Mystery of Vietnam’s Rock Apes

During the Vietnam War, American soldiers reported strange encounters deep in the jungle with large, aggressive, humanoid creatures they dubbed "rock apes." Described as 4-7 feet tall with reddish hair and muscular builds, these beings would stealthily approach soldiers and hurl massive boulders at them. Sightings were so frequent, one mountain became known as "Monkey Mountain," and accounts like Corporal Alfonso Villareal's detailed terrifying face-to-face encounters with both adult and young rock apes.

Explanations ranged from misidentified orangutans or gibbons to camouflaged Viet Cong soldiers, but none fit perfectly. Orangutans had been extinct in the region for centuries, gibbons were far too small, and even Vietnamese troops reported attacks, prompting a 1974 expedition to capture a live specimen. The consistency of the sightings across multiple years and numerous veterans makes outright fabrication unlikely.

Despite decades of scientific exploration in Vietnam, no definitive evidence of these creatures has ever been found. Whether a real undiscovered species or a shared wartime hallucination, the true identity of the rock apes remains one of the war's most bizarre and enduring mysteries.

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