Modern Dragons
Beyond any doubt, the most influential legend permeating multifarious cultures worldwide is that of the fearsome dragon. Tales of monstrous reptiles capable of wreaking havoc and mass destruction date back at least seven millennia in Chinese antiquity, and some three thousand years ago the ancient Sumerians revered a great, saurian beast known as Kur. There’s also an entire Old Testament chapter (Job 41) that chronicles a quasi dragon called Leviathan, a titanic beast that dwelt in the oceans and was capable of devouring the world. Even in ancient Mesoamerica, certain indigenous tribes worshipped a winged serpent god named Quetzalcoatl. The archetypal medieval dragon is often portrayed as a winged, fire-breathing ophidian that is often the chief antagonist of some great knight or warrior on a mighty quest. To what do we owe these diverse but seemingly parallel myths? Were the beliefs merely spawned by encounters with outsized crocodilians, snakes, and lizards? Or perchance could there be a connection to the enormous, dragon-like reptiles that ruled our planet sixty-five million years ago?
There is a theory that states that the discovery of fossilized dinosaur bones by early people may have instilled a belief in dragons. Bone fragments from various prehistoric animals are still sold in Chinese apothecaries to this day because they are believed to contain certain medicinal benefits. In fact, these are frequently still referred to as “dragon” bones. The beaked skull and stout quadruped body of a dinosaur called Protoceratops is thought to have spawned the legend of the dragon-like griffin. Conceivably, is there any chance that some dinosaur species could have survived the mass Cretaceous extinction event, astounding humans at some point during our distant past? Could a real dragon persist in some remote, mountain lair even to this day?
As mentioned in chapter 4, the 1938 discovery of the coelacanth, an ancient fish that was believed to have gone extinct along with the dinosaurs, stands as a weighty example that extinction is not always a permanent classification once it has been declared. Remember, too, that not all sizable reptiles went extinct at the close of the Mesozoic Era. Crocodilians, some of which can obtain lengths of twenty feet, have survived and have flourished, virtually unchanged since that time. The largest known snakes, pythons, and anacondas are capable of reaching lengths of over twenty feet, and during the Paleocene epoch some snakes (Titanoboa) grew twice that long. Goliath species of sea turtles and land tortoises can weigh between 800 and 1,500 pounds. The largest known lizard, the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), can reach lengths of up to ten feet and was hidden from western scientists until only a century ago. Perhaps the notion of a modern dragon is not so far-fetched after all.
The Tatzelwurm of the Alps
When I was fifteen years old, my father and I took a bus tour across Switzerland. This memorable adventure unfolded during the idyllic summer of 1982, and one of my truly favorite memories from that time is of attempting some light trekking through the gorgeous Alps mountains. I’ll never forget the intoxication I felt upon hearing about an enigmatic local creature referred to as the Tatzelwurm. Based on eyewitness descriptions, this elongate, fair-sized animal did not seem to resemble any type of worm at all, since (according to general accounts) it possessed a thick, scaly body; sharp teeth; and at least two limbs. Most curious was the animal’s apparent aggression towards innocent passersby, as well as a proclivity to pounce great distances when defending its territory. Some have claimed that the Tatzelwurm emits a hissing sound when threatened, and others that its bite is laced with venom. Oftentimes it is viewed slinking into caves and crevices at higher altitudes. On the surface it certainly sounds as though a sort of dragon survived into present-day Europe.
Confrontations with the Tatzelwurm were evidently so commonplace during the early nineteenth century that its image was portrayed in Bavarian field guides of the time. An Austrian hiker logged one of the more memorable sightings as recently as 1933, but run-ins with the Tatzelwurm seem to have diminished dramatically since then. Various suggestions have been put forward for the critter’s true identity, since it does not resemble anything that is currently known in that region. One thought is that the Tatzelwurm represents a very large and aggressive burrowing lizard similar to the Gila monster of the American Southwest or perhaps a type of gigantic skink. Another theory holds that it may in fact be a large amphibian, not unlike the giant salamanders of Japan and China. From my perspective, it’s not difficult to envision a rare and robust form of European legless or glass lizard (Pseudopus apodus) accounting for the Tatzelwurm stories, with the whimsical features (pouncing, venomous) sprinkled in for flavor.
Europe boasts a rich history of dragon tales. For centuries, according to aged literature, the entire continent was virtually crawling with them. Surprisingly though, a smattering of contemporary accounts have surfaced. For example, villagers in Syracuse, Sicily, hunted and eventually shot a huge serpent during December of 1933, according to newspaper articles from the time. The monster had been accused of terrifying the locals, since estimates put the specimen’s length at anywhere from eleven to twenty feet. Unfortunately, its remains were burned by its overzealous conquerors. The following year in the forests of Monterosso al Mare, Italy, an elderly man encountered a scaly, green and gold dragon eight feet in length. Some three and a half decades later, an Italian man claimed he was chased by a fifteen-foot, scaly, thick-legged lizard that reminded him of a dinosaur. The witness remarked that the beast seemed to exhale heated breath, a dragon-like attribute to be sure. This occurred near the city of Forlì, Italy, during December of 1970.
In June of 1975, a tomato farmer named Maurizio Tombini was working near Goro, Italy, and was frightened by a reptile that he estimated was ten feet eight inches long and as thick as a good-sized dog. Tombini also noted that the animal possessed four legs and apparently left some impressive tracks on the ground, which were examined by police. Tombini was adamant that what he saw was not a crocodile and the man apparently had a reputation for having a serious disposition. Other residents also encountered the Goro Monster, and a few villagers even claimed that it made a howling sound reminiscent of a wolf.
Neighboring France can declare a modern dragon too. During May of 1939, French women who were picking berries near Ossun encountered a gigantic “lizard.” The creature had previously been seen decades earlier, around the 1890s.
Dragons in the New World
One of my very favorite “worlds-colliding” stories involves a South Dakota farmer who claimed that his tractor was run off the road by a “dragon” back in 1934. For weeks prior, the distressed landowner noticed that some of his prized livestock was disappearing without a trace. Then one day he was operating his trusty machinery when something built like a dinosaur supposedly charged right past him. The man watched in disbelief as the creature vanished into nearby Campbell Lake. It left behind a few deep impressions in the muddy shoreline, but there were no other signs of the perplexing intruder. Nor has the beast been seen since, as far as we know.
An equally lively episode involves a Kentucky cryptid known as the Milton Lizard or Canip Monster Lizard. During July of 1975 a peculiar series of events unfolded in the tiny city of Milton, located in Trimble County. On July 3, the local newspaper published a photo of an unidentified animal track located in a tomato field belonging to resident Carl Abbot. The clawed, four-toed print measured four and a half by five inches, and whatever had left it in the soil had allegedly made some aggressive sounds that resonated throughout the evening. There was also the disconcerting matter of a neighborhood dog that had been assaulted by an unseen creature. The pooch had apparently sustained some deep gashes in its side.
Meanwhile, on the northeast side of Milton adjacent to the Ohio River lies meandering Canip Creek as well as (at that time) the Blue Grass Body Shop and auto scrapyard, owned and operated by the Cable brothers, Clarence and Garrett. Clarence, also known as “Toughy,” was the first one to spot the animal on their property as it emerged from some debris next to the wreckage of an old van. The alarmed business owner was astonished to observe an immense, man-sized reptile and was duly impressed by its huge, bulging eyes and foot-long forked tongue. The creature appeared to display an off-white color on its underside but had prominent black and white stripes as well as quarter-sized orange specks across its head and back. Its legs were each about eight to ten inches long. Garrett encountered the incomprehensible creature around three weeks later on July 25, after he had detected it slithering through a stockpile of car hoods.
By the time Garrett had returned to the location with his brother, as well as a rifle, the lizard was nowhere to be found. The following day, Toughy encountered the thing again but upped his size estimate to a whopping fifteen feet in length. Feeling threatened, he hurled a rock in its direction, causing the reptile to hiss at him before escaping into the thicket bordering the creek. Toughy returned a few minutes later with his rifle once again and fired into the brush where he had seen the abomination enter, apparently with no result. The brothers were supposedly unsuccessful in finding any volunteers brave enough to help them track the animal down. Ultimately, the speculation was that the specimen had probably been an escaped varanid (monitor lizard), though it must be recognized that even the great Komodo dragons of that family rarely grow longer than ten feet. An on-site inquiry by investigator Mark A. Hall during 1979 confirmed that the Milton Lizard had utterly vanished.
Some odd yarns originating in the American Southwest suggest living, two-legged, theropod dinosaurs may be running about. Virtually all of the accounts are dubious at best. Referred to as “river dinos” or “mountain boomers,” these creatures are mostly reported from riverbeds and watering holes in either southern Colorado or southwestern Texas, respectively. The prototypical version stands anywhere from three to five feet tall and has green- or gray-colored skin; a relatively small, snakelike head attached to a long neck; vestigial arms; powerful hind legs; and a stout tail. The things have been compared to large, upright lizards that are swift and graceful in their movements. Secondhand tales of these creatures scavenging roadkill or even running cars off the road sometime during the 1970s prevail.
The original source of the outlandish stories may be traced back to a letter penned by a woman named Myrtle Snow. Her testimonial was published in a Sunday supplement called Empire Magazine in 1982. Snow claimed to have seen man-sized dinosaurs no less than four times over the course of her life and at various points in Colorado and New Mexico. My colleague Nick Sucik spent considerable time researching the subject in 2005 and surprisingly uncovered other accounts. During 2001, a woman and her daughter who were motoring through the Yellow Jacket area spotted a five-foot river dino near an irrigation canal. They both felt that the thing looked like a cross between a reptile and bird, though it was completely featherless. The animal had a serpentine neck, thin legs and two stubby arms extending forward just below its neck area. Sucik also investigated an earlier account from 1996 that involved a woman living in Kampark near Mesa Verde. The witness happened to glance outside and noticed a reptile that she couldn’t identify running swiftly by. Sporting a cone-shaped snout and prominent tail, the creature stood three and a half feet tall and was clearly on two legs.
Texas T. rex?
Having once addressed Texas’s dinosaurian mountain boomers in a rather incredulous fashion, I resolved to file the whole matter away in my folder with other improbable scenarios and B-sides. Imagine my surprise when I was contacted by Lon Strickler, a resourceful researcher who runs a popular website called Phantoms and Monsters. Strickler felt that I might harbor a genuine interest in certain recent events that had transpired in far southern Texas and revolved around reports of small dinosaurs. Boy, was he right! The area in question was familiar to me, as I had scoured the Rio Grande Valley a decade ago while investigating abundant accounts of pterodactyl-like creatures. The valley is a very different kind of place in terms of its culture and habitat.
The sightings came about during the summer of 2013, and the descriptions seemed astoundingly similar to those of the boomers that I had so casually dismissed in my book Monsters of Texas (coauthored with Nick Redfern). Hebbronville resident Michelle Raines recalled,
My friend actually saw a small dinosaur here in town on a main street! It was evening when she saw it, probably around 8:45 p.m. She was driving and noticed the dinosaur crossing the street! She saw the shape clearly as it passed another car’s headlights on the opposite side. She said oddly that the other car didn’t seem to notice as the creature passed. She tried to call me but her phone was out of minutes.
It appears as though the encounter may have served as a kind of validation for Raines, who had desperately been trying to make sense of her own troubling episode.
Just a couple of months before I had actually heard the creature I could only describe as a dinosaur. I had been asleep, it was night, maybe around 1 or 2 am. I had awoken and just at that moment I heard an unfamiliar screech of something running by my window. We have an AC unit in the window so the window is basically open. I heard its footsteps as it ran by and it was heavy, whatever it was. I could hear it clearly on the ground. As it ran further away I could hear it screech again! It was like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life! It was loud too and I wonder if anyone else heard it or saw it. I live in an apartment complex. I just laid there in bed completely bewildered by what I had just heard. I questioned my sanity and if I had heard what I thought I heard. So when my friend saw the “dinosaur,” she was excited and wanted to tell me because of what I heard. I’m only sad I didn’t get to see it too.
Strickler’s subsequent release of Raines’s claims on his website and radio broadcast elicited a surprising response: yet another South Texas resident, with the initials L. M., came forward, presumably relieved to have some corroboration.
This morning I was, told by my neighbor that you [Strickler] had received reports of small T-Rex dinosaurs seen in Hebbronville, TX, and you mentioned it on a radio show. I live near Falfurrias, TX which is about 18 miles east of Hebbronville. I and others have seen those creatures. My neighbor and I saw a pair in December 2012 on the roadway behind our houses. We were scared to report our sighting. I know other people in this area have seen the same creatures.
A family member from Sabinas Hidalgo in Mexico told me that he saw a “big lizard” the last time he visited us. He saw it while he was driving near McAllen, TX. He described the same thing we have seen. It was 2–3 ft. tall with a large head and long tail. It ran on 2 legs and was very dark in color. The two creatures we saw were dark brown and walking quickly on 2 legs also. It was about 4:30 pm and we watched them for about 20 seconds as the moved towards the dead end of the road. We got a very good look.
For a few nights after that, we heard short shrills coming from the brush at the end of the road.
A couple of weeks later, my son told me that he and his friends found many quail feathers and deer bones scattered by a tree in the same brush. I did contact a wildlife authority about the remains but didn’t mention what we had seen. He said it was probably coyotes, though I have not heard or seen coyotes for a long time. Another neighbor lost a dog about the same time. Again coyotes were said to be the predator. No remains were ever found. My husband was alarmed and had a high heavy duty steel link fence built around the yard so that our grand children and pets are safe.
… Our dog (Rottweiler) has been acting strange lately. He acts calm and fearless sometimes, but hides and whines other times. This always happens at night. I think these creatures are around again.
Is there a gang of renegade dinosaurs running loose across the southern Texas scrub, or is it perhaps an unknown type of large, bipedal lizard? I plan on pursuing the matter in the very near future.
Twentieth-Century Pterosaurs
When deliberating the archetype of the classical, winged dragon, it is difficult to ignore the physical similarities to the dragon-like, flying reptiles that dominated our planet’s skies for 135 million years or so. I am referring of course to the tantalizing pterosaurs, those highly specialized contemporaries of the dinosaurs, some of which (the pterodactyls) obtained airplane-sized dimensions. These creatures possessed membranous bat-like wings, a beak brimming with sharp little teeth, and in some cases ornate head crests or serpentine tails. One can only imagine the types of mythologies these esoteric animals might have spawned if they had outlived their presumed extinction date of sixty-five million years ago. There are a surprising number of people who have claimed to have seen these prehistoric animals alive and well in modern times.
Acting on a tip, I contacted an Arizona woman named Elvia who believes she encountered an enigmatic, winged entity years ago. According to Elvia’s testimony, the event occurred between Victorville and Phelan, California, sometime back in 1982 or 1983. At the time she was working at a market that closed around 9:00 p.m., and after shutting it down with a fellow employee one evening, Elvia began her drive home on a remote road through the desert. During our interview, she recalled that it was pitch black outside and described the road as basically a wide, gravel trail running alongside a ditch. She was steering her half-ton, bobtail pickup truck, when a humongous beast bigger than her vehicle suddenly passed overhead. According to Elvia, the “bird” didn’t appear to have any feathers, though it possessed an extremely pointy head. She perceived a gray and pink pattern under its wings, which she estimated to be twenty-five feet across. Immediately following the incident, Elvia considered turning around and going back to the spot in order to get another look at the thing but thought about her children and decided it was not worth the risk.
A corroborating incident involves a young woman named Rhiannon Smith who saw something she interpreted as a pterosaur during 2003 or 2004. Smith’s sighting took place just outside of Lancaster, California, only forty miles west of Elvia’s encounter. Smith recalled,
I noticed a large winged creature off the left of the freeway. Judging the distance, I would have to say it was probably about 150 feet away … but the creature was definitely large enough for me to get a very good look at it. There were no feathers whatsoever, and the creature had large, leathery-type wings. It did not have a large crest on its head like a pteranodon, but it had the characteristic bald head and long beak like a pterodactyl. I honestly cannot remember if it had a short or long, thin tail, and I wish for the life of me I could remember. … I thought, surely I must be hallucinating or something, but I watched the creature silently glide between two hillsides and some trees for about a good ten seconds at least. I was so startled and shocked that I yelled to my parents, “Hey, look!” But soon stopped after I realized they wouldn’t believe me and would probably think I was imagining it. Sometimes to this very day I wonder if I was just seeing a figment of my imagination, but I’m not one to make up random things and pretend they are real. … I’ve always been one of those “I’ll believe it when I see it” type [of] people. Well, I guess my motto is true. I know what I saw and no one can say it was a bird, or small airplane, or whatever. … A pterodactyl is exactly what it looked like. … I saw it with my own two eyes.… It was just so surreal.
Rounding out our southern California cluster, we have this account from a resident of Oxnard who I’ll call James:
In late May of 2008, it was dusk, and I was out with my telescope. During a break from the scope, I looked up to see two flying creatures that appeared slightly anomalous to me. I have some experience estimating altitude from flying small aircraft, and I would estimate that what I saw was approximately 800 feet above sea level, flying south-southwest. They were in a steady glide; [they made] no power strokes or wing beats like a bird would. I was a bit taken aback. I saw two creatures, flying in a right-wingman formation. They didn’t look quite like birds: the wings were the wrong shape, they didn’t have any clearly visible feathering, there were two legs trailing behind them, and they had a strangely shaped head … I couldn’t immediately figure out what they were. Nothing seemed to fit. I pondered this and researched on the Internet for three days before I finalized my opinion of what I had seen. I’m convinced that I saw two pterosaurs that evening in May. I don’t make this statement flippantly. I’m quite certain of what I saw, and have taken every step to make sure I am not being misled by my own eyes. It’s quite obvious to me that these creatures are still with us.
Up the Pacific Coast about 700 miles or so, the accounts continue. A heart-stopping one occurred during the 1970s, according to Ashland, Oregon, resident Larry.
I saw a giant, prehistoric bird while hunting deer with my cousin in 1973. I was sixteen. He was eighteen. It was latched onto the side of a tall redwood tree [at] about 9:00 a.m. We were high up in the mountains. They were cutting new logging roads into places no one had ever been. We walked into a small clearing on the back side of a mountain. We had no idea it was there. High up that massive tree … all hell broke loose when I took a couple of steps toward the tree it was clinging to. … It pushed off from the side of the tree to gain flight with such force, such unbelievable power. I heard a crack like thunder break, then silence and a massive swoosh. I looked up and the redwood was swaying back and forth … and it was split right down the middle. I looked to the left and saw it for the first time. … It was not a bird, as we know them to be. It looked truly prehistoric! It made no sound at all, other than the sound of its wings … [and] it looked to be thirty-five to forty-plus feet from wing tip to wing tip and thirty-plus feet long from beak to tail and about eight-plus feet wide at the midsection. … It had no feathers at all! It looked like it had the skin of an alligator or elephant, darkish gray, and it looked to have twelve-inch square sections all over it like scales, or armor plates, as it were. It did not flap its wings like a bird does but lifted them up high and then down with massive power, and it would shoot forward with each stroke. … I raised my rifle and fired two or three times at it as it took its leave. … [I’m] not sure if I hit it or not. Three or four flaps of its wings and it was gone down the canyon.
Finishing up our West Coast tour, here’s a fairly recent 2010 sighting by Troutdale, Oregon, resident Shawn:
I listened to you on Coast to Coast AM the other night, and you had asked anyone who has seen a pterodactyl to contact you. I have not only seen one but was within twenty feet of it. I am an avid bird-watcher and I work out of my house, so I am able to take frequent breaks on my deck. I spotted what appeared to be a heron flying from the south, in the early morning, midweek in the spring. … What was perplexing is that I could see the bird, but it was still a great distance off. I knew it was large, but my only reference up to this point was a heron, so it did not make any sense that the bird had not arrived at my location given a normal time frame. … When I went back out, I could see the enormous size of this thing, and then it had my attention. The best I can describe the size is about the length of a VW Bug with a large wingspan. … The closer it got the more aware of the size I became .… Now this thing is flying at treetop level, which at the time would be fifteen to twenty feet above me, standing on a second story deck, so I am watching but having trouble processing what is going on. Now I am looking directly at the creature, and it rolls its head sideways to look at me, and the eye moved in the socket and then there we were eyeball to eyeball. … I can remember thinking, Man, the pterodactyl drawings that I had seen were spot on—the head, the teeth, and the wings with protruding fingers.
Desert Dragons
Within the annals of Forteana, there is a controversial affair said to have taken place in southern Arizona’s arid desert during the late nineteenth century. According to an article that was published in the Tombstone Epitaph on April 26, 1886, local ranchers shot a leather-winged monstrosity with a crocodilian head. There’s even a widespread belief that the men spread the animal out against the side of a barn and took a photo with it. The problem is though some claimed to have gazed upon this iconic image, no one seems to be able to produce a copy of it or can even recall where the darn thing was published to begin with. The Internet is littered with hoaxed recreations of the scene. Regardless, there seems to be an attitude that winged reptiles might still be found in the vast barren deserts of the American Southwest. Towards the end of 2011, I received correspondence from a young woman named Pamela Marsh indicating that may be the case.
We were driving from a new house my parents bought in Alto and noticed this tan-looking bird that resembled a pterodactyl flying in a field. … We didn’t get to see where it actually went. It wasn’t very big like some people have reported (looking like small airplanes), but [it was] a smaller version. I saw it along with my son and mom. This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my life. We saw … this pointed-head bird flying. … It just seemed like its head, beak, and [the] point on [its] head [were] more narrow. It went pretty fast, and we only noticed its wings and head and can’t recall looking at the tail. … We will always remember that this is not a normal bird.
Pterodactyls over Texas
In my first book, Big Bird!: Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters, I examined the lengthy history of winged creature sightings throughout my home state of Texas. In particular, the American Bicentennial year of 1976 seemed to produce a dramatic number of reports, though descriptions of the animals in question vacillated between monstrous black raptors and bat-winged pterosaurs. Occasionally, I still receive provocative testimonials such as this one sent to me by Texas resident Fiona:
Both my ex-husband and I saw a giant bird over Houston, Texas, in ’76. It was quite close and looked like a pterodactyl. I’ll never forget the huge size of it, the enormous wingspan, the clearly defined point at the back of the skull, and the long legs trailing behind. It wasn’t just gliding it was smoothly flapping its wings. I saw it as I was looking out the patio door and called my husband to come take a look. He saw it too and tried to call a radio or TV station, but they wouldn’t believe him. I didn’t know anyone else had seen any giant birds like this until I saw the documentary a couple of years ago on TV, which told of all the giant bird sightings in Texas in the mid-1970s. It was gratifying to find out that others had seen the giants as well. The skeptics try to say it was a giant condor or something like that. It wasn’t. You could clearly see the long, slim neck, pointed beak, pointed skull, and long, slim legs. I think of it as my UFO, as I now know what it feels like to try and tell others of something that sounds impossible and they don’t believe you.
My hometown of San Antonio seems to produce a notable number of pterosaur sightings for some reason, perhaps due to its proximity to remote, mountainous areas of Northern Mexico. Over the years, I’ve amassed reports from a diverse sample of its residents, including law enforcement officers, teachers, a biology student, and even celebrities. Quite recently, I spoke to an ex-Navy sailor named Ismael Wylie, who claims that he saw one of the creatures fly over his property on Christmas Day 2013.
According to Ismael, it was just before 1:00 p.m. He was in his backyard on the far north side of town finishing some yard work when he looked up and spotted what he thought was some type of stork flying his way. Ismael was about to go inside but decided to wait a few moments and enjoy the rare wildlife encounter. As the creature passed about thirty feet directly over his head, Ismael looked up, and only then did he surmise that the animal was not a bird at all but what he perceived to be a living, breathing pterosaur. The thing displayed a relatively small head that was attached to a long, rigid neck. But, what really caught Wylie’s attention was its membranous wings, which seemed devoid of feathers with sharp angles and also displayed a pronounced skeletal structure. In addition, the beast exhibited a solid, dark gray or charcoal color that confirmed that it was not a stork, crane, or heron. Ismael’s vast experience working in print shops enabled him to later apply an artistic eye and sketch what he had observed.
Wylie was aware of another incident involving a living pterosaur—and one of reportedly huge stature, to boot. During the early 1990s, while stationed on the USS Jouett (CG-29), a 547-foot Naval cruiser, he was awakened by news of an enormous “pterodactyl,” which apparently flew overhead in the presence of some fifty to one hundred fellow crewmembers. The location was somewhere in the East Indian Ocean just north of Australia. The significance of this episode is underscored by the fact that the nearby island of Papua New Guinea has long been rumored to be inhabited by a species of winged dragon known as the ropen, duah, or indava bird. Descriptions of this creature jibe well with archaic airborne reptiles, and one could hardly hope for a better habitat to conceal a population of Cretaceous survivors. My friend and colleague Paul Nation of Texas has undertaken no less than four expeditions to New Guinea in search of evidence and has interviewed many locals who claim to have had encounters. Perhaps the most startling fact about these monsters is the allegation that they are capable of emitting a bioluminescent glow in the night skies. Regarding the mass sighting from the USS Jouett, it is believed by some that it was covered up as part of some vast conspiracy. To any of the ship’s crewmembers reading this: I’d love to hear from you.
Missouri Mystery
I must also mention the American heartland and specifically the state of Missouri as a place where massive and mysterious flying things have been encountered. For example, there’s the remarkable experience of a woman named Georgia Brasher who grew up on a 700-acre farm in the far southeast corner of the state. Brasher wrote me a letter in order to enlighten me about a chilling experience she had at age twelve or thirteen while riding her dirt bike near a big ditch on the edge of the property:
As I got closer to the tree line, I saw two huge black objects on two of the trees. One was bigger than the other one. My mind did not register that these two huge objects were birds. I thought something must have come off a plane and landed in the trees. The reason I thought that was the way the tree was bowed over. It was heavy and weighing down the tree. … The closer I got, it looked less and less like airplane parts. … All of a sudden the bigger one opened up its wings and hovered off the tree. I could not believe I was looking at giant birds. My immediate first thought was [that this was] some prehistoric stuff. They didn’t look like they had feathers. It looked like skin when the wings opened, and the span of the wings was enough to scare me … They never took their eyes off of me. I wasn’t close enough to see detail in the face, but they had very long, bony-looking shapes. I felt like I was being sized up, and I knew that the size of those birds could have done me real harm. I got back on my bike and bugged out. I was looking back the whole time expecting to see them swooping down on me, but they stayed on the tree. … When I got back, I was ranting like a crazy person, begging my mom to drive out there and take a look. She would have none of it. … I didn’t take my eyes off the skies for a very long time.
Dixie Dragons
As we continue to tour the United States, it appears that there is no region immune to these present-day pterosaur accounts, not even the swampy hills and hollers of the Deep South. While some of these areas remain pretty rugged, I would hardly characterize them as lost worlds. Nonetheless, I’m familiar with an intriguing cluster of sightings originating in parts of northern Georgia and adjacent Tennessee. A woman named Linda mentioned in passing, “I saw a large pterodactyl creature rising out of the woods near Nashville, Tennessee, in 1975. … [Its] wingspan must have been about thirty feet … [but] unfortunately I had no camera.”
During the summer of 2012, a more specific narrative came to light. In this particular instance I was contacted by a woman named Lisa Letanosky who seemed a bit distraught:
I live in Clinton, Tennessee. I just saw a bird that was the most interesting bird I have ever seen. It was huge. It looked like a pterodactyl. You could see the skeleton of its arms and there was no fur or feathers on the underside of its belly, which looked to be the skin of a dragon like you see in a science fiction movie. Small head … [and] there was a large flap of skin hanging down under its chin. It left a huge shadow over the house, as it flew over. … All I could do is say, “What in the [world] is that?” It was around maybe 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. when it was spotted by me and flew over our home very low, might I add. My brother and neighbor were out here and saw the shadow of it flying over, and they were like, “What in the world?” The neighbor’s kid saw it as well. This all happened so fast. I ran to the backyard to see it again, but we have a lot of trees back there, and it was already gone. I’m not one to say I saw something if I didn’t. I’m as shocked as anyone to know this kind of bird actually exists.
We must acknowledge that some witnesses will mistakenly refer to these animals as birds, a gross generalization based upon superficial design as well as lack of familiarity with the differences. We know from fossils that some pterosaurs looked very similar to birds as a result of convergent evolution, and some even had feather-like structures called pycnofibres on their bodes. As members of the diapsid clade archosauria, pterosaurs and birds are in fact related.
Merely 150 miles due south of Clinton (as the pterodactyl flies), we learn of a potentially related series of events from Towns County, Georgia. In thoughtful correspondence, a man named David Schroder elaborates,
I have seen these birds here in North Georgia that are what I believe to be in the pterosaur family. I have seen three in the past three years. … In July of 2010, I saw what appeared to be a mating pair flying north. At their closest point to me they were just one hundred feet above the treetops … directly behind where I work and live. Dark gray skin color like an elephant and featherless, they had what looked to be long, thin tails with a larger area at the end. The heads were long and came to a sharp point, and the only thing that I could compare their look to would be a bat, except for the head and tail. The wingspan—I can only guess from the tree’s size—was around fifteen to twenty feet. Anyway, two days ago on December 8, 2012, I and two others were standing outside when a motion in the sky caught my eye. I pointed and said, “What’s that?” We all watched what I know was a young pterosaur flying right in front of us. It was just above the treetops in almost exactly the same path that I saw the other two, about a year and a half ago, only it was flying in a southeasterly direction. I know that they are supposed to be nocturnal, but my theory is that the drought here in Georgia has put stress on their environment and has forced them to veer from their normal habits. … The 2010 sighting is not where it started for me; it was about five years earlier. After fighting with myself as to whether what I know I saw could be real or not, this latest sighting has ended that debate for me. … They are still with us.
During a lengthy phone interview, Schroder impressed me as a man who was terribly sincere in his convictions. His description of long tails with a flattened flange on the end is clearly indicative of certain early pterosaurs (rhamphorhynchoids) and no other known species. Schroder stressed the importance of someone mounting an investigation into the adjacent wilderness in order to look for physical evidence, pointing out that the surrounding areas contain an abundance of water, wildlife, and even cave systems beneficial to concealing a small group of these remarkable creatures. He also mentioned that he believed he had heard an abrupt and aggressive screaming that might be associated with these animals.
Three very recent sightings occurred 125 miles to the southwest of Towns County in the city of Douglasville, Georgia, during 2014. A resident by the name of Christie Parker could hardly contain her excitement in her e-mail to me:
My boyfriend, Maurice, and I were driving down I-20 West [in] Douglasville, Georgia, and we saw a pterosaur in flight. Today was the second time this week. I saw it back in April and it almost crashed into my car, but I didn’t know that’s what it was since it was 5:30 a.m. and still dark outside. It’s incredible! It had no feathers and a long tail with a bulb at the end. The head had a long piece going toward the back. We saw it again an hour or so ago. It must live in this area. We didn’t get a chance to take a photo. It was fast.
During a phone interview, Parker and her boyfriend were both adamant that the animal they ultimately sighted on three separate occasions (while driving through roughly the same area) was not a bird. They stressed that the thing was huge, so much so that they could actually see that it had teeth. They both emphasized its unusual “wiggling” tail and head crest as well as the fact that it did not possess feathers.
The relative proximity of these sighting locations in addition to the startling similarity of physical descriptions from unrelated sources is intriguing to say the least. Living pterosaur researcher Jonathan Whitcomb has collected a handful of other corroborating reports from Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida in recent years, indicating that there is strong evidence for Deep South pterosaurs.
Flyers on the Fringe
The nearer we drift to the densely populated metropolitan region stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Midwest United States, the less I expect us to find unfamiliar fauna of any type, especially sizable prehistoric beasts. The only conceivable pitfall in embracing this line of logic is that we are inclined to overlook the fact that the majority of humans inhabit populated areas, leaving tracts of less traveled woodland in between. Some of these territories remain pretty pristine and could present an ideal stopover point for our hypothetical pterosaurs.
Manistee National Forest on the western edge of Michigan may constitute just such a refuge, at least if we consider the testimony of lifelong outdoorsman Hunter Dodge, who claims to have witnessed an unnerving spectacle there during 2009. Dodge was enjoying a fishing excursion at the time. While wading in the middle of a shallow river and casting his line for salmon, the calmness of his morning was shattered by a bloodcurdling shriek downriver. The shrill sound repeated rapidly, and then a lower-pitched guttural noise echoed; still he was not able to perceive what was causing it. He did notice that the surrounding forest became eerily silent and lacked the ambient buzz he was accustomed to. A moment later, he caught sight of a winged animal about 300 yards away and some 300 feet above the treetops. Drawing upon his vast experience in the outdoors, Dodge figured that the subject displayed a span between fifteen and twenty feet across and was about twenty to twenty-five feet in length from nose to tail, with the tail being excessively long. Visibility was low, so he struggled to make out the details of the animal’s finer points. Despite its bird-shaped wings, Dodge got the distinct impression that the thing was completely featherless and more or less resembled a living pterodactyl. Seconds later, the interloper performed a barrel roll and disappeared into the heavens.
As if this ordeal was not alarming enough, Dodge also confided in me that his brother might have actually been attacked by one of the creatures. It was the autumn following his sighting, and the two siblings were vacationing at a deer- hunting camp in the Baldwin area a mere thirty-five miles to the north. Just after dark, his brother had wandered into the adjacent woods in order to forage for firewood. All at once there was a thunderous crack followed by deathly silence. Dodge and a friend who was with them at the time rushed into the forest and discovered his brother sitting in a dazed and slumped over position in the middle of an open field. He had a nasty laceration on his skull as well as a chunk missing from his tongue. The troublesome part is that the brother had (and still has) no earthly memory of what happened to him that night, though his injuries required several stitches and continue to produce residual pain. Dodge points out the proximity of the location to the spot where he sighted his winged abomination and can think of no other reason why his brother would have been harmed in that way other than by an assault from above. Considering that there have been historical accounts of humans being attacked by sinister, winged monsters, it makes one wonder.
Drifting eastward, the state of Pennsylvania boasts a legacy of winged-creature accounts dating back to the late nineteenth century. Traditionally, these mystery beasts have been referred to as Thunderbirds because the accounts typically portray huge, dark-colored buzzards. However, there seems to be some diversity, as evidenced by this 2009 report I received from a resident named Daniel who lives near McConnells Mill State Park in Portersville:
I don’t know where to report something like this, so I figured I’d share this with you. I live in western Pennsylvania and I thought what I saw one night about a year ago was a pterodactyl. When I looked up it seemed to fit the description of what people have called [a] “Thunderbird.” Me and my friend were driving down a back road, and it flew over the car and was flying with us about ten feet over the car for about five seconds. It was long enough for each of us to lean forward and look up through the windshield and say, “What the hell is that?” It freaked us out, but I’m positive about what I saw, and I was talking a few months ago to a friend that lives right around where it happened and swore he saw it one night flying over his yard. He lives in the middle of nowhere. He said it was a twenty-foot-wide wingspan, and that’s the size of the one I saw. I know the terrain where these sightings take place, and I know that there’s more than enough hiding [space] for a creature like this. It’s all caves, hills, and trees. I know they’re living there anyway.
In addition to these recent reports, I’ve chronicled pterosaur accounts from highly populated areas including Maryland and eastern Canada in previous works.
So then, how realistic is it that people are genuinely encountering huge, winged reptiles that vanished from our fossil history tens of millions of years ago? It really comes down to a choice between two equally improbable paradigms: either a substantial number of seemingly credible folks are grossly mistaken, lying, or simply delusional in these matters, or else a breeding population of archaic, flying animals has remained hidden from us (and in the suburbs of one of the most developed nations on earth, at that). If it turns out to be the latter proposition, we will at least have the benefit of knowing that their unlikely survival, no matter how improbable, explains the worldwide dragon legends once and for all.