The Vietnam War is in full swing, and back home in the USA hordes of civilians are protesting
the US's involvement in what's seen as a pointless war almost every day.
The government pushes back against these protests, stating that it's important to cut off communism
wherever possible before it spreads like a plague.
For twelve men on patrol deep in the jungles of South Vietnam though, none of this matters.
What matters now is their own lives.
It's near dusk, and the men are cautiously making their way through thick jungle back
to their firebase.
They're not far now, only two or three miles away, but are wary of running into an enemy
ambush.
The Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies have taken to hitting American patrols on
the way back, when the men are exhausted after hours fighting the jungle and being eaten
alive by mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies.
Suddenly a rifle opens up, and then a dozen more.
The GIs hit the ground and return fire.
A quick heads up reveals that no one's been hit.
It's hard to see the enemy, but it's getting dark enough that muzzle blasts reveal each
shooter's position- the men must be careful to kill their target without being killed
in return.
In the midst of the firefight one of the American soldiers suddenly notices a large hulking
figure, which he had assumed was a big bush, stand up and immediately flee across the battlefield.
The creature is impressive, clearly at least seven feet tall and with a body that's pure
muscle.
Thick, matted fur- not, not fur, it's hair- covers the creature's entire body as it crosses
the jungle in huge bounding steps.
The American is in shock and briefly forgets all about the ongoing firefight.
On the other side of the battlefield there's an alarmed cry from the Viet Cong fighters
and the firing dies off briefly.
The enemy soldiers shout a word over and over again and suddenly one of them fires on the
creature.
Several American soldiers see the creature get struck by enemy fire, roar, but keep on
going!
The Viet Cong are in a near full panic now and begin to retreat, allowing the Americans
to flee the ambush.
The next morning the American GIs relate their encounter to their commanding officer and
ask for permission to investigate the ambush site.
Working their way back to the battlefield, the men quickly identify the location of the
firefight, and where the beast was originally seen.
As they search they make a grisly discovery- an enemy Viet Cong soldier lays dead, a frozen
look of horror still on his face.
The body has been mutilated, practically ripped apart, and there's not a single bullet wound
on it.
This encounter is not new to American forces operating out of Vietnam though, and the locals
quickly inform the soldiers that what they encountered was a creature they have known
of for generations- the Batutut, Ujit, or Nguoi Rung, otherwise known as the jungle
people.
These creatures have been known by the locals to inhabit the deep jungles of Vietnam and
Southeast Asia, exactly the places that have now been turned into battlefields.
Initially American troops quickly make allusions to the Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, of North America.
By the time of the Vietnam War Bigfoot mania was already sweeping the United States.
Tracks of a giant biped humanoid had been discovered in Northern California at a construction
site a few years ago, and tales of the elusive Sasquatch had begun to flood the media as
witnesses, silent for years for fear of ridicule, begin to come forward with their tales.
Experts claim that the creature is a hoax, and that no such great ape could possibly
still be living in North America without being discovered, and yet the footprint evidence
continues to pour in from all across the nation, and eyewitness accounts along with them.
Strangely, the creature seems to not be uniform in size or even appearance across North America,
with witnesses in the north and west of the continent describing it as having black or
reddish fur, while witnesses in the south of the United States describing it as having
light brown to reddish fur.
What is intriguing is that the descriptions of the beast, and even the tracks photographed
or collected as plaster casts, all seem to fit the general geographic description of
the mystery animal.
Could all these people be in on one big hoax?
These Rock Apes though, as the GIs begin to call them, couldn't be more different than
the Sasquatch of back home.
These mystery apes stand about six feet tall (1.8 m), a full foot to two feet shorter than
the North American bigfoot, and their fur is brown and black like a sasquatch but bare
in the knees, the soles of the feet, hands, and the face, more akin to an orangutan or
a chimpanzee.
Behaviorally, they couldn't be further from the North American bigfoot.
While American sasquatches are widely said to be gentle, even shy creatures who rarely
ever act aggressively, these rock apes are highly aggressive and bold creatures, often
charging straight at humans who trespass into their territory.
With their powerfully muscled bodies, the result of being caught by one of these creatures
is perhaps best evidenced by the sorry condition of the Viet Cong fighter the American soldiers
in our opening story discovered.
Much like Bigfoot though, the rock apes are said to be active at night or at dusk, which
could help to explain why they are so rarely ever seen- and why they've avoided scientific
detection.
Unlike Bigfoot though rock apes are known to travel in pairs, while Bigfoot is rarely
ever spotted in a group.
With a jungle full of dangers though perhaps it's no surprise that rock apes see a need
to travel in groups.
Sightings of rock apes were surprisingly common throughout fighting in Vietnam, by both sides
of the conflict.
One NVA general became obsessed with capturing a specimen alive and even ordered a hunting
party be formed, though most of the soldiers and locals were too terrified of the animal
to ever approach one willingly.
It would be American soldiers who nicknamed the creature the rock apes for the way that
the animals would hurl back rocks thrown at them, and on several occasions, even live
grenades!
Skeptics claimed that American troops were simply seeing orangutans and misidentifying
them in the thick jungle, except that while orangutans did once inhabit Vietnam, they
went extinct there thousands of years ago.
Another candidate for the rock ape was the gibbon, which was native to Vietnam and inhabits
the area in large numbers.
The sheer size disparity between a rock ape standing nearly six feet tall and a gibbon
which can weigh as much as twenty pounds though makes this highly unlikely.
The unsettling conclusion may simply be that at least some rock ape sightings were real,
and not the result of misidentification.
The creatures were at least real enough and spotted often enough that one hill where they
were frequently sighted ended up being called monkey hill by the Americans.
Interestingly, the creatures were never spotted in the jungles near the coastal areas, or
close to civilization, and instead only in the deepest parts of the Vietnamese jungle.
This perhaps explains why the animals were so fearless towards humans- their extreme
isolation in the deepest jungles would have rarely ever brought them into contact with
humans, aside from the few villagers living extremely isolated lives.
Seeing as prior to the war no sizable human presence had ever entered these jungles for
long, it's perhaps not surprising that combatants on both sides might have stumbled across an
entirely unknown great ape species.
The encounters would continue to pour in throughout the war though, and sometimes with a very
large amount of eyewitnesses.
One encounter as told by soldiers of the 101st Airborne, details an encounter between a troop
of rock apes and an entire infantry platoon that was settling in to a quick lunch.
Apparently the apes were suddenly spotted breaking clear of the jungle and advancing
along a trail on the ridge of Nui Mo Tau, a large hill that would end up being the site
of the Battle of Phu Loc.
The American infantry immediately thought the figures were viet cong and opened fire
with M16s, machine guns and even grenade launchers.
The figures quickly fled into the jungle.
Unlike a normal animal though, these rock apes appeared to rush through the trees almost
as if waiting for a break in the gunfire to charge the American troops, even stepping
out briefly to howl and flash huge fanged teeth at them.
The creatures also let loose with howls and barks, much like angry dogs- a behavior that
is common to many apes and even attributed to the North American sasquatch.
Eventually the soldiers realized they were not firing at people and ceased their fire,
and as the animals retreated they searched the area but found no bodies.
Another incredible account relates the story of a full-blown battle between rock apes and
American marines.
Taking place on Hill 868 in Quang Nam Province, the battle began with a unit of Marines deep
in the jungle radioing back to their HQ that they had spotted movement in the jungle near
their position.
The Marines- likely a patrol made up around thirty men total- were told to hold their
position and not give themselves away, simply observe the enemy's movements and radio back.
After a few minutes, the Marines nervously radioed back stating that they had been surrounded
by what looked like hairy, bipedal humanoid creatures.
Likely assuming the creatures were nothing more than the gibbons so common in the area,
the Marines were told to simply toss rocks at them in order to scare them away.
Upon throwing rocks though, the creatures became enraged and began tossing rocks back
at the men.
Suddenly what sounded like a pitched battle was heard over the radio, complete with men
yelling, inhuman screams, and the sounds of gunfire.
A patrol sent to reinforce the Marine unit discovered a battlefield littered with several
corpses of rock apes, along with many injured Marines.
This account however relies entirely on eyewitness testimony, as no evidence of these rock apes
was ever recovered.
The veracity of this particular tale is in serious question, though given the nature
of the fighting in Vietnam it may come as no surprise that nobody took the time to try
and recover a body.
Still, such a stunning incident should come with more hard evidence than scattered eyewitness
testimony, and for us we're willing to file this story away as a possible tall tale.
Hard evidence for the rock ape wouldn't appear until 1974, a year before the end of the Vietnam
War.
With both sides reporting the existence of the creature, Professor Vo Quy of Vietnam
National University decided to lead a North Vietnamese expedition into the jungle to search
for it.
While he never discovered a real rock ape, he did photograph and make plaster prints
of extremely curious tracks.
The tracks were said by locals to have been formed by the Batutu, a creature that they
had shared stories of for generations.
Curiously, the print, much like many Bigfoot prints, shows features that are strikingly
similar to apes, while being much larger than that of any known ape.
As has been said of many Bigfoot prints thought to be authentic, if these were hoaxed then
they would have to have been hoaxed by someone with detailed knowledge of ape physiology.
Sightings of the rock ape continue to this day, and though no hard evidence has been
gathered, perhaps the best evidence for the existence of these creatures is the sheer
amount of reported sightings.
Then there's also the fact that these are creatures believed to be real flesh and blood
animals by locals, rather than mythical spirits or animals of legend.
Skeptics point to a lack of remains or physical evidence as reason to doubt its existence,
and yet these are the same skeptics who were stunned in the early 1990s by the discovery
of the Saola- an animal described as an 'asian unicorn'.
(use photo)
The Saola was spoken of by natives for generations too, and yet science denied its existence
until a body was finally found in 1992.
Since then the animal has been officially classified and is considered one of the rarest
mammals in the world.
Perhaps if a large mammal like the Saola can lurk in the deepest jungles undiscovered for
thousands of years, then so too can an equally rare and terrifying beast such as the Vietnamese
Yeti- the legendary rock ape.
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