March 22, 2019 • 38 mins
In Malay folklore, the Orang Minyak is an supernaturally agile, humanoid creature coated in an oily, slippery substance. It is primarily known for abducting young women at night. There are other, similar creatures in folkloric beliefs across the planet -- boogeymen meant to warn children against disobeying their parents or social mores. But something about the Orang Minyak is different: Since the 1950s, it's been a prime suspect in numerous assaults and attempted crimes, with authorities and bystanders both claiming there was something supernatural about these crimes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer, Paul Mission controlled decans. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Generally speaking, most
of us when we tune into the show, we we
have some sort of at least surface level familiarity with
(00:48):
the subject of the episode. You know, everybody knows that JFK,
for instance, was assassinated. Right, people are familiar with that.
Everybody knows. I'm pretty sure it's that's the same thing
to say people know that. Uh. For millennia, folks have
chased after allegations of aliens, extra terrestrials and identified flying objects.
(01:10):
But today's episode explores a subject that may well be
unfamiliar to most of us. Until quite recently, the four
of us had never heard of this phenomenon. It's a
story that deals with a strange and unsettling intersection between
folklore and crime, and this is the type of crime
that requires a disclaimer or trigger warning. Today's episode contains
(01:36):
descriptions of mature themes and sexual violence, not graphic descriptions,
but they do occur in the story. Yeah, a lot
of people are familiar with with something that we're going
to talk about today that's similar. They are related. Let's say, Yeah,
this is a weird segue and this is a little weird.
Next thing in the notes is most folks are familiar
(01:57):
with the Ranglaton doctor zis dr zaias doctor duct. That's
what I always think about. Yeah, orangutans, the orangey looking
greater apes. They're they're fantastic. My son loves them. And
the name translates to old man of the woods and
they look at yeah totally, I mean really, Yeah. There
are three species of great apes at least now, there
(02:18):
are three species of great apes found in Indonesia Malaysia,
and the most famous fictional orangutan is Doctors as of
Planet of the Apes fame. But there's another, much less
lovable orange in the mix. It's called the orange maniac
in the Malay language. This name means the oily man. Yeah, yeah,
(02:42):
it's one. It's only one of many similar mythical beasts
in the region. There are It turns out there's there's
a whole posse of orangue variations. Yeah, there's the tailed
man or orange acor or ichor uh. This is a
race of men and women who have tails. Again, a
mythical race of men and women have tails. There's the
orange good dang, which is great to say rang um.
(03:07):
That is the big man. This is to me, this
feels similar to a big footash sasquatched kind of kind
of creature. The big Man is like a ten foot
tall beast with long hair. He's either a viking orangutan
or just a big foot. Hmm. There's also the orange
batti or flying man. This creature stands about five ft
(03:31):
tall and it has these black, leathery wings. This one
is best known for living in dormant volcanoes. And that's
This is just a taste of the various ranges. But
in folklore, the arrange manyac is a supernatural creature and
it is known for abducting and attacking women in the night.
(03:54):
Descriptions of this creature vary, and they vary widely. Sometimes
it's described as just a naked dude. Sometimes it's a
man wearing black swimming trunks. Sometimes it's only a vaguely
humanoid figure, occasionally covered with hair and so on. It's
occasionally described as being a human warlock, or the victim
of a magical curse, or the willing practitioner of a
(04:18):
magical right. Sometimes it is said not to be human
at all. And it's kind of tough to get a
physical description of this creature except for one thing. Yeah,
and it's a bit odd because it's described in so
many varying ways that it feels like there could be
many of this thing, this arang migniac. That's not just
a single creature out there. Um So, so if you
(04:41):
think about it in that way. The height and weight
have been described with a huge range from super skinny
too obese, from tall like taller than a normal man,
too much smaller, diminutive. Um. The eye color can alternate
between yellow, gold, red, even sometimes just jet black guys,
And these descriptions are complicated by a recurring claim that
(05:06):
only a certain type of human being can see these creatures,
specifically people who have not had sexual intercourse. R Yes. Yeah,
and you'll hear all these legends about this type of
creature that's the result of a spurned lover that has
gained powers because he has solicited the services of a bomo,
(05:27):
which is a Malayan witch doctor, or a contract with
a creature from the spiritual world. I want to pause
there for a second and point out that the phrase
witch doctor is is commonly seen as a pejorative, you know,
and I think in a lot of ways it's dismissive
of people's spiritual or cultural practices. But in this case,
(05:48):
that's that's the way it has been self described as well.
So their term not ours, but whether they have made
a contract with a boma or a creature entirely from
the spiritual world. The the pact itself is insidious and infernal.
(06:08):
The ideas that it's the old trope so common in
so many stories throughout legend, mythology and folklore. What would
you do? How far would you go for the love
of your life to obtain their favor? In this case,
the contract is um is brutal. The idea is that
this person must or this creature must sexually assault X
(06:33):
number of people by X number of days, and in
doing so will have completed their end of the contract.
And then the person that they are seeking to fall
in love with for the rest of their life, will
fall in love with them. An alternate version would be
that the um maniac is themselves a perspective Beaumo, and
(06:56):
will be um completing their are schooling. It's like the
final rite of Passages, this series of horrific acts, and
that's similar in some ways. I guess the the danger,
the inherent crime or write of passage it reminds it
could remind some of us of the Skull Amounts, which
was the secret Devil's academy for witches and warlocks so
(07:21):
famous in European folklore. And the way that the Skull
Amounts is often described as that a certain number of
students and role each term or each year, and that
at the end of that term or year, they all
have to race out the door, and the last one
to get to the door belongs to the devil. I know,
high stakes stakes. And you thought the l s at
(07:43):
the LS that was stressful, right, yeah. I'll tell you
the factor that I love about the descriptions of the
thing that always comes back to it being coated in
some sort of shiny, greasy material and that's how you
know they has captured literally slipped slick, slipping out of
the clutches of his pursuer. Yeah, the old greased pig
strategy exactly. But the unnatural speed thing is also up
(08:06):
there for sure. If you're greasy and speedy. I mean
we all, we've all made not all of us, many
of us have heard of the old greased up pig
thing and how difficult it is. And a pig that's
going fast it's all greasy. I feel like that's the
thing a lot of people have heard of but not
seen in real life. Yeah, grown up in for Southghany,
because I still that inve No, I'm just kidding. I
(08:28):
did in Texas the Rodeo. Yeah, exactly, I saw it
in I saw it in my earlier years, and uh
it was gross. It turns out that's a messy, gross pursuit. Yeah,
it's either I don't like pigs or I don't like
grease enough. But you're right, No, old this, this shiny,
greasy substance is the one common factor, and that's why
(08:50):
it plays into the name on a forensic note, which
will be important later. It would be pretty safe for
us to assume that someone covered in some kind an
oily substance would leave fingerprints everywhere, right, or footprints, especially
if they're nude and barefoot, but from what we find,
apparently they don't. Apparently that's part of the supernatural aspect
(09:14):
of their being. So it's supernatural Greece, is what you're saying.
That's yeah, that's the alleged thing is interesting because it
will also cake on people's skin when it touches them
it's victims or something, but it won't it won't cake
or leave a residue on floors, walls, door knobs, window panes,
and so on. And now that we we've got an
(09:37):
okay description as that is as best of a description
of of an arrangue magnac as you will find. But
let's talk about its behavior, and we'll get to that
right after a quick word from our sponsor. So the
physical description of this thing sounds at the very least
(09:59):
wolf lee unhygienic, but its behavior is terrifying because you see,
unlike other monsters from folklore that primarily seem to harm
human beings in an attempt to feed on them or
maybe to protect some specific location a sacred grove, a
hidden spring, and on and on, the orange maniac is
(10:21):
known specifically for sexually assaulting its victims, typically female, often
thought to target virgins exclusively. And this maniac, according to
the story, has the ability to paralyze its victims, so
it's similar to the sleep paralysis descriptions of succubus or
(10:45):
an incubus. It has the ability to physically stop people
from moving, and it finds them sometimes at night when
they're asleep, but sometimes also when they're awake, so it
can't entirely be attributed to sleep paralysis, right, And there
are ways you can protect yourself from a maniac should
(11:05):
you feel that one maybe uh targeting you. Yeah, so
the first thing you gotta do, or maybe the best thing,
find yourself a good old fashioned sorcerer. You know a
couple of sorcerers, don't you, Matt, I'm sitting next to one. Well,
that's true, he's talking about Ben. Yeah. You could also
arrange male clothes as an m l E. Clothes in
(11:28):
some kind of barrier around your bed, so almost like
a circle, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Or you could just
wear men's clothes to bed. That seems like a better
idea of rather than getting a whole bunch of men's
clothes and putting around the bed. I do that all
the time. I do not. Laundry pile is. Another solution
would be to bite your left thumb hard and cover
(11:52):
it in a magically treated cloth or fabric, something that
has been blessed or sanctified somehow. This is called b
A T I K. And it's only supposed to work
while an assault is taking place, so timing is key.
I'm imagining that you would need to bite it so
hard as to draw blood. I would assume I hadn't
found that, but I am. Usually, if you have to
(12:14):
do some sort of magical ritual involving a bite, it
does have to pierce the flesh. I. According to some stories,
a few superstitious people, when they were worried that a
maniac might be in their area, even began wearing sweaty clothes,
with the thought being that it would look like they
had just had some sort of sexual activity. Wow. Uh.
(12:36):
And then there's one last thing here. It says, uh,
have a big old knife. You call that a note.
That says a note, which is such a good line.
Just you know, get that old slippery mignac with that
knife and you're good to go, right, so in other words,
just kill it with the weapons, but you can't there
(12:57):
because it's this other worldly creature like there, and there's
a lot of unknown stone in the stories at least. Yeah,
So it's weird because it's it's similar to the early
stories of a lot of folkloric beings. You know, before,
before we had mass media, regional stories of vampires would
(13:20):
widely vary, you know, whether you're in Greece or whether
you're in Bulgaria or Syria or something, because the seed
of the story is sort of like it's where it starts,
and then everyone is it. I don't know. Is it
parallel thinking? Is it like one story that gets translated
and kind of moved around Like I'm wondering. I guess
it's more telephone in this case, because the name might
be familiar, or there will be parallel thinking, and that
(13:44):
there will be two very different creatures with two very
different idiosyncrasies, but they're all after your blood or your
liver or whatever. What occurs to me here, though, is
when we talked to David Bakara about Sasquatch and Bigfoot
and all that and so many reports of them moving
very very fast, asked and Uh, running around on all
four is like you know, the whole story he told
about one going under a truck, I believe, and like
(14:06):
you know, running alongside it. This occurs to me. This
creature is almost like a more rapey, creepy Bigfoot. Yet
you know not, No, it's known specifically for that oil,
but there are reports of tall ones. It's weird because
there's so many variations. And we see again that these
variations did not get codified into a single common description
(14:30):
until mass media. Because the mignionk was around in folklore
in Malaysia for a long, long, long long time and
as well as you know what, it transmitted through that
telephone game to Thailand, to Singapore to other areas in
the region. But it wasn't really sort of like how
Santa Claus always looked different until the Coca Cola commercials.
(14:53):
It wasn't really um a singular recognizable thing until it
experience and stay cultural resurgence in the late nineteen fifties.
In nineteen fifty eight, three different films about Arong maniac Uh,
they they hit the theaters. One was in a burst
of Creativity Arod Migniac. The other was Supa Arod magniac
(15:16):
and then Saragan Arod Migniac. The sample plot is this,
we'll just take one in Supa A Wrong Maniac or
Curse of the Oily Man. My favorite subtitle of any
movie ever. Great title, right, The orang Maniac was a
man who was cursed in an attempt to win back
has lost love. So it's it's kind of like if
(15:37):
one to do a pop culture comparison and take out
the egregious sexual assault involved in the film. Uh, it's
sort of like Todd McFarland's Spawn. In Spawn, the protagonist
is is not a very good person in their um
special Forces soldier kind of guy. They die, they go
(15:59):
to hell. They make a deal with an infernal creature
because they want to go back and win the love
of their life and be a better person. I think
the guy's name was Al Simmons. So he gets the
deal from the devil and then he comes back to
the world, but he comes back as like a servant
of evil, and he still tries to get back with
his you know, and his wife. The devil offered to
(16:22):
help this man in some rong minyak and give him
powers of the Black Arts, but only if the Mignyak
worshiped him and assaulted within a week twenty one virgins,
very specific, very specific. Yeah, you have to wonder if
there's some numerological significance there. In other versions, it's a
(16:43):
little more like the Cabinet of Dr Klighari. Do you
guys remember that one man it was? That's still a
spooky would but that that's where the wrong Magnyac becomes
more like um, almost like a golemn, or like a
somnambulist who's controlled by this evil authority, whether that's a
(17:04):
Boma sorcerer, the Calgary, it's a hypnotist. But the you know,
the comparison holds true, and so for decades here we go.
I love the Bigfoot comparison we're drawing here because for
decades people have been divided in their opinion in this story.
Is the wrong Mignyac a boogeyman? Just a fictional device
used to enforce compliance to social norms. Don't go out
(17:26):
late at night. Don't go out late at night alone,
you know what I mean. Don't go drinking and drugging
in the woods. Be careful around men that are not
related to you, especially if they're kind of oily, and
that's that's where a lot, honestly, that's where a lot
of these sorts of stories originate to get people to
(17:48):
from cradle to the grave, obey the rules of their society,
or usually in an attempt to keep people safe. Right.
But then we have the debate that's so similar to
Bigfoot or the Yeti, which is there's a contingent of
people who have always argued that these are real, actual
flesh and blood organisms. So is it some kind of
(18:11):
cryptic that may now or at one time have existed
in the wild. This is an interesting This is an
interesting question because we know that Malaysia and Indonesia both
have been home to tremendous biodiversity in the past, and
a lot of those creatures have since gone extinct. So
it could be it could be similar to the austro
(18:34):
lepithecus theory about you know, early early human like creatures
encountering this gigantic ape. Oh yeah. Or it could just
be made up to keep people from going out and
being unsafe at night, or has it become something more.
This last question is crucial because while this creature may
(18:57):
well be considered little more than a grizzly fair retail today.
The crimes attributed to it are tragically and undeniably real,
and they are happening as we record this. And I
remember you told this to me outside of War of
the office. We were hanging out briefly, and I was like,
I cannot believe this is true. And the story and
(19:19):
itself is good because it would be enough to make
an episode on its own, but this twist is out
of control. Unfortunately that's the case. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So before the movies ever came
(19:42):
out in there, there, you know, was an occasional sighting
and crime, like actual crimes reported to the authorities, about
things that have been done or crimes that have been
committed by some orang miniac or the orang miniac. And uh,
you know those those those movies, those films, they heralded
(20:03):
this other cultural event. Uh, reports that would come in
about attacks or about sightings or about at least some
encounter with the orange maniac. M Yeah, these were reports.
Were not just hey, there's a dirty, grease coated guy
kind of slinking around the local car wash or something.
(20:28):
These were reports of sightings and of attempted sexual assault,
and there were tons and tons and tons of these.
The reports skyrocket through the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies.
Remember that those films come out in nineteen fifty eight,
and there were I believe one or two other Orange
Maniac films that came out in the seventies. Let's say, oh,
(20:52):
Oily Maniac from that's fantastic. And we have to remember too,
it's like over here or in the States, a lot
of these folklore type things that are United States centric.
It's very niche. The people that will be like, this
is a thing. Let's attribute real events to this creature
culturally over here, and then we're talking about it's much
(21:13):
more I think, accepted as a real thing as opposed
to like a legend. Yeah, there's uh there. There's a
conversation that's a lot more divisive between the skeptical part
of the population and the people who, well, I don't
want to say our credulous, but the people who saw
something firsthand and believe they experienced it. The reports still continue,
(21:36):
as we said, in the modern day. In November of
two thousand five, the Malaysian National News Agency reported that
a uh Kuala Lumpur hospital was shaken by news that
an arrange magnac or oily man was on the prowl
on its premises trying to assault nurses. And we we
have this story about this because one thing we have
(21:58):
to note for the purposes of this story, the nurses
live on site. So at three am on Tuesday of
that week, a nurse in her thirties who was in
the nurses quarters I was sort of almost like a
hostile uh in on the hospital grounds, was believed to
have been um sexually assaulted by a man armed with
a knife and whose body and face was covered with oil.
(22:21):
A police spokesperson said the man had entered the nurses
room in the dormitory and threatened the woman before tying
her up, binding her hand defeat and then undressing her.
This is hard, it's hard to describe um. He said
that a security guard of the hostel became aware of
the nurses situation at around five am when he heard
(22:44):
her screaming for help, and then the guard untied the
nurse who this was her room exclusively. She did not
have any any flatmates, so that was that was attempted.
Fortunately it was not doesn't sound any was successfully complete did,
but it is weird that there is no report of
him seeing anyone or any like, I'm not seeing a
(23:06):
lot of the evidence of oil or anything. And the
nurse in this story claims that it was at a
wrong Mignac and two thousand five. This continues. In Christmas
of two thousand twelve, The Star Online reported there were
multiple sightings over the Christmas holidays. Uh. One eye witness
even described its behavior. They saw it moving. Yeah, this
(23:30):
is a quote crawling up the stairs of the house,
just like Spider Man. When it reached the top, it
suddenly jumped onto the roof. I don't think a human
could do that. It then just disappeared. And the person
who's reporting this, the eyewitness, says, we can laugh and
joke about this, but this is serious. All the families
(23:50):
here have young girls. So this sounds like a person saying,
I get that this might sound provincial, or this might
sound like a rural superstition. Two people reading this story,
but we are actual people who live here were genuinely concerned.
Yeah yeah uh. In The Star also reported a woman
(24:14):
claimed that she had nearly been assaulted by an a
wrong Magnac at a petrol station gas station toilet. This
was via the Harry and Metro. She gave her name
Eli Sharia Molda. She was thirty years old. Told police
she put up a struggle because a man dressed only
in red underwear entered the entered the restroom while she
(24:36):
was in there. I was in one of the stalls
when I heard the door to the main toilet entrance
open and closed. Had a bad feeling, decided to leave
when I saw the man clad in underwear. He tried
to push her back into the cubicle the bathroom stall,
but she fought him off and ran out of the toilet,
shouting for help. The guy ran away towards the back
of the gas station. The police confirmed this happened. The
(24:57):
police confirmed that she said there was and orangue Minyac
and police, we should note, are actively cited in these investigations,
uh sometimes in a skeptical way. In twenty seventeen, in August,
police debunked and Arrange Minyac story, or they denied it.
(25:18):
In Malacca, there was a village. There are two villages Malacca,
Tenga and Justin and the Assistant Commissioner Afness are Ahmad
was asked about these messages that were circulating over social
media over the past two days. There were attacks that
were rumored to be perpetrated by a wrong minyak, and
(25:38):
he said, quote such unfounded claims will cause unnecessary anxiety
among villagers. Will act against those who spread such lies.
So he said, we're we're going to not only deny
this stuff, but if you're spreading this stuff, we're gonna
shut you down. To at this point in the story
that creatures supposedly entered five homes in the area and attempted,
(26:02):
at the very least attempted acts of assault. And this
this leads us to the question, this is something we
talked about off air too. What's going on? You know,
the reports of declined since the sixties and seventies, but
there's still occurring. That last story is from twenty seventeen,
that was not very long ago. Is there something like this? Okay,
(26:28):
something's happening, right, yeah, Okay. So to me that the
story of the woman in the bathroom with a man
clearly wearing red underwear um to me that one is
easily just a human male, at least in my mind,
a human male that is a monster and attempting to
(26:48):
rape a woman in a bathroom stall. That's what it
sounds like to me. But then it has that cultural
uh surrounding of what what a rapist essentially is. Well,
and my question to is how how do the cultural
um kind of stars align that this they are able
to successfully blame it on this urban legend, Like I
(27:09):
wanted to bring that up earlier, like, how do you
think do you think in general culturally there's more of
a willingness to accept myth as reality than there is
over here. I'm wondering what you think is leading to
this being a legitimate a thing to blame these crimes on. Right,
We also, well, we have to remember that one person's
myth is another person's matter of fact, you know, depending
(27:30):
on where they live. There are people who will assure
you that everyone in the United States is deluded because
they believe in myths like democracy or capitalism, which is
not the same hopefully as a supernatural creature breaking into
people's houses at night. But it's also not perfect. It's
(27:51):
weird because we have to wonder, we have to wonder
how much of it is willing, you know, like you said,
a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to attribute mundane tragedies
to supernatural causes. It Also, you guys have heard about Iceland,
right and their belief in elves or fairies. If you're
(28:12):
familiar with this. Our super producer Paul Michigantrol Decade traveled
to Iceland and I can't remember if we talked about it.
We've got to figure this out off air. I have
heard that people will attribute construction problems and things to
elves Inland, and surely a lot of that that is
with a nod and a wink. But uh, there was something.
(28:35):
There was some pole I read wherein the residents of
Iceland who participated self reported to believe in in elves,
to actually no fooling believe in them. And you have
to you have to wonder if you're in an environment
where you may be relatively isolated. Uh, our knowledge of
(28:58):
what is or is not true is largely going to
be based on our own experiences and interactions. You can
you can read about a country like Bhutan, for instance,
for your entire life. You can see pictures that say
they're from there, but there are people will argue that
you don't know something for sure unless you experience it firsthand.
(29:20):
I don't particularly subscribe to that or ascribe to that rather,
but there are people who who believe that. So maybe
maybe they're saying, I believe this because I saw something
inexplicable and the closest thing to my knowledge in my
like data banks that that um resembles what I know
that I physically saw is this thing called in the
(29:43):
wrong Mignac. So maybe they believe it and also want
to walk back what I said, just ever so slightly,
Like I mean, you know, you could say that Christianity
is a myth and that people outside of the United
States look at that as being a widely accepted belief
as bonkers and like like, how could you believe than
this this magical creature of Jesus Christ or you know
what I mean. It's just all about it's all about
(30:04):
your perspective and where you're coming from. What is a
myth versus what is a belief system? And I just
think it's interesting. You know, we blame things on religion
all the time, you know, so it's it's really not
that different. You know. It's true legally we do have things,
uh called acts of God. Yeah, it's like all right, Sorry,
we don't have to pay you for this because it
(30:25):
was an act of God. I think that should be
changed to natures. Yep, so you heard it here, folks.
You heard it here first, folks, Matt Frederick. Regardless though,
then this, this is a conversation that can get very
deep and very complicated very quickly, right, and regardless of
(30:46):
what you think. And No, to be absolutely clear, we
are not we are not making a one to one
comparison between the wrong maniac capitalism, Christianity, and democracy. Those
are ideologies. But there's still their beliefs, right, there's still
beliefs at this point, though, regardless value feel about any
(31:08):
of those things. It looks extremely likely, I would say
overwhelmingly likely. In fact, I would say I have certitude
about this. I am certain that at multiple times genuine
sexual crimes were either dismissed or actively covered up through
the through attributing this to a supernatural creature. No, it wasn't.
(31:33):
It wasn't that guy who has had like four or
five other previous run ins with the law. It was
the irong migniac. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with with that
which you assert. I mean, there's always the notion of
public panic too, right. I'm not saying that people are
(31:53):
always intentionally trying to cover up a crime using this.
There's always notion to outbreak like a moral panic, they're called.
And I know in our previous work with reports of
serial killers, for instance, one thing that we've seen um
(32:14):
happen every single time, every single time there's an active,
identified serial killer, none has not been apprehended, or even
after the most likely suspect is apprehended, police departments and
law enforcement agencies will be inundated with the weirdest calls.
People who confess to being the killer because they want attention,
(32:35):
People who are certain they've seen the killer, people who
have some sort of like very very um low effort
count of Monte Cristo revenge scheme, who reports someone they
don't like at work or in their personal life as
the killer. That happens so often. And then this this
also has a little bit of a uh cultural divide.
(32:59):
Is is some one saying that there's a language divide, right,
That's a better way to say it. Is someone saying
that when they're saying I was attacked by ring Migniac,
do they mean I was attacked by this supernatural creature
or do they mean I was attacked by this creepy
dude covered in slime or oil? In this case, regardless
public panic aside, it looks like several criminals took advantage
(33:22):
of a longstanding belief. And as we record this, these
people got away clean with their crimes. They dressed up right,
I mean this is and not to sound dismissive, they
disguised themselves. They participated in causplay for the purpose of crime.
This is similar to saying, for instance, let's make uh,
(33:48):
let's make it part of folklore that bigfoot is in
addition to being real known for robbing banks, and then
let's all dress up his big foot and start rob banks.
Brilliant And then it was never it was never us.
It was a group of big feet. Big feet. Um.
But this, this is the case, and this is something
(34:10):
at this point we haven't we haven't cracked the case on.
We know that the police clearly hate this idea. It's
not helpful for an investigation, No, not at all. At
least again, I keep going back to the red underpants thing,
because at least that's a good description of the person
(34:31):
and hopefully a witness I saw that person that if
you just describe it as a naked, oily human being
that is this other creature, that's not a lot to
go on for law enforcement. That's that's definitely unfortunate. You
can only hope that people out there very soon will
begin to understand that there are awful human beings that
(34:55):
exist in the world that will do terrible things and
those are the ones that you need to blame it on,
not some myth. It's interesting because there there are other reports.
Asia One reported that as recently as two thousand twelve,
in some regions of the area, people overwhelmingly did believe
(35:16):
in the wrong miniac, especially in kampang La Samana. It's
it's apparently very difficult to find a resident who doesn't
believe in arang maniac or feel like they have seen it.
This was a place where, remember we we talked about
the spike in reports. Over Christmas of that year, two
hundred people went out into the street patrolling the area.
(35:40):
They carried machetes, axes, sticks, whatever they could find and spotlights.
So people actually went out on a search for this thing.
And you know, there's some there's something else here. Because
when we were describing what an arang maniac is or
could be. With all the various descriptions up at the
top of this episode, one of the major versions of
(36:00):
this is a spurned lover, a human being that is
a spurned lover. Right, So it's even if there's some
kind of supernatural or the belief of supernatural power working
through this human being, it is a human being, and
I think it as long as that is kept. Perhaps,
I know that's not the only description, but if that
(36:22):
thought is kept, then hopefully some of these some of
these human monsters can be apprehended and this could be stopped,
and at least in the minds of people, they could
have that framing of seeing something very real, even if
it is supernaturally enhanced. So yeah, I guess I don't
(36:43):
know what else to say. Well, you know, at this point,
this is where, this is where the story ends. It's
tremendously fortunate that these reports have precipitously declined, but it's
tremendously tragic that they still continue, you know what I mean.
And this is where we want to hand this story
over to you. Thank you so much for listening. Let
(37:06):
us know if there are any similar things like this
in your neck of the global woods, whether that's Peru, Pennsylvania, uh, Paraguay, Paris,
even places that don't begin with the peak. And we're
asking this. We're asking for this because it may surprise
(37:27):
you to learn how many stories, um, maybe not this sinister,
maybe not this disturbing, but how many stories like this, uh,
the supernatural impinging on modern life? How many stories like
this exist and are not well known? You know, as
a matter of fact, right to us and let us
know if you heard of the wrong Magnac before you
(37:49):
listen to this show. You can find us on Instagram
where we are Conspiracy Stuff show, or in other places
where we're conspiracy stuff. You can uh, you can call
us if you want to leave a message. It might
get on the air. Our number is one eight three
three S C D W Y T K stuff. They
(38:10):
don't want you to know an acronym form, and yes
they are numbers as well. Use your phone. You'll you'll
you'll get it. Uh. If you don't want to do
any of that stuff, send us a good old fashion email.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer, Paul Mission controlled decans. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Generally speaking, most
of us when we tune into the show, we we
have some sort of at least surface level familiarity with
(00:48):
the subject of the episode. You know, everybody knows that JFK,
for instance, was assassinated. Right, people are familiar with that.
Everybody knows. I'm pretty sure it's that's the same thing
to say people know that. Uh. For millennia, folks have
chased after allegations of aliens, extra terrestrials and identified flying objects.
(01:10):
But today's episode explores a subject that may well be
unfamiliar to most of us. Until quite recently, the four
of us had never heard of this phenomenon. It's a
story that deals with a strange and unsettling intersection between
folklore and crime, and this is the type of crime
that requires a disclaimer or trigger warning. Today's episode contains
(01:36):
descriptions of mature themes and sexual violence, not graphic descriptions,
but they do occur in the story. Yeah, a lot
of people are familiar with with something that we're going
to talk about today that's similar. They are related. Let's say, Yeah,
this is a weird segue and this is a little weird.
Next thing in the notes is most folks are familiar
(01:57):
with the Ranglaton doctor zis dr zaias doctor duct. That's
what I always think about. Yeah, orangutans, the orangey looking
greater apes. They're they're fantastic. My son loves them. And
the name translates to old man of the woods and
they look at yeah totally, I mean really, Yeah. There
are three species of great apes at least now, there
(02:18):
are three species of great apes found in Indonesia Malaysia,
and the most famous fictional orangutan is Doctors as of
Planet of the Apes fame. But there's another, much less
lovable orange in the mix. It's called the orange maniac
in the Malay language. This name means the oily man. Yeah, yeah,
(02:42):
it's one. It's only one of many similar mythical beasts
in the region. There are It turns out there's there's
a whole posse of orangue variations. Yeah, there's the tailed
man or orange acor or ichor uh. This is a
race of men and women who have tails. Again, a
mythical race of men and women have tails. There's the
orange good dang, which is great to say rang um.
(03:07):
That is the big man. This is to me, this
feels similar to a big footash sasquatched kind of kind
of creature. The big Man is like a ten foot
tall beast with long hair. He's either a viking orangutan
or just a big foot. Hmm. There's also the orange
batti or flying man. This creature stands about five ft
(03:31):
tall and it has these black, leathery wings. This one
is best known for living in dormant volcanoes. And that's
This is just a taste of the various ranges. But
in folklore, the arrange manyac is a supernatural creature and
it is known for abducting and attacking women in the night.
(03:54):
Descriptions of this creature vary, and they vary widely. Sometimes
it's described as just a naked dude. Sometimes it's a
man wearing black swimming trunks. Sometimes it's only a vaguely
humanoid figure, occasionally covered with hair and so on. It's
occasionally described as being a human warlock, or the victim
of a magical curse, or the willing practitioner of a
(04:18):
magical right. Sometimes it is said not to be human
at all. And it's kind of tough to get a
physical description of this creature except for one thing. Yeah,
and it's a bit odd because it's described in so
many varying ways that it feels like there could be
many of this thing, this arang migniac. That's not just
a single creature out there. Um So, so if you
(04:41):
think about it in that way. The height and weight
have been described with a huge range from super skinny
too obese, from tall like taller than a normal man,
too much smaller, diminutive. Um. The eye color can alternate
between yellow, gold, red, even sometimes just jet black guys,
And these descriptions are complicated by a recurring claim that
(05:06):
only a certain type of human being can see these creatures,
specifically people who have not had sexual intercourse. R Yes. Yeah,
and you'll hear all these legends about this type of
creature that's the result of a spurned lover that has
gained powers because he has solicited the services of a bomo,
(05:27):
which is a Malayan witch doctor, or a contract with
a creature from the spiritual world. I want to pause
there for a second and point out that the phrase
witch doctor is is commonly seen as a pejorative, you know,
and I think in a lot of ways it's dismissive
of people's spiritual or cultural practices. But in this case,
(05:48):
that's that's the way it has been self described as well.
So their term not ours, but whether they have made
a contract with a boma or a creature entirely from
the spiritual world. The the pact itself is insidious and infernal.
(06:08):
The ideas that it's the old trope so common in
so many stories throughout legend, mythology and folklore. What would
you do? How far would you go for the love
of your life to obtain their favor? In this case,
the contract is um is brutal. The idea is that
this person must or this creature must sexually assault X
(06:33):
number of people by X number of days, and in
doing so will have completed their end of the contract.
And then the person that they are seeking to fall
in love with for the rest of their life, will
fall in love with them. An alternate version would be
that the um maniac is themselves a perspective Beaumo, and
(06:56):
will be um completing their are schooling. It's like the
final rite of Passages, this series of horrific acts, and
that's similar in some ways. I guess the the danger,
the inherent crime or write of passage it reminds it
could remind some of us of the Skull Amounts, which
was the secret Devil's academy for witches and warlocks so
(07:21):
famous in European folklore. And the way that the Skull
Amounts is often described as that a certain number of
students and role each term or each year, and that
at the end of that term or year, they all
have to race out the door, and the last one
to get to the door belongs to the devil. I know,
high stakes stakes. And you thought the l s at
(07:43):
the LS that was stressful, right, yeah. I'll tell you
the factor that I love about the descriptions of the
thing that always comes back to it being coated in
some sort of shiny, greasy material and that's how you
know they has captured literally slipped slick, slipping out of
the clutches of his pursuer. Yeah, the old greased pig
strategy exactly. But the unnatural speed thing is also up
(08:06):
there for sure. If you're greasy and speedy. I mean
we all, we've all made not all of us, many
of us have heard of the old greased up pig
thing and how difficult it is. And a pig that's
going fast it's all greasy. I feel like that's the
thing a lot of people have heard of but not
seen in real life. Yeah, grown up in for Southghany,
because I still that inve No, I'm just kidding. I
(08:28):
did in Texas the Rodeo. Yeah, exactly, I saw it
in I saw it in my earlier years, and uh
it was gross. It turns out that's a messy, gross pursuit. Yeah,
it's either I don't like pigs or I don't like
grease enough. But you're right, No, old this, this shiny,
greasy substance is the one common factor, and that's why
(08:50):
it plays into the name on a forensic note, which
will be important later. It would be pretty safe for
us to assume that someone covered in some kind an
oily substance would leave fingerprints everywhere, right, or footprints, especially
if they're nude and barefoot, but from what we find,
apparently they don't. Apparently that's part of the supernatural aspect
(09:14):
of their being. So it's supernatural Greece, is what you're saying.
That's yeah, that's the alleged thing is interesting because it
will also cake on people's skin when it touches them
it's victims or something, but it won't it won't cake
or leave a residue on floors, walls, door knobs, window panes,
and so on. And now that we we've got an
(09:37):
okay description as that is as best of a description
of of an arrangue magnac as you will find. But
let's talk about its behavior, and we'll get to that
right after a quick word from our sponsor. So the
physical description of this thing sounds at the very least
(09:59):
wolf lee unhygienic, but its behavior is terrifying because you see,
unlike other monsters from folklore that primarily seem to harm
human beings in an attempt to feed on them or
maybe to protect some specific location a sacred grove, a
hidden spring, and on and on, the orange maniac is
(10:21):
known specifically for sexually assaulting its victims, typically female, often
thought to target virgins exclusively. And this maniac, according to
the story, has the ability to paralyze its victims, so
it's similar to the sleep paralysis descriptions of succubus or
(10:45):
an incubus. It has the ability to physically stop people
from moving, and it finds them sometimes at night when
they're asleep, but sometimes also when they're awake, so it
can't entirely be attributed to sleep paralysis, right, And there
are ways you can protect yourself from a maniac should
(11:05):
you feel that one maybe uh targeting you. Yeah, so
the first thing you gotta do, or maybe the best thing,
find yourself a good old fashioned sorcerer. You know a
couple of sorcerers, don't you, Matt, I'm sitting next to one. Well,
that's true, he's talking about Ben. Yeah. You could also
arrange male clothes as an m l E. Clothes in
(11:28):
some kind of barrier around your bed, so almost like
a circle, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Or you could just
wear men's clothes to bed. That seems like a better
idea of rather than getting a whole bunch of men's
clothes and putting around the bed. I do that all
the time. I do not. Laundry pile is. Another solution
would be to bite your left thumb hard and cover
(11:52):
it in a magically treated cloth or fabric, something that
has been blessed or sanctified somehow. This is called b
A T I K. And it's only supposed to work
while an assault is taking place, so timing is key.
I'm imagining that you would need to bite it so
hard as to draw blood. I would assume I hadn't
found that, but I am. Usually, if you have to
(12:14):
do some sort of magical ritual involving a bite, it
does have to pierce the flesh. I. According to some stories,
a few superstitious people, when they were worried that a
maniac might be in their area, even began wearing sweaty clothes,
with the thought being that it would look like they
had just had some sort of sexual activity. Wow. Uh.
(12:36):
And then there's one last thing here. It says, uh,
have a big old knife. You call that a note.
That says a note, which is such a good line.
Just you know, get that old slippery mignac with that
knife and you're good to go, right, so in other words,
just kill it with the weapons, but you can't there
(12:57):
because it's this other worldly creature like there, and there's
a lot of unknown stone in the stories at least. Yeah,
So it's weird because it's it's similar to the early
stories of a lot of folkloric beings. You know, before,
before we had mass media, regional stories of vampires would
(13:20):
widely vary, you know, whether you're in Greece or whether
you're in Bulgaria or Syria or something, because the seed
of the story is sort of like it's where it starts,
and then everyone is it. I don't know. Is it
parallel thinking? Is it like one story that gets translated
and kind of moved around Like I'm wondering. I guess
it's more telephone in this case, because the name might
be familiar, or there will be parallel thinking, and that
(13:44):
there will be two very different creatures with two very
different idiosyncrasies, but they're all after your blood or your
liver or whatever. What occurs to me here, though, is
when we talked to David Bakara about Sasquatch and Bigfoot
and all that and so many reports of them moving
very very fast, asked and Uh, running around on all
four is like you know, the whole story he told
about one going under a truck, I believe, and like
(14:06):
you know, running alongside it. This occurs to me. This
creature is almost like a more rapey, creepy Bigfoot. Yet
you know not, No, it's known specifically for that oil,
but there are reports of tall ones. It's weird because
there's so many variations. And we see again that these
variations did not get codified into a single common description
(14:30):
until mass media. Because the mignionk was around in folklore
in Malaysia for a long, long, long long time and
as well as you know what, it transmitted through that
telephone game to Thailand, to Singapore to other areas in
the region. But it wasn't really sort of like how
Santa Claus always looked different until the Coca Cola commercials.
(14:53):
It wasn't really um a singular recognizable thing until it
experience and stay cultural resurgence in the late nineteen fifties.
In nineteen fifty eight, three different films about Arong maniac Uh,
they they hit the theaters. One was in a burst
of Creativity Arod Migniac. The other was Supa Arod magniac
(15:16):
and then Saragan Arod Migniac. The sample plot is this,
we'll just take one in Supa A Wrong Maniac or
Curse of the Oily Man. My favorite subtitle of any
movie ever. Great title, right, The orang Maniac was a
man who was cursed in an attempt to win back
has lost love. So it's it's kind of like if
(15:37):
one to do a pop culture comparison and take out
the egregious sexual assault involved in the film. Uh, it's
sort of like Todd McFarland's Spawn. In Spawn, the protagonist
is is not a very good person in their um
special Forces soldier kind of guy. They die, they go
(15:59):
to hell. They make a deal with an infernal creature
because they want to go back and win the love
of their life and be a better person. I think
the guy's name was Al Simmons. So he gets the
deal from the devil and then he comes back to
the world, but he comes back as like a servant
of evil, and he still tries to get back with
his you know, and his wife. The devil offered to
(16:22):
help this man in some rong minyak and give him
powers of the Black Arts, but only if the Mignyak
worshiped him and assaulted within a week twenty one virgins,
very specific, very specific. Yeah, you have to wonder if
there's some numerological significance there. In other versions, it's a
(16:43):
little more like the Cabinet of Dr Klighari. Do you
guys remember that one man it was? That's still a
spooky would but that that's where the wrong Magnyac becomes
more like um, almost like a golemn, or like a
somnambulist who's controlled by this evil authority, whether that's a
(17:04):
Boma sorcerer, the Calgary, it's a hypnotist. But the you know,
the comparison holds true, and so for decades here we go.
I love the Bigfoot comparison we're drawing here because for
decades people have been divided in their opinion in this story.
Is the wrong Mignyac a boogeyman? Just a fictional device
used to enforce compliance to social norms. Don't go out
(17:26):
late at night. Don't go out late at night alone,
you know what I mean. Don't go drinking and drugging
in the woods. Be careful around men that are not
related to you, especially if they're kind of oily, and
that's that's where a lot, honestly, that's where a lot
of these sorts of stories originate to get people to
(17:48):
from cradle to the grave, obey the rules of their society,
or usually in an attempt to keep people safe. Right.
But then we have the debate that's so similar to
Bigfoot or the Yeti, which is there's a contingent of
people who have always argued that these are real, actual
flesh and blood organisms. So is it some kind of
(18:11):
cryptic that may now or at one time have existed
in the wild. This is an interesting This is an
interesting question because we know that Malaysia and Indonesia both
have been home to tremendous biodiversity in the past, and
a lot of those creatures have since gone extinct. So
it could be it could be similar to the austro
(18:34):
lepithecus theory about you know, early early human like creatures
encountering this gigantic ape. Oh yeah. Or it could just
be made up to keep people from going out and
being unsafe at night, or has it become something more.
This last question is crucial because while this creature may
(18:57):
well be considered little more than a grizzly fair retail today.
The crimes attributed to it are tragically and undeniably real,
and they are happening as we record this. And I
remember you told this to me outside of War of
the office. We were hanging out briefly, and I was like,
I cannot believe this is true. And the story and
(19:19):
itself is good because it would be enough to make
an episode on its own, but this twist is out
of control. Unfortunately that's the case. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So before the movies ever came
(19:42):
out in there, there, you know, was an occasional sighting
and crime, like actual crimes reported to the authorities, about
things that have been done or crimes that have been
committed by some orang miniac or the orang miniac. And uh,
you know those those those movies, those films, they heralded
(20:03):
this other cultural event. Uh, reports that would come in
about attacks or about sightings or about at least some
encounter with the orange maniac. M Yeah, these were reports.
Were not just hey, there's a dirty, grease coated guy
kind of slinking around the local car wash or something.
(20:28):
These were reports of sightings and of attempted sexual assault,
and there were tons and tons and tons of these.
The reports skyrocket through the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies.
Remember that those films come out in nineteen fifty eight,
and there were I believe one or two other Orange
Maniac films that came out in the seventies. Let's say, oh,
(20:52):
Oily Maniac from that's fantastic. And we have to remember too,
it's like over here or in the States, a lot
of these folklore type things that are United States centric.
It's very niche. The people that will be like, this
is a thing. Let's attribute real events to this creature
culturally over here, and then we're talking about it's much
(21:13):
more I think, accepted as a real thing as opposed
to like a legend. Yeah, there's uh there. There's a
conversation that's a lot more divisive between the skeptical part
of the population and the people who, well, I don't
want to say our credulous, but the people who saw
something firsthand and believe they experienced it. The reports still continue,
(21:36):
as we said, in the modern day. In November of
two thousand five, the Malaysian National News Agency reported that
a uh Kuala Lumpur hospital was shaken by news that
an arrange magnac or oily man was on the prowl
on its premises trying to assault nurses. And we we
have this story about this because one thing we have
(21:58):
to note for the purposes of this story, the nurses
live on site. So at three am on Tuesday of
that week, a nurse in her thirties who was in
the nurses quarters I was sort of almost like a
hostile uh in on the hospital grounds, was believed to
have been um sexually assaulted by a man armed with
a knife and whose body and face was covered with oil.
(22:21):
A police spokesperson said the man had entered the nurses
room in the dormitory and threatened the woman before tying
her up, binding her hand defeat and then undressing her.
This is hard, it's hard to describe um. He said
that a security guard of the hostel became aware of
the nurses situation at around five am when he heard
(22:44):
her screaming for help, and then the guard untied the
nurse who this was her room exclusively. She did not
have any any flatmates, so that was that was attempted.
Fortunately it was not doesn't sound any was successfully complete did,
but it is weird that there is no report of
him seeing anyone or any like, I'm not seeing a
(23:06):
lot of the evidence of oil or anything. And the
nurse in this story claims that it was at a
wrong Mignac and two thousand five. This continues. In Christmas
of two thousand twelve, The Star Online reported there were
multiple sightings over the Christmas holidays. Uh. One eye witness
even described its behavior. They saw it moving. Yeah, this
(23:30):
is a quote crawling up the stairs of the house,
just like Spider Man. When it reached the top, it
suddenly jumped onto the roof. I don't think a human
could do that. It then just disappeared. And the person
who's reporting this, the eyewitness, says, we can laugh and
joke about this, but this is serious. All the families
(23:50):
here have young girls. So this sounds like a person saying,
I get that this might sound provincial, or this might
sound like a rural superstition. Two people reading this story,
but we are actual people who live here were genuinely concerned.
Yeah yeah uh. In The Star also reported a woman
(24:14):
claimed that she had nearly been assaulted by an a
wrong Magnac at a petrol station gas station toilet. This
was via the Harry and Metro. She gave her name
Eli Sharia Molda. She was thirty years old. Told police
she put up a struggle because a man dressed only
in red underwear entered the entered the restroom while she
(24:36):
was in there. I was in one of the stalls
when I heard the door to the main toilet entrance
open and closed. Had a bad feeling, decided to leave
when I saw the man clad in underwear. He tried
to push her back into the cubicle the bathroom stall,
but she fought him off and ran out of the toilet,
shouting for help. The guy ran away towards the back
of the gas station. The police confirmed this happened. The
(24:57):
police confirmed that she said there was and orangue Minyac
and police, we should note, are actively cited in these investigations,
uh sometimes in a skeptical way. In twenty seventeen, in August,
police debunked and Arrange Minyac story, or they denied it.
(25:18):
In Malacca, there was a village. There are two villages Malacca,
Tenga and Justin and the Assistant Commissioner Afness are Ahmad
was asked about these messages that were circulating over social
media over the past two days. There were attacks that
were rumored to be perpetrated by a wrong minyak, and
(25:38):
he said, quote such unfounded claims will cause unnecessary anxiety
among villagers. Will act against those who spread such lies.
So he said, we're we're going to not only deny
this stuff, but if you're spreading this stuff, we're gonna
shut you down. To at this point in the story
that creatures supposedly entered five homes in the area and attempted,
(26:02):
at the very least attempted acts of assault. And this
this leads us to the question, this is something we
talked about off air too. What's going on? You know,
the reports of declined since the sixties and seventies, but
there's still occurring. That last story is from twenty seventeen,
that was not very long ago. Is there something like this? Okay,
(26:28):
something's happening, right, yeah, Okay. So to me that the
story of the woman in the bathroom with a man
clearly wearing red underwear um to me that one is
easily just a human male, at least in my mind,
a human male that is a monster and attempting to
(26:48):
rape a woman in a bathroom stall. That's what it
sounds like to me. But then it has that cultural
uh surrounding of what what a rapist essentially is. Well,
and my question to is how how do the cultural
um kind of stars align that this they are able
to successfully blame it on this urban legend, Like I
(27:09):
wanted to bring that up earlier, like, how do you
think do you think in general culturally there's more of
a willingness to accept myth as reality than there is
over here. I'm wondering what you think is leading to
this being a legitimate a thing to blame these crimes on. Right,
We also, well, we have to remember that one person's
myth is another person's matter of fact, you know, depending
(27:30):
on where they live. There are people who will assure
you that everyone in the United States is deluded because
they believe in myths like democracy or capitalism, which is
not the same hopefully as a supernatural creature breaking into
people's houses at night. But it's also not perfect. It's
(27:51):
weird because we have to wonder, we have to wonder
how much of it is willing, you know, like you said,
a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to attribute mundane tragedies
to supernatural causes. It Also, you guys have heard about Iceland,
right and their belief in elves or fairies. If you're
(28:12):
familiar with this. Our super producer Paul Michigantrol Decade traveled
to Iceland and I can't remember if we talked about it.
We've got to figure this out off air. I have
heard that people will attribute construction problems and things to
elves Inland, and surely a lot of that that is
with a nod and a wink. But uh, there was something.
(28:35):
There was some pole I read wherein the residents of
Iceland who participated self reported to believe in in elves,
to actually no fooling believe in them. And you have
to you have to wonder if you're in an environment
where you may be relatively isolated. Uh, our knowledge of
(28:58):
what is or is not true is largely going to
be based on our own experiences and interactions. You can
you can read about a country like Bhutan, for instance,
for your entire life. You can see pictures that say
they're from there, but there are people will argue that
you don't know something for sure unless you experience it firsthand.
(29:20):
I don't particularly subscribe to that or ascribe to that rather,
but there are people who who believe that. So maybe
maybe they're saying, I believe this because I saw something
inexplicable and the closest thing to my knowledge in my
like data banks that that um resembles what I know
that I physically saw is this thing called in the
(29:43):
wrong Mignac. So maybe they believe it and also want
to walk back what I said, just ever so slightly,
Like I mean, you know, you could say that Christianity
is a myth and that people outside of the United
States look at that as being a widely accepted belief
as bonkers and like like, how could you believe than
this this magical creature of Jesus Christ or you know
what I mean. It's just all about it's all about
(30:04):
your perspective and where you're coming from. What is a
myth versus what is a belief system? And I just
think it's interesting. You know, we blame things on religion
all the time, you know, so it's it's really not
that different. You know. It's true legally we do have things,
uh called acts of God. Yeah, it's like all right, Sorry,
we don't have to pay you for this because it
(30:25):
was an act of God. I think that should be
changed to natures. Yep, so you heard it here, folks.
You heard it here first, folks, Matt Frederick. Regardless though,
then this, this is a conversation that can get very
deep and very complicated very quickly, right, and regardless of
(30:46):
what you think. And No, to be absolutely clear, we
are not we are not making a one to one
comparison between the wrong maniac capitalism, Christianity, and democracy. Those
are ideologies. But there's still their beliefs, right, there's still
beliefs at this point, though, regardless value feel about any
(31:08):
of those things. It looks extremely likely, I would say
overwhelmingly likely. In fact, I would say I have certitude
about this. I am certain that at multiple times genuine
sexual crimes were either dismissed or actively covered up through
the through attributing this to a supernatural creature. No, it wasn't.
(31:33):
It wasn't that guy who has had like four or
five other previous run ins with the law. It was
the irong migniac. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with with that
which you assert. I mean, there's always the notion of
public panic too, right. I'm not saying that people are
(31:53):
always intentionally trying to cover up a crime using this.
There's always notion to outbreak like a moral panic, they're called.
And I know in our previous work with reports of
serial killers, for instance, one thing that we've seen um
(32:14):
happen every single time, every single time there's an active,
identified serial killer, none has not been apprehended, or even
after the most likely suspect is apprehended, police departments and
law enforcement agencies will be inundated with the weirdest calls.
People who confess to being the killer because they want attention,
(32:35):
People who are certain they've seen the killer, people who
have some sort of like very very um low effort
count of Monte Cristo revenge scheme, who reports someone they
don't like at work or in their personal life as
the killer. That happens so often. And then this this
also has a little bit of a uh cultural divide.
(32:59):
Is is some one saying that there's a language divide, right,
That's a better way to say it. Is someone saying
that when they're saying I was attacked by ring Migniac,
do they mean I was attacked by this supernatural creature
or do they mean I was attacked by this creepy
dude covered in slime or oil? In this case, regardless
public panic aside, it looks like several criminals took advantage
(33:22):
of a longstanding belief. And as we record this, these
people got away clean with their crimes. They dressed up right,
I mean this is and not to sound dismissive, they
disguised themselves. They participated in causplay for the purpose of crime.
This is similar to saying, for instance, let's make uh,
(33:48):
let's make it part of folklore that bigfoot is in
addition to being real known for robbing banks, and then
let's all dress up his big foot and start rob banks.
Brilliant And then it was never it was never us.
It was a group of big feet. Big feet. Um.
But this, this is the case, and this is something
(34:10):
at this point we haven't we haven't cracked the case on.
We know that the police clearly hate this idea. It's
not helpful for an investigation, No, not at all. At
least again, I keep going back to the red underpants thing,
because at least that's a good description of the person
(34:31):
and hopefully a witness I saw that person that if
you just describe it as a naked, oily human being
that is this other creature, that's not a lot to
go on for law enforcement. That's that's definitely unfortunate. You
can only hope that people out there very soon will
begin to understand that there are awful human beings that
(34:55):
exist in the world that will do terrible things and
those are the ones that you need to blame it on,
not some myth. It's interesting because there there are other reports.
Asia One reported that as recently as two thousand twelve,
in some regions of the area, people overwhelmingly did believe
(35:16):
in the wrong miniac, especially in kampang La Samana. It's
it's apparently very difficult to find a resident who doesn't
believe in arang maniac or feel like they have seen it.
This was a place where, remember we we talked about
the spike in reports. Over Christmas of that year, two
hundred people went out into the street patrolling the area.
(35:40):
They carried machetes, axes, sticks, whatever they could find and spotlights.
So people actually went out on a search for this thing.
And you know, there's some there's something else here. Because
when we were describing what an arang maniac is or
could be. With all the various descriptions up at the
top of this episode, one of the major versions of
(36:00):
this is a spurned lover, a human being that is
a spurned lover. Right, So it's even if there's some
kind of supernatural or the belief of supernatural power working
through this human being, it is a human being, and
I think it as long as that is kept. Perhaps,
I know that's not the only description, but if that
(36:22):
thought is kept, then hopefully some of these some of
these human monsters can be apprehended and this could be stopped,
and at least in the minds of people, they could
have that framing of seeing something very real, even if
it is supernaturally enhanced. So yeah, I guess I don't
(36:43):
know what else to say. Well, you know, at this point,
this is where, this is where the story ends. It's
tremendously fortunate that these reports have precipitously declined, but it's
tremendously tragic that they still continue, you know what I mean.
And this is where we want to hand this story
over to you. Thank you so much for listening. Let
(37:06):
us know if there are any similar things like this
in your neck of the global woods, whether that's Peru, Pennsylvania, uh, Paraguay, Paris,
even places that don't begin with the peak. And we're
asking this. We're asking for this because it may surprise
(37:27):
you to learn how many stories, um, maybe not this sinister,
maybe not this disturbing, but how many stories like this, uh,
the supernatural impinging on modern life? How many stories like
this exist and are not well known? You know, as
a matter of fact, right to us and let us
know if you heard of the wrong Magnac before you
(37:49):
listen to this show. You can find us on Instagram
where we are Conspiracy Stuff show, or in other places
where we're conspiracy stuff. You can uh, you can call
us if you want to leave a message. It might
get on the air. Our number is one eight three
three S C D W Y T K stuff. They
(38:10):
don't want you to know an acronym form, and yes
they are numbers as well. Use your phone. You'll you'll
you'll get it. Uh. If you don't want to do
any of that stuff, send us a good old fashion email.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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