The Kota Tinggi Mawas: fish-farm workers' Bigfoot sighting at Kampung Mawai

The forests of southern Johor have an old legend. The Jakun tradition calls it Hantu Jarang Gigi, the ghost with teeth apart. Others call it the Mawas, or Orang Mawas. The English-language press would soon call it Malaysia's Bigfoot.

November 2005. Kampung Mawai, in the Kota Tinggi district. Three workers were clearing ground and building a fish pond on the edge of a forest reserve.

Then they saw them. A family of three. Two adults and a youngster, on a riverbank. The workers tried to pursue the creature but lost track of it.

What stayed behind was on the ground. Footprints up to 45 cm long, both big and small, pressed into mud and leaves. Brown hair, reeking of body odour. A broken tree branch suggested the creatures were some three metres tall. The workers' employer, the fish farmer, photographed the prints.

By late December the story was out. The New Straits Times reprinted one of the farmer's photographs, a triangular depression in the undergrowth. Hashim Yusoff, director of the Johor National Parks Corporation, visited and promised an investigation. "My personal feeling is that there is a possibility it could be what we call in Malaysia the 'mawas' which is more of a primate," he said. "But we don't deny the sightings, we've got to prove it and we've got to do it scientifically."

Camera traps followed. A telephone hotline opened in January 2006. An Orang Asli man reported his own encounter, and Yusoff relayed it: "hairy, brownish in colour, and about four metres tall… It was not aggressive, but the Orang Asli was startled by the creature and ran away."

Around 27 January 2006, Johor chief minister Abdul Ghani Othman announced an official expedition to likely locations, including Endau Rompin. The creatures were not to be harmed. NPR and ABC's Good Morning America called it possibly "the world's first government-sponsored effort" of its kind.

In April 2006, Berita Harian reported that a young Bigfoot had been caught near Kota Tinggi by men thought to be from Perhilitan, the wildlife department. Residents said it was tranquillised and seen in the back of a truck. Perhilitan director-general Musa Nordin denied it: "During the period reported, Perhilitan did not mount any operation in the area." Journalist Jan McGirk joined the search in the Bukit Lantang woods and cast a single splayed print in plaster. In November 2006, researcher Mansur Poh, supervised by Azhar Kassim of Universiti Putra Malaysia, submitted a preliminary report titled "The Identity and Distribution of Bigfoot in Johor".

December 2006 brought the official doubt. Environment Ministry parliamentary secretary Sazmi Miah said 40 years of monitoring had produced no firm evidence such as droppings or hair. "If there's truly a Bigfoot, there would have been firm evidence of its existence or the cameras would have captured its image or movements." He called the buzz a hoax, saying the witnesses had probably seen apes or bears. Sceptics suggested a tourism stunt, but Vincent Chow of the Malaysian Nature Society rejected that. "Bigfoot exists," he said, adding, "We have received reports from many people…"

No final report with conclusive findings has surfaced. The three workers were never named. What they left is a family on a riverbank, a trail of prints, a tuft of brown hair and a broken branch. And a government that, for a few months, went looking.