Spotlight: Supernatural sightings?
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New Straits Times » Focus
Spotlight: Supernatural sightings?
09 Jul 2006If a toyol is bothering you, or your neighbourhood is being terrorised by a jin, who do you call? No, not the ghostbusters but the P-Team.
THEY are a team like no other and their members are made up of religious teachers and healers from Malaysia and neighbouring countries.
They are the paranormal team, but unlike the A-Team or the SWAT team, their job is rather unique.
Believe it or not, they deal with beings and happenings not many would want to encounter, in the seen and unseen world.
According to ustaz Safuan Abu Bakar, the team has captured beings ranging from mermaids, toyols and jins to the legendary Bigfoot that is making a name for itself in Johor.
Safuan said the P-Team had tracked down and captured a Bigfoot about six-foot tall in Cambodia three years ago.
“We will be bringing it down for an exhibition here as soon as we have enough money to make the transport arrangements,” promised Safuan, 48.
“The team members come from Malaysia and neighbouring countries like Indonesia and Cambodia and we go wherever we are needed.”
While most people would brush off these beings as mere myths, Safuan said he has encountered enough of these beings to know they are real.
“Take mermaids, for example. Whatever lives on land lives in the sea, too.
“There are lions and horses on land, so there are also sea lions and horses. Mermaids are like women who live in the sea.”
How did the P-Team manage to capture a mermaid? Safuan said they tracked it down in a neighbouring country using mandram (magic) and yellow rice to draw it to the surface.
“Everyone knows of mermaids but most of the time, these creatures are portrayed as beautiful young women. But we have yet to see one that fits this description.”
A mermaid, he explained, is “born” maybe once in a thousand years.
Safuan said the mermaid on display at the exhibition looks the same as it did when it was captured.
“An Australian wanted to buy it for RM300,000, but we cannot sell something as rare and special as this.”
Safuan said the paranormal team was formed in 1993 and its latest mission was to capture a jin two months ago.
“During our missions, many of us have had bizarre and unexplainable experiences. But we pray and meditate before embarking on our missions and so far, none of us has been harmed.
“Most of us are also vegetarians and undergo a lot of spiritual preparation.”
Safuan said the most common supernatural being the team has encountered is the toyol.
“Recently, a village was terrorised by a toyol and we assisted them in capturing the creature.
“The funny thing is when a toyol steals from a person’s wallet, it would not take all the money, unlike a human who would steal everything.”
Safuan said all the exhibits were real and he welcomed any scientist or interested party to conduct experiments to prove they were not genuine.
“We have X-rays and DNA results to support our claims. Besides, some exhibits till today still emit the same smell as they did when we captured them.
“There are beings in the seen and unseen world. For those who don’t believe… it’s up to them.”
‘Mermaid’ a crowd puller
AMONG the top draw at the “Genies, Ghosts and Coffins” exhibition is the ikan duyung (mermaid) which was captured off the coast of a neighbouring country several years ago.
The creature has the head and upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish, and it is believed to be two to three years old.
This creature symbolises a bond between land and sea creatures.
Another draw is the langsuir, which is said to be the flying vampire of Malaysia and can be only captured by those with strong spiritual powers.
It is said that a woman becomes such a creature if she dies in childbirth, or from the shock of hearing that her child is stillborn.
The Nyi Belorong or Nyai Blorong is represented as a beautiful female with the lower part of the body of a snake. The creature seduces the weak, especially men craving for riches.
It is commonly known as the snake demoness of wealth.
The jenglot is said to have existed before the dawn of man and has the same DNA and bone structure as humans. The creature is said to exist in China, Peru, Chile and Indonesia.
Other exhibits include the toyol, which was caught trying to steal money from a man’s wallet, and a jin, which has the ability to transform into various forms.
Scary fascination
CURIOSITY and a fascination for the supernatural world is attracting thousands to the “Genies, Ghosts and Coffins” exhibition at the Sultan Alam Shah Museum in Shah Alam.
Most of the visitors said they heard of the exhibition from friends and were curious to know what a toyol and jin looked like.
“My friend, who visited the exhibition, told me it was scary, so I decided to see it for myself,” said Razman Mohd Amin, 32, who was at the exhibition with his friends.
He said the exhibit that fascinated him the most was the ikan duyung (mermaid).
“I have never seen anything like it. It is unbelievable.”
Australians Michael and Susan Mitchell said they were visiting several spots in Shah Alam and chanced upon the exhibition.
“It’s really cool. We have never seen anything like this before,” said Michael.
“If these creatures are real, then they should be exhibited around the world.”
In Australia, he said the only supernatural beings talked about are vampires and werewolves.
“We were told that various kinds of supernatural beings existed in Asian countries. It is really fascinating to actually see them.”
N E W S Monday July 10, 2006
Hundreds turn up to see mummified mermaid
SHAH ALAM: They came by the hundreds to the small hall wanting to see for themselves what they had read in books and seen in movies.
At the “Genies, Ghost, Coffin?” exhibition at Museum Sultan Alam Shah, a mummified mermaid has caught the imagination of the visitors.
Encased in glass, the exhibit is half-a-metre long with hair and scales on its body and the tail of a fish.
IS IT REAL?: A visitor admiring what is said to be the mummified mermaid at an exhibition held at the Museum Sultan Abdul Alam Shah in Selangor.
The mermaid’s owner, Safuan Abu Bakar, is adamant that the exhibit is real.
He told The Star that he and a group of bomoh (mediums) took months to locate the mermaid “in a secret location in a neighbouring country.”
“After locating it, we performed special prayers, including throwing yellow rice into the sea, to entice the creature out,” he said.
The mermaid died when it surfaced.
A visitor, Mohd Rafi Osman, 35, said he came out of the exhibition with mixed feelings.
“I don’t know whether to believe it or not,” he said.
Azmi Baharin, 37, said it was not logical for mermaids to exist.
“If there is a female specimen, where is the male?” he asked.
Souaud, 61, was so curious of the exhibition that he brought his wife, daughter and grandchildren all the way from Kota Kinabalu.
“I’ve not seen a live one. Hearing all about them makes me want to see the real one,” said the farmer.
But the large crowd left many people disappointed.
“When there are too many people, I don’t get to see the exhibits properly,” said Chong Moon Har, 23.
Arifin Shamsudin, 40, said: “My family and I came purely for the entertainment.”
Will Redsky, 36, from the United States, who did not get to go in, said he wanted to know more of the Malaysian culture and folklores.
“In America, we have our own folklores too like (those on) Bigfoot and werewolves,” he said.
Selangor Museum Board acting director Mohd Lotfi Nazar said the exhibition, ending on Oct 4, received an overwhelming response and the museum was looking for a bigger hall to display the mermaid.
I posted this under another section, anyway reproduced here again:
fengshui remarks:
The mermaid on display looks like a fiji (feejee) mermaid, which is a hoax.
p.t. barnum was the lou pearlman of the 1800’s. without any semblance of shame, he fabricated the best entertainment the american public had ever seen. his legend lives on still 150 years later with the ever lasting popularity of his circus, and of course for his greatest hoax, the feejee mermaid.
the feejee mermaid was introduced to the world in august of 1842 when an englishman named dr. j. griffin stopped in new york claiming to have a real mermaid that had been captured near the feejee islands. he agreed to exhibit the mermaid for a week before taking it to a british museum. darwin had just introduced the theory of evolution, and the public was hungry for natural oddities. barnum purchased the “american museum” where the feejee mermaid was moved to and exihibited, becoming the number one attraction in america over the next twenty years.
the hideous creature has an uncannily wide-eyed stare. tufts of coarse hair cling to the shriveled skeleton of its head and left shoulder. only one arm remains. it bares its tiny, pointed teeth, daring anyone to voice doubts concerning its authenticity. it looked nothing like the bare-breasted maiden mermaids of the sea of which sailors told so many tales.
the “real mermaid” turned out to be the dried husk of a orangutan’s torso and baboon head sewn to a salmon’s tail. dr griffin was in fact a long-time friend of barnum’s, whose actual name was levi lyman. but that didn’t stop throngs of people from wanting to see the mermaid – even after it became public knowledge that it was a fake.
the mermaid was supposed to have burned in a museum fire in 1864 and the barnum museum created an artist’s rendition and now displays the replica. in 1992, the original mermaid was discovered at the st. bonaventure university along hidden under a stairwell. it is now displayed in their arts center. with the rise in popularity, other mermaids were fabricated and “discovered” throughout the world. the most famous of these knock-offs, known as the peabody mermaid, is currently on exhibit in harvard.
why do we continue to be fascinated by the feejee mermaid well over a century after it was revealed as a hoax? long after the death of the great entertainer p.t. barnum, people still flock to see it for themselves. the feejee mermaid may be a fake, but our fascination with it is still very real.
Source : http://www.envasion.net/2002/feejee.html
M e r m a i d s , M o n s t e r s —Q&A 1. What is the origin of the “dried mermaids” sometimes seen in sideshows and curio shops?
There is, of course, no such thing as a true “mermaid”. However, sideshow exhibitors often display small, mummified, but rather creditable-looking “mermaids”, which, it is often claimed, were captured with great difficulty in some far-off place. These “mermaids” have been manufactured for years in China and Egypt by cleverly uniting the head and torso of a dehaired monkey to the hinder portion of a fish, often the Nile perch. Such skillful works of fakery have often been sold at a handsome profit to gullible tourists as genuine mermaids.
Q&A 2. What is the sea animal which has given rise to the legends and myths about mermaids?
Probably the best of the several theories which have been proposed as explanations of the mermaid myths involves the manatees of the tropical western Atlantic and the west coast of Africa and the dugong from Oriental and Australian shores. The manatee is a large seal-like animal which lives in shallow bays in some areas along tropical American coasts. From a distance, a manatee might be confused with a swimming human, although all similarity disappears at close range. The body of the manatee is covered with fine wrinkles and is hairless except for the strong bristles which cover the two cleft lobes of the upper lip. The body ends in a broad, shovel-like, horizontal tail with rounded edges.
The dugong is very like the manatee except that the tail is forked. The mermaid stories became prevalent in Europe about the time of the early Portuguese explorations along the West African Coast and it is supposed that they were based on sightings of these animals in the shallow bays which the ships visited.Q&A 3. On a recent trip, I saw an exhibit called a “merman” in a small museum. The merman was supposedly an extinct creature that used to swim in the South China Sea. Can this be true?
San Marcus, CaliforniaNo. What you saw was a composite of various skeletons and other materials similar to the artificial mermaids built by the Japanese and described in Sea Fables Explained by Henry Lee (William Clowes & Sons, London, 1883). According to Lee, the Japanese constructed the lower half of their models from the skin and scales of a fish of the carp family. Onto it they carefully fastened an upper body of wood. The fingernails were made of ivory or bone, and the teeth were obtained from a fish. A little wool was placed on top of the head, which was shaped like that of a small monkey. Prominent ribs, thin and scraggly arms, and long skeletonlike fingers, which gave the model a miserable and half-starved appearance, completed the illusion. One of these models is illustrated in the above drawing.
Q&A 4. I purchased a 22-inch-long dried fish skeleton called a devilfish, which when displayed upright resembles a grotesque human figure. It has a humanlike “face,” two armlike appendages pulled to the side to resemble the cape of the devil, two leglike appendages, and a spiked tail. What is this strange creature?
Ingleside, IllinoisYou undoubtedly possess a “Jenny Haniver”- an imitation monster fashioned from certain species of skates, rays, and other cartilaginous fishes. Your particular specimen was most likely fashioned from a chimaera or ratfish, which has a more elongate body and a thicker tail than a similarly sized skate or ray. Manufacture of Jenny Hanivers was common in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, although specimens of recent origin are found occasionally. It is not difficult to imagine how these fakes originated, since the underside of the head of a skate, ray, and chimaera crudely resembles a human face. With a little embellishment, these fishes can be transformed into a monster. First, the mouth and the tissue on the sides of the mouth are manipulated to give it a more human appearance, and artificial eyes are inserted into the nostrils. The pectoral fins are clipped and pulled to the side to give the impression of two arms and a devil’s cape. For skates and rays, the legs are fashioned from the appendages on the pelvic fins of male fishes, whereas in chimaeras, they may be produced by splitting the tail into two “legs” and a spiked tail. Finally, after careful drying, a Jenny Haniver results.
Source: University of Miami, Rosenstiel Schoo of Marine and Atmospheric Science
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/support/lib/seas/seasQA/QAs/m/mermaids.html
-
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New Straits Times » Focus
Spotlight: Supernatural sightings?
09 Jul 2006If a toyol is bothering you, or your neighbourhood is being terrorised by a jin, who do you call? No, not the ghostbusters but the P-Team.
THEY are a team like no other and their members are made up of religious teachers and healers from Malaysia and neighbouring countries.
They are the paranormal team, but unlike the A-Team or the SWAT team, their job is rather unique.
Believe it or not, they deal with beings and happenings not many would want to encounter, in the seen and unseen world.
According to ustaz Safuan Abu Bakar, the team has captured beings ranging from mermaids, toyols and jins to the legendary Bigfoot that is making a name for itself in Johor.
Safuan said the P-Team had tracked down and captured a Bigfoot about six-foot tall in Cambodia three years ago.
“We will be bringing it down for an exhibition here as soon as we have enough money to make the transport arrangements,” promised Safuan, 48.
“The team members come from Malaysia and neighbouring countries like Indonesia and Cambodia and we go wherever we are needed.”
While most people would brush off these beings as mere myths, Safuan said he has encountered enough of these beings to know they are real.
“Take mermaids, for example. Whatever lives on land lives in the sea, too.
“There are lions and horses on land, so there are also sea lions and horses. Mermaids are like women who live in the sea.”
How did the P-Team manage to capture a mermaid? Safuan said they tracked it down in a neighbouring country using mandram (magic) and yellow rice to draw it to the surface.
“Everyone knows of mermaids but most of the time, these creatures are portrayed as beautiful young women. But we have yet to see one that fits this description.”
A mermaid, he explained, is “born” maybe once in a thousand years.
Safuan said the mermaid on display at the exhibition looks the same as it did when it was captured.
“An Australian wanted to buy it for RM300,000, but we cannot sell something as rare and special as this.”
Safuan said the paranormal team was formed in 1993 and its latest mission was to capture a jin two months ago.
“During our missions, many of us have had bizarre and unexplainable experiences. But we pray and meditate before embarking on our missions and so far, none of us has been harmed.
“Most of us are also vegetarians and undergo a lot of spiritual preparation.”
Safuan said the most common supernatural being the team has encountered is the toyol.
“Recently, a village was terrorised by a toyol and we assisted them in capturing the creature.
“The funny thing is when a toyol steals from a person’s wallet, it would not take all the money, unlike a human who would steal everything.”
Safuan said all the exhibits were real and he welcomed any scientist or interested party to conduct experiments to prove they were not genuine.
“We have X-rays and DNA results to support our claims. Besides, some exhibits till today still emit the same smell as they did when we captured them.
“There are beings in the seen and unseen world. For those who don’t believe… it’s up to them.”
‘Mermaid’ a crowd puller
AMONG the top draw at the “Genies, Ghosts and Coffins” exhibition is the ikan duyung (mermaid) which was captured off the coast of a neighbouring country several years ago.
The creature has the head and upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish, and it is believed to be two to three years old.
This creature symbolises a bond between land and sea creatures.
Another draw is the langsuir, which is said to be the flying vampire of Malaysia and can be only captured by those with strong spiritual powers.
It is said that a woman becomes such a creature if she dies in childbirth, or from the shock of hearing that her child is stillborn.
The Nyi Belorong or Nyai Blorong is represented as a beautiful female with the lower part of the body of a snake. The creature seduces the weak, especially men craving for riches.
It is commonly known as the snake demoness of wealth.
The jenglot is said to have existed before the dawn of man and has the same DNA and bone structure as humans. The creature is said to exist in China, Peru, Chile and Indonesia.
Other exhibits include the toyol, which was caught trying to steal money from a man’s wallet, and a jin, which has the ability to transform into various forms.
Scary fascination
CURIOSITY and a fascination for the supernatural world is attracting thousands to the “Genies, Ghosts and Coffins” exhibition at the Sultan Alam Shah Museum in Shah Alam.
Most of the visitors said they heard of the exhibition from friends and were curious to know what a toyol and jin looked like.
“My friend, who visited the exhibition, told me it was scary, so I decided to see it for myself,” said Razman Mohd Amin, 32, who was at the exhibition with his friends.
He said the exhibit that fascinated him the most was the ikan duyung (mermaid).
“I have never seen anything like it. It is unbelievable.”
Australians Michael and Susan Mitchell said they were visiting several spots in Shah Alam and chanced upon the exhibition.
“It’s really cool. We have never seen anything like this before,” said Michael.
“If these creatures are real, then they should be exhibited around the world.”
In Australia, he said the only supernatural beings talked about are vampires and werewolves.
“We were told that various kinds of supernatural beings existed in Asian countries. It is really fascinating to actually see them.”
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N E W S Monday July 10, 2006
Hundreds turn up to see mummified mermaid
SHAH ALAM: They came by the hundreds to the small hall wanting to see for themselves what they had read in books and seen in movies.
At the “Genies, Ghost, Coffin?” exhibition at Museum Sultan Alam Shah, a mummified mermaid has caught the imagination of the visitors.
Encased in glass, the exhibit is half-a-metre long with hair and scales on its body and the tail of a fish.
IS IT REAL?: A visitor admiring what is said to be the mummified mermaid at an exhibition held at the Museum Sultan Abdul Alam Shah in Selangor.
The mermaid’s owner, Safuan Abu Bakar, is adamant that the exhibit is real.
He told The Star that he and a group of bomoh (mediums) took months to locate the mermaid “in a secret location in a neighbouring country.”
“After locating it, we performed special prayers, including throwing yellow rice into the sea, to entice the creature out,” he said.
The mermaid died when it surfaced.
A visitor, Mohd Rafi Osman, 35, said he came out of the exhibition with mixed feelings.
“I don’t know whether to believe it or not,” he said.
Azmi Baharin, 37, said it was not logical for mermaids to exist.
“If there is a female specimen, where is the male?” he asked.
Souaud, 61, was so curious of the exhibition that he brought his wife, daughter and grandchildren all the way from Kota Kinabalu.
“I’ve not seen a live one. Hearing all about them makes me want to see the real one,” said the farmer.
But the large crowd left many people disappointed.
“When there are too many people, I don’t get to see the exhibits properly,” said Chong Moon Har, 23.
Arifin Shamsudin, 40, said: “My family and I came purely for the entertainment.”
Will Redsky, 36, from the United States, who did not get to go in, said he wanted to know more of the Malaysian culture and folklores.
“In America, we have our own folklores too like (those on) Bigfoot and werewolves,” he said.
Selangor Museum Board acting director Mohd Lotfi Nazar said the exhibition, ending on Oct 4, received an overwhelming response and the museum was looking for a bigger hall to display the mermaid.
- Offline
I posted this under another section, anyway reproduced here again:
fengshui remarks:
The mermaid on display looks like a fiji (feejee) mermaid, which is a hoax.
p.t. barnum was the lou pearlman of the 1800’s. without any semblance of shame, he fabricated the best entertainment the american public had ever seen. his legend lives on still 150 years later with the ever lasting popularity of his circus, and of course for his greatest hoax, the feejee mermaid.
the feejee mermaid was introduced to the world in august of 1842 when an englishman named dr. j. griffin stopped in new york claiming to have a real mermaid that had been captured near the feejee islands. he agreed to exhibit the mermaid for a week before taking it to a british museum. darwin had just introduced the theory of evolution, and the public was hungry for natural oddities. barnum purchased the “american museum” where the feejee mermaid was moved to and exihibited, becoming the number one attraction in america over the next twenty years.
the hideous creature has an uncannily wide-eyed stare. tufts of coarse hair cling to the shriveled skeleton of its head and left shoulder. only one arm remains. it bares its tiny, pointed teeth, daring anyone to voice doubts concerning its authenticity. it looked nothing like the bare-breasted maiden mermaids of the sea of which sailors told so many tales.
the “real mermaid” turned out to be the dried husk of a orangutan’s torso and baboon head sewn to a salmon’s tail. dr griffin was in fact a long-time friend of barnum’s, whose actual name was levi lyman. but that didn’t stop throngs of people from wanting to see the mermaid – even after it became public knowledge that it was a fake.
the mermaid was supposed to have burned in a museum fire in 1864 and the barnum museum created an artist’s rendition and now displays the replica. in 1992, the original mermaid was discovered at the st. bonaventure university along hidden under a stairwell. it is now displayed in their arts center. with the rise in popularity, other mermaids were fabricated and “discovered” throughout the world. the most famous of these knock-offs, known as the peabody mermaid, is currently on exhibit in harvard.
why do we continue to be fascinated by the feejee mermaid well over a century after it was revealed as a hoax? long after the death of the great entertainer p.t. barnum, people still flock to see it for themselves. the feejee mermaid may be a fake, but our fascination with it is still very real.
Source : http://www.envasion.net/2002/feejee.html
M e r m a i d s , M o n s t e r s —Q&A 1. What is the origin of the “dried mermaids” sometimes seen in sideshows and curio shops?
There is, of course, no such thing as a true “mermaid”. However, sideshow exhibitors often display small, mummified, but rather creditable-looking “mermaids”, which, it is often claimed, were captured with great difficulty in some far-off place. These “mermaids” have been manufactured for years in China and Egypt by cleverly uniting the head and torso of a dehaired monkey to the hinder portion of a fish, often the Nile perch. Such skillful works of fakery have often been sold at a handsome profit to gullible tourists as genuine mermaids.
Q&A 2. What is the sea animal which has given rise to the legends and myths about mermaids?
Probably the best of the several theories which have been proposed as explanations of the mermaid myths involves the manatees of the tropical western Atlantic and the west coast of Africa and the dugong from Oriental and Australian shores. The manatee is a large seal-like animal which lives in shallow bays in some areas along tropical American coasts. From a distance, a manatee might be confused with a swimming human, although all similarity disappears at close range. The body of the manatee is covered with fine wrinkles and is hairless except for the strong bristles which cover the two cleft lobes of the upper lip. The body ends in a broad, shovel-like, horizontal tail with rounded edges.
The dugong is very like the manatee except that the tail is forked. The mermaid stories became prevalent in Europe about the time of the early Portuguese explorations along the West African Coast and it is supposed that they were based on sightings of these animals in the shallow bays which the ships visited.Q&A 3. On a recent trip, I saw an exhibit called a “merman” in a small museum. The merman was supposedly an extinct creature that used to swim in the South China Sea. Can this be true?
San Marcus, CaliforniaNo. What you saw was a composite of various skeletons and other materials similar to the artificial mermaids built by the Japanese and described in Sea Fables Explained by Henry Lee (William Clowes & Sons, London, 1883). According to Lee, the Japanese constructed the lower half of their models from the skin and scales of a fish of the carp family. Onto it they carefully fastened an upper body of wood. The fingernails were made of ivory or bone, and the teeth were obtained from a fish. A little wool was placed on top of the head, which was shaped like that of a small monkey. Prominent ribs, thin and scraggly arms, and long skeletonlike fingers, which gave the model a miserable and half-starved appearance, completed the illusion. One of these models is illustrated in the above drawing.
Q&A 4. I purchased a 22-inch-long dried fish skeleton called a devilfish, which when displayed upright resembles a grotesque human figure. It has a humanlike “face,” two armlike appendages pulled to the side to resemble the cape of the devil, two leglike appendages, and a spiked tail. What is this strange creature?
Ingleside, IllinoisYou undoubtedly possess a “Jenny Haniver”- an imitation monster fashioned from certain species of skates, rays, and other cartilaginous fishes. Your particular specimen was most likely fashioned from a chimaera or ratfish, which has a more elongate body and a thicker tail than a similarly sized skate or ray. Manufacture of Jenny Hanivers was common in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, although specimens of recent origin are found occasionally. It is not difficult to imagine how these fakes originated, since the underside of the head of a skate, ray, and chimaera crudely resembles a human face. With a little embellishment, these fishes can be transformed into a monster. First, the mouth and the tissue on the sides of the mouth are manipulated to give it a more human appearance, and artificial eyes are inserted into the nostrils. The pectoral fins are clipped and pulled to the side to give the impression of two arms and a devil’s cape. For skates and rays, the legs are fashioned from the appendages on the pelvic fins of male fishes, whereas in chimaeras, they may be produced by splitting the tail into two “legs” and a spiked tail. Finally, after careful drying, a Jenny Haniver results.
Source: University of Miami, Rosenstiel Schoo of Marine and Atmospheric Science
http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/support/lib/seas/seasQA/QAs/m/mermaids.html
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