bat – Pterosaur Eyewitness

November 17, 2017January 16, 2019

Sightings of Living Pterosaurs in the South – Yes, in the USA

sketch of the two pterosaurs observed by Eskin Kuhn in Cuba

Eyewitness Accounts of Modern Pterosaurs in the Southern States

By the living-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb (author of books on extant pterosaurs)

UPDATE: To encourage practices of internet security and to support those online sites that are safe, this post on encounters with non-extinct pterosaurs has been updated with “https” in the URL’s of its links.

The online Living Pterosaurs proclamation gives the following American states in the South, among many U.S. states, as places where eyewitnesses have seen apparent non-extinct “pterodactyls,” by whatever name those persons used for the flying creatures (sometimes using the word “dragon”):

Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Texas
Virginia

Pterosaur Sighting in Raleigh, North Carolina

I received the following email in February of 2014. It’s edited here for standard English (“b4” in the original means “before”), with a small part of it being deleted. The eyewitness reported two sightings: in 2003 and in 2007.

I have been telling this . . . to my family for the past 10 years. I was coming from work, walking down Cross Link Road, going towards Garner Road, and I saw this huge (what I thought was a) bird, but it was not any bird I had seen before. I stopped walking and watched it until I couldn’t see it anymore. Cars where just driving by; nobody even noticed (2003).

In 2007, I was on Bragg Street and I heard the trees ruffle and that same thing flew from one side of the street to the other. It was beside the bike trail before you get to Central Women’s Prison. I knew I wasn’t crazy: This time a guy at the other end looking towards me saw it [at] the same time. We just stared and both said, “Did you see that?” GOD as my witness, I saw this. . . .

It didn’t flap its wings like a bird . . . more like back peddle like a bat, then it soars out and repeats to get more speed. I hope one day someone gets more info. I wish I had my cell with a good camera then. Thanks for your time.

Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, North Carolina (photo in public domain)

Pterosaur Sighting in Edmond, Oklahoma

In June of 2014, I got the following two emails:

I believe I saw a pterosaur last night in Edmond, Oklahoma, just north of OKC. . . . Today I was trying to look up other recent sightings and was shocked to see that two other people have seen something similar in my state.

. . . my friend that was with me immediately said “Is that a dragon!?” It had a long tail, pointed wings straight to the side, short head. I thought it was a giant bat, but it would have to be the largest bat in the world. I didn’t want to report it as I didn’t think it would matter. But seeing that others have had recent sightings in Oklahoma, I felt obligated to do so.

The sighting was almost close to 9 pm, right before sunset. It was dark but not too dark and I got a really good look at it because it flew right over the car and I was able to see the exact shape of the creature from underneath. It was out in the country, I live in a very rural area.

We were driving and I was the one who saw fly out of the tree and instantly I could tell something was different because of the way it flew. It is hard to describe, all I can say is it flew very “majestic” like, almost like a dragon. Slow wings.

Notice that both sighting reports mention the word bat. That can shoot down a misidentified-bird conjecture.

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Living Pterosaurs in Louisiana

Last night, I got a phone call from a Ryan Causey, who had a sighting in 1994 in southern Louisiana. The flying creature was seen late at night as it flew over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway bridge . . .

Pterosaurs sightings in Oklahoma and in West Virginia

This happened to me about an hour ago. My dad, my baby sister, and I were outside in the hot tub. . . . giant winged creature flying across the sky . . .

Books on Living Pterosaurs

Brief reviews of five nonfiction books about these wonderful flying creatures

LDS Books

Ender’s Game
Searching for Ropens and Finding God
Common Sense (by Glenn Beck)

Nonfiction books for LDS

Fear not the light of unfamiliar hue
Washing sand at first
Then penetrating the depths
It bids a hidden feast emerge at last

Pterosaur sighting in Bethany, Oklahoma

. . . on two occasions have seen a huge winged creature that had no feathers, gray leathery skin. It looked like the pictures I have seen of pteradactyls.

Pterosaur Sighting in Raleigh, North Carolina

I was going over a report of a pterosaur sighting in North Carolina and noticed similarities with Susan Wooten’s sighting in South Carolina.

Pterosaur or a giant bat?

Sometimes an eyewitness will say “giant bat.” We need not assume the flying creature was literally a bat. In Western cultures, the idea of universal pterosaur extinction is so deeply ingrained that eyewitnesses find it difficult to use that word [pterosaur], for it makes them feel unbelievable.

April 18, 2012April 18, 2012

Scientific Conspiracy or not?

Is the opposition to reports of living pterosaurs from a scientific conspiracy? To the best of my experience and knowledge, no. I am unaware of any evidence for any coordinated attempt to cover up valid evidence for living pterosaurs. But virtual conspiracy is another story. The cumulative effect of countless Westerners placing 100% of their faith in a pile of dependent assumptions—that blind faith in universal extinctions of pterosaurs has caused a very similar result: road-blocking investigations of reports of living pterosaurs.

“Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth”

It’s not that the writer, Brian Switek, is technically wrong in all his proclamations in his blog post. Indeed he was correct in pointing out the error of a newspaper reporter who used a photo of a Frigate Bird as if evidence for modern living pterosaurs. But Switek ridiculed in general: any potential report, anywhere, of any possible sighting of any living pterosaur, and he ridiculed that general concept while failing to mention even one of the key sightings. Taking a shuttle van to an airport does not prove that the Space Shuttle was just a science fiction myth.

That Smithsonian blog post might just as well have been orchestrated from a member of a conspiracy group, for it appeared to give solid evidence that no sighting of any pterosaur could have been of that type of flying creature. But after many paragraphs that ridicule the religious beliefs and ideas of men who had explored remote tropical rain forests in Papua New Guinea, Switek says, “Furthermore, even if a long-tailed pterosaur were found it would do nothing to undercut the science of evolution.” It seems that both sides of an origin-philosophy dispute agree on one thing: It is possible that a species of long-tailed pterosaur still lives. Even Mr. Switek admits that possibility.

Giant Bat

Too often have I encountered a generalization that is too convenient, an explanation not for any particular sighting of an apparent pterosaur in Papua New Guinea but for sightings in general: a misidentified Flying Fox fruit bat. The Hodgkinson sighting alone, perhaps the most important pterosaur sighting in history, repudiates the “giant bat” misidentification explanation.

9-11 Conspiracy Theory

Now how could one depraved government official begin to gain help for an enormous attack against Americans? He or she would have had to find somebody else just as depraved. Then more individuals equally depraved would need to find more, and then more. One non-depraved person would have immediately exposed the conspiracy, or (if fear had prevented that) would have leaked out the details, causing the deprived conspirators to be caught. Yes, even before 9-11, planning to murder thousands of people was illegal.

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back and front covers of Live Pterosaurs in America book

Live Pterosaurs in America (sale price on Amazon.com)

From the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America:

Since less-credible reports are of limited relevance in the investigation of the possibility of living pterosaurs, let us ignore [this paleontologist’s] many examples of questionable reports; consider the more-credible reports. They are consistent with the hypothesis that more than one species of pterosaur, rare and mostly nocturnal, live (at least for much of the year) in the United States.

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golden interior of the Smithsonian "Castle"

Inside the Smithsonian “Castle” in Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution is the largest museum complex in the world, with historical buildings lauded as architectural landmarks. But with all of its scientific displays and projects, it is not yet supporting the living pterosaur investigations that have accelerated since the two ropen expeditions of 2004. In fact, one Smithsonian Magazine blog post blasted the very idea that the ropen is more than a myth.

August 31, 2011August 31, 2011

Flying Fox Fruit Bat

Even recent criciticms (for example, by the paleontologist Darren Naish) of living-pterosaur research sometimes includes the insinuation of misidentification regarding bats, especially the fruit bat called “flying fox.” A typical sighting of a large long-tailed pterosaur, however, differs greatly from a sighting of a Flying Fox fruit bat. For one thing, at least some critics fail to realize how many sightings of apparent pterosaurs are in locations where this Megabat does not live.

Georgia Pterosaur (from the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America)

The lady . . . had been trying to find someone who might help her verify the existence of the strange animals that she had seen twice in the past few weeks. . . . Her first sighting was at 7 a.m., the second, 9 a.m., with both mornings overcast. . . .

Fifteen miles of her commute is on a two-lane 55-mph road through woods alternating with pastures . . . on August 27, 2008. She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house at 6:45 a.m., with the sky still overcast from the last remnants of [a] storm. . . . She had driven less than ten miles, just leaving an area of pasture, entering an area of thick woods . . . when an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car. Although alone, she yelled, “What the — what — what is that?” She was stunned.

. . . It was the tail; she looked up at a “very long” tail that had a strange shape at the end. . . . a thick almost-heart-shape at the end of the tail . . . “Dive-bombing my car,” is how she described the flight path, as it crossed the highway in front of and slightly above her. “Curved, like a hammer,” is how she described the head, which had a crest that she thought was “solid, not feathery at all.” . . . a smoothly curved head crest.

Obviously what the lady saw near Winder, Georgia, in the summer of 2008, was no Flying Fox fruit bat, even if that species of Megabat lived in Georgia, which it does not. So what about sightings in Papua New Guinea, where those bats live in great numbers?

Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen

The cryptid seen in New Guinea, by Duane Hodgkinson in 1944 and by Brian Hennessy in 1971, I have named “Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen.” Similarities between the descriptions given to me by these two eyewitnesses struck me as too much for coincidence. . . .

. . . these different lengths of head crest I believe fall within the range of eyewitness error. In other words, the creatures observed by these two men could very well have had the same length of head crest (relative to the size of the head) . . . it seems likely that the species is the same for the 1944 and 1971 sightings.

Both Duane Hodgkinson and Brian Hennessy were struck by the long pterosaur tail . . . in a manner of speaking, and Hodgkinson was close enough to make an estimate of tail-length: “at least ten or fifteen feet.” It was obviously not any Flying Fox fruit bat.

Eskin Kuhn Pterosaur Sighting

Her sighting [Patty Carson] confirms the credibility of the eyewitness Eskin Kuhn, who long ago reported his 1971 encounter. But Patty saw a similar creature in 1965 . . .

Kuhn sketched what he had seen, soon after his sighting (obviously no fruit bat):