Mount Sual (Umboi Island), where the ropen light sometimes flies

For years, I have advocated multiple species of pterosaurs living in various parts of the world. Even for glowing lights in Papua New Guinea, multiple species may be involved, even when only two mountain ranges separate them. But for now, let’s consider why one species seems to be responsible for flying lights in two areas of that tropical country.

Let’s compare the words of four witnesses: three natives on Umboi Island and one British biologist on the mainland of New Guinea. Each describes flying lights: on two sides of Umboi and on the mainland to the west of Umboi.

Evelyn Cheeseman

The British biologist and explorer Lucy Evelyn Cheesman was the first woman ever hired as a curator at the Regent’s Park Zoo, in London. She traveled in the south Pacific prior to World War II, discovering a number of new species of small creatures and writing several books. But the discovery she made near Mondo, on the mainland of New Guinea, would support cryptozoological investigations many decades later.

In her book The Two Roads of Papua (1935 – London: Jarrolds), she described the flying lights:

While at Mondo I witnessed a most curious phenomenon which I could not understand; nor could I later hit upon any satisfactory explanation for it.

[One night] I spent much in time leaning over the veranda, and gazing across at the . . . jumbled hills against a purple sky. When suddenly I saw a flash of light somewhere below the horizon. It was rather a slow flash, and might have been made with an electric torch [flashlight] by someone with a finger on the switch to prolong it perhaps four seconds. . . . in a moment it came again, and this time I counted; yes about four or five seconds . . . flashes continued at intervals.

Many lights appeared like the first one, and they were strung out in a horizontal line for quite a distance, just below the top of a mountain ridge. The natives would not answer Cheesman’s questions about them so she relied on her own powers of reasoning.

But after careful observations and careful pondering, she gave up trying to explain the phenomenon. It could not have been from many natives with flashlights: The flying lights were slightly above the tree canopy, and even if natives had access to many flashlights, why would they use them in that fashion, on a long horizontal line? She became convinced that the lights were not from any human origin. But what were they?

Lucy Evelyn Cheesman, biologist

First 2004 Ropen Expedition

When I explored part of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, in 2004, I had no knowledge of Cheesman’s observations seven decades earlier. I was following up on the findings of other cryptozoologists, including Paul Nation (who had instructed me in how to conduct my expedition). I interviewed native eyewitnesses of the flying light and eyewitnesses of a large flying creature they call “ropen.” Natives think of them as the same thing, and my findings verified that idea.

I interviewed David Moke, a village leader, who told me about his encounter with a bright light that appeared over his head while he was fishing one night, months earlier, over a reef off the southern coast of Umboi Island. The brilliant light lasted about “five seconds.”

About a week later, I talked with another native. William Gima told me about the bright light that lit up Aupwel Village, a few weeks earlier, on the northern side of Umboi. That light lasted about “five seconds.”

Second 2004 Ropen Expedition

A few weeks after I completed my expedition, two other American cryptozoologists were exploring Umboi: Garth Guessman and David Woetzel. Many of their interviews were with islanders I had not met, in villages I had not visited.

The school teacher of Arot Village, Gibson Kuvurio, told the Americans about the ropen light:

When ropen flies, its body glows maybe around five or six seconds, but the light never glows beyond this time.

Coincidence or Bioluminescence?

Many observations of flying lights that last 4-6 seconds—those are not likely by coincidence, especially when some areas of Papua New Guinea have reports of large nocturnal flying creatures that glow as they fly. This phenomenon deserves serious scientific study, not just by cryptozoologists but by biologists.

Indava and Ropen of Umboi Island

Evelyn Cheesman appeared to have no thought about pterosaurs when she observed the strange glowing objects that flew near the top of a mountain ridge.

________________________________________________________________

Live Pterosaurs in America — third edition of nonfiction cryptozoology book

From the chapter “Marfa Lights of Texas”

His account of the strange lights of Marfa [Texas] got me thinking. Some accounts, not quite like James’s observations, involve “dancing” behavior. But if the lights are made by ropen-like animals, why would they move like that? Of course ropens in Texas might be hunting bats, but how could dancing help them catch bats? Insects! Of course lights attract insects. After two ropens have glowed in one area long enough to concentrate insects, they separate for awhile to allow the bats to feel safe in catching those insects. Soon the ropens return to catch the bats.

Jacob Kepas, a Baptist minister and a native of Papua New Guinea, may be the most experienced ropen seeker in his country. But when he was a boy, the glowing creature that he saw fly over his village was not known by his people as “ropen” but as “seklobali.” It would not be the only time in his life that he would see a giant nocturnal flying creature in Papua New Guinea: a pterosaur candidate.

Late in 2006, the American Baptist missionary James Blume, an airplane pilot, took Kepas and American Paul Nation deep into the mountainous interior of the mainland. There, near the village of Tawa, Blume left the two explorers as he flew back. Kepas and Nation talked with the villagers and learned that the local name for the large glowing creature of the night was “indava.”

I have often written about the two indava lights Paul Nation videotaped near the top of a ridge above Tawa Village. Not so often have I written about the daylight sighting of an indava that Jacob Kepas and a local villager observed. It helps verify what local villagers say about the creature.

Paul Nation did not accompany the other two men on this particular daylight hike, but he loaned them his camcorder to. Unfortunately Kepas and the local guide could not get close enough to the sleeping creature that they observed. It appeared to be sleeping on a cliff opposite to the hill that they had climbed. They tried to get a video recording of it but failed, perhaps because of their lack of experience with the camcorder; but it was also just too far away. They reported to Nation that the creature was very large.

During this 2006 expedition, Nation learned from one local villager of another daylight sighting. The man had seen an indava near a river and described the creature in terms of the size of an airplane (Tawa Village is near a small air strip). Nation also learned that indavas sometimes carried away village pigs or children, at some time in the past, but they no longer do so, for the villagers have learned to make noise to scare away the creatures.

Investigators now believe that both the lights videotaped by Nation and the creature observed by Kepas were modern living pterosaurs.

The American cryptozoologist Garth Guessman (lower-left) interviews native Jacob Kepas, with interpretation help from Mary Blume (wife of Jim Blume). This interview was in 2004, just before the Woetzel-Guessman-Kepas expedition on Umboi Island. Kepas tells of his sighting when he was a boy.

###

Lakewood – child care cost

Long Beach child care

Forgive me for stating the obvious regarding the hoax explanation for pterosaur sightings, but no hoax, no matter what the subject, can prove that everything else of that subject is also a hoax. One boy crying “wolf!” (when he did not really see any wolf) does not prove that wolves do not exist or that all persons who cry “wolf!” are hoaxers. When a malicious hoaxer makes a phone call warning a school official that a bomb has been planted in that school, and careful searches reveal the absence of any bomb, that does not mean that all bombs are fictional or that everybody who makes a phone call is telling a lie.

Likewise, when a newspaper publishes an article, in the nineteenth century, about a living pterosaur, and that story is later declared a hoax, that does not mean that everybody, in whatever century, who cries “pterodactyl!” is a hoaxer. How we need clear thinking!

Evelyn Cheesman was a biologist who searched for insects and small animals in remote areas, including New Guinea, in the 1920′s and 1930′s. In fact, some of her discoveries put her name to some of those creatures, including Lipinia cheesmanae—a skink (lizard), and Litoria cheesmani—a treefrog. To biologists, she is less well known for her observations and writing about strange flying lights on the mainland of what is now Papua New Guinea. Those flying lights now, long after Cheesman’s passing, appear to be related to the ropen lights. Nobody suggests Cheesman ever played a hoax.

I explored Umboi Island in 2004 (many miles east of where Cheesman saw strange lights). I interviewed many eyewitnesses, most of whom saw only the strange flying light that they call “ropen.” No form or features were visible in those many sightings (like Cheesman’s observations).

I myself stayed up on some nights, watching the sky with Luke Paina and Mark Kau. Those two men saw the ropen light once during my stay on Umboi Island, but I was asleep in bed at the time and so have never witnessed a ropen light. During the seven years since my expedition, a few skeptics occasionally label me as a liar; I am grateful it is only occasionally. But why would a hoaxer travel to a faraway tropical island and then come back home to proclaim to the world that he saw nothing?

What I encountered on Umboi Island were many eyewitnesses, of few of whom had encountered the ropen at a much closer distance; those few eyewitnesses describe features that make the ropen stand out as a huge flying creature very unlike any bird or bat. My interviews with most of those few critical eyewitnesses were videotaped and those videos are available on YouTube. Why insinuate a hoax? Examine the words of those skeptics and you will find bulverism.

Are Many Pterosaur Sighting Reports From Hoaxes?

I interviewed Hodgkinson sixty years later, by phone, emails, and mail . . . I continued interviewing him, on occasion, and my associate in cryptozoology, Garth Guessman, also interviewed Hodgkinson. Over a period of eight years, we have found no indication of any hoax. Besides that, Hodgkinson has been a flight instructor for years; he would not risk his reputation by playing a live-pterodactyl hoax for decades.

Feathers – no Hoax

“Did hoaxes play any significant role in these many reports?” That question can be answered decisively: “No.” It comes from careful analysis of the data of ninety-eight sighting reports, compiled in late-2011, and it confirms an earlier analysis.

Gideon Koro, on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, told the American cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, “It came down.” He also described the huge flying creature: The tail length Gideon estimated to be seven meters (about 23 feet). It was no fruit bat.

This “batman” may be a modern pterosaur. Before quoting the story from Big Bird (nonfiction cryptozoology book), by Ken Gerhard, I’ll make an observation about night sightings of glowing flying creatures in general. When a bioluminescent barn owl or a ropen (or perhaps another flying creature that glows) gradually turns off its glow at night, what is a likely result? If the night is very dark, a person observing that reduction of glow would probably see the form of the flying creature for a short while but when the glow is completely out, then there would be nothing visible; in other words, the creature would literally disappear from view, even though it was still there in the dark.

From Page 64 of Big Bird

[An] incident, which occurred in Houston’s historic Heights neighborhood during the early morning hours of June 18, 1953, involves an entity that has become known as the Batman. . . . Hilda Walker, Howard Phillips, and Judy Meyers, were sitting on the porch . . . a huge shadow passed over their heads, landing in a nearby pecan tree. . . . The shadow appeared to resemble a tall man donning a kind of paratrooper uniform, but with bat-like wings attached. [It] seemed to be encased in a grey halo of light, which faded out slowly as the mysterious figure vanished in front of their startled eyes.

I have not interviewed any of the eyewitness nor read the original newspaper article, so my idea is speculative, but it could have been a large bioluminescent flying creature.

Two Glowing Pterosaurs in the Caribbean

 . . . between about 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., her daughter called her to come out to the balcony to “see something weird.”

The lady told me, “The minute I stepped onto the balcony, I knew exactly what she wanted me to see. Off in the distance were two very, very large, pink/orange flourescent birds flying behind each other. They looked like the flying dinosaurs . . . They would fly towards the ship, then back out to sea, then fly together in tandum then make a sharp right, away from the ship and disappear into the night. Then they would return. We witnessed this activity for about fifteen minutes.”

Marfa Lights

The cryptozoological possibility seems weird, but there are similarities with the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea, and there the lights are said to be nocturnal flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs: long-tailed ropens.

American Ghost Lights (those that are bioluminescent owls)

Prosecution: What exactly do you do for a living?

GL: Every night I look for food.

Prosecution: Why at night?

GL: It’s what my family’s always done. It’s all we know.

Prosecution: But not always totally in the dark, is it?

GL: No, sir. Sometimes I glow. It runs in the family.

*****************************************************************

Ad

From the title page of Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition):

Reports of huge flying “pterodactyls” in American skies have floated around the internet for years; but before about 2005, details were scarce. When an eyewitness was named, the interviewer was often anonymous; even when an eyewitness was credible, and the account published in a newspaper, the story was ridiculed, discouraging others who had also seen strange flying creatures. Where could eyewitnesses go? What a predicament for them! Who would believe their reports?

Jonathan Whitcomb is a modern pterosaur expert