Kisah Benar : Harimau Jadian Bunuh 8 Mangsa Dalam Satu Malam Ngeri Di Kg Ranggul Tembeling

Ini cerita benar berlaku pada tahun 1862 di Lembah Tembeling. Ramai orang tua-tua bercerita kisah seekor harimau jadian (weretiger) yang besar telah membunuh 31 mangsa dan pernah dalam satu malam yang ngeri membunuh 8 sekeluarga dalam sebuah rumah di Kg Ranggul, Tembeling.

Hugh Clifford Residen Inggeris di Pahang pernah menulis mengenai kisah harimau jadian ini. Satu kisah di Tembeling dan satu lagi di Slim River Perak. Masa itu orang Melayu percaya orang Kerinci dari Sumatera boleh menjadi harimau jadian.

Masa itu juga orang Tembeling tidak berani menyebut nama harimau bukan sahaja dalam hutan tapi di rumah juga bimbang angin akan membawa ke telinga harimau dan akan datang membaham mereka.

Orang Tembeling menyebut harimau itu dengan nama Si Pudong atau 'dia yang muka berbulu'!

Secara peribadi WZWH tidak percaya pada harimau jadian tapi percaya itu adalah harimau yang sebenar. Mungkin harimau ini sungguh luarbiasa saiz dan kekuatannya.

WZWH percaya ini adalah harimau yang sebenar membunuh 31 orang Tembeling itu.

Orang Tembeling dan Hugh Clifford percaya itu harimau jadian dari dunia magic dan mistik.

Mengikut ceritanya harimau jadian itu adalah seorang orang asli Semang @ Negrito di hutan Tembeling. Tinggal dikalangan orang Semang pada siang hari bila malam menjelma sebagai harimau jadian @ weretiger membunuh mangsa untuk menghisap darah, lebih banyak dari makan daging!

Harimau jadian ini ketika itu telah membunuh seorang budak perempuan dari keluarga Wan di Kg Labu. Itu menjadikan mangsa yang ke 23 dan berita cepat tersebar ke seluruh kampung-kampung.

Semua orang bila malam menjelma berasa takut dan duduk di rumah. 

Cerita harimau jadian bunuh 8 mangsa dalam satu malam sungguh ngeri di Kg Ranggul Tembeling. Diberitakan pada petang hari keluarga 8 orang ini telah mengetahui kisah harimau jadian membunuh seorang budak perempuan bernama Wan Esah di Kg Labu.

Masing-masing merasa takut. Malam itu sebenarnya ada 9 orang berlindung ketakutan dalam sebuah rumah di Kg Ranggul sambil memegang lembing dan parang. Mereka ialah:

• Che Seman
• 2 anak lelaki Che Seman iaitu Awang dan Ngah
• Lang isteri Che Seman
• Minah anak perempuan kecil Che Seman
• Kassim
• Potek
• Abdollah
• Mat

Harimau itu datang pada malam hari mengaum dengan kuat dan menerkam ke tingkap rumah tapi gagal masuk terjatuh. Kali ke dua berjaya menghembur hingga ke bumbung dan berjaya menyelinap memasuki rumah lalu membunuh 8 orang kecuali Mat selamat kerana menyorok di satu bahagian rumah.

Mengikut Mat, harimau itu menghisap darah setiap mangsa yang dibunuh dan bermain dengan mangsa yang sudah mati seperti kucing bermain dengan tikus sambil mencakar dan menggigit tubuh mangsa.

Sungguh ngeri semua tubuh mangsa bagai dikerat-kerat tidak berupa orang dan yang paling sedih harimau itu sebelum membunuh sikecil Minah budak perempuan, harimau itu seolah-olah macam bermain-main dengan Minah seperti tikus. Minah beberapa kali merangkak hingga sangat keletihan akhirnya dengan ganas harimau itu mencakar dan mengigit tengkuk Minah hingga mati.

Menjelang subuh harimau itu terus terjun ke tanah berlari ke arah hutan menghilangkan diri dan paginya orang Kg Ranggol melihat 8 tubuh manusia yang hancur bergelimpangan sukar untuk dikenali.

Apa yang berlaku kesudahannya kepada harimau jadian itu tidak diketahui. Hugh Clifford tidak memberitahu apa jadi adakah harimau jadian itu berjaya dibunuh. Hugh Clifford cuma mengutuk harimau jadian yang asal dari manusia sanggup membunuh 31 orang kampung demi menghisap darah dengan kejam kerana ilmu hitam.

WZWH percaya harimau jadian itu akhirnya berjaya dibunuh tapi tidak mahu mendedahkan siapa kerana semua yang terlibat sudah mati.

Untuk pembaca blog WZWH menghayati kisah yang ditulis oleh Hugh Clifford,WZWH telah extract dibawah. Please enjoy the old Queen English of 19th century works....

A NIGHT OF TERROR   by Hugh Clifford

The glaring eyes through the brushwood shine, 

And the striped hide shows between 
The trees and bushes, 'mid trailing vine 

And masses of ever-green. 
A snarling moan comes long and low. 

We may neither flee nor fight. 
For well our leaping pulses know 

The Terror that stalks by Night. 

If you put your finger on the map of the Malay 
Peninsula an inch or two from its exact centre, you 
will find a river in Pahang territory which has its rise 
in the watershed that divides that State from Kelantan 
and Trengganu. This river is called the Tembeling, 
and it is chiefly remarkable for the number of its rapids 
and the richness of its gutta-bearing forests. Its in- 
habitants are a ruffianly lot of Malays, who are preyed 
upon by a family of Wans^ a semi-royal set of nobles 
who do their best to live up to their traditions. Below 
the rapids the natives are chiefly noted for the quaint 
pottery that they produce from the clay which abounds 
there and the rude shapes and ruder tracery of their 
vessels have probably suffered no change since the days 
when Solomon's fleets sought gold and peafowl and 
monkeys in the jungles of the Peninsula, as everybody 



A NIGHT OF TERROR 197 

knows. Above the rapids the Malays plant enough 
gaynhir to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing 
population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this com- 
modity wins them a few dollars annually, they are too 
indolent to plant their own rice. This grain, which 
is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot 
live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, 
at the exorbitant price of half a dollar the bushel. 

A short distance up stream, and midway between 
the mouth and the big rapids, there is a straggling 
village, called Ranggul, the houses of which, made of 
wattled bamboos and thatched with palm leaves, stand on 
piles, amid the groves of cocoa-nut and areca-nut palms, 
varied by clumps of smooth-leaved banana trees. The 
houses are not very close together, but a man can call 
from one to the other with ease j and thus the cocoa- 
nuts thrive, which, as the Malays say, grow not with 
pleasure beyond the sound of the human voice. The 
people of the village are not more indolent than other 
Malays. They plant a little rice, wh^n the season 
comes, in the swamps behind the village. They work 
a little jungle produce, when the pinch of poverty 
drives them to it, but, like all Malays, they take life 
sufficiently easily. If you chance to go into the village 
of Ranggul, during any of the hot hours of the day, 
you will find most of its occupants lying about in their 
dark, cool houses, engaged upon such gentle mental 
tasks as may be afforded by whittling a stick, or hack- 
ing slowly at the already deeply scored threshold-block, 
with their clumsy wood-knives. Sitting thus, they gossip 
with a passing neighbour, who stops to chatter as he sits 
propped upon the stair ladder, or they croak snatches 



198 IN COURT AND KJMPONG 

of song, with some old-world refrain to it, and, from 
time to time, break off to cast a word over their 
shoulders to the wife in the dim background near the 
fireplace, or to the little virgin daughter, carefully- 
secreted on the shelf overhead, in company with a 
miscellaneous collection of dusty, grimy rubbish, the 
disused lumber of years. Nature has been very lavish 
to the Malay, and she has provided him with a soil 
which returns a maximum of food for a minimum of 
grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call 
aloud to all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant 
shade during the parching hours of mid-day, and the 
Malay has caught the spirit of his surroundings, and is 
very much what Nature has seen fit to make him. 

Some five-and-thirty years ago, when Che' wan 
Ahmad, now better known as Sultan Ahmad Maatham 
Shah, was collecting his forces in Dungun, preparatory 
to making his last and successful descent into the 
Tembeling valley, whence to overrun and conquer 
Pahang, the night was closing in at Ranggul. A large 
house stood, at that time, in a somewhat isolated 
position, within a thickly-planted compound, at one 
extremity of the village. In this house, on the night 
of which I write, seven men and two women were at 
work on the evening meal. The men sat in the 
centre of the floor, on a white mat made from the 
plaited leaves of the mengkuang palm, with a plate piled 
with rice before each of them, and a brass tray, holding 
various little china bowls of curry, placed where all 
could reach it. They sat cross-legged, with bowed 
backs, supporting themselves on their left arms, the 
left hand lying flat on the mat, and being so turned 



A NIGHT OF TERROR 199 

that the outspread fingers pointed inwards. With the 
fingers of their right hands they messed the rice, 
mixing the curry well into it, and then swiftly carried 
a large handful to their mouths, skilfully, without 
dropping a grain. The women sat demurely, in a 
half kneeling position, with their feet tucked away 
under them, and ministered to the wants of the men. 
They said never a word, save an occasional exclamation, 
when they drove away a lean cat that crept too near to 
the food, and the men also held their peace. There 
was no sound to be heard, save the hum of the insects 
out of doors, the deep note of the bull-frogs in the rice 
swamps, and the unnecessarily loud noise of mastication 
made by the men as they ate. 

When the meal was over the women carried what 
was left to a corner near the fireplace, and there fell 
to on such of the viands as their lords had not con- 
sumed. If you had looked carefully, however, you 
would have seen that the cooking-pots, over which the 
women ruled, still held a secret store for their own con- 
sumption, and that the quality of the food in this cache 
was by no means inferior to that which had been allotted 
to the men. In a land where women wait upon them- 
selves, and have none to attend to their wants, or 
forestall their wishes, they very soon acquire an ex- 
tremely good notion of how to look after themselves ; 
and, since they have never known a state of society in 
which women are treated as they are amongst ourselves, 
they do not repine, and seem, for the most part, to be 
sufficiently bright, light-hearted, and happy. 

The men, meanwhile, had each rolled up a quid ot 
betel-nut, taking the four ingredients carefully from 



200 IN COURT AND KAMPONG 

the little brass boxes in the wooden tray before them, 
and having prepared cigarettes of Javenese tobacco, 
with the dried shoots of the nipah palm for wrappers, 
had at length broken the absorbed silence, which had 
held them fast while the matter of the meal was 
occupying their undivided attention. 

The talk flitted lightly over many subjects ; for a 
hearty meal, and the peace of soul which repletion 
brings with it, are not conducive to concentration of 
attention, nor yet to activity of mind. The Malay, 
too, is always superficial, and talk among natives 
generally plays round facts, rather than round ideas. 
Che' Seman, the owner of the house, and his two 
sons, Awang and Ngah, discussed the prospects of the 
crop then growing in the fields behind the compound. 
Their cousin Abdollah, who chanced to be passing the 
night in the house, told of a fall which his wife's 
aunt's brother had come by, when climbing a cocoa- 
nut tree. Mat, his hiras (for they had married two 
sisters, which established a definite form of relationship 
between them, according to Malay ideas), added a few 
more or less ugly details to Abdollah's description of 
the corpse after the accident. And as this attracted 
the attention of the two remaining men, Potek and 
Kassim, who had been discussing the price of rice, and 
the varying chances of getah hunting, the talk at this 
point became general. Potek and Kassim had recently 
returned from Dungun, where, as has been said, the 
present Sultan of Pahang was, at that time, collecting 
the force with which he afterwards successfully invaded 
and conquered the State. They told of all they had 
seen and heard, multiplying their figures with the 



A NIGHT OF TERROR 201 

daring recklessness that is born of unfettered imagina- 
tions, and the lack of a rudimentary knowledge of 
arithmetic. But even this absorbing topic could not 
hold the attention of their hearers for long. Before 
Potek and Kassim had well finished the enumeration 
of the heavy artillery, of the thousands of the elephants, 
and the tens of thousands of the followers, with which 
they credited the adventurous, but slender bands of raga- 
muffins, who followed Ahmad's fortunes, Che' Seman 
broke into their talk with words on a subject which, at 
that time, was ever uppermost in the minds of the 
Tembeling people, and the conversation straight- 
way drifted into the channel in which it had run, 
with only casual interruptions, for many weeks 
past. 

' He of the Hairy Face ^ is with us once more,' 
ejaculated Che' Seman ; and when this announcement 
had caused a dead silence to fall upon his hearers, and 
had even stilled the chatter of the women-folk near 
the fireplace, he continued : 

'At the hour when the cicada is heard (sunset), 
I met Imam Sidik of Gemuroh, and bade him stay to 
eat rice, but he would not, saying that He of the 
Hairy Face had made his kill at Labu yesternight, and 
it behoved all men to be within their houses before the 
darkness fell. And so saying he paddled his dug-out 
down stream with the short quick stroke used when 
we race boats. Imam Sidik is a wise man, and his 
words are true. He of the Hairy Face spares neither 

^ Si Pudo77g = ont of the names used by jungle-bred Malays to describe 
a tiger. They avoid using the beast's real name lest the sound of it 
should reach his ears, and cause him to come to the speaker. 



202 IN COURT JND KJMPONG 

priest nor prince. The girl he killed at Labu was a 
daughter of the Wans — her name Wan Esah.' 

'That makes three-and-twenty whom He of the 
Hairy Face hath slain in one year of maize' (three 
months), said Awang in a low fear -stricken voice. 
' He touches neither goats nor kine, and men say He 
sucketh more blood than He eateth flesh.' 

' That it is which proves Him to be the thing he 
is,' said Ngah. 

'Thy words are true,' said Che' Seman solemnly. 
' He of the Hairy Face has his origin in a man. The 
Semang — the negrits of the woods — drove him forth 
from among them, and now he lives solitarily in the 
jungles, and by night he takes upon himself the form 
of Him of the Hairy Face, and feasts upon the flesh of 
his own kind.' 

' I have heard tell that it is only the men of 
Korinchi who have this strange power,' interposed 
Abdollah, in the tone of one who longs to be re- 
assured. 

' Men say that they also possess the power,' rejoined 
Che' Seman, ' but certain it is that He of the Hairy 
Face was born a Semang^ — a negrit of the woods, — and 
when He goeth forth in human guise he is like all 
other Semangs to look upon. I and many others have 
seen him, roaming alone, naked, and muttering to 
himself, when we have been in the forests seeking for 
jungle produce. All men know that it is He who by 
night harries us in our villages. If one ventures to go 
forth from our houses in the time of darkness, to the 
bathing raft at the river's edge, or to tend our sick, or 
to visit a friend. Si Pudong is ever to be found 



J NIGHT OF TERROR 203 

watching, and thus the tale of his kills waxes longer 
and longer.' 

' But men are safe from him while they sit within 
their houses ? ' asked Mat with evident anxiety. 

' God alone knows,' answered Che' Seman piously, 
' who can say where men are safe from Him of the 
Hairy Face ? He cometh Hke a shadow, and slays like a 
prince, and then like a shadow he is gone ! And the 
tale of his kills waxes ever longer and yet more long. 
May God send Him far from us ! Ya Allah ! It is 
He ! Listen ! ' 

At the word, a dead silence, broken only by the 
hard breathing of the men and women, fell upon all 
within the house. Then very faintly, and far away 
up stream, but not so faintly but that all could hear it, 
and shudder at the sound, the long-drawn, howling, 
snarling moan of a hungry tiger broke upon the still- 
ness. The Malays call the roar of the tiger aum^ and 
the word is vividly onomatopoetic, as those who 
have heard the sound in the jungle during the silent 
night watches can bear witness. All who have 
Hstened to the tiger in his forest freedom know that 
he has many voices wherewith to speak. He can give 
a barking cry, which is not unlike that of a deer ; he 
can grunt like a startled boar, and squeak like the 
monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches 
overhead ; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, 
resonant purr, like the sound of faint thunder in the 
foot-hills ; he can mew and snarl like an angry wild- 
cat ; and he can roar hke a lusty hon cub. But it is 
when he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan 
that the jungle chiefly fears him. This cry means 



204 IN COURT JND KJMPONG 

that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of 
his kill that he cares not if all the world knows that 
his belly is empty. It has something strangely 
horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, 
dispassionate cruelty which is only to be found in 
perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth- 
skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, 
torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in 
strength which has something in it more violently 
repugnant to our natures than any sensation with 
which the thought of the blundering charge and 
savage goring of the buffalo, or the clumsy kneading 
with giant knee-caps, that the elephant metes out to 
its victims, can ever inspire in us. 

Again the long-drawn moaning cry broke upon the 
stillness. The cattle in the byre heard it and were panic- 
stricken. Half mad with fear, they charged the walls 
of their pen, bearing all before them, and in a moment 
could be heard in the distance plunging madly through 
the brushwood, and splashing through the soft earth 
of the padi fields. The dogs whimpered and scampered 
off in every direction, while the fowls beneath the 
house set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. 
The folk within the house were too terror-stricken to 
speak, for fear, which gives voices to the animal world, 
renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this 
time the cry broke forth again and again, ever louder 
and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew nearer and 
yet more near. 

At last the cruel whining howl sounded within the 
very compound in which the house stood, and its 
sudden proximity caused Mat to start so violently 



A NIGHT OF TERROR 205 

that he overturned the pitch torch at his elbow, 
and extinguished the flickering light. The women 
crowded up against the men, seeking comfort by- 
physical contact with them, their teeth chattering like 
castanets. The men gripped their spears, and squatted 
tremblingly in the half light thrown by the dying 
embers of the fire, and the flecks cast upon floor and 
wall by the faint moonbeams struggling through the 
interstices of the thatched roof. 

' Fear nothing, Minah,' Che' Seman whispered, in 
a hoarse, strange voice, to his little daughter, who 
nestled miserably against his breast, ' in a space He will 
be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no 
harm while we sit within the house.' 

Che' Seman spoke from the experience of many 
generations of Malays, but he knew not the nature of 
the strange beast with whom he had to deal. Once 
more the moan-like howl broke out on the still night 
air, but this time the note had changed, and gradually 
it quickened to the ferocious snarling roar, the charge 
song, as the tiger rushed forward and leaped against 
the side of the house with a heavy jarring thud. A 
shriek from all the seven throats went up on the 
instant, and then came a scratching, tearing sound, 
followed by a soft, dull flop, as the tiger, failing to 
effect a landing on the low roof, fell back to earth. 
The men started to their feet, clutching their weapons 
convulsively, and, led by Che' Seman, they raised, 
above the shrieks of the frightened women, a lament- 
able attempt at a sora^^ the Malayan war-cry, which is 
designed as much to put heart into those who utter it, as 
to frighten the enemy in defiance of whom it is sounded. 



2o6 IN COURT AND KAMPONG 

Alat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged 
the house in darkness, alone failed to add his voice to 
the miserable cheer raised by his fellows. Wild with 
fear of the beast without, he crept, unobserved by the 
others, up into the para^ or shelf-like upper apartment, 
on which Minah had been wont to sit, when strangers 
were about, during the short davs of her virginity. 
This place, as is usual in most Alalav houses, hardly 
desen'ed to be dignified bv being termed a room. It 
consisted of a platform suspended from the roof in one 
corner of the house, and among the dustv lumber with 
which it was covered Mat now cowered and sought to 
hide himself. 

A minute or two of sickening suspense followed 
the timer's first unsuccessful charge. But presently the 
howl broke forth again, quickened rapidly to the note 
of the charge song, and once more the house trembled 
under the weight of the great animal. This time the 
leap of Him of the Hairy Face had been of truer aim, 
and a crash overhead, a shower of leaflets of thatch, 
and an ominous creaking of the woodwork told the 
cowering people in the house that their enemy had 
effected a landing on the roof. 

The miserable thready cheer, which Che' Seman 
exhorted his fellows to raise in answer to the charge 
song of the tiger, died down in their throats. All 
looked upwards in deadlv fascination as the thatch was 
torn violently apart by the great claws of their 
assailant. There were no firearms in the house, but 
the men instinctively grasped their spears, and held 
them readv to await the tiger's descent. Thus for a 
moment, as the quiet moonlight poured in through 



A NIGHT OF TERROR 207 

the gap in the thatch, they stood gazing at the great 
square face, marked with its black bars, at the flaming 
eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which 
the claws of the beast had made. The timbers of 
the roof bent and cracked anew under the unwonted 
weight, and then, with the agility of a cat. He of the 
Hairy Face leaped lightly down, and was in among 
them before they knew. The striped hide was slightly 
wounded by the spears, but the shock of the brute's leap 
bore all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger never 
stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the attitude 
of a kitten which plays with something dangled before 
its eyes, and the soft pit-pat of its paws, as it struck 
out rapidly and with unerring aim, speedily disposed 
of all its enemies. Che' Seman, with his two sons, 
Awang and Ngah, were the first to fall. Then lang, 
Che' Seman's wife, fell backwards against the wall, 
with her skull crushed out of all resemblance to any 
human member, by the awful strength of one of those 
well-aimed buffets from the fearful claws. Kassim, 
Potek, and Abdollah fell before the tiger in quick 
succession, and Minah, the girl who had nestled against 
her father for protection, lay now under his dead body, 
sorely wounded, wild with terror, but still alive and 
conscious. Mat, cowering on the shelf overhead, 
breathless with fear, and gazing fascinated at the 
carnage going on within a few feet of him, was the 
only inmate of the house who remained uninjured. 

He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently, 
while there were yet some ahve to resist him. Then, 
purring gently, he drank a deep draught of blood 
from each of his slaughtered victims. At last he 



2o8 IN COURT AND KJMPONG 

reached Che' Seman, and Minah, seeing him approach, 
made a feeble effort to evade him. Then began a 
fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing the 
girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed 
mouse. Again and again Minah crawled feebly away 
from her tormentor, only to be drawn back again just 
when escape seemed possible. Again and again she 
lay still in the utter inertia of exhaustion, only to be 
quickened into agonised movement once more by the 
touch of the tiger's cruel claws. Yet so cunningly 
did he play with her, that, as Mat described it, a time 
as long as it would take to cook rice had elapsed, 
before the girl was finally put out of her misery. 

Even then He of the Hairy Face did not quit the 
scene of slaughter. Mat, as he lay trembling in the 
shelf overhead, watched the tiger, through the long 
hours of that fearful night, play with the mangled 
bodies of each of his victims in turn. He leaped from 
one to the other, inflicting a fresh blow with teeth or 
claws on their torn flesh, with all the airy, light- 
hearted agility and sinuous grace of a kitten playing 
with its shadow in the sun. Then when the dawn 
was breaking, the tiger tore down the door, leaped 
lightly to the ground, and betook himself to the 
jungle. 

When the sun was up, an armed party of neigh- 
bours came to the house to see if ought could be done. 
But they found the place a shambles, the bodies 
hardly to be recognised, the floor-laths dripping blood, 
and Mat lying face downward on the shelf, with his 
reason tottering in the balance. The bodies, though 
they had been horribly mutilated, had not been eaten, 

A NIGHT OF TERROR 209 

the tiger having contented himself with drinking the 
blood of his victims, and playing his ghastly game 
with them till the dawn broke. 

This is, I believe, the only recorded instance in the 
Peninsula of a tiger having dared to attack men 
within their closed houses ; and the circumstances 
are so remarkable in every way, that I, for one, cannot 
find it in me to greatly blame the Malays for 
attributing the fearlessness of mankind, and the lust 
for blood displayed by Him of the Hairy Face, to the 
fact that he owed his existence to magic agencies, and 
was in reality no mere wild beast, but a member or 
the race upon which he so cruelly preyed.