Pterodactyl in Cuba

In February of 2010, Whitcomb gave Eskin C. Kuhn (living in Ohio) a surprise phone call, questioning him about his report of two creatures he had seen flying over the U. S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1971. . . . Whitcomb became convinced, before the end of their conversation, that Kuhn was telling the truth. . . .

Two large long-tailed flying creatures, apparent pterosaurs, caught the Marine’s attention. He later reported that they were “flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them.” He noticed that the “structure and the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . .” He had no idea that anybody else had seen such a creature. . . .

In April of 2011, Whitcomb began email and phone conversations with Patty Carson, of Riverside, California, who had lived as a child at the military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965. . . . She told Whitcomb, “We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up . . . All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . . It did have a tail and it had a diamond shaped tip . . . The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little teeth, a LOT of them.”

The other two eyewitnesses in Cuba, Tom Carson (brother of Patty) and an anonymous eyewitness, had less-clear views, although Tom did mention that the flying creature he saw had a tail like that of a shaved tail of a dog.

Kuhn Pterosaur in Cuba

This lady has seen the sketch by Eskin Kuhn and she told me it is very close to the appearance of what she had seen; she told me that she would not make any major change to that sketch other than shortening the tail slightly and lengthening the wings slightly and making the head slightly curved.

Yesterday, I spoke by phone with Tom Carson, the brother of eyewitness Patty Carson. His 1966 sighting sighting, about one year after Patty’s, seems to have been a smaller creature of the same species. This brother and sister never spoke with each other about their sightings until 2011, after I began interviewing Patty by emails and telephone, but each of them told their father about the creatures soon after the sightings.

Tom’s sighting lasted only about three seconds, and the dark grey-tan creature flew almost overhead, at maybe a hundred feet high, perhaps a little less. It appeared to have no feathers, with a moderate-length tail that seemed odd, like a “shaved dog tail.” The creature appeared to be larger than a pelican.

Pterosaur in New Jersey (email send to Jonathan Whitcomb)

“In the summer of 2009, I saw something that I didn’t quite understand, in the pinelands of New Jersey. . . . The following year, on the same stretch of highway, I definately saw something clearly and without doubt. . . . I saw a giant bat-like bird, dark brown without feathers, something prehistoric . . . a long thin head, a long tail, [and a] kind of leathery dark brown skin. The body seemed to be the size of a good-sized man; the wind span, maybe 12-15 feet across.”

Pterosaur in Idaho

After the man learned about web sites and research regarding living pterosaurs, he told me about his 1991 (or thereabouts) encounter.

I don’t recall the exact time of year. Early summer is my best guess, maybe May or June.  I was with a friend the same age and my parents. We were traveling in central Idaho and spent the night on the Snake River just outside Lewiston. My friend and I were sleeping outside and my parents in the back of the pickup with a camper shell. The moon was full or near full as I remember. I recall waking up during the night and seeing two large creatures flying in a circle above us. They were fairly high up, I would say at least 2-300 feet. The distance and wingspan are the two things hard to be certain of, as they could be higher and therefore larger or closer to the ground and smaller.

. . . As they circled, they crossed over the moon multiple times, and I was struck by the outline of the wings which seemed very bat-like to me. Certainly did not give the appearance of a feathered wing. . . . [The creatures] let out a shriek. Not high-pitched or extremely shrill, just a multi-tonal screech.

Compare this sketch by Carson, based on her memory of a flying creature that was only about thirty feet away from her, with the 1971 sketch by U. S. Marine Eskin C. Kuhn:

Kuhn saw two pterosaurs in Cuba, in 1971

First consider the differences. Carson’s sketch she drew over forty years after her sighting; Kuhn’s, just minutes after his sighting. Carson saw one creature that was only about thirty feet away; Kuhn saw two creatures at “close range,” but probably much further away than Carson’s encounter. Carson may have startled a creature on the ground; Kuhn was probably not noticed by the two creatures he saw. Carson saw teeth in a partially-opened mouth; Kuhn saw no teeth, possibly because the mouths were closed in flight. Carson was a young child; Kuhn was a young adult. Carson was with a brother; Kuhn was alone.

Now consider the similarities. Carson’s 1965 sighting and Kuhn’s 1971 sighting were at the U. S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both sightings were in daylight. The head crest is very similar in the two sketches.  Carson saw that the flying creature had a long tail with a diamond-shaped structure at the tail-end; Kuhn drew a structure at the end of both tails. Neither eyewitness saw anything like any feather. Both of them were disbelieved by others, but Carson and Kuhn continued to believe in what they had seen. I found both of them highly credible, over the course of a number of phone interviews.

Carson’s sighting deserves a brief review:

1965 Sighting by Patty Carson

“ . . . Suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed. . . . All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound, in a big hurry, more of a scramble, and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.”

Modern Pterosaur Verified in Cuba

Patty did tell me, in a phone conversation, that the creature looked at them with apparent intelligence, as if trying to decide whether or not to attack them. The teeth were small but clearly visible, as the creature’s mouth was not quite closed. About those teeth, Patty said that there were “a LOT of them.” . . .

She told me that the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vane” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.

Aside from the image of Mr. Kuhn’s sketch, the bulk of my own posting is in the first paragraph:

I gave Mr. Kuhn a surprise phone call earlier this year (2010). I talked with him for some time and found him to be highly credible. He answered my questions as an honest person would. He stands by his long account of the encounter almost four decades ago, even though he has been ridiculed by at least a few skeptics.

 Half a day after my comment was posted, the first reply came up; it was from “Karl.” His first sentence seemed to me a perfect example of bulverism:

Finding him credible supports your agenda.

What human who ever lived on this earth has ever said or done anything that was contrary to that person’s personal purpose? I admit to being human. So what is the difference between “purpose” and “agenda?” Karl’s choice of words simply means that he objects to my purpose, for that is the way the word ”agenda” is now used among those fluent in English (but not necessarily both adept at and involved in reasoning). He insinuates that I have an improper purpose.

How is his first sentence an example of bulverism? It says nothing about the point: a sighting that suggests pterosaurs are still living; it avoids reasoning on the subject, instead pointing out a flaw or supposed flaw in an opponent, the essence of bulverism.

The next sentence wraps up what Karl had to say, at least at this time:

He can be as credible as you need him to be, but his story remains incredible, and contradicts common sense.

He continues the bulverism (referring to my own needs), concluding his remarks with a statement that the story (of Kuhn’s sighting of two pterosaurs in Cuba, in 1971) is incredible, contradicting “common sense.” He ends there, apparently assuming that everybody should therefore dismiss the story, with no other explanation necessary. Let’s look more closely.

Should every human experience that is out of the ordinary be dismissed because it is unusual? Where would astronomy be if all solar eclipses were disbelieved? Did the “unsinkable” Titanic actually avoid sinking, because one report of a disaster was incredible? No, the label of “incredible” does not, in itself, require anyone to dismiss a reported human experience.

So why not set aside my personal purpose and Karl’s personal purpose, to examine what Eskin Kuhn says that he personally experienced?

Specific American cryptozoologists have interviewed specific eyewitnesses, during the past seventeen years: scores of eyewitnesses have been interviewed. So what do critics mention about eyewitnesses? They mostly mention theoretical sightings or two or three that are more than a hundred years old. What a problem! Critics often ignore critical witnesses, those whose credibility has attracted cryptozoologists who interview them. So why do critics mostly ignore those important eyewitnesses? What other explanation but the obvious? They do not have any reasonable reply to the testimonies of Duane Hodgkinson and Brian Hennessy, eyewitnesses who saw, in clear daylight, large or giant long-tailed featherless flying creatures with head crests. Hodgkinson does not have visual problems; he is a flight instructor with many thousands of hours of flying time. Hennessy is not crazy; he is a professional psychologist.

Let’s look closer at these two sightings, watching for any possibility of a misidentification. Hodgkinson’s “pterodactyl” was clearly visible in a clearing just west of Finschhafen, New Guinea. Although he and his army buddy were in the same clearing as the creature that soon flew away, they were at opposite sides; but the clearing was small, so the creature was close. Hodgkinson estimated the tail of the creature was “at least” ten to fifteen feet long. So how could that creature be a misidentified bird or bat? Any suggestion of a misidentification, in this case, would likely sound like a joke; no it was a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, strange as that may sound.

What about Hennessy? He described the “prehistoric” flying creature that he saw on Bougainville Island, New Guinea: long tail, no sign of feathers,  head “disproportionately large compared to the body.” His choice of identification sketches (survey examination) resulted in a head sketch very similar to the one chosen by Hodgkinson. They probably observed the same species of pterosaur.

What if these two eyewitness sightings were just weird flukes? Well, I interviewed several natives on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, in 2004, with similar results. Gideon Koro answered my question about the length on the tail of the ropen that terrified him and his friends years earlier: seven meters (about twenty-two feet). That was no fruit bat. No way!

What’s the difference between a fox and a paleontologist? After a successful hunt, one is lick’n bones of chicken; the other is pick’n bones of therizinosaurus. It makes no rhyme, but a paleontologist is not usually associated with light verse: Don’t confuse Darren Naish and Ogden Nash.

How else is a fox like a paleontologist? When fully mature, neither one should be mistaken for a playful puppy, else you may be lick’n your wounds. More important, both of them can sometimes roam outside their proper place.

One Monsterquest episode involved an expedition to New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. On the surface, it appeared to be a search for giant nocturnal flying creatures that some cryptozoologists believe are modern living pterosaurs (in reality, it was a dramatic production project to make an intertaining show; it was not a scientific investigation). Of all the potential explorers to take with them, Monsterquest chose a paleontologist. What’s wrong with that? It’s like inviting a fox to inspect an electric-fence security system for a chicken yard; you know that the fox will advise you to immediately stop wasting electricity on the worthless contraption. Likewise a paleontologist will be totally predictable, regardless of eyewitness evidence that a cryptid is a “living fossil.”

That brings up another similarity between a fox and a paleontologist: They both have to eat. I condemn neither of them for the need to survive. But I must point out that crytozoology is far outside the realm of paleontology, and any apparent or real lack of known fossils in any particular series of strata is not evidence for the non-existence of life. The world of living organisms is far bigger than all the fossils ever found. When paleontologists dismisses a large number of eyewitnesses with insinuations of misidentifications and improper motivations, those paleontologist have gone far outside the special field in when they are experts. They have no more right to ridicule those specific eyewitnesses than a fox has a right to eat chickens in a specific chicken yard.

The paleontologist Glen Kuban has been associated with a mild case of bulverism because of his web page criticizing the concept of modern living pterosaurs. I have known of some non-paleontologists who seem to be trying to defend traditional models of that field by using extreme bulverism. I invite all critics to keep to the issues involved: Avoid personal attacks such as insinuations of lies. Kuban has at least used a number of examples of eyewitness cases, even though he has avoided the more important cases. His portrayal of problems in the objectiveness of investigators or their lack of clear thinking seems to be in the background rather than the foreground, so I classify his page as using mild bulverism.

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Child Care in Long Beach, California

Pterosaur Sighting in Ohio (Antwerp, Ohio, sightings and the minister near Mount Vernon, Ohio)

My own work in living-pterosaur investigations began in 2003. I was a forensic videographer at the time, interviewing and videotaping accident victims (for attorney firms). I examined Paul Nation’s videos from his expeditions in 1994 and 2002 and became convinced that the native eyewitnesses were telling the truth about a strange large flying creature in Papua New Guinea: consistant with what would be expected of a sighting of a living pterosaur. My own expedition to Umboi Island, in late-2004, confirmed to me the reality of living Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs in that part of the world. I have since interviewed many eyewitnesses (many from North America, but others in Europe and elsewhere in the world) and written two non-fiction books.

This blog is now open to comments from those who have been involved or positively interested in living-pterosaur investigations. [Introduction to this Live Pterosaur blog]