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Report Pterodactyl Sighting

Whitcomb's nonfiction book "Live Pterosaurs in America"

By Jonathan Whitcomb

I encourage people around the world to report their sightings of apparent living pterosaurs to me or to one of my associates. Why tell someone about your sighting? It helps bring the world closer to officially discovering these amazing flying creatures.

A number of dedicated cryptozoologists and eyewitnesses have made this field their specialty: modern non-extinct pterodactyls, in other words “flying dinosaurs”, although these flying creatures are not really dinosaurs.

The following email form will make it easy for you to contact me:

→   Report Pterodactyl Sighting  

 

You may remain anonymous if you so choose. On the other hand, I will be delighted if you allow your name to be connected to your report. Yet at least until you grant me permission to use your name, your report will be kept in the most secret confidence. If you never choose to allow your name to be revealed then I will continue to keep your name away from the public eye: always secret.

The following is an example of an anonymous reported sighting, given here as only an excerpt of the original email:

Pterosaur Sighting Report Example

[email sent to me in the middle of 2021]

Dear Mr. Whitcomb, I hope you and yours are doing well in these crazy times. Anyway, I just wanted to relate a personal story that happened to me and my husband almost five years ago. Briefly, we had just finished a 10 mile bike ride around the perimeter of Foster City here in California. . . .

. . . this was between 8:15 and 8:30 pm. We were standing with our bikes at the edge of the bay on the path which is about 7-8 feet above the water looking out over towards the east bay. . . .

I looked to our right . . . this large creature . . . I am sure there were two of them flying in close proximity together towards the north just above the surf line. . . . they were maybe 10-15 feet in front of us . . .

It didn’t click with me what I was looking at until I saw the picture of the sketch on the front of your book. When I got home I recorded the whole event on the calendar . . . the skin of the creature was dark and textured . . . I would say the length and width was about 10-12 feet maybe slightly more. Thanks for hearing me out.

Here is the front cover of my book Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition):

Whitcomb's nonfiction book "Live Pterosaurs in America"

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New Pterodactyl Sighting Report From Colorado

Youtube video on a pterosaur encounter in Colorado

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Eyewitness Reports of Living Pterosaurs

. . . research into many eyewitness sightings of apparent extant pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls,” . . .

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Pterodactyl Sighting Reports

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the nonfiction book “Live Pterosaurs in America,” interviewed, from 2005 to 2009, eyewitnesses from 19 states: California, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Washington State. The sightings themselves were from 1980 through 2008.

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Report a flying dinosaur encounter

Blog related to the book “The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur”, which has a link for reporting a pterodactyl sighting

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Prehistoric flying creature report

Nonfiction cryptozoology paperback “Live Pterosaurs in America”—this has been a leading online book about non-extinct pterodactyls in the United States. This is here offered on Barnes & Noble.

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Report seeing a pterodactyl

Reports of “flying dinosaurs” or “pterodactyls” have accelerated during the past year or so, probably because more and more eyewitnesses are becoming aware of the research of cryptozoologists like Garth Guessman and me, Jonathan Whitcomb. Some reports are of sightings that happened months ago or even years ago, accounts of flying creatures described like what scientists would call “pterosaurs.”

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Press Releases on Pterodactyl Sightings

“Some people in Western countries like the United States do not belief everything that is said by natives in Papua New Guinea” [That is truly unfortunate, for the great majority of natives have told the truth.]

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Youtube Videos on Pterodactyl Sightings

The eyewitness said, “I was horseback riding when suddenly my horse stopped dead in her tracks then began to tremble violently . . . I saw it. This thing was huge and gliding rather than flying, and it was very close to the ground.”

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Glen Kuban and Living Pterosaurs

"The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur" - a paperback nonfiction book

By non-fiction cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb

Please consider the following, before I respond to a small portion of the negative comments that Glen Kuban has made about my writings. Not all of his writings are about me or my publications, but many of them are.

Introduction

From the middle of 2003 until early in 2019, I have spent well over 10,000 hours in my investigation of eyewitness sightings of possible living pterosaurs. Only a small portion of that time has been on expeditions and directly looking for the flying creatures that are described by eyewitnesses. Many of those hours have been in writing books and blog posts.

Yet those 10,000+ hours were spent entirely in this narrow, obscure branch of cryptozoology: related to sighting reports of flying creatures that appeared to be extant pterosaurs, a.k.a. “pterodactyls.” In other words, none of those hours involved Bigfoot or Loch Ness or any non-flying cryptid. I really have entirely specialized in this narrow branch of cryptozoology, possibly writing more about it than all other cryptozoologists combined, at least in the most obvious books and online publications.

I do not declare that all the hundreds of eyewitnesses saw exactly what they reported to me that they had seen, as if all the details must have been 100% correct. Yet the great majority of those who have been brave enough to contact me—those persons really did see a living pterosaur, in my opinion.

Glen J. Kuban seems to me to have dedicated much of his life, in the past seven years or so, to try to convince people that no modern pterosaur exists, anywhere on the planet, and that is where we completely disagree.

stack of 14 books: "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

The most recent book written by Jonathan Whitcomb

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Criticisms from Glen Kuban

Before dealing with Kuban’s criticisms of my book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, I need to put things in perspective. For many years, Kuban has criticized my work and writings. Many of these have been on his web page “Living Pterosaurs (‘pterodactyls’)?”

The August 15, 2018, version of his page is enormous. Consider the calculations done by the online counter at Word-counter (dot-net):

  • Number of words: 37,452
  • Number of characters: 238,194
  • Sentences: 1548
  • Paragraphs: 527
  • Time it may take you to read it: 2 hours and 16 minutes
  • Most common word: Whitcomb: 407

Yes, you read that last line correctly: The most common word in Glen Kuban’s web page about “living pterosaurs” is my surname, Whitcomb. (not counting words like “the,” and,” etc.) He actually mentions me much more often than 407 times, with pronouns, but you get the point. I don’t recommend taking the 136 minutes needed to read his web page.  If you do read it, I doubt you’ll see much about me that is positive; about 1% may be neutral about me.

I will not take the time to counter everything negative that Kuban says about me and my writings. I do not have a thousand hours or so that would be necessary to spend on it. I’ll just say that much of it is mostly false, some of it is almost entirely false, and a smaller portion of it is 100% false.

Please put yourself in my place. Should somebody publish hundreds of negative things about you, at least a very few might have some truth to them, would they not? Not one of us is perfect. At least a few of Kuban’s criticisms of my work and my writings have at least some merit, surely. But the point is this: The great majority of them have little, if any, merit or reasonable relevance.

A copy of "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur" held by the hand of J. D. Whitcomb

The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur (by Jonathan Whitcomb)

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Amazon Customer Review

Glen Kuban goes by the name of “Paleo View” on Amazon. I have nothing against people using a pen name when they write an Amazon customer review. In fact, a number of things might justify using a pseudonym online or in print publications. I do object, however, to the content of his comments about this book.

I now mention the original customer review Kuban wrote and put up on the Amazon page on January 29, 2019. Kuban sometimes makes changes in his online writings, after I make comments about them. He might make positive changes here, so please do not assume that he always holds onto his mistakes or fails to improve himself when his error is corrected and he learns about it. He does better at self-correction than a number of writers I have known of.

But a reader-book-review on Amazon is supposed to be about the book. In fact, their policy includes, “Customer Reviews and Questions and Answers should be about the product.” In other words, if the book is not about religion, then a person writing a review about that book should not write about the supposed religious beliefs of the author of the book.

The cryptozoology book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is not about religion. Mr. Kuban, however, included the following in his review of the book:

. . . many young-Earth creationists (YECs) such as Whitcomb often disregard this, however, Whitcomb’s claims are not even endorsed by any major creationist or cryptozoology groups . . .

Even if Kuban’s opinions about my religious beliefs are correct, the book should be the subject of the book review. Nothing in this book is about creationists or about the Bible or about religion. I expect, that by the time you read this, Amazon will have removed Kuban’s customer review of this book, and it may be because of his improper comments about religion.

The book review by Glen Kuban has other serious problems, but I’ll let this go for now. By the way, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is for young readers: older children and young teenagers.

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Living pterosaur

Bioluminescence and the ropen of Papua New Guinea

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Living pterosaurs and Glen Kuban

About the gigantic web page that is critical of living-pterosaur research and expeditions and publications

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Nonfiction books on living pterosaurs

About two cryptozoology books by Jonathan Whitcomb:

  • Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition)
  • Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition)

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Is the Ropen a “Stupid Fantasy?”

It began after the online publication of a photo of a biology professor from Oregon; he was standing by the Yakima River in Washington state. Professor Peter Beach (who has taught at a small college in the Portland area) was being interviewed by me, Jonathan D. Whitcomb (an American cryptozoology author), on August 6, 2014, with Milt Marcy (also from Portland), another cryptozoologist. . . .

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New book about “flying dinosaurs”

Actually, I highly recommend my book that was just published: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. I just want to be sure that copies of it go to those young readers who want the adventure of approaching this subject with an open mind.

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Another book on live pterosaurs

“At least hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses worldwide have seen living pterosaurs, and real science must progress with human experience.”

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"The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

Short nonfiction cryptozoology book for kids and teens

From the title page of this book:

What the eyewitnesses have seen, in many areas of the world, are not literally flying dinosaurs. The correct name for this kind of flying creature is ‘pterosaur.’ How is that possible? All of them are said to have become extinct many millions of years ago. It takes a whole book to answer a question like, “Why do some people believe that some of them are still alive?” This is one of those books.

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Modern Pterosaurs in Arkansas

Countryside in Arkansas

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

Report a Sighting

If you have seen any flying creature that brings to mind one or more of the following words or phrases, please contact me. Also feel free to get in touch with me if you know of any friend or relative or neighbor who may have seen such an animal. This applies whether or not the sighting was in Arkansas. Thank you.

  • Pterodactyl
  • Flying dinosaur
  • pterosaur
  • Dinosaur bird
  • Dragon
  • Prehistoric bird

Sighting of a Modern Pterosaur in Sherwood, Arkansas

I got the first email from this eyewitness on November 12, 2018. I asked permission for publishing the person’s name and received it: Chancey Carter:

I saw what looked to be a flying dinosaur this morning. It flew above my vehicle and I was too late to take a picture. It had long wings and a long neck. I was in Sherwood, Arkansas when I saw this creature.

My Reply:

Thank you very much for telling me about this. About what time was it? Thanks.  Jonathan Whitcomb

Second email from Chancey Carter:

It was right around 7:15 am, it’s raining and cold here so the sun is not out.

My Reply:

Thank you. I just want to be sure that I understand. Was your sighting this morning, Monday, Nov 12th?

Third email:

Yes . . .

My Reply:

Thank you. I see Sherwood on a map now. Is it just a few miles from Little Rock? In what area of Sherwood was the sighting?

Fourth email from Chancey:

It’s a few miles from Little Rock, Arkansas. It flew from the direction of Sherwood police department. If you could find that on the map, it flew towards a wooded area with . . . trees. I wish I could’ve caught a picture but I was so shocked to see something I [had never seen before].

Another Sighting in Arkansas, Early in 2018

Earlier in the same year, I got an email from an eyewitness who told me about a sighting a few weeks earlier. James Smith and his mother Melba Smith saw a “pterodactyl” in Camden, Arkansas, at 11:45 a.m. (It was overcast that day.)

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Dinosaur Book for Children and Teens

Why would the new book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur be the best Christmas or birthday gift for many kids and teenagers? It invites them into a new world of adventure in cryptozoology: true stories of encounters with modern living pterosaurs.

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Modern pterosaurs and extinction

From fossils, we know that some pterosaurs had wingspans over 20 feet. Should such an animal live near humans, it would be feasible for it to carry off a child or small adult. A report of such an incident may resemble a fable to Westerners, yet natives in a remote jungle see no problem except the danger from that animal.

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Pterodactyl in Arkansas

“My father and I saw a huge, featherless bird in Arkansas . . . when I was sixteen . . . We were sitting on big rocks at a cliff about 300 foot above the river when it flew out just under us and we watched it all the way down toward the river till it passed the tree lines. . . .”

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Yes, the Ropen is Real

In 1897, an eight year old girl, Virginia O’Hanlon, wrote a letter to the editor of a big newspaper in New York, asking if Santa Claus was real. The response has since become the most famous editorial of all time: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” I now apply that kind of positive journalistic response to what some persons have asked me over the past fifteen years. The question is in this general form: “Did I see a pterosaur?”

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Dinosaur book for LDS children and teens

My new nonfiction is for middle-grade children and many (but not all) teenagers: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. This is a short cryptozoology book, not about religion but about eyewitness sightings of apparent living pterosaurs. It invites you to seek the truth behind what people around the world report observing. . . . my new book . . . really is for English-speaking people of all faiths.

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Flying-dinosaur adventure book

I wrote the nonfiction book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur for several purposes. As a gift giver for a child or teenager, you need to know what benefits it can give to the young reader. I recommend it for readers between about the ages of eight and fourteen; for some ten-year-olds (and eleven and twelve) it will be exceptionally delightful: easy to understand yet stimulating.

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Cryptozoology book for children and teenagers

It’s about eyewitness testimonies about strange flying creatures that appeared unlike any bird or bat. The scientifically correct name for what some people call a “dinosaur bird” or a “flying dinosaur” is pterosaur. Please now consider how a young reader may be better off because of reading this short book (for readers about 8-14 years old).

[This is about the book “The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur.”]

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A new nonfiction book for children and teenagers:

stack of 14 books: "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

Nonfiction book for young readers: Non-extinct ‘dinosaurs’

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Yes, Virginia, There is a Ropen

Patty Carson's sketch of a ropen with caption: "Yes, Virginia, there is a ropen"

By the investigative journalist Jonathan David Whitcomb

Introduction

I now respond to countless cries from children around the world, calling out for answers, crying out for help as they try to understand why all dinosaurs must have become extinct many millions of years ago. Consider one answer: the new nonfiction book for kids and young teens: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. Now consider another answer below.

This is about an animal that people around the world have seen, a creature whose page was deleted from the English Wikipedia in August of 2014, apparently after a few persons became offended because of what they thought about the religious beliefs of some of the American explorers who had searched for that animal in Papua New Guinea. This nocturnal flying creature is the ropen. I am one of those explorers.

The ropen is not any species of dinosaur, in the strict scientific sense: It’s a long-tailed pterosaur, according to some cryptozoologists, what many people in earlier human history would have called a dragon. Many Westerners, some of them eyewitnesses, now call it a pterodactyl.

An old Newspaper Editorial

What is the most famous newspaper editorial in history? The one most often reprinted seems to be “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” Here is the untouched first paragraph of that editorial, which was published on September 21, 1897, in New York’s Sun. I suggest reading this within a new light: Let “your little friends” refer to all those who dogmatically insist that all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs must have become extinct many millions of years ago. Let “Virginia” be every child who asks, “Why did they all die?”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Adapting the old Newspaper Editorial

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a ropen. He exists as certainly as birds and butterflies exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life great beauty and joy. The sketch of the ropen, drawn by Patty Carson, who was only about six years old when she saw that “pterodactyl,” may look frightening, yet consider what Patty told me decades later, when she was a grownup: It did not attack the children but quickly flew away from them. Maybe it was afraid of people.

Patty Carson's sketch of a ropen with caption: "Yes, Virginia, there is a ropen"

Alas! how dreary would be the world if all the professors needed only to imagine that all species of a particular type were extinct, and—POOF—all of them instantaneously died! Add to that idea an apparent time machine, which takes that extinction back millions of years, be it 65-million or 66-million. How tragic if those professors actually had that kind of power!

Not believe in the ropen! You might as well not believe in the platypus! (I don’t remember the last time I saw one of those; it must have been in a zoo.) Keep in mind that the word strange is non synonymous with impossible. If your little friends told you that the ropen cannot be real because its head crest is like that of a Pterodactyloid yet its tail is like that of a Rhamphorhynchoid, remind them of the mammal having a mouth like a duck’s bill.

I recall one skeptic who declared that no Rhamphorhynchoid ever had a head crest. What nonsense! Paleontologists know about at least two species of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs that had some kind of head crest. And what about the countless long-tailed pterosaurs that never left a fossil, and what about all of them that left fossil evidence that has not yet been discovered?

Remind your little friends, Virginia, of what they believed in many years ago: Santa Claus. As children grow older, they realize they’ve never seen him and none of their friends have seen him. I suggest that’s about the time your little friends began to doubt the stories of Santa.

The ropen, however, flies circles around all those stories about flying reindeer. I’ve never heard about any person, not even one human, who has reported observing Santa Claus in a sleigh being pulled around the world by those animals. Yet over the past 15 years, hundreds of persons from around the world have reported to me that they had observed a living pterosaur.

Not believe in the ropen! Let me tell you part of why I believe. Among all the emails eyewitnesses have sent me, some of them tell me something else. It’s not nearly half of the eyewitnesses; perhaps less than 15%. Yet a significant minority of them tell me about another person who has seen a real living pterosaur. I’m not talking about somebody standing or sitting next to the person at the time of that sighting: I mean a friend or family member who had a different sighting of a modern pterosaur, on a different day and usually in a different place. The implication is huge.

I admit my calculations are crude; I could have missed the mark. If I am correct, however, the number of persons now living in the United States who have had a clear view of an obvious living pterosaur is between 50,000 and 4,000,000. Even taking the lowest figure and assuming I have made an error making it only 10% as many as I have figured, we have 5,000 persons now living in the United States, with each of those persons getting a view good enough to see a flying creature obviously appearing to be a “pterodactyl.”

Yes, Virginia, there is a ropen, and I believe in this animal. If we could get millions of people to search in every bush and hole on the planet, trying to see a ropen, what would that prove? The searchers with closed minds and fear of ridicule, perhaps like your little friends—they might not report finding any ropen, even if they had seen one. And what about those who did report finding a ropen? How would they differ from the hundreds of persons who have already told me about their encounters with living pterosaurs?

Please, Virginia, believe in what the eyewitnesses have already told us. Even though you and I have not seen a ropen, we can perceive it through the eyes of other persons who’ve been more fortunate.

Not believe in the ropen! Thank God this animals lives! Whatever some people think about Santa Claus or about mass extinctions of general types of animals millions of years ago, the ropen will continue to fly through the sky, albeit mostly unseen at night. I pray that knowing about this uncommon creature will lift the hearts of children and of teenagers and adults around the world. What a wonder God has given us! The supposedly oldest of pterosaur types is still flying over our heads at night, calling for us to rise above those dogmas that have long held us down.

Believe in the ropen, Virginia, and in your heart fly with him above villages, lakes, cities, and oceans, above mountains, deserts, plains, and jungles. I’ll be flying by your side.

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Belief in the Ropen

Introduction to an apparent modern pterosaur

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Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

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Modern pterosaur in Virginia

If apparent pterosaurs observed in Virginia are not the same species as the flying creature called “Gitmo Pterosaur” or “American Hammerhead Ropen,” it may at least be a closely-related species. I recently got another report from Virginia: a sighting just a few days ago in Richmond.

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How many Americans have seen a living pterosaur?

For the moment, we’ll have to be content with a general range. It seems that between 50,000 and 4,000,000 Americans have seen an obvious pterosaur at some time in their human lifespans. It certainly cannot be much below that minimum or much above that maximum.

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What is a Ropen?

Notice the above two sketches: both heads have long pointed head crests. The top image was chosen by Hennessy; the bottom, by Hodgkinson. This does not prove those flying creatures of the southwest Pacific were the same species as the ones flying in Cuba, but it does suggest a similar type.

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Declaration on pterosaurs

The actual number of humans now living worldwide, who have encountered one of these flying creatures, has been estimated, by Jonathan David Whitcomb, at between 7 million and 128 million. That is a conservative estimate, but it includes all encounters, and many of those were brief and at night and many were not recognized by the eyewitnesses as significant or involving anything unusual . . .

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Ropen of Papua New Guinea

Many natives living on the tropical island of Umboi (Siasi), Papua New Guinea, have seen the flying light, the bioluminescent glow of the ropen.

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