A listener writes “My wife and I have been listening to Sasquatch Chronicles for a few months. Her father Joe is a stoic, somewhat reserved Vietnam veteran. He did two voluntary tours as a Marine tank commander. He worked as a prison guard in Michigan upon his return to civilian life. He is nice, enjoys his family but is a bit of a no nonsense person.
He paid us a visit over Christmas and we ended up talking about politics, 2020 lockdowns, etc. I have on occasion asked him questions about his tours and he has been willing to talk to me about some horrible things that he never told my wife. I saw a show recently about alleged ufo sightings in Vietnam and on a whim asked him if he ever saw one. His response was most unexpected.
He said he never saw any but heard rumors of them. Then he said, “what I saw were rock apes.” I had never heard of rock apes. He explained they were like Bigfoot but usually only 6 to 7 feet tall, very strong and very fast. He told us a story about two nights where they were dug into some large hills in the jungle. Squads of the of six men were set up to form a defensive perimeter.
Just before dark on the first night they saw rock apes throw rocks at a squad. The squad threw some rocks back. Not much else happened that night. On the second day, as it was almost getting dark, from up high they saw a group of rock apes throw rocks at one of the squads again. The squad threw rocks back at the rock apes.
They lost contact with the squad during the night and the squad failed to return back to the company the next morning. They sent men out to look for them. They found the entire squad dead, horrifically torn limb from limb. None of their weapons had been fired. Everyone blamed it on the rock apes. He said it didn’t look like something the enemy could have done.
I did some brief googling after he left and see that rock apes were a widely reported animal during the war. Perhaps this is a subject you can explore with Vietnam veterans.”
Danny G
Wow!
I’ve heard of the rock apes before.
Sounds pretty interesting.
Denise F
This sounds really interesting, doesn’t it?
Great possible episode
Denise F
After reading this, I reached out to a relative who worked in the ‘flatlands’ in vietnam during the war. He also said he knew of rock apes (which were much larger) and lived in the mountains. He acted very matter of fact about it.
Steven W
I attended the Naval War College in the mid 2000’s and attended a small group lecture by retired US Special Forces Sergeant Jon Robert Cavaiani who received the Medal of Honor during Vietnam. Among the many fascinating anecdotes he told our group was one of an ambush his patrol was on in Vietnam where one of his soldiers had attempted to knife what he thought was a Vietnamese man on an open trail. Cavaiani said that he watched his team member run up to the “man” from behind with his knife just before the soldier abruptly turned around and attempted to run away and retreat. The “man” whom, everyone assumed was Vietnamese, turned and ran after the soldier and jumped on his back biting into him. Cavaiani and others ended up shooting the “man” and killing him only to find out it was a large (man sized) orangish “orangutan” covered in reddish long hair. The Special Forces solider who was attacked survived but I recall him saying they had to sever the dead apes head to get it off the soldier. We all laughed at the story at the time and assumed it was an orangutan as Cavaiani said. However years later two things now come to my mind; these Vietnam Rock Ape accounts and the fact that there are NO known large primates in Indochina! There are no orangutans either. I now wonder what they had run into and killed in Vietnam. And sadly Sergeant Cavaiani died in 2014.