western Java, and lay listening to the surrounding forest’s clamorous orchestra of nocturnal insects. Suddenly, a very different sound came winging to his ears from directly overhead—a loud, clear, melodious cry that seemed to utter “A-hool!” A few moments later, but now from many yards further on, the cry came again—a single “A-hool!” Bartels snatched his torch up and ran out, in the direction of this distinctive sound. Less than 20 seconds later he heard it once more, for the third and last time—a final “A-hool!” that floated back towards him from a considerable distance downstream. As he recalled many years later in a detailed account of this and similar events
(Fate
, July 1966), he was literally transfixed by what he had heard—not because he
didn’t
know what it was, but rather because he
did!
The son of an eminent zoologist, Dr. Bartels had spent much of his childhood in western Java, and counted many of the local Sundanese people there as his close friends. Accordingly, he was privy to many strange legends and secret beliefs that were rarely voiced in the presence of other Westerners. Among these was the ardent native conviction that this region of the island harbored an enormous form of bat. Some of Bartels’s Sundanese friends claimed to have spied it on rare occasions, and the descriptions that they gave were impressively consistent. Moreover, as he was later to discover, they also tallied with those given by various Westerners who had reputedly encountered this mysterious beast.
It was said to be the size of a one-year-old child; with gigantic wings spanning 11 to 12 feet; short, dark-grey fur; flattened forearms supporting its wings; large, black eyes; and a monkey-like head, with a flattish, man-like face. It was sometimes seen squatting on the forest floor, at which times its wings were closed, pressed up against its flanks; and, of particular interest, its feet appeared to point backwards. When Bartels questioned eyewitnesses as to its lifestyle and feeding preferences, he learned that it was nocturnal, spending the days concealed in caves located behind or beneath waterfalls, but at night it would skim across rivers in search of large fishes upon which it fed, scooping them from underneath stones on the beds of the rivers. At one time, Bartels had suggested that perhaps the creature was not a bat but some type of bird, possibly a very large owl, but these opinions were greeted with great indignation and passionate denials by his friends, who assured him in no uncertain terms that they were well able to distinguish a bat from a bird! And as some were very experienced, famous hunters, he had little doubt concerning their claims on this score.
Even so, the notion of a child-sized bat with a 12-foot wingspan seemed so outrageous that he still had great difficulty in convincing himself that there might be something more to it than native mythology and imagination—until, that is, the fateful evening arrived when he heard that unforgettable, thrice-emitted cry, because one of the features concerning the giant bat that all of his friends had stressed was that when flying over rivers in search of fish this winged mystery beast sometimes gives voice to a penetrating, unmistakable cry, one that can be best rendered as “A-hool! A-hool! A-hool!”
Indeed, the creature itself is referred to by the natives as the
ahool
, on account of its readily recognizable call—totally unlike that of any other form of animal in Java, as Bartels himself was well aware.
Transformed thereafter from an
ahool
skeptic to a first-hand
ahool
“earwitness,” Bartels set about collecting details of other
ahool
encounters for documentation, and eventually news of his endeavors reached veteran cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, who became co-author of Bartels’s above-cited
Fate
article.
The
ahool
was of special interest to Sanderson, because he too had met with such a creature—but not in Java. Instead, he had
(Fate
, July 1966), he was literally transfixed by what he had heard—not because he
didn’t
know what it was, but rather because he
did!
The son of an eminent zoologist, Dr. Bartels had spent much of his childhood in western Java, and counted many of the local Sundanese people there as his close friends. Accordingly, he was privy to many strange legends and secret beliefs that were rarely voiced in the presence of other Westerners. Among these was the ardent native conviction that this region of the island harbored an enormous form of bat. Some of Bartels’s Sundanese friends claimed to have spied it on rare occasions, and the descriptions that they gave were impressively consistent. Moreover, as he was later to discover, they also tallied with those given by various Westerners who had reputedly encountered this mysterious beast.
It was said to be the size of a one-year-old child; with gigantic wings spanning 11 to 12 feet; short, dark-grey fur; flattened forearms supporting its wings; large, black eyes; and a monkey-like head, with a flattish, man-like face. It was sometimes seen squatting on the forest floor, at which times its wings were closed, pressed up against its flanks; and, of particular interest, its feet appeared to point backwards. When Bartels questioned eyewitnesses as to its lifestyle and feeding preferences, he learned that it was nocturnal, spending the days concealed in caves located behind or beneath waterfalls, but at night it would skim across rivers in search of large fishes upon which it fed, scooping them from underneath stones on the beds of the rivers. At one time, Bartels had suggested that perhaps the creature was not a bat but some type of bird, possibly a very large owl, but these opinions were greeted with great indignation and passionate denials by his friends, who assured him in no uncertain terms that they were well able to distinguish a bat from a bird! And as some were very experienced, famous hunters, he had little doubt concerning their claims on this score.
Even so, the notion of a child-sized bat with a 12-foot wingspan seemed so outrageous that he still had great difficulty in convincing himself that there might be something more to it than native mythology and imagination—until, that is, the fateful evening arrived when he heard that unforgettable, thrice-emitted cry, because one of the features concerning the giant bat that all of his friends had stressed was that when flying over rivers in search of fish this winged mystery beast sometimes gives voice to a penetrating, unmistakable cry, one that can be best rendered as “A-hool! A-hool! A-hool!”
Indeed, the creature itself is referred to by the natives as the
ahool
, on account of its readily recognizable call—totally unlike that of any other form of animal in Java, as Bartels himself was well aware.
Transformed thereafter from an
ahool
skeptic to a first-hand
ahool
“earwitness,” Bartels set about collecting details of other
ahool
encounters for documentation, and eventually news of his endeavors reached veteran cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, who became co-author of Bartels’s above-cited
Fate
article.
The
ahool
was of special interest to Sanderson, because he too had met with such a creature—but not in Java. Instead, he had
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