Teh One Who Knocks
10-22-2012, 10:40 AM
By Alex Gore - The Daily Mail
http://i.imgur.com/cmZWV.jpg
A Bradford housewife has claimed she spent five years as a child being raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle.
Marina Chapman said she was kidnapped for ransom in the 1950s when she was just five years old and abandoned in the jungle, with her captors believed to have botched the abduction.
For five years, she lived a Tarzan-style existence with a colony of Capuchin monkeys - learning to catch prey, including birds and rabbits, with nothing but her bare hands.
Her daughter Vanessa James told The Sunday Times: 'She obviously learnt to fend for herself and only once got very ill when she ate some poisonous berries.'
Chapman's life in the jungle was said to have ended when she was discovered by hunters and sold to a brothel in the northern city of Cucuta, where she was regularly beaten.
She escaped and was taken in by a Colombian family as a teenager, choosing the name Marina Luz.
When Chapman was in her twenties, she travelled to the UK with her neighbours - who worked in the textile trade - and remained in the country after meeting her future husband John Chapman.
The couple have two children and live in Yorkshire. Chapman, who says she never cries, only told her husband, a former church organist and bacteriologist, about her bizarre claims after they were married.
James added: 'When we wanted food, we had to make noises for it. All my school friends loved Mum as she was so unusual. She was childlike, too, in many ways.
'I got bedtime stories about the jungle, as did my sisters. We didn't think it odd - it was just Mum telling her life. So in a way it was nothing special having a mother like that.'
James is helping her mother write a book - The Girl With No Name, which is due to be published in April - about her experiences, while Blink Films is planning to make a television documentary about her childhood.
Monkeys are known for accepting humans into the fold, according to experts on feral children.
Ugandan orphan, John Ssebunya, lived for more than a year with monkeys at the age of four and adapted well to life with humans after he was rescued more than 20 years ago.
http://i.imgur.com/cmZWV.jpg
A Bradford housewife has claimed she spent five years as a child being raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle.
Marina Chapman said she was kidnapped for ransom in the 1950s when she was just five years old and abandoned in the jungle, with her captors believed to have botched the abduction.
For five years, she lived a Tarzan-style existence with a colony of Capuchin monkeys - learning to catch prey, including birds and rabbits, with nothing but her bare hands.
Her daughter Vanessa James told The Sunday Times: 'She obviously learnt to fend for herself and only once got very ill when she ate some poisonous berries.'
Chapman's life in the jungle was said to have ended when she was discovered by hunters and sold to a brothel in the northern city of Cucuta, where she was regularly beaten.
She escaped and was taken in by a Colombian family as a teenager, choosing the name Marina Luz.
When Chapman was in her twenties, she travelled to the UK with her neighbours - who worked in the textile trade - and remained in the country after meeting her future husband John Chapman.
The couple have two children and live in Yorkshire. Chapman, who says she never cries, only told her husband, a former church organist and bacteriologist, about her bizarre claims after they were married.
James added: 'When we wanted food, we had to make noises for it. All my school friends loved Mum as she was so unusual. She was childlike, too, in many ways.
'I got bedtime stories about the jungle, as did my sisters. We didn't think it odd - it was just Mum telling her life. So in a way it was nothing special having a mother like that.'
James is helping her mother write a book - The Girl With No Name, which is due to be published in April - about her experiences, while Blink Films is planning to make a television documentary about her childhood.
Monkeys are known for accepting humans into the fold, according to experts on feral children.
Ugandan orphan, John Ssebunya, lived for more than a year with monkeys at the age of four and adapted well to life with humans after he was rescued more than 20 years ago.