Marfa Lights – Pterosaur Eyewitness

June 12, 2015January 16, 2019

Ropen Bioluminescence in North America, including in Utah

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

UPDATE: The links in this blog post have been updated with “https” in support of those pages that are secure online. Everything in this post (on the bioluminescence of modern pterosaurs) was already safe; this just verifies that safety.

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Three boys were playing at night on a playground in the farming community of Grantsville, Utah, around the fall of 2001, when they were shocked at the appearance of a large glowing creature that flew overhead. At the first moment that 12-year-old Dallin saw the thing, he had no way of telling if it were several glowing objects flying together or one large object. But Dallin eventually resolved that it was one huge bird, and he shouted to the other two boys that the bird was on “fire.”

By the time his brother Devon saw the creature, it was overhead, and the farm animals nearby were “going crazy” in panic. Devon thought of the legendary Phoenix bird, but he eventually got the impression that it was a strange kind of bioluminescent flying creature, with a wingspan of perhaps 15-20 feet.

That was around 2001, when very few Americans knew anything about investigations into the bioluminescent ropen of Papua New Guinea. And few people in North America were aware of sightings of apparent living pterosaurs, including sightings in the United States.

I interviewed both Dallin and Devon face-to-face in 2015, recording their testimonies on video.

Dallin described to Jonathan Whitcomb the strange flying creature seen by the three eyewitnesses

After the videotaped interviews, I wondered if that night was not the first time that the apparent ropen had flown over that area of Grantsville, Utah. Devon and Dallin both told me of the noise the farm animals made when the creature flew overhead, at least when it was glowing. That degree of panic, among a number of farm animals, is consistent with the idea that one or more of those animals had been attacked on a previous night.

I believe that the truth will eventually come out into the open and that these glowing flying creatures will be seen to be related to the Marfa Lights of Texas and to the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea.

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Flying Lights: Bioluminescent Predators?

I am now beginning to dig more deeply into reports of strange flying lights around Brown Mountain in Burke County, North Carolina. . . . have researched the most mysterious of the Marfa Lights, concluding that they are from bioluminescent flying predators (BFP) that return to the same general area of Texas every few weeks. [The more mysterious of the Marfa Lights of southwest Texas have baffled the investigators who had assumed they are non-living energy forces.]

The Bioluminescent Ropen

On Umboi Island (Morobe Province), the ropen has a 5-6-second bioluminescent glow that the natives see when the creature is about one hundred meters above the ground (although villagers sometimes see it over a reef). . . . In 2004, in central Umboi Island, Jonah Jim was interviewed twice: by Whitcomb and, a few weeks later, by Guessman and Woetzel. . . . it ties the glowing form to the pterosaur-like form. He saw it glowing and he saw its long tail (obviously not a Flying Fox fruit bat).

Locations of Pterosaurs in the United States

Within hours of a sighting, a ropen (or other modern pterosaur) could be many miles away, with who-knows-what destination. Within years of a sighting, a ropen could be on the other side of the planet. Who knows, except that ropen?

Pterosaur Sightings in Utah

. . . we stared up at the night sky . . . [My brother] suddenly noticed something and started yelling something about a giant bird . . . At around the same time, the animals in the farm next to us started going berserk.

March 7, 2015

Reflecting on the Brown Mountain Lights of North Carolina

In this first week of March, 2015, I am now beginning to dig more deeply into reports of strange flying lights around Brown Mountain in Burke County, North Carolina.

Brown Mountain, NC, is a long flat ridge with few distinguishing characteristics

Comparing Marfa Lights With Brown Mountain Lights

The strangest flying lights of southwest Texas, the Marfa Lights that fly just a few feet above the desert soil and appear to have something like chemical-electromagnetic properties—those flying lights rarely appear in that area of Texas, maybe only about six nights of each year. I’ve learned much about those from reading the book Hunting Marfa Lights, by the scientist James Bunnell. Well, it seems that the most mysterious flying lights around Brown Mountain, North Carolina, also only appear on occasion.

I have researched the most mysterious of the Marfa Lights, concluding that they are from bioluminescent flying predators (BFP) that return to the same general area of Texas every few weeks, as they roam around that part of North America, including Mexico. They may very well be related to the glowing nocturnal ropen of the southwest Pacific.

If I find that those more mysterious of the Brown Mountain Lights behave in similar ways, I may conclude the same thing for them. Let us look at the whole picture before jumping to conclusions, especially if those conclusions are based upon a few observations of lights that are easily explained: those common lights that have common explanations.

Beware of making the same error with Burke County, North Carolina, that some skeptics make with Presidio County, Texas. When a group of university physics students turned their cameras toward a highway at night, near Marfa, Texas, they recorded automobile headlights, which proves nothing about strange lights that fly a few feet above desert bushes where there are no roads. When a geologist in 1922 has two good nights to look for the Brown Mountain Lights, he reported nothing strange, which proves nothing about strange lights that rarely appear.

Caves in North Carolina

The Western NC Attractions web site calls the Linville Caves “North Carolina’s only caverns.” That seems hard to believe, considering how many caves are known in this part of the country. Finding no source to back up that statement, I suspect it would have been more accurate to say that Linville Caverns are the only ones in North Carolina that have organized tours for the public. Whatever the case, I wonder if it’s only a coincidence that these caves are only a few miles from Brown Mountain (a few miles as the pterosaur flies).

Why do I bring up caves in the eastern United States? Caves are where bioluminescent flying creatures are sometimes said to stay during daylight hours, whether in North America or in the southwest Pacific. So these unusual lights in North Carolina really do deserve more attention.

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Mystery Lights of Marfa, Texas

What is guaranteed to shock most Americans who hear about Marfa, Texas? It’s not stories of the ghost lights or scientific speculations on earth lights. A nonfiction book on living pterosaurs in America—that is shocking, including the chapter on Marfa Lights.

The Ropen and Brown Mountain Lights

Research by the physicist Clifford Paiva of BSM Research Associates

August 28, 2013

Plasma or Ropens Near Marfa, Texas?

front cover for nonfiction cryptozoology book, 3rd edition

Nobody has spent more hours actively investigating Marfa Lights in the field than James Bunnell, who lives in Texas. He has accumulated much valuable data on sightings of the truly mysterious lights, the ones that are clearly not related to car headlights. He deserves far more acclaim than he has received, from the majority of those who have written about Marfa Lights. I highly recommend his book Hunting Marfa Lights.

But he is a rocket scientist, literally, not a biologist, so I do not expect him to quickly drop his hypothesis of hot plasma bubbles and jump onto the back of a large bioluminescent flying creature. “Not everybody embraces a live pterodactyl,” as I put it.

In his discussion “What is the source of Marfa Lights?” he states:

ML locations vary between events but appear to be associated with fault lines in Mitchell Flat based on triangulation and estimation of locations for 17 MLs . . .

But I was struck by the labels on two of those fault lines: Little Goat Creek Fault and Walnut Creek Fault. Notice the word “creek.”

Flying Creatures, Storm Channels, and Old Creeks

Like Mr. Bunnell, I have studied a strange phenomenon in my home state. I strongly suspect that there is no coincidence in the similarities of our findings about objects in the air. Both of us have investigated strange things that fly over old stream beds, his in Texas, mine in California.

Earlier this year, I noticed that many sightings of strange flying creatures (not likely birds, probably ropens) in Southern California have a close association with storm channels and old creek beds.

In fact, some of those sightings involve glowing creatures with large wingspans in, of all places, Los Angeles County, the home of Hollywood. Take the sighting of a couple on a walk, in 2009, in the San Fernando Valley (Sherman Oaks area) of Southern California; it has no relationship with plasma. The following is taken from the third edition of my book Live Pterosaurs in America:

“It was a very large, winged creature that was gliding maybe 100 yards above us. We stared at the creature in disbelief because it was so strange . . . it didn’t look like a bird really. . . my girlfriend has 20-20 vision and she told [me] a few minutes later that it had lights on it.”

I asked, “How was it unlike a bird?” He replied that it was bigger, was not flapping its wings . . . and its wings were deeper from leading edge to trailing edge. He estimated the wingspan at ten to fifteen feet, mentioning that his girlfriends estimate was twenty feet. The wings were more bat-like than bird-like.

Another sighting in the San Fernando Valley also involved a large glowing flying creature of the night (whether or not a ropen):

“It was late in the evening, almost dark . . . I was walking from my car to my house (Sun Valley) and something in the sky caught my eye. My girlfriend also looked up and right away said, ‘Is that a bat?’ But she wears glasses so she has trouble seeing how close objects are. What caught my eye was the bright radiation like light coming from the belly of this Pterodactyl looking animal. I seen it fly right above us maybe 150-200 feet and this thing wasn’t no bat; it was bigger with large wing span . . .”

Neither of those sightings were far from any stream bed or storm channel, although they were at least hundreds of feet away. But what about other sightings of apparent pterosaurs in Southern California, in which the flying creatures were only feet away from a storm channel, or only inches? Those extremely close associations with storm channels—that were probably once old stream beds—those are surely not by coincidence. The winged things probably hunt prey by flying through or alone them, as they look for rats or possums or other tasty snacks.

Nocturnal flying creatures that resemble pterosaurs are sometimes observed in daylight or twilight. In Southern California sightings, I see a reasonable correlation with storm channels and I believe those were once stream beds. What better place to construct a storm channel?

I suggest a similar species of winged creature—probably not any bird—flies close to stream beds in southwest Texas, for similar reasons: hunting prey. I can see how Mr. Bunnell noticed the underlying original source of the stream beds around Marfa (faults), but the stream beds themselves are surely what causes the correlation with CE-III’s, not the faults.

Reports of Apparent Pterosaurs in Texas

I long ago lost count of the eyewitness accounts, and other reports, I have seen of possible pterosaurs in Texas. I have also received many sighting reports from surrounding states, including New Mexico, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Most of the sightings are clearly of non-birds, winged creatures too big to be bats.

I suspect that most of those who have researched and investigated the more mysterious of the lights that fly over the Mitchell Flat area—those persons have no idea how many Texans have reported seeing large flying creatures at night, things with wings but which look unlike birds and bats. And many persons in the Southern states seem to have witnessed flying creatures that glow at night.

Explanation for CE-III Marfa Lights

James Bunnell has given us precise categories of Marfa Lights, including the subtype “III” of chemical-electromagnetic flying entities (which are less than 3% of the lights that could be called strange in that part of Texas). He has suggested that hot plasma can behave in complex ways, but in “What is the source of Marfa Lights?” he does not give any particular reason for splitting-separating-rejoining behavior.

The Bioluminescent Flying Predators (BFP) concept explains the precise nature of the complex behaviors of the CE-III Marfa Lights. Some of those behaviors are well explained as hunting techniques for catching the Big Brown bat, a common bat in this part of Texas. One of those methods has been explained in detail, on a number of web pages, notwithstanding few non-biologists have given it much attention.

This biological interpretation of the actively flying Marfa Lights is the simplest and best explanation for the apparent splittings, separations, and rejoinings of CE-III ML’s. The bioluminescence exhibited by the flying creatures is more active than that of other glowing creatures, but it seems to be similar to what is described in Papua New Guinea, in what we call the “ropen.”

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Bioluminescent Flying Predators of Marfa

Two of the BFP’s . . . are close to each other, using the glow to attract insects that in turn could attract the Big Brown bat . . . it appears to us that a light is splitting into two lights; they were always two objects.

Marfa Lights – A Living Nightmare?

What could be worse than any nightmare? In the dead of night, you are awakened by what you fear most, glaring down at you. To humans, this monster should not even exist except in a dream. This one is real. Race out of your bedroom; it’s after you. Race out the front door; it follows. Search for a place to hide; it’s too late. You are exposed, surrounded by many monsters ready to feast. You have fallen into their trap. Your family is scattered, chased across the freezing countryside. You are alone. You are Eptesicus fuscus, a Big Brown Bat.

Marfa Lights Explanation

To paraphrase Nicola Tesla, the modern scientist needs, rather than deep thinking, clear thinking. I suggest that investigators need to recognize evidence of intelligence rather than require interpretations involving non-intelligence, regarding the CE-III mystery lights of Marfa, Texas.

Third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America by Jonathan David Whitcomb

First paragraph of the Introduction:

This book might make a few Americans uneasy to walk alone at night; my intention, however, is not to frighten but to enlighten as many readers as possible to know about live-pterosaur investigations. Those who’ve been shocked at the sight of a flying creature that “should” be extinct—those eyewitnesses, more numerous than most Americans would guess, need no longer be afraid that everyone will think them crazy, and no longer need they feel alone. Those of us who’ve listened to the American eyewitnesses, we who have interviewed them, we now believe. So, if you will, consider the experiences of these ordinary persons (I’ve interviewed most of them myself) and accept whatever enlightenment you may.