On the 15th of May, 2001, the first of many reports about a mysterious creature known as a ‘man-monkey’, who was attacking people as they slept on their roofs during the insanely-hot summer months in Dehli. These attacks caused one death and at least 35 injuries as people were injured by the assailant or in the panic to escape from him. The effects of these attacks were so severe that in one suburb of Delhi ordered its police officers to shoot-on-sight at the creature.Described as ‘short, dark and hairy, with human legs and an ape-like face’, the monkey-man of Dehli sounds as if he could infact be a pre-historic human, such as a Neanderthal.

What adds mystery to the assailant is his apparent ability to survive leaps that would kill a normal human being, and his ability to cover long distances in a short amount of time. Because of this, he inspires terror into all that see him, causing a man to die as he jumped from the roof as his house in an attempt to save himself.

The police on the night of these first attacks, received 29 ‘distress calls’ from the eastern and north-eastern areas of Dehli. Patrols were stepped up, and police were tasked to investigate the mysterious happenings. However, this wasn’t the last sighthing of the Monkey-man, as he is still being sighted today, becoming something of a legend amongst the people of New Dehli.

[Wikipedia]

P. Selvakumar was a man cursed. Being physically fit 15-years ago, the man had attacked and killed two dogs through stoning. This violence caused him, in the eyes of him and his family, to be stricken by the inability to move his limbs freely and loss of hearing. He tried salves and other such cures to make him better, but nothing would work. However, 3 years ago, he went to an astrologer.

This astrologer gave him some advice: marry a dog.

By marrying a dog, he would appease the spirits and show that he had atoned for his crimes. This is actually quite a common aspect of Indian culture, with many people marrying animals and sometimes objects to appease spirits. A famous example is actress Ashwarya Rai marrying a tree so that her engagement to another Bollywood actor wouldn’t have bad signs against it, as they would already be spent on the tree. However, this practice is actually illegal in India, as it practices the caste system, something that has been deemed illegal and taken out of the constitution.Rai has been taken to court about the matter.

The bride, named Selvi, who you see picture above was dressed in an orange sari, was taken to the temple where vows were exchanged, somehow, and the couple were married. The villagers cheered the newly-weds, and soon enough, Selvakumar alleges he was cured.

[Telegraph]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle the Rougarou. Monday we looked at the origin story, Wednesday we explored the byzantine rules that come along with the curse.

We’ve heard almost too many stories of white colonists co-opting and literalizing indigenous folklore. Starting with Lake Champlain’s Champ and moving westward, plenty of the classic American lake monster tales started when some eager fishermen heard about, or saw a native drawing of, a serpentine lake spirit and took it as a warning of tangible aquatic horror. Aboriginal bunyip legends found British interlopers tramping through the Australian brush, rifles raised and taxidermists on call. More recently, American Indian Skinwalker legends were dumped into the boiling, paranoid slurry of UFOs, portals, cryptoeverythingology and government conspiracy theories. So it’s kinda nice to know that the Rougarou legend cross-pollinated in the opposite direction.
The Rugaru of Chippewa and Ojibwa legend isn’t the wolf-headed antagonist that bullied the French, nor does it adhere to that monster’s seasonal schedule or incomprehensible 101-day statute of limitations. So what is it? That, my buddies, is a source of some contention. While scholars know for a fact that the word “Rugaru” isn’t derived from any Native American language – meaning it’s almost certainly a bastardized version of either the Cajun term “Rougarou” or the French “Loup Garou” – it’s not entirely clear as to how various tribes and groups applied the word to their established mythologies.

It’s clear that the native Rugaru was a mysterious hairy humanoid who lived out in the forest. Some researchers suggest that tribes began using the term “Rugaru” in relation to their already-extant Sasquatch equivalents (not actually Sasquatch, but rather a physically similar entity with the same Type B personality). And that makes sense. If you aren’t Catholic, haven’t been raised in constant aural proximity to European werewolf stories and can already account for your own packed pantheon of culturally loaded monstrosities, it jibes that, when French traders start going off about some sort of animal guy hiding out in the wilderness, your mind turns immediately to the one animal guy hiding out in the wilderness that you’re already hip to. In this way, this native Rugaru is loosely comparable to our modern Bigfoot – a lumbering mascot for the enduring connection between nature and man, and an animal that couldn’t give two bunyips whether or not you eat a cheeseburger on Good Friday.

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