Tarzan

In 1872, a British expedition vanished deep in the Congo Basin. Only one survivor returned — a missionary who spoke of “a man among apes, pale as moonlight, crowned in vines.”

He called him Tarzan, though his real name may have been John Clayton, heir to a lost estate. Shipwrecked as an infant, he was raised by the Mangani — a now-extinct species of great ape. But what the missionary described was no noble savage.

“He spoke no language, yet the forest answered him.

The vines moved where he pointed.

The dead leaves whispered prayers.”

Later explorers found evidence of primitive temples carved into the trunks of colossal trees — with skeletal remains of both men and apes, positioned as if in worship.

In 1934, a local legend spread: the Ghost of the Green Cathedral — a man-shaped shadow swinging between trees at night, followed by whispers of weeping apes.

When Tarzan was romanticized in print, the truth was buried: the legend wasn’t about a hero raised by beasts, but a forest that learned to raise its own god.