Hi there. Thanks for taking my call. My name's Daniel, and I'm calling from Bogor in West Java. My family's lived in this region for generations, and there's something I need to share about my grandfather. He passed away fifteen years ago, but before he died, he told me a story I've never forgotten. A story about something he saw in the mountains back in 1925. My grandfather was named Eduard. He was a naturalist, studied birds mostly. His father was a famous ornithologist, so he grew up around that work, learning to identify species, cataloging what he found. In 1925, he was twenty-nine years old, doing fieldwork in the Salak Mountains. That's a volcanic range southwest of here, beautiful country but remote. Still is, really.
He'd been documenting waterfall sites, looking for bird species that nested near moving water. There's a particular area on the slopes, maybe fifteen hundred meters up, where several waterfalls cut through the forest. He'd been working there for about a week, camping nearby, taking notes during the day. It was late afternoon when it happened. He told me he remembered checking his watch, it was around five thirty. The light was starting to fade, that golden hour before sunset. He was standing at the base of one of the larger waterfalls, maybe twenty meters high, just finishing his observations for the day. The sound of the water was loud, you know what I mean? That constant roar that makes it hard to hear anything else.
He said he felt it before he saw it. A rush of air, a sudden gust that made him look up. And that's when this thing flew directly over his head. Close. Maybe three, four meters above him. He described it as enormous, with wings spread wide. The wingspan had to be at least six meters across, maybe more. He said it blocked out the light for a moment as it passed. The wings were leathery, like a bat's wings, not feathered like a bird. Dark gray, almost black. And he caught a glimpse of the body, covered in gray fur. The face, he said that's what really stuck with him. It wasn't like any bat he'd ever seen. The face was flat, almost ape-like, with large dark eyes. He only saw it for a few seconds, but those details burned into his memory.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]