Asia | Live Pterosaur

August 15, 2014August 18, 2014

Is Dracula for Real?

This vampire idea has nothing to do with the Twilight fiction books by Stephenie Meyer or the films from those novels. It’s not directly related to the 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, either. Since the word “Dracula” has come out in a few of the many sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, it’s time to examine an explanation for the origin of the vampire legends in Europe and Asia.

Natural Explanation for Vampire Legends

Not all legends are based solely on imagination or fiction. When enough people see something similar at night, fear can cause imaginative ideas to flourish, in particular when people have little or no knowledge about what they actually observed in the dark. It’s common for us to grasp at conjectures to fill in the void of ignorance, yet what originally caused that grasping is often real human experience.

Vampires in Europe

For thousands of years, vampire legends have floated around in what we now call the Middle East and in ancient Greece, and probably elsewhere: terrifying spirits that drank blood. The kinds of stories better known to the modern Western world, however, more resemble legends from southeastern Europe within the past two or three centuries. From the early-to-mid-1700’s in particular—that’s when the frenzy of vampire gossip took hold in some areas.

European Dracula

Vampire Stories in the Philippines

According to Wikipedia, “The manananggal [related to the Aswang legend] is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge bat-like wings . . .” This could have come from observations of a ropen, for that modern pterosaur has nothing resembling a lower torso or legs of a human. On Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, one native tradition about the ropen seems related: It is said to transform itself between snake, human, and ropen. On one or more occasions, natives in the Philippines may have seen a woman at night, in about the same area and about the same time as a ropen was seen. This led to the idea that a woman can transform herself into a large winged creature at night.

Bats and Vampire Legends

Also according to Wikipedia, bats were not originally associated with the vampires of European legends, within the past few centuries. “Vampire bat” refers to species in the Western Hemisphere, with that animal being named for its blood-drinking; the European Dracula more likely got the bat-idea from the New World, not the other way around. Little is said about any wings on vampires, on the Wikipedia pages, and much of what is mentioned refers to stories in the Philippines.

So does the Dracula story (about a man transforming himself into a dangerous bat) come from encounters with blood-sucking pterosaurs in Europe? Probably not, although the man-to-ropen transformation legend on Umboi Island appears to resemble that European story. Each area of the world, and each legend, needs to be taken into account separately, which is a bit outside my area of expertise in my interviews with eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs. Nevertheless, it may be worthy of closer scrutiny.

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Dracula-Vampire and Modern Pterosaurs

. . . I don’t dispute this possibility for the origin of the Dracula myth in Transylvania, that it involved one or more observations of a large pterosaur standing on the ground at night. But it is speculation.

Searching for Ropens and Finding God

Similarities of belief are emphasized in Searching for Ropens and Finding God, with mutual faith in the supreme mission of Jesus Christ and with mutual conviction in the historic truthfulness of the Flood of Genesis and agreement in the new interpretation of the biological nature of the fiery flying serpents. No compromise is needed in those beliefs.

August 1, 2013December 27, 2013

Possible Modern Pterosaur in China

mountains somewhere in China - photo by Lee LeFever

I recently got a tip from my associate Richard Muirhead, who referred me to a forum post in the Mandarin Chinese language. This Richard Muirhead is the same British cryptozoology researcher who, a few years ago, gave me critical text pages from a book by the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman, who observed flying lights in New Guinea. Thank you Richard!

The online comment is lengthy and entirely in Chinese. Here is part of the eyewitness account:

注意！头上有角，我那时的形容是一只牛角长在了头上。

另外，它有一条尾巴，我说是象猫尾巴一样的，一段黑一段白的，朝上翘着。

关于脚，我记的不太清楚的，貌似是垂在身后的，就像鸟儿在飞的时候那样平行的放在身后吧。

The eyewitness was a child at the time. The flying creature was very big, and it had a horn (or more than one horn) on its head. It also had a tail. It made an impression as a very strange “bird” but there is no indication of any feathers. The eyewitness had no memory of the feet, or no reasonable memory of the feet.

If I understand part of the report correctly, it seems that one of the two children drew a sketch of the flying creature, soon after the sighting, perhaps a drawing or painting on a wall of the house; but that image has been lost. The eyewitness seems to say that the imagination of a child could not have produced that drawing, in the details shown in the image.

A mountainous area in China (generic photo)

Of course dragon legends in China go back countless centuries. I’m not the first to suggest those legends are not entirely fictional, that they originate from real living animals, although the artistic representations may be far from accurate. I do suggest that such a large area of Asia should not be devoid of those large featherless flying creatures that are seen in so many other areas of the world. Pterosaurs, whether or not called “dragons,” have no reason to avoid China.

I believe that if most Chinese citizens were proficient in English and spent as much time online as Americans, I would be receiving many emails from Chinese eyewitnesses, ordinary persons who have seen extraordinary flying creatures. As it is, I don’t recall receiving even one email from China during the past ten years of my investigation. Almost no person in China has any knowledge of me, an obscure American in an obscure branch of the obscure field of cryptozoology. But I am delighted to now receive, albeit indirectly, a report from an eyewitness in China. At last!

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Modern Pterosaur or Dragon in China

I just received my first report of a possible modern pterosaur in China. I don’t know Mandarin or any other Chinese language, so struggling with online translation sites has been difficult . . .

October 23, 2012August 25, 2014

Pterosaurs Across the Pacific

Photo by "Roslyn in Starfish Island" Quezon Province

Long-tailed pterosaurs, called by the name “ropen,” are reported in many areas surrounding the Pacific Ocean, including islands near the mainland of Asia. We now have considerable sighting evidence even in Hawaii, islands surrounded by vaste areas of the Pacific.

Two “Pterodactyls” Observed in Philippines in 2008

According to the eyewitness, “I think we’re not the only ones who saw it, because my classmate told me that there are sightings of this thing in Atimonan, Quezon [Province], just one-half hr travel from Pagbilao, and I was told by the local fisherman there that he saw it several times, flying above the sea.”

. . . Question: Did the two creatures have tails?

Answer: YES! they have long tails about 3 to 4 meters long . . .it is not a bird: They don’t have any feathers.

Question: Did you have a good view of them?

Answer: Yes! I was not the only one who saw it . . .

Quezon Province, Philippines

How can long-tailed pterosaurs fly across the Pacific Ocean and be found in many countries? Consider the size of some of these flying creatures. Some eyewitnesses estimate the wingspans: “30-50 feet” (Perth creature), “29 feet” (Finschhafen “pterodactyl”), “seven meters” (for one wing of the Lake Pung ropen, sighting around 1994). What could prevent such huge flying creatures from eventually expanding their habitat across the planet?

Additional Notes (Nov 5, 2012):

After publishing the above information, somebody responded with the idea that “many” sightings of apparent pterosaurs are misidentified Manta ray fish that jump out of the sea. But many problems are found in that conjecture.

The great majority of sighting reports that I have received involved flying creatures that were not over the sea but flying over land. That eliminates the Manta ray conjecture for those sightings.
Those few sighting that were of creatures over the sea—some of them involved long periods of flight, far longer than the few seconds it takes for a Manta ray fish to jump out of the sea and fall back into the water.
Other sightings over the sea involved descriptions that were unlike anything we know about any Manta ray: bioluminescence, for example, or flying in pairs (ray fish don’t jump up out of the water in pairs in a way that would look like two pterosaurs flying in tandem).

The sighting mentioned above, in the Philippines, had critical points from the eyewitness, details absent above:

“. . . a LONG NECK and . . . a horn behind their heads. They have a long beak. I even saw their claws between their wings. . . . They seldom flap their wings, about every three to four seconds.”

That destroys the Manta ray conjecture for this particular sighting in the Philippines.

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From the Third Edition of Live Pterosaurs in America:

Some birds migrate for many thousands of miles. . . . Since humans were inspired by birds to invent flying machines, give credit to birds for that inspiration. And give credit to the lowly Monarch Butterfly for migrating in large numbers for 2000 miles, with individuals crossing the Atlantic Ocean sometimes. But the wings of a giant ropen make the whole planet accessible . . .

Pterosaur in Hawaii

[The eyewitness] stepped out into his front yard and saw, about 100 feet high, a gliding ”pterodactyl.”

Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific

For Americans (and perhaps citizens of other developed countries) who know about recent sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, the best known area for sightings may be in Papua New Guinea.

Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea

I believe in living pterosaurs and hope they will soon be officially discovered. More important, I believe in you, that you can soar above dogmatic assumptions about extinctions.

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Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea (nonfiction e-book) now FREE

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