Book | Live Pterosaur

April 13, 2010December 8, 2011

American ghost lights — what are they?

The Gurdon Light (Arkansas), the Chapel Hill Light (Tennessee), the Cohoke Light (Virginia), the Gonzales Light (Louisiana), the Hornet Light (Missouri)–Each has a legend of a headless ghost with a lantern; other places have similar lights with similar legends. What are these strange lights? Let’s find out with a fictional court interrogation of Mr. Gurdon Light (GL) (but the mystery lights themselves are nonfiction).

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Prosecution: Mr. GL, do you live in Gurdon, Arkansas?

GL: In that neighborhood, yeah.

Prosecution: Have you ever been around Chapel Hill, Tennessee?

GL: No, sir. But I have relatives there.

Prosecution: Have you ever been in Gonzales, Louisiana, or in Missouri, or in Virginia?

GL: No, sir. Funny thing you should ask; I have relatives in them places, too.

Prosecution: To get to the point, some time ago you scared some people in Gurdon.

GL: Sorry, sir. I meant no harm.

Prosecution: Did you know that they thought they’d seen a ghost?

GL: Heck, I aint no ghost. I didn’t even see ’em ’til they started a-hollerin’.

Prosecution: But just one night earlier, in that same neighborhood, near the railroad tracks, you were involved in a killing weren’t you?

Defense Attorney: Objection: irrevelant.

Judge: Sustained.

Prosecution: You heard the previous testimony, about how you rushed at these people?

GL: It was an accident. I didn’t see ’em.

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.

Prosecution: Just how do you make yourself glow?

GL: Heck, I don’t know. It happens sometimes when I’m a-huntin’.

Prosecution: And what it is you hunt?

GL: Whatever I can catch. Sometimes I’m lucky to find a rat.

Prosecution: Did you know that your family is in some biology textbooks?

GL: I don’t read. I don’t know nothin’ about tax books. But my lawyer told me about one book.

Prosecution: What book was that?

GL: A Mr. Silcock in Australia wrote a book. It’s about my relatives there. They can glow, too . . .

Prosecution: But my question is about textbooks. Are you aware of any textbook that has anything about any member of your family glowing?

GL: No, sir. I don’t know nothin’ exceptin’ that one book in Australia.

Prosecution: Did you know that some of your relatives are behind bars?

GL: I heard about ’em, yeah. But it weren’t from the killin’s.

Prosecution: Thank you.

GL: In the killin’s, no people were hurt.

Prosecution: So all of your relatives are innocent?

GL: Yes, sir. Just huntin’.

Prosecution: Did you know that not one of your relatives has ever been seen to glow while behind bars?

GL: Funny thing you should ask. We often glow when we’re hungry. Behind bars, vittles are handy. So I was a-thinkin’ maybe they don’t glow ’cause they’re a-feedin’ good.

Prosecution: But are you aware that no scientist has ever said anything about you or your relatives glowing?

GL: Exceptin’ Mr. Silcock.

Prosecution: Getting back to the point, you flew at these poor terrified people, did you not?

GL: Flyin’s how we get around. I meant no harm.

Prosecution: One more thing: Did we get your name for the record, your official name?

GL: Tyto. Tyto Alba.

Prosecution: Do you have a nickname?

GL: Barney. Some folk call me “barn owl.”

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According to the Australian author Fred Silcock, some barn owls glow, sometimes. The strange bobbing lights are often called Min Min lights. It appears to be an intrinsic bioluminescence that may be triggered by hunger. At any rate, not all barn owls glow and those that do glow do so only sometimes. Some observations in Australia reveal one cause for the glow: Hungry owls can catch insects when rodents are scarce. Bioluminescence in some barn owls appears to be the cause of the whiteness of the underside feathers: More light passes through white feathers.

The Gurdon Light, Chapel Hill Light, Cohoke Light, Gonzales Light, and Hornet Light (and others) resemble the movement of a lantern being carried by someone who is searching for something. The light bobs up and down a bit and flies back and forth because a barn owl is searching for food. It may be rare enough that rodents have not developed any fear of it; insects are attracted to it.

How do glowing barn owls relate to modern living pterosaurs? When a strange light behaves like a hunting barn owl, it may be just that. But when it flies too fast and glows too brightly, it may be related to the ropen light of Papua New Guinea: It may be a bioluminescent pterosaur.

The Marfa Lights, of Texas, appear so different from many “ghost lights” that a ropen-light interpretation has been suggested, for they sometimes coordinate their glowing flights in what seems to be a complex hunting technique. And they flash too brightly and fly too fast to be barn owls. They do not suggest a headless ghost looking for its head, but a shrewd predator looking for bats: perhaps a predator with a head for hunting the Big Brown Bat, common in that part of Texas.

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book cover of Live Pterosaurs in America - second edition Did you know that living pterosaurs have been reported in North America, even in the United States? Read the many eyewitness sighting reports by purchasing a nonfiction book on Amazon or from the publisher—Live Pterosaurs in America.

This cryptozoology book has now been published in its third edition, greatly expanded from the original.

March 10, 2010December 8, 2011

Non-fiction book on living pterosaurs in the U.S.

Live Pterosaurs in America (2009, nonfiction) [second edition: Nov, 2010; third edition: Nov, 2011] is still [early 2010] more popular on Amazon.com than most of the many nonfiction cryptozoology books. Here is the main text of the title page:

Reports of giant flying “ptero-dactyls” in American skies—these have floated around the internet for years; but they had been mostly devoid of interview details. Until about 2005, even 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? Who would believe them?

Since the two ropen expeditions of 2004, in Papua New Guinea, more Americans have become exposed to the amazing living-pterosaur investigations and the many resulting eyewitness interviews. Many web pages have sprung up, many of them by explorers themselves. But despite other web pages, by scornful critics who never went anywhere and never interviewed anyone, these two expeditions, and those that preceded and followed them, are causing an awakening, the birth of a new perspective about extinction-assumptions regarding pterosaurs.

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 . . . until now.

More about cryptozoology books (nonfiction) on modern living pterosaurs

February 20, 2010January 10, 2017

Indava and ropen of Papua New Guinea

By the living-pterosaur author and expert Jonathan D. Whitcomb

Since Paul Nation’s 2006 video recording of two lights on a ridge deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea, cryptozoologists have a new name for the ropen: “indava.” It’s not that everything about the glowing indava is identical to ropen lights; indeed, the indava seems to glow for many more seconds than the apparently giant ropen that flies between mountains on Umboi Island. But both creatures have been described, by local natives, as giant flying creatures.

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. The British entomologist would surely have been interested in the explanation of “large flying animal” if the local villagers had said anything; but they were reluctant to talk about the lights. Nevertheless, Cheeman wrote about the mystery in her book, The Two Roads of Papua (published in 1935). Her observations were a few mountains to the north of Paul Nation’s later observations. She probably never dreamed that those flying lights were the bioluminescence of large flying creatures that were not classified in Western science.

Since the Cheesman lights were so close to the area where native village call flying lights indava, it’s quite likely that they are of the same species of flying creature. The ropen of Umboi Island, however, may be a related species or the same species but a pterosaur that has a different habit in the use of its intrinsic bioluminescent capacity.

By the way, Paul Nation never saw the form or features of the flying lights he videotaped late in 2006 on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. His video footage, however, was later analyzed by the missile defense physicist Clifford Paiva, and found to be quite unusual. The lights were not a paste-on hoax. Neither were they from common sources:

Not meteors
Not camp fires
Not flash lights
Not car headlights
Not airplane lights

One of the images from Paiva’s analysis of the indava-lights video footage

The British biologist and explorer Evelyn Cheesman

Other Books on Modern Living Pterosaurs

You probably won’t find the phrase “living pterosaur” in Cheesman’s book The Two Roads of Papua; you’re more likely to find a ropen in the middle of the day, taking a sun bath in your backyard. But other nonfiction books do mention modern pterosaurs, and the following are just a sample:

Searching for Ropens and Finding God – with much about the expeditions on Umboi Island
Big Bird – mostly about strange flying creatures in Texas
Bird From Hell – living pterosaurs in one area of British Columbia, Canada
Live Pterosaurs in America – sightings in many states of the USA

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February 7, 2010December 8, 2011

No Pterosaur Time Travel

At least one reader of my first book, Searching for Ropens, misunderstood my comment about the idea that ancient pterosaurs, sometimes, get caught in a time hole and appear briefly in our modern world. I never believed in anything like that; it smells of superstition.

I mentioned that idea in my book to show how dogmatically some persons hold onto the idea that pterosaurs lived only many millions of years ago, even imagining time-traveling pterosaurs (to keep ancient extinctions alive.) How much more reasonable to simply believe in modern living animals!