The ocean is vast and filled with mysteries. 71% of the Earth’s surface is water and man has only explored roughly 5% of the oceans. It seems every year brings a new discovery, a new life form previously unknown to us is dragged up from the dark waters. Sometimes old fisherman’s tales are proven to be true while some are left unfound at the bottom of the sea. Such is the Ningen.
Ningen, Japanese for “Human”, was first spotted sometime in the 1990’s. Massive, blubbery and white as snow, people were understandably shocked at the sightings. What disturbed them the most about the creature was its human shape. Often described as having long arms with five fingered hands, defined legs or tentacles and an obvious face with eyes and a mouth. One sighting involved a ship that at first thought they had encountered a submarine but further, inspection revealed organic movement and a color similar to smooth ice.
The Ningen has primarily been sighted in cold Antartic waters. Which understandably does lead some credence to the thought that the cryptid might actually just be oddly shaped ice. Ningens also seem to be nocturnal. While reports did come in before, interest in the creature didn’t catch fire until a post in 2007.
Someone claiming to be a government employee aboard a whale research ship posted on 2channel, a popular message board in Japan. The witness claimed to have sighted the creature, along with the rest of the crew, one day and frantically snapped pictures of the beast. The supposed photos were then kept from the public by the government, which some speculate have known about the creatures for some time.
The post proved so popular that Mu, a Japanese magazine with focuses on the mysterious, did a feature on the creature. It proved to be so popular that readers began hunting for more reports and managed to unearth more information on the elusive cryptid. This wild search eventually yielded a video of the alleged creature.
Sighting begins about 1:25 in
Possible explanations for the Ningen range from the ever popular Alien theory, which has an interesting tie in with USO sightings, to an albino whale and even a prehistoric sloth. The whale theory to me holds more water, pun intended because it seems to fit the supposed massive size of the Ningen. Though the human shape of the creature does give me pause and I can only imagine how unsettling it must have been to see it raise up from the dark waters.
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Sources:
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/
http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Cryptid_Wiki
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