NEW ORANG PENDEK SIGHTING

I was talking to Debbie Martyr on Facebook yesterday morning about setting up Paypal accounts for Sahar's appeal when she told me this:

'A former member of the tiger team on his way to Lempur from Renah Kemumu (south of the Kerinci Valley) told me he saw something he thought was an orang-pendek. Kosher description not least the relic brachiating ..animal crossing the trail from Lempur to Renah Kemumu. (...) About two months ago.'

WREDFERN WRITES...

Just published by Britain’s CFZ Press is a brand new book from Richard Freeman, of the Center for Fortean Zoology, one of the very few full time groups in the world dedicated to uncovering the truth behind Bigfoot, the Yeti, sea-serpents, the Chupacabra, and much more of a beastly nature.

Over the course of the last few years, Richard has been on a number of expeditions to the island of Sumatra in search of its very own equivalent of Sasquatch: It has become known as the Orang-Pendek.

Read on...

BREAKING NEWS - Death of cryptid tracker Sahar Dimus

It's with sadness that we learn of the death of the expert tracker Sahar Dimus.

Richard Freeman writes these words:

February 3^rd 1969- November 14^th 2011

I first met Sahar in 2003 on the first of my trips to Sumatra in search of the orang-pendek. He was to be our chief guide and had been personally recommended by Debbie Martyr. I was surprised upon meeting him at how unassuming he was. A smiling, be-spectacled little man he could have easily passed for an accountant if dressed in a suit. A great example of how looks can be deceptive, Sahar was a master of bushcraft and the most impressive guide I ever had in the jungle. He could tell what animal had passed and how long ago simply by the slightest disturbance of leaves that no one else would have noticed. He was immensely strong and fit and could carry huge weights up the steepest and most treacherous hills like an ant carrying a leaf up an anthill.

Not only that, he was a tiger shaman. His people held the tiger as a sacred animal, according to their tribal tradition the man who founded their tribe lived to a huge age before walking into the jungle and becoming a tiger. Tiger shaman are supposed to be able to call down the tiger spirit in tribal ceremonies. They are said to be able to look through the eyes of the tiger, observing far off things in the jungle and to become possessed by its spirit. Debbie herself had witnessed this and seen the happy, inoffensive Sahar turn into a feral, snarling dervish unrecognizable as himself.

He proved not only to be a great guide in the jungle but a great friend too. He was patient with slow bumbling westerners who found the terrain hard and the food harder. He held us spellbound around camp fires with stories of the jungle and the experiences of both himself and his late father. He was a mine of information on both Sumatran folklore and wildlife.

So good was Sahar that we used him as chief guide all of the CFZ expeditions to Sumatra. We often stayed in his house at the foot of Gunung-Tuju with his lovely wife Lucy and his sons. Over our many trips we watched them grow up. His eldest, Raffles, was training to become a guide and accompanied us on our last expedition.

Sahar had lived and worked in the jungle for 14 years and had come across orang-pendek tracks and heard its call but never saw the creature until 2009 when he and Dave Archer encountered the creature in the clod forests of Gunung-Tuju. After the sighting he wept for a quarter of an hour due to the fact that he had no camera to capture an image of the beast on. Plans were afoot in 2011 to plant permanent camera traps in Kerinci Sablat National Park and had to pay Sahar to check the pictures each month.

On our last trip he seemed a little tired and slower than usual. His leg was hurting him. We all thought that in was nothing but age catching up with him and the rough terrain. I came home from the Fortean Times Unconvention 2011 to the news Sahar had died on 11^th of November. He had been taken ill and was unable to walk. He was taken to hospital were apparently he was finding it hard to recognize people. He died shortly afterwards of what appears to be liver failure.

To me Sahar was Sumatra. He was just as much a part of Kerinci National Park as the lake, the mountain and the jungle. Sumatra and Sahar Dimus are inextricably linked in my mind; they are one in the same. Now he has gone it feels like a piece of Sumatra has died. The island can and will never be the same. He leaves behind him four children and a wife.

Goodbye old friend.

Sahar Dimus: Jungle guide, tiger shaman, orang-pendek witness and researcher.

DALE DRINNON'S WEDNESDAY POSTS

Two New Blogs up at Frontiers of Zoology. The first one sheds some new light on some old Orang Pendek reports which now seem to be at odds with the newer descriptions:
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/08/alternative-info-on-orang-pendek..html

And then the follow-up part on Oriental Dragons touching on the point that they appear to be Euryapsids, like Plesiosaurs and as previously stated for the Viking Dragons and Gargoyles.
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/08/taotie-tao-tieh-dragon-faces.html

And at Frontiers of Anthropology, the first of three articles submitted (in German) on the twin subjects of Jurgen Spanuth and the myth of Phaethon as describing the impact of some celestial body(Translation is still in progress for the other parts):
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/08/fall-of-phaethon.html

A SONG TO LAUNCH THE ORANG PENDEK EXPEDITION

Once I had the best band in southwest England; now I have a small boy, a bulldog and some glove puppets. Hey Ho!

For more details on the orang pendek expedition this autumn check out www.cfz.org.uk

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Plea in Mitigation

For nearly a decade and a half I have been running the Centre for Fortean Zoology - the world's largest cryptozoological research organisation. As it says on our website front page:

'At the beginning of the 21st Century monsters still roam the remote, and sometimes not so remote, corners of our planet. It is our job to search for them. The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is the only professional, scientific and full-time organisation in the world dedicated to cryptozoology - the study of unknown animals. Since 1992 the CFZ has carried out an unparalleled programme of research and investigation all over the world.'
We have no outside funding, and all our money comes from membership fees, sales of our books, and donations. However, we not only manage to keep going, but over the years have mounted expeditions across the world - most recently to Mongolia (2005) in search of the fabled Mongolian Deathworm, to Puerto Rico (2004) in search of the grotesque vampiric chupacabra, and to Sumatra (2004) in search of a legendary bipedal ape called Orang Pendek.

People often comment that mine must be a wonderfully exciting job - after all, I lead a team of monster hunters, and haven't had a haircut in years! It is very true; what I do can be very exciting indeed, but it is often far more prosaic.

Because we are funded by public monies, I feel that it is only appropriate for us to share our activities with the people who pay for them. Therefore (and I can't remember who's idea it was; probably Corinna, my girlfriend's) I shall attempt to keep this blog going. I don't promise to do it every day, but I shall try to keep everyone who is interested up to date with what we all actually do here at the CFZ.

Once I have managed to keep this going for a while, I shall use my position of moral superiority to try and get some of the other core members of the CFZ team to do blogs as well. In certain cases it might well be the only way I shall ever find out what the buggers actually get up to all day....