Sighting near Fraser Hill in the late 1950’s – 60s

[Anonymous]

Extracted passage:

Which reminds me, there was a family friend who once saw a very curious creature along the same stretch of road.

It was early one morning and the sun had already risen, but the days was still young, and Bernand was on his way down from Fraser’s Hill after spending the weekend there with his family. The later were staying on at “Fraser’s” for a few extra days and Bernard was alone, driving unhurriedly along, when his attention was suddenly caught by the sight of a strange animal standing upright on a dead branch, a hundred yards or so from the road.

He stopped the car for a better look and was able to note that the creature, which was covered in thick dark hair, was anthropoid in form, but very much larger than a siamang (gibbon). Moreover, its posture was erect, rather than stooped, as if bipedal locomotion was its normal gait. Bernard looked at the creature and the creature looked at Bernard. After a few minutes, Bernard got back in the car and went on his way, very much regretting the fact that he had left his binoculars with his family.

Now Bernard was a straightforward, no-nonsense Yorshireman, and though he might occasionally have liked a drink or two, this was a bright and sunny morning and he was on his way to work after a relaxing weekend in the mountains. Nor was he the sort of person to spin a yarn. Indeed he was, for the most part, a fairly taciturn sort of fellow who only told my mother about the sighting because he knew that she was interested in such things.

So what exactly did Bernard see? There are no orang utans outside of zoos in the Malay Peninsula, and anyway the animal was more hominid than simian. As it happens, in those days alleged sightings of tis mysterious creature were quite common. Indeed, one often read about them in the newspaper – an Indian rubber tapper making his morning rounds would catch sight of a strange figure, like a man but unclothed and extremely hairy, flitting through the shadows in the half-light of early dawn. Sometimes it was a couple, the female with an infant at her breast, but always they slipped silently away into the forest, half-real, half imagined, watching from just beyong the margins of civilsation, an alter ego that may have been entirely chimerical, or maybe not.

Extracted from One for the Road and other stories by Julian Davison – a personal record of what life was like in Singapore and Malaya in the late 1950s and 60s.

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Julian Davison is a writer and historian with an avid interest in Singapore and Malaysia

[Author]

Posts

[Anonymous]

Extracted passage:

Which reminds me, there was a family friend who once saw a very curious creature along the same stretch of road.

It was early one morning and the sun had already risen, but the days was still young, and Bernand was on his way down from Fraser’s Hill after spending the weekend there with his family. The later were staying on at “Fraser’s” for a few extra days and Bernard was alone, driving unhurriedly along, when his attention was suddenly caught by the sight of a strange animal standing upright on a dead branch, a hundred yards or so from the road.

He stopped the car for a better look and was able to note that the creature, which was covered in thick dark hair, was anthropoid in form, but very much larger than a siamang (gibbon). Moreover, its posture was erect, rather than stooped, as if bipedal locomotion was its normal gait. Bernard looked at the creature and the creature looked at Bernard. After a few minutes, Bernard got back in the car and went on his way, very much regretting the fact that he had left his binoculars with his family.

Now Bernard was a straightforward, no-nonsense Yorshireman, and though he might occasionally have liked a drink or two, this was a bright and sunny morning and he was on his way to work after a relaxing weekend in the mountains. Nor was he the sort of person to spin a yarn. Indeed he was, for the most part, a fairly taciturn sort of fellow who only told my mother about the sighting because he knew that she was interested in such things.

So what exactly did Bernard see? There are no orang utans outside of zoos in the Malay Peninsula, and anyway the animal was more hominid than simian. As it happens, in those days alleged sightings of tis mysterious creature were quite common. Indeed, one often read about them in the newspaper – an Indian rubber tapper making his morning rounds would catch sight of a strange figure, like a man but unclothed and extremely hairy, flitting through the shadows in the half-light of early dawn. Sometimes it was a couple, the female with an infant at her breast, but always they slipped silently away into the forest, half-real, half imagined, watching from just beyong the margins of civilsation, an alter ego that may have been entirely chimerical, or maybe not.

Extracted from One for the Road and other stories by Julian Davison – a personal record of what life was like in Singapore and Malaya in the late 1950s and 60s.

---

Julian Davison is a writer and historian with an avid interest in Singapore and Malaysia

[Author]

Posts