The Elusive Creature
Deep in the forests of Sumatra, there is said to be a mysterious creature known as the ‘orang pendek’ (which is Indonesian for ‘short person’). It is said to be covered in an orange-shade fur and walks on two legs, whilst carrying similar mannerisms to the orangutan. It is said to be between 80 and 150cm in height, meaning if you saw one out and about, it’s unlikely you’d mistake it for a human being (although my aunty is pretty damn short).
Several people have described different variations in appearance but all have labelled it as the “orang pendek”.
Sightings
This elusive creature (or possibly creatures) have been sighted as far back as the 1920s by both colonisers and natives, however as recently as 2017, a group of motorcyclists videoed a small creature running out in front of them and surprising them to the extent that one of the cyclists actually crashed his bike.
They continued to chase it down the path until it ran into the long grass and they lost sight of it.
You can watch the video on the History Channel’s YouTube below:
Centre for Fortean Zoology Expedition
Last year the Centre for Fortean Zoology including Richard Freeman and company went on an expedition in Sumatra to find the orang pendek.
This was a delicate operation as Sumatra finds many people visiting in order to hunt the creature and as such those hunting in national parks are often subject to extortion and bribery by park rangers. Luckily Richard’s group had a local guide who knew where to take them outside of the national parks.
The group spoke to a man who had been pig-hunting in 1981 when he saw an orang pendek and claimed that people in his village often heard its weird, high-pitched laugh. They thought it was a ghost. Another man came across a group of orang pendek stealing rice from the village cooking pots, again in 1981. The man’s friend killed one of the creatures and the rest immediately set upon him, killing him too.
Reports of the orang pendek’s appearance vary, with some stating the more commonly known orange-fur, walking on two legs, whilst others are described as having long hair on the head but otherwise being human formed and naked. One witness described seeing a creature “frolicking in the water” and stated it was “white and hairless, no eyebrows, like a oversized strong baby”. He claimed it ran away laughing. Image that. The stuff of nightmares indeed.
Richard’s full article can be read over at Fortean Times and if you’re really into the strange and unusual, it’s definitely worth the subscription.
Could it be Real?
Whilst the video above that the motorcyclists recorded is not great quality, all we have to go on is that single video and the word of a few glimpses from people who claimed to have seen it. The video is allegedly not a fake, although that’s not to say that it doesn’t show a rare, undiscovered native tribe who remain isolated from society, such as the Mante Tribe.
It’s not too far-fetched to suggest that this creature could exist in its own right, as let’s face it, when the Lord of the Rings came out, we all thought Hobbits were just made-up by the mind of a genius. Years later, skeletons were discovered in Flores, Indonesia in a cave, and the skeletons were just over one metre tall with small skulls and for all intents and purposes, were real-life (albeit massively extinct) Hobbits.
We are discovering new things constantly, and I’m sure the first person to discover a beluga whale probably shit themselves and swam away terrified, although now we know what they are, they’re pretty cute and a whole lot of awesome.
That’s not to say that this isn’t all just a massive case of misidentification and all people have been seeing for decades is genuinely an elusive clan, rather than an elusive cryptid.
I guess until all the tribes who are living away from society brave the world and come out and talk to us (and probably end up turning into woke, self-hating-sheep who are glued to mobile phones) we’ll never know for sure.
But given the state of the world at the moment, maybe I’ll ask if I can join them…
The M.O Podcast 