Awesome - Woman Was Raised By Monkeys - Years Later She Tells Her Insane Life Story
Have you ever read or watched The Jungle Book or Tarzan? Until now, those stories seemed like complete fiction, however, this remarkable story of a girl who was raised by monkeys in the Columbian jungle will blow you away and change your understanding of the world! Marina Chapman is a Columbian-born British woman who claims she was left stranded in the Columbian jungle after she was kidnapped as a child. Brace yourself as we are about to tell you one of the craziest stories in the world!
Who is Marina Chapman?
Marina Chapman was born approximately in 1950 in the Columbian village whose name she was too little to remember and her name is just the name she chose for herself since she couldn’t even remember what she had been originally called. Her birth name remains unknown to this very day and she has no recollection of her parents or her life before she was kidnapped at the age of five.
Believe It or Not
The story of Marina Chapman is truly an incredible one and many people chose not to believe her. It has been speculated that she is suffering from false memory syndrome and that she invented the monkey story in order to deal with her traumatic childhood. But then again, what if she’s telling the truth? Truth or fiction – judge for yourself! This is her story.
The Point of No Return
Marina was seemingly a happy child, living a relatively normal life with her parents. However, one day completely changed the course of her life. Like many of her peers, she loved spending time outside playing with her friends. Never in a million years could anyone predict what would happen that particular day when she was only 5 years old. Had she known what life had in store for her on that day, she would have never left the house.
Namely, that day she was playing outside close to her house when she noticed two adults coming up to her. The next thing she remembers is a cloth covering her mouth and nostrils and everything immediately went dark. Today, she believes that the handkerchief was soaked in chloroform. When she woke up, she was in the trunk of a car driving her far away from the life she had known. And that was only the beginning of her hardships.
All Alone
While being driven in the car trunk, she could hear other children crying, which to some extent, provided her with some consolation that she was not alone. However, that would change too, soon enough. The car stopped and the kidnappers dropped Marina in the middle of the jungle all alone and drove away. Watching her kidnappers getting further and further away from her made her even more scared. The five-year-old was left alone to the mercy of a harsh jungle.
Marina was desperately hoping that either the kidnappers or someone else would come back and save her from the claws of the merciless jungle. Unfortunately, her hopes were in vain. She spent days crying and looking for people but there was nobody in sight. Slowly but surely, Marina lost all hope that she would ever be found and turned on the survival mode.
Fending for Herself
After a few days spent in the middle of the jungle, Marina realized that she needed to collect herself and regain control. She became an adult overnight. It didn’t matter anymore that she was only five years old – she was on her own and she needed to fend for herself if she wanted to survive. Talk about courage and fearlessness!
Only a few hours before, her only concern had been what game she was going to play with her friends and now she had to find a place to sleep, a shelter to hide from animals and bad weather, and food to survive. It is unbelievable how life can change in the blink of an eye. She slept in the holes in the ground, ate plants hoping they were not poisonous and prayed for any form of salvation and human contact. Eventually, her prayers were answered.
A Not So Warm Welcome
One day, while Marina was wandering the jungle, she came across a native village among the trees which made her jump for joy. However, the natives were not as welcoming as Marina hoped. Having no mutual language of communication, the villagers got scared of the child and threw stones at her in order to chase her away. The poor girl ran away from, what she thought, was her last hope for salvation.
Nonetheless, there was still something good about her finding that village. She was hiding from the natives during the day but when night fell she would creep out of her shelter and collect the food scraps and leftovers the villagers had thrown away. At this point, Marina was fighting for dear life and she was not ready to give up.
Escaping Death
Finding edible food in the jungle is no easy task. Adults cannot always recognize the poisonous plants, let alone a five-year-old. Eventually, she lucked out! Marina was terribly hungry and she couldn’t help but eat a plant she had previously found. Unfortunately, the plant she ate was tamarind and Marina suffered terrible food poisoning. She fell on the ground, shrieking in pain. It seemed as if her life would end then and there.
However, her luck was not ready to leave her quite yet. Lying on the ground, curled up in pain, she saw the face of her savior and it was not exactly the face she had expected. The elderly capuchin monkey, which she now calls Grandpa, dragged the little girl to a muddy lake and instructed her to drink the water. After doing so, Marina vomited everything and felt immediately better. Grandpa to the rescue!
A Part of a Family
After being rescued by Grandpa, Marina felt she could befriend the monkey family and find her place among them. She desperately needed to belong somewhere. The monkeys, on the other hand, were not that willing to accept a new member to their troop. At first, they completely ignored Marina even though she tried her best to approach them and win their affection.
Little by little, the monkeys went from ignoring to tolerating her presence. Marina copied them while they were searching for food and climbing trees. She soon realized that if she stood beneath the trees while they were taking food up to the treetops, she could collect the bananas they dropped. After some time, the monkeys got used to Marina and even let her join them in the treetops. Although not the family she expected to have, it was the only one she got.
The moment the monkey family ’adopted’ Marina, she began to feel a sense of hope. She would spend days playing with the monkeys, grooming, and scavenging for food together. ”One day one of the younger ones landed on my shoulders, and if you've never been hugged in your life, and this animal climbs over your shoulders and puts their hands on your face, I tell you it's the nicest touch,” Marina said in an interview. However, there was still something missing – a human touch.
Craving Human Touch
A year or more must have passed and Marina started missing her own kind. During her stay in the jungle, she had occasionally seen hunters passing by but she had never felt the urge to come up to them. However, one day she saw the group of hunters nearby and felt an unbelievable need to run toward them. Later she reported she had done that because there had been a woman in the group. If she only had known what those people would do to her, she would have forever remained a part of the monkey family.
Back to Civilization
Thinking she had found her way out of the jungle, Marina ran toward the hunters as fast as she could. She came up to the woman and grabbed her leg. It took the woman some time to realize that the animalistic creature that Marina became was actually a girl. The hunters put her into the car trunk and drove away, leaving the jungle far behind. Sounds familiar?
A First Job
By the time she was saved from the jungle, she had completely lost the ability to speak a human language. Although she begged in grunts the hunters to save her, they did completely the opposite, they made her life even more difficult. Marina was sold to a brothel, named Gloria and at the age of about 7, she was put to work. No, we’re not crying, you are!
A First Customer
Marina was forced to clean the brothel and she was beaten on a daily basis. The day she was supposed to get her first ’customer’ she managed to escape. After she fled the brothel, she lived on the streets of Cúcuta where she became the leader of the gang of homeless children. She went from Gloria to being called Pony Malta, because according to her new friends, she resembled the drink.
Child Thief
Marina, or Pony Malta, was already used to fending for herself and she managed to survive by stealing bags from wealthy women. Her tactic was to come up to women and pull their underpants down which would make them drop their bags in shock. She would then take the bag and run. She was hiding from the police in the treetops since she had already become an expert at climbing them. However, that could not last forever.
The Way Out
Marina desperately needed a roof over her head and after hearing that one friend managed to get away from the street by becoming a maid for a family, she decided to do exactly the same. After a long and tiresome search, she found the family that was willing to take her in. They offered her a room and food in return for cleaning their house. However, her trust in people’s goodness once again cost her freedom.
Enslaved
The family turned out to be the notorious criminal family who enslaved the girl and once again made her lose all hope in humanity. They named her Rosalba and kept her captive in their house. At the time she even missed being in the jungle where she was at least free. When she almost lost all hope that she would ever escape, one kind woman showed the poor Marina that not all people were evil and that there was still goodness in people’s hearts.
The Child No. 10
Her kind neighbor Muraja, who had 9 children of her own, but who had a heart so big to take one more child in, was her only hope. If it hadn’t been for Muraja and her daughter Maria, who knows if Marina would even be here to tell her story. Muraja saved Marina from the mafia family and sent her to live with her daughter Maria and her family in Bogota. She even bought her a plane ticket and her first present ever - a dress made of pale blue satin, a hair clip, white socks and a pair of shiny white shoes. What a heart of gold that woman had!
Choosing Her Name
Living with Maria Forero Eusse and her family, she was given the opportunity to choose her name for the very first time. She chose the name, Marina Luz. Maria adopted the girl when she was about 14 years old. Although the Ferero Eusse family was not particularly rich, Marina was never hungry or deprived of anything. After God knows how many years, Marina was surrounded by people who cared.
Finding her True Self
In 1977, the Ferero Eusse family moved to Bradford, England and Marina moved with them as a nanny for the Ferero Eusse kids. Since then, Bradford has become her home and she has been living there to this very day. She met her husband, John Chapman, in church and after only six months of knowing him, they got married. Today, she is happily married with two daughters, Vanessa and Joanna.
Trying to Fit In
Looking at her now, being a loving mother and wife and a respectful church member, it is hard to believe that her life was as hard as she claims. However, if you look closely past all the normality, you can still see the feral creature deep inside. She still has a problem with table manners, she struggles with opening doors or doing other things that require fine motor skills, she likes climbing trees and sometimes she produces monkey sounds.
Acting Normal
However, she has been trying so hard to act normal for the sake of her kid, and she made it. She was even a chef at Bradford's National Media Museum and now she runs a non-profit organization that works with kids. Although she claims that she sometimes feels embarrassed by her past, her family is the source of endless love and support for her. And boy does she deserve it!
The Girl With No Name
Marina’s life does read like fiction so she decided to write it down and make the story eternal. With the help of her daughter Vanessa, who listened to her mother’s stories and noted every single one of them, Marina wrote the book titled ’The Girl With No Name’. After being rejected by numerous publishers, Marina’s book got published in 2013 by Mainstream Publishing.
In Search of Answers
Recently, Marina has returned to Columbia with her daughters in search of some answers and lost puzzles. After publishing the book, Marina believed that coming back to the crime scene she could find the missing pieces and put her life together or maybe even track her original family. Although she didn’t find the rainforest where she had spent most of her early childhood, she did find the brothel and the mafia family’s house.
Making Sense
Most of Marina’s life is still confused in her head and she has been trying so hard to make some sense of it. Her husband even said that he would find out new things about her life every single day and that is probably what makes her so unique and remarkable. As for us, we wish Marina all the luck in her search of the past and may she find whatever she is looking for.
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