough to tell them that this was not just a forgotten animal thus far missed by mankind. And as they each processed this in the moment, the sounds of coral whooping rang out from the darkness behind the creature. And more of the same things as this other one flew from the brush to join him in staring down the soldiers. What followed was the chaos of pure terror. Each man, seeing this team of foes for what it was that they had to be standing before them, simultaneously formulated the same plan of action. Open fire. Their rifles sang their rhythmic beating, and hot steel plunged through the still air like a swarm of bees attacking these strange guests. Thuds of bullets hitting flesh joined the cacophony, and the beings began to flinch ever backwards in pain. They yelled and whooped more in high pitches, shrieks. And so the soldiers thought. Some of the creatures looked to his mate next to him with pitiful expressions, as if longing for pity and help. It was all too uncanny. Too human, but yet not human enough. Still, despite the storm of bullets continuing to pour on them, none of the creatures fell. They merely seemed inconvenienced, comparatively, in the way a stubbed toe might inconvenience a toddler into thinking his life's journey is over. They retreated back into the thick and darkest parts of the forest as the gunfire ceased and echoed its last booms through the trees. All was especially quiet now. No more birds above, no more animals afar, no rustling leaves, only branches softly bending or snapping beneath the feet of the soldiers as they marched forward, still withdrawn weapons, to examine where the strange beings had been. There they found nothing but drops of blood here and there, and the tracks of what could have been dragging feet. Not many words were shared. Some spoke of Vietnam not having a known ape population. Others responded to this, that whatever those things were, they were not ordinary apes. But after those comments and others like them, the men glanced at each other, turned, and continued their march deeper into the wilderness. But if no more words were said, it was not for lack of thought given. Each man pondered over the event time and time again, wondering occasionally aloud but under his breath, what those things could have been, how they were not dead, where they all came from so suddenly, and where they all went to more suddenly still. But this was just one encounter among the many that soldiers from every side of the Vietnam War had with the so called rock apes in the Vuquang Mountains. Those places in the world which lie far to the east tend to also lie in a conceptual place of shadow. To us in the west, they are dense, forested places, dark places, places battered like toys by the wars of the 20th century, but places with untold histories of violence from ancient days that have been forgotten. There are places which spark a kind of claustrophobic and helpless imagination. Make no mistake, the beauty these countries contain Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma is indescribably vast. But their mystery at least equals their beauty. Where you see an ocean of green untouched by industry, you also see a world of unknown below the trees, a world full of legends waiting to be discovered if we dare. Where we see ribbons of blue and green and gray, left to their courses since the dawn of time. You also see peril and primordial memory that has not been whitewashed by the modern, rational man. And so, while they are and seem lovely places to observe from afar or from the comfort of the resort, here and there they become treacherous places that feel inhospitable to man once he is up close to them. For outside of the pictures and outside of the walls of the resorts, they are wilderness. Man was meant to tame wilderness. But we're out of practice. Where better men might have seen a playful challenge to win glory for God and country. In the darkness, we tend to only see threat, and we tend to only respond with retreat and unease. And one place encapsulates and maximizes all of these feelings at the same time. Tucked into an almost complete, unknown corner of the earth, upon the borders of Cambodia and Laos, sits the western mountains of Vietnam's Kon Tum province. Inside of it, we all sense are wonders beyond reckoning and perils beyond prediction. But what if I told you that this place, this alien place, holds some secrets that we in the west are far too familiar with already? What happens when lore repeats itself the world over, and in ways to the people of that place, does it then become something a bit more than lore to us? For generations before the latter half of the 20th century, the few rural families who lived in the remote region of Khon Tomb spoke in whispers about a strange group of entities they called the Ngoy Rim, the People of the Forest. Their oral traditions told of how they had been found by the first people to dwell in the mountains. How they vacillated between friend and foe and something somewhere in between. How they were neither human nor beast, and how sometimes they seemed to stretch the limits of what a thing ought to do in a purely seen world. These rural tribes never lost their stalwart belief in this race of creature. How could they deny what they had seen themselves? But it wasn't until the Vietnam War that the rest of the world started to listen to them with more sincerity. The story which opened this show, as we said, is just one among many that recount the terrible interactions soldiers on all sides of the Vietnam War had with these creatures. When the war began, patrols and entire squadrons were forced to map and subdue areas of the forest there, which had seldom been touched by any human being ever. It meant finding new things and new fears to guard against in the midst of war. Then there was also the opportunity to explore the edges of the world and to push man's knowledge of his home to new limits. So when soldiers came back from the forest with shaky voices telling stories about hairy ape men attacking them in the mountains, both sides decided that the proper response was to press further in. A professor named Voi Koo of the Vietnam National University was sent into the Kon Tum wild for an investigation with a small team to assist him. For days they made slow progress through the dense growth, through rivers and over high ridgelines, looking for signs of the elusive Ngoi Ru. They never knew if they could do anything to attract the beasts. They never knew if maybe they were already being stalked by them the entire time. The dense, still air of those forests is already uncanny. It's not a leap for a traveler through them to think himself not alone. But their perseverance eventually paid off. After a morning of heavy rain, they walked near to a riverbank in the afternoon. When Kwi found a single footprint between the water's edge and the layer of scree that led to the trees, it was akin to the bare footprint of a large human. At first glance, of course, the few villagers that still lived in those forests tended not to have people that were very large in stature. And so Kwie made quick work of casting the footprint in plaster before more rain could come to wash it away. Upon returning to the university, the footprint was analyzed by a team of higher level scientists still led by Quie. It was found to be wider than the human footprint, but still smaller than the print of an ape, any known species of ape, at least. After this, the trail of actual data went cold. Despite sightings by soldiers and locals continuing to take place, there eventually came to be a stark contrast in how the eyewitnesses though of these creatures and how the scientists saw them. The witnesses continually attributed a level of terror to these things, which seemed to the more rational interested parties to outpace what the creature would warrant if it was actually real. The scientists wondered how scary and angry and strong and tall a chimpanzee really could be. But they had not seen them. They did not really know. In 1982, more prints were discovered. And 10 years later, a man named John MacKinnon discovered three new mammalian species in the mountains around Kontum. These findings gave new life to the scientific possibility of these so called apemen. And yet, the eyewitness account tells a different story. Not a different one, mind you, but a deeper one. What if, like our own Western Bigfoot, there is more to these creatures than first meets the eye? In December of 1964, an American PBR, that's a river patrol boat, sped through the glassy waters of the Mekong Valley in the fog of early morning. It was the dawn patrol, something the men were familiar with, but were not ever very excited about. The Mekong was like a house of mirrors in the morning fog. One could never tell how quick the next turn may come into view, or how fast. The boat would have to stop at a dead end of some tributary delta. Additionally, the thick forest that began right at the water's edge, like the moon's albedo, could always be hiding a Viet Cong force ready for a breakfast fight. The men were therefore on high alert with guns at the ready. And everything which seemed even slightly out of place caused at least one of the men to excitedly jerk his head toward it. A bird flying fast off a branch left bouncing a fish top water feeding a swirling wind that gusted the fog before the boat into spirals like a portal drawing into some devilish world. All the while, the sun was still shrouded behind light gray clouds. As they journeyed, one man started to squint his eyes and lean ever so slightly forward, as if to see something far off in the haze. A small light, or so he thought, not unlike the bright lamp that was attached to the top of his own boat, was shining above the water some hundreds of yards ahead. Without looking away, he slapped the man next to him and pointed. His friends stared keenly too, and saw the same thing. One by one. As they approached, the rest of the men studied this now almost pulsating light that was still veiled ahead of them. But after only a few seconds more, they broke out of the densest fog and were able to see more clearly what they actually raced towards. The thing or things were off to their left on the water before a small clay cliff that rose up to the forest floor at the river's edge. They were not standing on some stones, though. The things were floating about a foot above the river's surface. Three things or beings that appeared in the forms of hulking men between 7 and 8ft tall, covered in thickly matted black hair everywhere save the face, hands, knees and feet, they seemed to take little heed of the approaching American patrol, instead maintaining their posture of upright and pointed up towards the heavens in some sort of salutation. Their glow became brighter as the boat drifted closer, pulsing with increasing luminosity and blinding the men, forcing them to close or shield their eyes. What monsters were these? The men had already heard of the rock apes, but they had not heard of them flying and glowing and being quite as tall as these ones. Panicked, the men on the boat opened fire on the three creatures, finally forcing them to look in their direction. The bullets sliced through the lights and slammed hard into the fey flesh. The thumping sound of the impact between bullet and beast was almost surreal, like the meeting of metal that was less than real, absorbed into muscle that was somehow more than real, all encased in a sea of light still pouring from the creatures that was thick like syrup and brilliantly golden. The creatures, apart from looking at the boat, merely flinched with each shot that hit them. Their flat faces showed no emotion, but their jewel like eyes turned from mammalian to reptilian, sparkling with the new colors and turning upright in their sockets. The Americans took this from malice and kept firing at will. But nothing else happened. Finally, the soldiers stopped their attack and found, once the smoke cleared, that the beings still floated before them in the same aura of light. But then, as if marshaled by the thought of the creatures, they watched in horror as more of the same things, monsters walked to the edge of the forest to see them. Everyone glowed like that first three. Everyone was at least a full head taller than the tallest man they had on the boat. The driver didn't wait for orders. He turned a hard 180 degrees and raced back into the fog from whence they'd come back to their docks. In the fall of 1967, deep inside the jungles on the eastern border of the Vietnamese dmz, another six man reconnaissance group began the end of their mission by turning near the border of Laos to head back west. Despite days in the deepest parts of the jungle, they had encountered no Viet Cong guerrillas or North Vietnamese special forces. Consequently, they felt relatively fresh for the return journey, still having plenty of rations remaining and no wounded men to tend to. Unfortunately, they felt too easy. They started the day early and plodded steadily through the trees, lashing through the undergrowth and pouring sweat that soaked deep into their heavy rocks. As the day wore on, the forest became more alive. Deafening bugs rattled their calls out from all over, and the canopy only made the sound echo again and again around them. This masked their own noisy marching enough to have them walk up on a family of snub nosed monkeys and later, even a black bear. Both ran off right away. But it was shocking to the team that all six men had been able to see both marvels. Animals that normally kept far out of the range of anyone, especially soldiers. The men even had to raise their voices slightly to speak with one another over the deafening sounds of the bugs. Birds called loudly overhead. They felt for the first time that they were seeing the forest as it is. When war is not near at hand. It lightened the mood all the more and gave the team a sense of security. But that security was not to last. After crossing a river and walking another hundred yards or so into the ridge of the opposite bank, the entire jungle went eerily quiet. In an instant, gone were the bugs and birds. Gone even was the sound of the rushing water they felt sure they could have heard a few yards previously. It actually made the men stop dead in their tracks in unison. The collective instinct made it clear to each part of the group that something was terribly wrong. Furtive and soft steps waded forward, and when the leader brushed the next leafy branch away from his sight line, everyone understood why the silence had fallen. Standing in a small clearing, shadowed heavily by the forest roof, there stood a sort of humanoid thing. It stood on two legs comfortably and held its face upturned to the sky, as if it alone could see the sun and blue and clouds beyond the black ceiling. When the final man stepped through the corridor of brush, the being slowly turned his face down to face the men. He was glowing. A soft but incredibly rich, almost pastel gold. The light was coming from the thing, and it seemed as though bits of the light itself could be seen floating just off the hair that covered the creature, like a sort of pixie dust. All six men marked the uncanny image before him. This eight foot tall hairy monster that looked like a man. The tall face stretched thin like taffy, with large beady black eyes at its top. But then the image faded into disarray. The leading man raised his rifle in a flash and fired a single shot right at the surrealist's face. And all watched as the bullet ripped into the side of the creature's head, spraying a slimy and glowing blue blood onto the foliage around it. Yet the creature seemed unbothered. He merely turned and ran, not in a panic, but not slowly either, into the deeper trees until the shadows took him. Why? The men felt compelled to look up where the Creature had been staring, none could say. But they did. There, through a hole in the canopy through which little sunlight came, each man was able to describe three orbs flying high in the heavens, dancing in and out of one another in quick patterns of stop motion. The men looked until each orb darted off into the vastness of space, away from them, and they were alone again. The noises slowly returned, and not a word was shared by the team until days later, they were back at their headquarters. Only two of those men made it back to their homes. Join us in this episode of Haunted Cosmos as we make our own walk through the dimly lit wilderness of Vietnam, wondering and investigating. Why is this such a strange place? And why, it seems, did this nasty war fought there bring so much strangeness out of the cracks into the visible light of our world?