Hantu Penanggal

              PENANGGAL (Hantu Penanggal)

The Penanggalan or 'Hantu Penanggal' is a peculiar variation of the vampire myth that apparently began in the Malay Peninsula, or Balan-balan in Sabah. See also the Manananggal, a similar creature of Filipino folklore. "Penanggal" or "Penanggalan" literally means "detach" or "remove". Both terms — Manananggal and Penanggal — may carry the same meaning due to both languages being grouped or having a common root under the Austronesian language family, though the two creatures are culturally distinct in appearance and behavior.
There are similar myths of creatures with almost exactly the same features among the Balinese of Indonesia, where it is called the Leyak, in Thailand where it is called the Krasue, in Laos where it is the Kasu or Phi-Kasu and in Cambodia where it is the Ap.
According to the folklore of that region, the Penanggalan is a detached female head capable of flying about on its own. As it flies, the stomach and entrails dangle below it, and these organs twinkle like fireflies as the Penanggalan moves through the night.
Due to the common theme of Penanggal being the result of active use of black magic or supernatural means, a Penanggal cannot be readily classified as a classical undead being. The creature is, for all intents and purposes, a living human being during daytime (much like the Japanese Nukekubi) or at any time when it does not detach itself from its body.

                                      
                                     Pictures Of Hantu Penanggal


                                           


                                                             


                               
                                Nature
In Malaysian folklore, a Penanggal may be either a beautiful old or young woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic, supernatural, mystical, or paranormal means which are most commonly described in local folklores to be dark or demonic in nature. Another cause where one becomes a Penanggal in Malaysian folklore is due to the result of a powerful curse or the actions of a demonic force, although this method is less common than the active use of black magic abovementioned.
The Penanggalan is usually a female midwife who has made a pact with the devil to gain supernatural powers. It is said that the midwife has broken a stipulation in the pact not to eat meat for 40 days; having broken the pact she has been forever cursed to become a bloodsucking vampire/demon. The midwife keeps a vat of vinegar in her house. After detaching her head and flying around in the night looking for blood the Penanggalan will come home and immerse her entrails in the vat of vinegar in order to shrink them for easy entry back into her body.
One version of the tale states that the Penanggal was once a beautiful woman or priestess, who was taking a ritual bath in a tub that once held vinegar. While bathing herself and in a state of concentration or meditation, a man entered the room without warning and startled her. The woman was so shocked that she jerked her head up to look, moving so quickly as to sever her head from her body, her organs and entrails pulling out of the neck opening. Enraged by what the man had done, she flew after him, a vicious head trailing organs and dripping venom. Her empty body was left behind in the vat. The Penanggal, thus, is said to carry an odor of vinegar with her wherever she flies, and returns to her body during the daytime, often posing as an ordinary mortal woman. However, a Penanggal can always be told from an ordinary woman by that odor of vinegar.


                              Victims
The Penanggalan's victims are traditionally pregnant women and young children. Like a banshee who appears at a birth rather than a death, the Penanggalan perches on the roofs of houses where women are in labour, screeching when the child is born. The Penanggalan will insert a long invisible tongue into the house to lap up the blood of the new mother. Those whose blood the Penanggalan feeds upon contract a wasting disease that is almost inescapably fatal. Furthermore, even if the penanggalan is not successful in her attempt to feed, anyone who is brushed by the dripping entrails will suffer painful open sores that won't heal without a bomoh's help.
A Penanggal is said to feed on human blood or human flesh although local folklore (including its variations) commonly agrees that a Penanggal prefers the blood of a newborn infant, the blood of woman who recently gave birth or the placenta (which is devoured by the Penanggal after it is buried). All folktales also agree that a Penanggal flies as it searches and lands to feed. One variation of the folklore however claims that a Penanggal is able to pass through walls. Other, perhaps more chilling, descriptions say that the Penanggal can ooze up through the cracks in the floorboards of a house, rising up into the room where an infant or woman is sleeping. Sometimes they are depicted as able to move their intestines like tentacles.


                   Protection and Remedies
The most common remedy prescribed in Malaysian folklore to protect against a Penanggal attack is to scatter the thorny leaves of a local plant known as Mengkuang which would either trap or injure the exposed lungs, stomach and intestines of the Penanggal as it flies in search of its prey. These thorns, on the vine, can also be looped around the windows of a house in order to snare the trailing organs. This is commonly done when a woman has just given birth. However, this practice will not protect the infant if the Penanggal decides to pass through the floorboards. In some instances, it is said that months before birth, family members of the pregnant women would plant pineapples under the house (traditional Malay houses are built on stilts and thus have a lot of room underneath). The prickly fruit and leaves of the pineapple would deter the penanggalan from entering through the floorboards. Once trapped, a Penanggalan who attacks the house can then be killed with parangs or machetes. As an extra precaution, the pregnant woman can keep scissors or betel nut cutters under her pillow, as the Penanggalan is afraid of these items.
Another way of killing the vampire is for some brave men to spy on the Penanggalan as it flies around in the night.
Midwives who become Penanggalans at night appear as normal women in the daytime. They, however, can be identified as Penanggalans by the way they behave. When meeting people they will usually avoid eye contact and when performing their midwife duties they may be seen licking their lips, as if relishing the thought of feeding on the pregnant woman's blood when night comes. The men should find out where the Penanggalan lives. Once the Penanggal leaves its body and is safely away, it may be permanently destroyed by either pouring pieces of broken glass into the empty neck cavity, which will sever the internal organs of the Penanggal when it reattaches to the body; or by sanctifying the body and then destroying it by cremation or by somehow denying the Penanggal from reattaching to its body upon sunrise.


             Differences from Manananggal
Unlike Manananggal, all Penanggal are females and there is no variation in Malaysian folklore to suggest a Penanggal to be male. Another notable difference between a Penanggal and Manananggal is that a Penanggal detaches only her head with her lungs, stomach and intestines attached while leaving the body before coming back and soaking her innards in a pre-prepared container filled with vinegar to fit back into the body. Additionally, unlike the Manananggal which uses a proboscis-like tongue, a Penanggal is commonly depicted as having fangs. The number of fangs varies from one region to another, ranging from two like the Western vampire to a mouthful of fangs.

KINABATANGAN

                      KOTA KINABATANGAN


The Kinabatangan River (Sungai Kinabatangan) is located in Sabah, eastern Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It is the second longest river in Malaysia, with a length of 560 kilometers from its headwaters in the mountains of southwest Sabah, to its outlet at the Sulu Sea, east of Sandakan.
Kinabatangan is known for its remarkable wildlife and fascinating habitats such as limestone caves at Gomantong hill, dryland dipterocarp forests, riverine forest, freshwater swamp forest, oxbow lakes and salty mangrove swamps near the coast.


          ECOLOGY OF THE KINABTANGAN RIVER

The ecology of the upper reaches of the river has been severely disrupted by excessive logging and clearing of land for plantations. However, the original lowland forests and mangrove swamps near the coast have largely survived and provide sanctuary for a relatively decent population of Saltwater Crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus), and contain some of Borneo's highest concentrations of wildlife. Of special note are Borneo's indigenous proboscis monkeys and orangutans, Asian elephants and Sumatran rhinoceros. The area is also known for its great variety of birdlife.
Each year, the lashing rains of the northeast monsoon cause the river to swell rapidly. Unable to disgorge into the sea quickly enough, the river frequently overflows its banks and spreads across the flat land of its lower reaches, creating a huge floodplain. The lower Kinabatangan teems with both animal and plant life, making it the best area for viewing wildlife, not just in Sabah but all of Southeast Asia.
In 1997, 270 square kilometres of the lower Kinabatangan floodplain was declared a protected area, and in 2001 this designation was upgraded to that of "bird sanctuary", largely through the efforts of the various NGOs. However, further efforts to have the area declared a "wildlife refuge" or even "national park" had been opposed by the largely oil palm plantation owners seeking to expand their cultivated land.
Thankfully by August 2006 following media attention after a decapitated elephant's head was found floating down the river, the area was finally gazetted under the State's Wildlife Conservation Enactment of 1997 as the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. It is now under the preview of the Sabah Wildlife Department.
Currently, most nature tourism is concentrated around Sukau, accessible by road and offering comfortable accommodation to visitors prepared to pay for well-managed tours. The most populated area and also the Central Administration for Kinabatangan is Kinabatangan Town, located along the Sandakan-Lahad Datu highway, and about 90 kilometers from Sandakan Town. The largest cave system in Sabah, Gomantong Caves, also can be found in this region.


Gomantong Caves










                               HISTORY

For centuries, the rare treasures of Borneo's forests acted like a magnet for traders in search of edible bird's nests, rhinoceros horn, elephant ivory and hornbill casques for the Emperor and the wealthy mandarins of China.
They also sought a hardwood resin, damar; flexible rattan vines; beeswax to make candles; fragrant woods and oil-rich illipe nuts


Bird's nest




DAMAR





BEESWAX







Getting there

One can fly from Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan on Malaysia Airlines, whilst those from Kuala Lumpur can take direct daily flights to Sandakan on AirAsia.
Alternatively, one can take an air-conditioned coach to Sandakan or Lahad Datu from Kota Kinabalu. One can also take a ferry to Sukau from the Sandakan harbour.

 When to visit

The Kinabatangan region can be visited all year round, though it is often flooded during the wettest part of the year in December and January.
The main flowering and fruiting season, from April to October is generally fairly dry and a good time to spot many birds and animals.
During the northeast monsoon, from November to March, there are often heavy showers during the afternoons, particularly during December and January. During the rainy season, however, it is possible to negotiate many of the river channels leading in to the oxbow lakes, where there is a greater concentration of wildlife.

 Accommodation

In Sukau, many of the major tour operators maintain lodges. All lodges offer packages, which usually include transport, accommodation, food and guiding services. However, most of the money spent in these Lodges leaves the area. Visitor's should also check locally run bed & breakfast and homestay accommodation. More information can be obtained on the Sabah Tourism Website.
Further up river at the villages of Bilit or Batu Putih you could opt to stay with the local orang sungai people in the Miso Walai homestay program part or a Sabah National Project [1] . Nearby the villages there are beautiful series of oxbow lakes. They provide accommodation, food, jungle guides, boat trips, fishing and other activities. They also have recently built an eco-lodge in the jungle nearby one of the oxbow lakes - Tungog lake. The ecotourism program has been successful and helped clear the oxbow lake of weed, funded reforestation projects with partnership with LEAP and is providing a sustainable income for the communities.

 Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project

Since 1996 HUTAN, a French grassroots non-profit organisation founded and run by primotologist Dr. Isabelle Lackman and wildlife veterinarian Dr. Marc Ancrenaz, has been working to develop and implement solutions to conserve the orangutans in Sabah. In 1998, HUTAN together with the Sabah Wildlife Department established the Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project. A small conservation centre was built in the village of Sukau in the Kinabatangan wetlands.^[1]
Initially it conducted studies and an in-depth stakeholders' consultation process to identify the complex threats faced by the orangutans. Its findings were used by the Sabah Wildlife Department to develop and implement a sound and efficient orangutan conservation strategy, first for the Lower Kinabatangan region and later for Sabah.^[2] It now has 40 staff from the Kinabatangan local community, working in collaboration with a network of Sabahan partners including government agencies, Non-Governmental-Organisations and research institutions as well as private stakeholders.

WORLD WAR ONE HISTORY

                       World War I

World War I (WWI) or the First World War, formerly called the Great War, was a major war centred on Europe that began in the summer of 1914 and lasted until November 1918. It involved all of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history.More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in Western history.
The assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was the proximate trigger of the war. Long-term causes, such as imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of Europe, such as the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, France, and Italy, played a major role. Ferdinand's assassination by a Yugoslav nationalist resulted in a Habsburg ultimatum against the Kingdom of Serbia. Several alliances formed over the past decades were invoked, so within weeks the major powers were at war; via their colonies, the conflict soon spread around the world.
On 28 July, the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia,followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France; and a Russian attack against Germany. After the German march on Paris was brought to a halt, the Western Front settled into a static battle of attrition with a trench line that changed little until 1917. In the East, the Russian army successfully fought against the Austro-Hungarian forces but was forced back by the German army. Additional fronts opened after the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914, Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 and Romania in 1916. The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, and Russia left the war after the October Revolution later that year. After a 1918 German offensive along the western front, United States forces entered the trenches and the Allies drove back the German armies in a series of successful offensives. Germany agreed to a cease-fire on 11 November 1918, later known as Armistice Day.
By the war's end, four major imperial powers—the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires—had been militarily and politically defeated. The latter two ceased to exist. The revolutionised Soviet Union emerged from the Russian Empire, while the map of central Europe was completely redrawn into several smaller states.^[14] The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The European nationalism spawned by the war and the breakup of empires, and the repercussions of Germany's defeat and the Treaty of Versailles led to the beginning of World War II in 1939


                               Pictures


                                              


                                                         

                                                         
                                                         

                        
                                   HISTORY


                                                              Causes of World War I


The causes of World War I, which began in central Europe in July 1914, included many intertwined factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the conflict as well. However, the immediate origins of the war lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914, casus belli for which was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Gavrilo Princip, an irredentist Serb.
The crisis came after a long and difficult series of diplomatic crashes between the Great Powers (Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hungarian Empire and Russia) over European and colonial issues in the decade before 1914 that had left tensions high. In turn these diplomatic clashes can be traced to changes in the balance of power in Europe since 1867. The more immediate cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary competed with Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the conflict through their various alliances and treaties.
The topic of the causes of World War I is one of the most studied in all of world history. Scholars have differed significantly in their interpretations of the event.


                                            BACKGROUND

From the time of the Balkan Wars, which had increased the size of Serbia, it had been the opinion of leading Austrian officials (most notably the Foreign Minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold) that Austria would have to wage a "preventive war" to greatly weaken or destroy Serbia as a state in order to maintain the dual monarchy which held extensive Serb-populated Balkan territories. Between January 1913 and January 1914, Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf advocated a preventive war against Serbia twenty-four times.

The alliance situation in central Europe in 1914

Serbia expanded its territory at the expense of the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest. Regarding the expansion of Serbia as an unacceptable increase in the power of an unfriendly state and in order to weaken Serbia, the Austrian government threatened war in the autumn of 1912 if Serbs were to acquire a port from the Turks. Austria appealed for German support, only to be rebuffed at first.
In November 1912 Russia, humiliated by its inability to support Serbia during the Bosnian crisis of 1908 or the First Balkan War, announced a major reconstruction of its military.
On November 28, in partial reaction to the Russian move, German Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow told the Reichstag, the German parliament, that “If Austria is forced, for whatever reason, to fight for its position as a Great Power, then we must stand by her”.As a result, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey responded by warning Prince Karl Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, that if Germany offered Austria a “blank cheque” for war in the Balkans, then “the consequences of such a policy would be incalculable”. To reinforce this point, R. B. Haldane, the Germanophile Lord Chancellor, met with Prince Lichnowsky to offer an explicit warning that if Germany were to upset the balance of power in Europe by trying to destroy either France or Russia as powers, Britain would have no other choice but to fight the Reich.
With the recently announced Russian military reconstruction and certain British communications, the possibility of war was a prime topic at the German Imperial War Council of 8 December 1912 in Berlin, an informal meeting of some of Germany's top military leadership called on short notice by the Kaiser.Attending the conference were Wilhelm II, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz - the Naval State Secretary, Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, the Chief of the German Imperial Naval Cabinet (Marinekabinett), General von Moltke - the Army’s Chief of Staff, Admiral August von Heeringen - the Chief of the Naval General Staff and (probably) General Moriz von Lyncker, the Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet.The presence of the leaders of both the German Army and Navy at this War Council attests to its importance. However, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and General Josias von Heeringen, the Prussian Minister of War, were not invited.
Wilhelm II called British balance of power principles “idiocy,” but agreed that Haldane’s statement was a “desirable clarification” of British policy.His opinion was that Austria should attack Serbia that December, and if “Russia supports the Serbs, which she evidently does…then war would be unavoidable for us, too,”  and that would be better than going to war after Russia completed the massive modernization and expansion of their army that they had just begun. Moltke agreed. In his professional military opinion “a war is unavoidable and the sooner the better”. Moltke “wanted to launch an immediate attack”.
Both Wilhelm II and the Army leadership agreed that if a war were necessary it were best launched soon. Admiral Tirpitz, however, asked for a “postponement of the great fight for one and a half years”  because the Navy was not ready for a general war that included Britain as an opponent. He insisted that the completion of the construction of the U-boat base at Heligoland and the widening of the Kiel Canal were the Navy’s prerequisites for war. As the British historian John Röhl has commented, the date for completion of the widening of the Kiel Canal was the summer of 1914. Though Moltke objected to the postponement of the war as unacceptable, Wilhelm sided with Tirpitz. Moltke “agreed to a postponement only reluctantly.”
Historians more sympathetic to the government of Wilhelm II often reject the importance of this War Council as only showing the thinking and recommendations of those present, with no decisions taken. They often cite the passage from Admiral Müller’s diary, which states: “That was the end of the conference. The result amounted to nothing.” Certainly the only decision taken was to do nothing.
Historians more sympathetic to the Entente, such as British historian John Röhl, sometimes rather ambitiously interpret these words of Admiral Müller (an advocate of launching a war soon) as saying that "nothing" was decided for 1912-13, but that war was decided on for the summer of 1914. Röhl is on safer ground when he argues that even if this War Council did not reach a binding decision - which it clearly did not - it did nonetheless offer a clear view of their intentions,or at least their thoughts, which were that if there was going to be a war, the German Army wanted it before the new Russian armaments program began to bear fruit. Entente sympathetic historians such as Röhl see this conference in which "The result amounted to nothing” as setting a clear deadline when a war was to begin, namely the summer of 1914.
With the November 1912 announcement of the Russian Great Military Programme, the leadership of the German Army began clamoring even more strongly for a “preventive war” against Russia.Moltke declared that Germany could not win the arms race with France, Britain and Russia, which she herself had begun in 1911, because the financial structure of the German state, which gave the Reich government little power to tax, meant Germany would bankrupt herself in an arms race. As such, Moltke from late 1912 onwards was the leading advocate for a general war, and the sooner the better.
Throughout May and June 1914, Moltke engaged in an “almost ultimative” demand for a German “preventive war” against Russia in 1914.The German Foreign Secretary, Gottlieb von Jagow, reported on a discussion with Moltke at the end of May 1914:

“Moltke described to me his opinion of our military situation. The prospects of the future oppressed him heavily. In two or three years Russia would have completed her armaments. The military superiority of our enemies would then be so great that he did not know how he could overcome them. Today we would still be a match for them. In his opinion there was no alternative to making preventive war in order to defeat the enemy while we still had a chance of victory. The Chief of the General Staff therefore proposed that I should conduct a policy with the aim of provoking a war in the near future.”

The new French President Raymond Poincaré, who took office in 1913, was favourable to improving relations with Germany. In January 1914 Poincaré became the first French President to dine at the German Embassy in Paris. Poincaré was more interested in the idea of French expansion in the Middle East than a war of revenge to regain Alsace-Lorraine. Had the Reich been interested in improved relations with France before August 1914, the opportunity was available, but the leadership of the Reich lacked such interests, and preferred a policy of war to destroy France. Because of France’s smaller economy and population, by 1913 French leaders had largely accepted that France by itself could never defeat Germany.
In May 1914, Serbian politics were polarized between two factions, one headed by the Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, and the other by the radical nationalist chief of Military Intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known by his codename Apis.In that month, due to Colonel Dimitrigjevic’s intrigues, King Peter dismissed Pašić’s government.The Russian Minister in Belgrade intervened to have Pašić’s government restored.Pašić, though he often talked tough in public, knew that Serbia was near-bankrupt and, having suffered heavy casualties in the Balkan Wars and in the suppression of a December 1913 Albanian revolt in Kosovo, needed peace. Since Russia also favoured peace in the Balkans, from the Russian viewpoint it was desirable to keep Pašić in power. It was in the midst of this political crisis that politically powerful members of the Serbian military armed and trained three Bosnian students as assassins and sent them into Austria-Hungary.


                                TIMELINE
 
                                                                                                                  

	July 31st	Start of the Third Battle at Ypres
	October 24th	Battle of Caporetto – the Italian Army was heavily defeated
	November 6th	Britain launched a major offensive on the Western Front
	November 20th	British tanks won a victory at Cambrai
	December 5th	Armistice between Germany and Russia signed
	December 9th	Britain captured Jerusalem from the Turks
1918
	March 3rd	The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Russia and Germany.
	March 21st	Germany broke through on the Somme
	March 29th	Marshall Foch was appointed Allied Commander on the Western Front
	April 9th	Germany started an offensive in Flanders
	July 15th	Second Battle of the Marne started. The start of the collapse of the German army
	August 8th	The advance of the Allies was successful
	September 19th	Turkish forces collapsed at Megiddo
	October 4th	Germany asked the Allies for an armistice
	October 29th	Germany’s navy mutinied
	October 30th	Turkey made peace
	November 3rd	Austria made peace
	November 9th	Kaiser William II abdicated
	November  11th	Germany signed an armistice with the Allies – the official date of the end of World War One.
	Post-war – 1919
	January 4th	Peace conference met at Paris
	June 21st	The surrendered German naval fleet at Scapa Flow was scuttled.
	June 28th	The Treaty of Versailles was signed by the Germans.