Ningen (folklore)

In modern Japanese folklore, the Ningen (ニンゲン) is a humanoid whale-like or mermaid-like aquatic creature said to inhabit the subantarctic oceans and Antarctic ice sheets. The legend emerged among users of the Japanese textboard 2channel in the mid 2000s, with contributions from participants elsewhere in the world. In late 2007, the Japanese paranormal magazine Mu published an article about a mysterious white figure reportedly observed on Google Earth off the coast of Namibia, suggesting that it might be a human-shaped creature known as a ningen or hitogata. The article acknowledged the creature's origins on 2channel while also linking it to an earlier report of an unusual sighting by the crew of the research vessel Soya-maru in 1958.