Africa Sighting – Pterosaur Eyewitness

May 11, 2019

“Flying Dinosaur in Africa” — a paranormal Youtube video

thumbnail for a paranormal video on living pterosaurs

By the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb

If I do say so myself, this paranormal music video is an entertaining way of informing viewers of a sighting of an apparent living pterosaur in Sudan, Africa, and comparing it to an encounter in Cuba: “Flying Dinosaur in Africa.” I uploaded it to Youtube yesterday (my channel is Protect Animal Life).

As of May 11, 2019, this is the shortest video on my new channel, at just over three minutes long; it has only one sighting report, although it does compare it to another sighting, that one in Cuba.

Here’s a bit more about the sighting in Sudan (including some details not in the video), taken from the fourth edition of my nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God:

In Sudan the classic house is one level made of mud bricks and walls . . . each room being a separate unit, but connected by a roofless hallway that leads to the patios.

One evening in July of 1988, we had some guest over the house. . . . The guest were in the living room which was at one end of the house, and my aunt was in the kitchen . . .

She asked me to bring the tray of tea, cookies, sugar & spoons to the guest. . . . I took the tray walked through the open hallway . . .

When I got to the patio, I noticed something on the roof . . . it was night time but the patio has one of those long cylinder like light bulbs that light up the whole patio . . . I was standing by the bathroom, about 10 feet away from [the thing]

It was perched about 5 feet from the light bulb. I seen it very clearly and got a good look at it. It was very large, about 4 or 5 feet in height. It was an olive brown color, no feathers. It was leathery looking. It had a large long, wide beak and the classic appendage (the long bone looking thing sticking out the back of its head). It had really large black claws and its tail looked like a lion’s tail . . . very long and had a bushy or hairy tip.

The above is part of what’s in the book, which has more information than the video has.

Why don’t you watch the video yourself?

From the paranormal music video “Flying Dinosaur in Africa”

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Music video “Pterosaurs in California”

Seven sightings of huge flying creatures in California

Shooting down a flying-fish conjecture regarding living pterosaurs

Although some modern pterosaurs appear to live close to water . . . the sighting reports themselves, when details are noted, eliminate any reasonable possibility that what was seen was a stingray.

The kongamato of Africa

Deep in the bush of east central Africa, lives a beaked, flying creature called the Kongamato. This fascinating animal first received widespread attention when explorer Frank Welland described it in his 1932 book In Witchbound Africa.

I saw a flying dinosaur

This post begins with a sighting report in the U.S. state of Georgia.

June 7, 2012November 10, 2018

When a Child Sees a Flying Dinosaur

sketch, by eyewitness, of the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur of eastern Cuba

By the nonfiction cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb

[revised on April 19, 2018 and November 10, 2018]

[The nonfiction book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur was published on November 8, 2018, for middle-grade children and teenagers. This is very relevant to this post.]

Why should only adults see apparent living pterosaurs? In fact, some of the eyewitnesses of modern “pterodactyls” are children and why not? Outside is where people need to be, if they are to have any reasonable chance of observing a living pterosaur. How often is a child seen to spend much time outdoors! Those who care about the truth about reports of apparent living pterosaurs will not be so concerned about the age of an eyewitness. This is a good opportunity to list some of the sightings in which a child was an eyewitness, although kids are sometimes in the company of an adult when a “flying dinosaur” is observed.

By the way, the word ropen is now often used when a long-tailed modern pterosaur is observed.

Sudan, Africa

The boy was taking a tray of food from one mud hut to another one night, in 1988, when he was startled to see a strange winged creature on the roof of one of the huts. As an adult, any year later, he reported the encounter to me, Jonathan Whitcomb. I found his testimony to be credible.

Gitmo, Cuba, “Dinosaur”

Patty Carson was only a small child, when she and her brother saw a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur in clear daylight, at the Guantanamo Bay military station in eastern Cuba, around 1965. Note that in 1971, a U.S. Marine, Eskin C. Kuhn, also saw two very similar creatures in clear daylight. He used the word “pterodactyl.” Both Carson and Kuhn, fortunately, are talented artists and have sketched what they observed. It seems these two persons observed the same species of ropen.

Sketch by eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

Sketch by eyewitness Patty Carson (sighting about 1965, Cuba)

Why should an objective person care whether or not an eyewitness is a child?

“Dragon” in England (ten-year-old child)

“I just wanted to tell someone about my sighting of a flying creature whilst in my childhood. . . .

“It was either 1987 or 88, when my mother used to work an evening shift at our local superstore . . . I was too young to be left at home (aged 10 then). The sky was clear and I was watching the stars when something caught my eye. It was a glowing object which seemed to open up to what I thought looked like a dragon. I was too shocked to tell my father . . . and I never told anyone about this until I met [my husband].”

The strange phrase “dinosaur bird” or “flying dinosaur” may easily throw off an adult who hears an excited child try to explain what was encountered, but the young age of an eyewitness does not in itself invalidate a sighting report. Let’s now consider sightings involving more than one generation of a human family.

Sightings in Hawaii

A woman and her nephew saw what appeared to be a pterosaur on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2008, although this one was not extremely large: about three to four feet in wingspan. The wings appeared featherless and the coloring was “fleshy.” It was only about 80 feet over their heads, and they could see a “diamond” shape at tail end.

Several other members of a different family had three sightings of apparent pterosaurs on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2012, and they gave a wingspan estimate of five to six feet.

On that same island but in 2013, three eyewitnesses encountered an apparent pterosaur that had an estimated wingspan of ten feet. The three persons who observed it were an eleven-year-old boy and his two parents.

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Nonfiction cryptozoology book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

Pterosaur Flying in Texas

. . . only eight years old when he encountered what could only be called a “pterosaur,” in northeastern Texas, in 1995.

Ropen Declaration (living pterosaurs)

This update mainly contains those sightings reported to me (Jonathan Whitcomb) since the middle of 2014, although some of the early significant reports are included.

California Child Care Backyard

These photos were recorded in May of 2012, after spring cleaning in preparation for the summer play times

January 26, 2012January 28, 2012

Pterodactyl Attacks and Human Deaths

I rarely mention jaws that snap or claws that scratch. I write more on featherless features of long-tailed creatures, emphasizing both non-bird and non-bat evidence from eyewitnesses, and I warn against a weakness in Western mentality, pleading for self-inoculation against the intellectual danger of bulverism. Laying aside those points, I’ve recently read the cryptozoology book Bird From Hell, not the best or second-best living-pterosaur nonfiction but it warns us of a more down-to-earth danger. It’s now time to mention what often captivates readers: teeth with an appetite to bite.

I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert, but I also hope that all attacks from irresponsible humans, against innocent human victims, will cease, and that this world will become a paradise in which death itself will cease. Notwithstanding all our hopes for the future, however, we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”

Chapter Eight, “Highway of Tears,” in Bird From Hell reveals, “Amnesty International estimates that since 1969, thirty-two women and girls, most of them Aboriginal, have disappeared along that highway.” Nobody denies that some women and girls in this part of Canada are victims of abuse at home and that some of them hitchhike on this highway, making themselves vulnerable at night. But the general human population, at least the Native Americans in one area of northern British Columbia, keep indoors at night to avoid the “devil bird,” and some eyewitnesses of that flying creature have been attacked by an animal with wings, when those persons have stayed outside after sunset.

Of course it is possible that aboriginals are superstitious and that all the missing persons, over the decades, who have walked that long highway at night were attacked by human rapists and murderers; that seems possible on the surface. But animalistic humans do not fit all the reported encounters at night in British Columbia, according to the book Bird From Hell.

What about the dead horse mentioned in that book? Much of its body was found by a tree. Of course ordinary non-human predators could be responsible, or so it seems. But why were parts of its body in the top of that tree, with some of the branches broken?

What about the girl in Kwadacha (northern British Columbia)? She was outside one dark night, when it seemed that “one of the boys” was spying on her. She was big for her age, and decided to teach him a lesson by charging him. At the end of the charge, she came to a stop. It was not one of the boys . . . She was facing a creature that she later called the “devil bird.” It released a “cloud of smoke” and flew away. Whatever the species of that flying creature, pterosaur, whatever, it was not one of the boys or one of the animalistic humans who have attacked girls on the Highway of Tears.

I don’t believe everything that I’ve read in Bird From Hell, but other cryptozoology books mention “pterodactyl attacks,” even when a different name is used for the flying creature. Take one account in the pioneering nonfiction On the Track of Unknown Animals, by Bernard Heuvelmans:

Coming straight at me only a few feet above the water was a black thing the size of an eagle. . . . its lower jaw hung open and bore a semicircle of pointed white teeth set about their own width apart from each other. . . . And just before it became too dark to see, it came again, hurtling back down the river, its teeth chattering, the air “shss-shssing” as it was cleft by the great, black, dracula-like wings. . . . the brute made straight for George. He ducked.

Those are the words of the well-known biologist-explorer Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973). Within minutes, a large flying creature had dived straight at a human twice; I would call that behavior “attacking.”

I have read other reports of early-to-mid twentieth-century attacks, in Africa, from pterosaur-like flying creatures; but in late-2004 I did more than read: I led a small expedition on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, where I interviewed an old villager who encountered a strange flying creature. Micheal told me that he had witnessed, in 1949, the glowing ropen one night, when it dug up and carried away a human body that had just been buried in a grave in Gomlongon Village. I would not call that behavior “attacking,” for the man was already dead, but it was extremely rude to the family and friends of the deceased. If I were a resident of Umboi Island, I would not allow my children to wander too far, alone at night. And if I were a resident of northern British Columbia, I would avoid a long walk at night.