Creature record / 2011
Kampung Laksamana, Gombak. Christmas 2011. Residents of this Selangor village began reporting one or two figures in the dark. Man-sized. Clad only in underwear. Drenched in black, shiny oil. Witnesses said they climbed walls and stairs, leapt onto roofs, breathed loudly and whispered to women. They left oily marks behind. Then they were gone. The village answered with patrols. Over the Christmas weekend about 200 people turned out, many carrying parangs and axes. A government welfare unit and the RELA volunteer corps joined the hunt. Then someone found containers of black oil in an empty house. The orang minyak, Malaysia's oily man, was back.
The orang minyak, the "oily man", had visited before. The first press mention came in Berita Harian on 12 October 1957. After night intrusions, wives of Malay soldiers left their married quarters in Clementi, Singapore. A wave of reports followed from 1958 to 1961, and P. Ramlee put the figure on screen in Sumpah Orang Minyak (1958). Some later cases proved very human. Attacks in Sri Petaling in 2000 ended with an arrest.