Marfa Light Introduction

Specific sightings of mysterious Marfa Lights, in southwest Texas, deserve notice here. Not all sightings of apparently strange lights around Marfa need be from the same source, of course; not all of them need be actually mysterious (I believe that some of them are the bioluminescence of a flying predator: a species of live pterosaur, maybe similar to the glowing ropen of Papua New Guinea). But the strange appearances should receive more attention, for investigating those lights may result in an important discovery.

Marfa Lights and Ropen Lights (blog post by Jonathan Whitcomb)

(ML photographed in 2003) . . . The flying light appeared to have “on and off states as well as occasional bursts to brightness.” He concluded that it had “the appearance of chemical combustion including at least two re-ignitions and step changes in brightness.”

. . . in 2004, the American cryptozoologist David Woetzel witnessed a strange light flying to the mountains near Lake Pung. . . . “shimmering around the edges.” Other eyewitnesses of the horizontally-flying ropen light have mentioned a pulsating appearance.

The Marfa Lights (qsl.net)

Robert Ellison came to Marfa in 1883 . . . He then drove [his cattle]  herd . . . and on the second night out, while camped just outside Paisano Pass, he saw strange lights in the distance. . . . Mr. Ellison searched the countryside by horseback. He finally realized that the lights were not man-made. Other early settlers assured him that they too had seen the lights and had never been able to identify them.

Marfa Lights Seen With Binoculars (testimony of the scientific researcher-investigator Ed Hendricks)

Car lights could easily be discerned by their regular motion and color. Other lights would suddenly appear, move slightly, split into multiple lights, and show a distinctly different color and motion. They were not at all head lights.

Handbook of Texas: Marfa Lights

Mrs. W. T. Giddings, who grew up watching the lights and whose father claimed he was saved from a blizzard when the lights led him to the shelter of a cave, considers the lights to be curious observers, investigating things around them.

 In recent years the lights have become a tourist attraction. The Texas State Highway Department has constructed a roadside parking area nine miles east of Marfa on U.S. Highway 90 for motorists to view the curious phenomenon. [Marfa Lights Viewing Platform]

Marfa’s Legendary Lights (by Lee Paul) Includes a fuller account of the 1883 sighting and investigation by Robert Ellison (although he seems to have been a cowboy rather than a scientist)

All day, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains and the mesa between their camp and where the lights had been. They found no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. No tracks, no doused campfires, no nothing. But the next night and the next after that, they again saw the strange lights. Cowboys kept seeing the lights night after night, week after week, and year after year. All attempts at identifying them went fruitless. . . . the cowboys finally decided the lights were [not from people] . . . calling them ”ghost lights.”

The Marfa Lights — a Mystery (by Rosemary Williams; related by an email from Janet Christian)

“Well, I first saw the Marfa Lights in 1916, when I was teaching school in Presidio,” says Hallie, who has lived in the Big Bend country for most of her 95 years. “Every time I’d go home to Alpine, I’d have to wait until school was out, and it would be nighttime when I would pass by the Chinati Mtns. That’s where the ‘mystery lights’ would appear,” she says.

The Marfa Lights Mystery of Texas (part of report by Zeke_D)

. . . there is a separate and unique light phenomenon in the area of the Chianati mountain range that I can not explain. Balls of light sitting in a chico bush, atop a small pile of rocks or on the foundation of a removed radio antenna spitting streamers and shifting color from yellow to purple and red, a few flashes of yellow streamers and the light blinks out. The lights in the washes and gulleys that you can only see shadows from really get my heart pumping. I want so much to see what they are doing. Normally you just wait and a few will pop out in plain sight. The color changes and lightning like tendrils are very neat to watch. One I really enjoyed watching moved straight up a cliff face and then rested on top of the mountain changing from bright yellow to a dim red then blinked a couple times and was gone.

From the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America, we read of a startling sighting in a remote California desert:

We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge, on lawn chairs, enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. I caught the sight of it with the corner of my eye and looked up. It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us . . . I remember saying ‘. . . that looks just like a Taradactyl!’ . . . My friend looked in the binoculars and said it looked like one but it had to be a kite or something because they were extinct. . . . I grabbed the binoculars . . . What I saw was large and very much alive. Its hue was close to the hue of the desert sand but more the color of rust. Its skin, I say skin because there were no feathers, . . . looked like dull leather sort of dusty looking. . . . The back of the head was pointed.

[From page 16 of the first edition of the book] I interviewed this eyewitness and questioned her about details. She answered thoroughly, demonstrating her credibility. I have communicated with her since that 2007 interview and she maintains the truthfulness of her account; I have no reason to doubt her experience. This sighting seems to have been of a Pterodactyloid pterosaur, for it had no tail: only “a nub where a tail would be.”

A Youtube video titled “Ropen (Flying Dinosaur)” has received 37,000 views as of this afternoon. But the beginning of that video shows an obvious Frigate Bird soaring as Frigate Birds will soar. I’ve lost count of how many times I have responded to that video footage, explaining that it does not show any ropen but only a common ocean-going bird.

Another Youtube video, “pterosaur type creature part 1,” is the identical video footage but with text: “While on holiday in Papua New Guinea with my wife . . .” I am not accusing any person of dishonesty here, but that barren hillside above the beach looks nothing like any beach that I saw while I was in Papua New Guinea. In addition, the two telephone poles and the two cars and the almost total lack of humans appears to add up to some beach other than one in that remote tropical part of the world; I don’t say that this is a fraud, but it appears very strange, regardless of birds and ropens. I don’t say that this beach is in Mexico or some other country other than Papua New Guinea; I just feel that the strangeness of the barren hill and the strangeness of the lack of natives thronging around those two cars—they deserve an explanation.

I am concerned that some of the 176,000 viewers may have been mislead in some way, for that Frigate Bird looks nothing like the descriptions that I have received from eyewitnesses of the ropen, regardless of what beach is in that video. Ropens are nocturnal creatures, for the most part, appearing dark and featherless, not with a white throat-chest common for some Frigate Birds. This video has been put up on Youtube with apparent blocking of  negative comments for about two years. It seems that this version of the footage is purposefully protected from a criticism like ”Frigate Bird,” an obvious explanation.

I don’t know that all photos and videos of proclaimed pterosaurs are non-pterosaurs; but frauds and jokes through photos and videos are so common that it has interferred with publicizing the results of legitimate investigations and research.

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The nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America is the undisputed best seller among nonfiction books that have much content about apparent living pterosaurs (Amazon.com, late 2009 through early-August, 2010). Purchase your own copy and discover these amazing eyewitness accounts for yourself: large “pterodactyls” flying through the skies of California, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, New York state, South Carolina, and elsewhere in the United States.

This is probably the only nonfiction book ever written about eyewitness sightings of apparent living pterosaurs seen across many of the forty-eight states, from West Coast to East Coast and from North to South: “Live Pterosaurs in America!”

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Child Care in Long Beach — Childcare Resources in California

Once in a while let’s consider some of the best articles on living pterosaurs, those especially deserving attention.

Why so few eyewitnesses?

I’ve lived more than half a century in Southern California, but I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. It’s not that I’ve never walked through a wilderness area; mountain lions keep hidden, most of the time. But a few Southern Californians do see them.

At the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, in Southern California, near Irvine, in the summer of 2007, a man was driving north from the university, with the ponds on his right. From the marshy area on his left a very strange flying creature flew across the road, right in front of him, flying into the sanctuary.

American eyewitnesses (1400) of pterosaurs

 I have learned, over the years that I have promoted attention to the eyewitness evidences, that some vocal critics are overly anxious to discredit all those who promote the idea of living pterosaurs. I welcome comments on the eyewitness evidence itself, rather than weaknesses (real or wrongly-supposed) of the interviewers and investigators.

Marfa Lights and Min Mins (and ropens)

Come with me to Victoria, Australia, along Salisbury Road in Mt. Macedon. Notice, as we enter an open window, that Mr. Fred Silcock is sleeping in the easy chair by the fireplace. Now search for a thin brown book on the bookshelf. That’s the one; the spine says “The Min Min Light  F.F. Silcock”. Notice the drawing of a glowing barn owl on the cover.

Science and Clear Thinking

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” I believe Nikola Tesla was thinking clearly when he said that. I also believe that we need clear thinking in the scientists of today, at least as much as in the time of Tesla. It appears to me difficult to define, although its opposite appears easy to expose. Perhaps we should be grateful for extremes that help us to distinguish between foggy and clear thinking. I suggest a couple of examples.

Glowing Orbs of the Mekong River

What attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators, every October, to Nong Kai Province? The Naga Fireballs of Southeast Asia have attracted crowds for many years, and these strange glowing orbs have been seen emerging from the Mekong River for centuries.

. . . We know that some insects glow and some insects emerge from rivers to fly away. This may be a large bioluminescent insect.

Cryptozoology Book Live Pterosaurs in America

“The world’s greatest expert on chickens—that’s a fox. The details of that expertise culminate in picking bones, executed differently than, but for the same purpose as, the work of a fossil expert: to make a living. The hope differs: The paleontologist searches for ancient bones somehow protected from the destructive forces of time; the fox, for fresh meat, somehow unprotected by the farmer for a time. Interminable dogmatism keeps both of them searching: one for death anciently; the other, death soon-to-be.”