"He said it was hairy all over, like a gorilla," said Hashim Yusoff, director of Johor National Parks Corp.

Hashim took and a group of park rangers and journalists into the Sungai Madek forest reserve last week in four-wheel-drive vehicles to ask indigenous people in the area about the reported sightings.

He said he was keeping an open mind and wanted to enlist scientists to prove whether the beast was fact or fantasy. "We are collecting a database on the sightings," he added.

Hashim denied he was staging a publicity stunt to lure more visitors to the area. But with latest remake of the movie "King Kong" and bigfoot-spotting almost an industry in itself, there are bound to be suspicions.

"No way. If there's any suggestion that we are using this one to get publicity, it's not true," Hashim said.

The Malayasian press is enjoying the story, running headlines like "Rangers on the trail of Bigfoot" and "Villagers' close encounter with Bigfoot".