Have You Ever Heard of the Tek Tek of Cambodia? They Eat PEOPLE!

Don't let the cartoon drawing of that guy up there fool you. See those claws? Apparently those are for ripping apart humans! The Tek Tek of Cambodia is a yeti-like creature with an appetite for people.

It was a loud evening deep in the jungle, the crickets, frogs and odd cicadas were busy playing their usual nighttime symphony. A group of trekkers were getting ready to bunk down for the night.

“My friend was zipped up in his hammock and beginning to doze off, when he noticed that all of the insects had stopped making sounds: the jungle went completely silent,” said Greg McCann, a field coordinator for HabitatID, a conservation group working in Virachey National Park, where the trekkers were camping.

A few moments later, a horrid smell engulfed the camp – the trekkers all emerged from their tents to find its source. A minute after that, the smell had gone and the insects and frogs returned.

“The next morning the rangers refused to discuss the issue and wanted out of the park ASAP,” retold McCann. “My friend assumed they thought it was a ghost.”

All over the globe, stories abound about mysterious creatures that live in remote, often mountainous areas. The legendary Himalayan Yeti, North America’s Sasquatch, the Vietnamese nguoi ung, Australian yowie and Indonesian batatut have intrigued explorers and terrified children for generations.

It was Cambodia’s answer to the myth, the tek tek, that the rangers believed was lurking that night in Virachey, which covers Ratanakkiri and Stung Treng provinces.

Said to live in the far northern parts of the national park, the tek tek – according to a series of accounts that vary from person to person – is a frightening and bizarre creature to behold.

He’s said to be bipedal, short in stature – roughly five feet tall – and covered in greyish-red hair, with arms like machetes. He’s rumoured to have a healthy appetite for humans.

Others say he’s much larger and without knees. Some say that in the national park hideous roars are often heard at night, as hungry tek teks start biting their own flesh.

To read more about this flesh-eating creature, click here.