How can the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America be related to Paulo Coelho’s worldwide best-selling allegorical fiction The Alchemist? Certainly not in book sales, and it’s not a direct relationship; it’s in what Coelho calls a “personal calling.” I don’t want to give away an important surprise for those who have not yet read The Alchemist, but it’s in how something in a shepherd boy’s quest resembles something in the history of living-pterosaur investigations since the late twentieth century (traveling back and forth, literally).

The Alchemist (a different kind of relationship between the two books)

Before Januaruy 17, 2012, the Wikipedia page on The Alchemist said, “It has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries.” On that day, Jonathan Whitcomb, a volunteer Wikipedia editor and author of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, noticed that figure on book sales of The Alchemist. He had just finished reading the book, delighting in its message and delivery, but the “65 million” reminded him of two things.

The back cover of the English paperback that Whitcomb had just read referred to the number of copies sold of all the books by Paulo Coelho, not just The Alchemist. It was “more than 65 million copies in 150 countries.” It looked like too much for a coincidence . . .

Sixty-Five Million

Coelho’s own web page reveals that twenty-one million copies had been sold worldwide. I believe that the back cover of the paperback I had read was correct, that the “sixty-five million” was the total number of sales of all Coelho’s novels (not just this one short novel) up until that paperback printing of the English version of The Alchemist (a few years ago). . . .

On rare occasions I edit Wikipedia pages, and on January 17, 2012, I edited The Alchemist page, to correct that mistake. So why think of it? To most ordinary persons, who will never sell any millions of anything or be famous for anything, twenty-one million seems practically the same as sixty-five million. The problem lies in casual thinking: Too many of us rely on others to think for us, and we do so too often, too much, and in matters too important.

First let’s consider a pterosaur sighting in Africa and compare it with one in Australia. The extremes are distance from observer to flying creature: 10 feet away and 17,000 feet away. Neither of these encounters are found in the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America or the second edition of Searching for Ropens (my nonfiction cryptozoology books of sightings of apparent pterosaurs). I plan to include them in an e-book, to be published soon.

Pterosaur in Sudan, Africa

“Walking from one mud-brick hut to another, early one night in 1988 (in Sudan, Africa), the boy noticed something on the roof of a nearby hut. Lit up by the patio light, perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall . . . and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head, and its long tail somehow resembled that of a lion.”

That “kongamato-pterodactyl” web page fails to mention, however, that the creature hopped from one mud-brick hut to another RIGHT OVER THE BOY’S HEAD. The distance between the feet of the creature and the head of the boy must have been about ten feet, if that much. After the boy had grown into a man, he gained access to a computer (not everybody in Sudan has a computer) and sent me an email, with details about his encounter. I found his report highly credible, both in his honesty and in the high probability that it was a pterosaur.

Pterosaur, perhaps, in Victoria, Australia

I say “perhaps” because the flying creature, observed in about 1998, was so far away from the eyewitness. I say “pterosaur” because the sighting is consistent with other sightings in Australia, encounters that were much closer to the eyewitnesses, and because the creature appeared to be about the size of a “Cesna” but was slowing flapping its wings. After receiving a long email from the Australian man, I came to believe that he had seen what he suspected he had.

What I saw was what I first thought was a pelican flying about 3000 feet high but realised pelicans at that height did not look as large as this. I was standing outside about nine o’clock one night. It was full moon and very bright with a cloud bank to the south east extending to and over the Ranges. Mt. Dandenong is about 2000 feet high and the clouds were much higher than this.

I glanced to the south and something caught my attention. It was something flying that appeared to be at the height of light planes that fly around here as Moorabbin Airport is not far away. This thing was at least as large as a light plane, say a Cesna.  It was about 5 klms away and was lazily flapping it’s wings, flying to the east in at that point a clear sky. It appeared to be lit up by the moonlight and shining as if it had no feathers. . . . I could see it quite clearly. I had it under observation for about 5 mins whence it disappeared into the cloud bank.

Extremes in Delayed Reactions

From the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, a lady gives us a positive perspective on her two 2008 encounters in Georgia.

Fifteen miles of her commute [in northeast Georgia] is on a two-lane 55-mph road through woods alternating with pastures; This part of Highway 82 has few houses and almost no stop signs. . . . She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house [to drive to work] at 6:45 a.m. . . . She had driven less than ten miles, just leaving an area of pasture, entering an area of thick woods, around a mild downhill curve, with high banks and brush on each side of the road, when an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car. Although alone, she yelled, “What the — what — what is that?” She was stunned.

She had another encounter two weeks later, at a different part of the same stretch of highway. But the point is how she looked back on her experiences with apparent living pterosaurs:

The lady used to dread her daily commute to work; that has changed. She told me, “The world is now totally different. I feel blessed that God has allowed me to see this creature that should not be here, and yet is, this strange dragon-like thing that lives somewhere in the woods in this redneck little town.”

Her experiences differ greatly from those of seven boys who encountered the giant ropen at Lake Pung:

On the remote island of Umboi, in Papua New Guinea, seven boys climbed up to Lake Pung, just north of their village. Within a few minutes they saw the giant creature fly over the water. The boys ran home in terror and the memory of that fear lasted for years. In 2004, Jonathan Whitcomb explored part of Umboi Island. He interviewed Gideon Koro, who confirmed their encounter, calling the creature by its local name: “ropen;” two other young men verified Gideon’s account.

Of course the circumstances between these cases differs considerably. Gideon and his friends were exposed to a creature that was notorious, on Umboi Island, for eating human flesh (at least taking dead human bodies from graves). The lady in Georgia was protected in her car, with no knowledge of any potential danger from any strange flying creature. With all that said, I suspect the flying creatures seen by these eyewitnesses (in Sudan, southern Australia, southeastern USA, and Umboi Island) are related, even if they represent different species.

The third edition of my nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America is undergoing final editing on the cover and the interior. Perhaps the most notable improvement is the addition of details on the 1965 sighting by Patty Carson: the “Gitmo pterosaur” in Cuba. Previous editions had nothing about this sighting at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Her sighting corroborates the 1971 pterosaur encounter Eskin Kuhn experienced in 1971, on that same base.

Carson’s 1965 Pterosaur Sighting

A few months after the publication of the second edition of this book, I began interviewing Patty Carson, by email and telephone. Her sighting (around 1965) makes Kuhn’s 1971 encounter even more credible. . . .

“I was watching Monster Quest . . . it triggered my memory of [my] sighting of the pterodactyl . . . I googled ‘Pterodactyl in Cuba’ . . . if that guy’s drawing didn’t come up on the first page, and the word Guantanamo!!! No kidding! I searched around some until I found your link and emailed you. . . .

“I was only a child when I saw it . . . We lived at the end of the road, last house, by the radio tower. We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . .

“ . . . 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.”

From the Title Page of Cryptozoology Book

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

I delight in eyewitness corroboration of a testimony of a live pterosaur. On Umboi Island, in 2004, I was finishing my interview of the eyewitness Gideon Koro when I received the pleasant surprise. He and six of his boyhood friends had hiked up to the crater lake Pung, about ten years earlier, when they were terrified at the giant ropen that flew over the surface of that lake. Those boys (or teenagers) ran home. As I was about to run out of questions for Gideon, somebody told me that two other eyewitnesses were present: Mesa Augustin, and Wesley Koro (brother of Gideon). Three of those seven eyewitnesses were available for me to interview on that day, and the encounter at Lake Pung was confirmed.

Today I sat in front of my computer, delighted at the detailed sighting report in an email from a lady who, as a child, had observed a “pterodactyl,” around 1965, at the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba. Her email indirectly confirmed the 1971 sighting, at Guantanamo, by Eskin Kuhn, directly corroborating the concept that live pterosaurs can be found in the Caribbean, even at a particular shoreline of Cuba, at least in the mid-twentieth century.

Pterosaur in Cuba in 1965

In the words of the eyewitness

I was around six years old. . . . We were walking down near the boat yards, headed home. . . . where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . . suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. . . . It was at about 2 o’clock [probably meaning to the right of where they were heading] right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . .  and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.

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 . . . It was as tall as a man when it stood up on it haunches.

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.

One of two pterosaurs that the U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn saw in Cuba in 1971

“I did interview him [Eskin Kuhn, eyewitness who had drawn this sketched] by phone just a few weeks ago, and I found his response to my surprise phone call truly enlightening: He was highly credible in his manner of speaking and his answers to my unexpected questions. This mature man has not been playing a hoax for four decades, for everything points to an honest reporting of a real experience. In light of many other sightings, by many other eyewitnesses, Mr. Kuhn’s sketch now deserves serious attention.”

 

Eskin Kuhn at Guantanamo Bay, 1971

Gitmo Pterosaur Seen by Kuhn

“I was not stationed to the barracks; but to 2nd Battallion, 8th Regiment (reinforced), H&S Co., 106mm recoiless rifle platoon. . . . It was a beautiful, clear summer day . . . most of the platoon was in the new barracks “hanging out”. I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. It mesmerized me! . . .  I saw two Pterosaurs . . . 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 . . .

“. . .  the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . . they had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end.”

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Marfa Lights as Flying Predators

Recently, two glowing pterosaurs were observed flying together in the Caribbean, between Cuba and Haiti. The lady who reported those two flying creatures was not alone in being an eyewitness on that night on her cruise ship; her daughter can corroborate that sighting. At other times, and in other areas of North America, other eyewitnesses have seen large flying creatures that glow at night. At least some of these may relate to the Marfa Light of southwest Texas, for many sightings of apparent pterosaurs come from various parts of Texas.

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Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, nonfiction

Read the amazing stories that newspaper editors rarely tell the public: eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs in the United States of America. Learn for yourself the astonishing secret: These flying creature, many of them huge and featherless and with long tails, are not extinct but still living in North America. How amazing! Live Pterosaurs in America.

This nonfiction cryptozoology book will enlighten you about these living “pterodactyls” that sometimes are seen to fly at night. One chapter is devoted to the Marfa Lights of Texas, but many of the 48 contiguous states of the U.S.A. are included: California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas, etc. Find out for yourself about the sighting by Eskin Kuhn, the U.S. Marine who witnessed those two pterosaurs in Cuba, in 1971.