The Familiar Other and Feral Selves

Life at the Human/Animal Boundary

Copyright © H. Peter Steeves (editor of Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life, and author of The Things Themselves), reproduced with permission of the author.

This article appears in The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives

1. Introduction: An Easy Job

In September 1920, Reverend J. A. L. Singh set out into the Indian night to kill the Manush-Bagha, the man-ghost of the jungle. [1]The creature, it was said, had the body and limbs of a human, the face of a ghost. The villagers warned the Reverend that it was a hideous beast — possibly not of this world — and that no one was safe in the jungle. Part human, part animal, part who-knows-what, but supernatural — to be sure — they assured him that it was a reason to travel in groups, to be sure to be home before dusk turned into night and the beast awakened, hungry.

Reverend Singh, more curious than frightened, suggested constructing a platform in a tree in order to have a vantage point from which to shoot the beast, but the villagers wanted no part of it. By early October, though, he had finally found someone to lead him to a place where there had been several sightings — to a white-ant mound near Godamuri, to a site where the locals told stories of a creature that raced through the night, haunting the countryside. Singh and his party set up camp near the ant mound and began their vigil.

The short wait was soon rewarded. The first evening, three wolves tentatively made their way out of the ground, squeezing through the large holes in the mound. They were followed by two wolf cubs and, finally, two white creatures — the man-ghosts — which Reverend Singh immediately recognized to be two female human children.

Singh persuaded the group to hold their fire as the wolf family disappeared into the jungle. Visibly shaken, the party disbanded and headed back to the village in spite of the Reverend's assurance that he had solved the mystery and his pleas to remain and help excavate the mound. After the close encounter with the creatures no one, in fact, would stay with Reverend Singh, and he was forced to search for a new party of men from a tribe far away and unacquainted with the ghost story. One week later, he returned with his new group and began the dig, hoping to capture what he now believed to be the two feral children — human girls raised and cared for by the wolf-family in the middle of the Indian wilderness.

With the first few strokes of the shovel, two male wolves emerged from the mound, ran past the diggers, and were enveloped by the jungle. Next, a female wolf appeared, and Singh knew right away that she would be the greatest obstacle to securing the children. Even as the party shouted and threatened her, she remained on the mound, baring her teeth and growling at the diggers. It soon became clear to everyone that she was prepared to make a stand — she was not going to abandon her home and her family so easily.

In his diaries, Reverend Singh explains: