This week I received a sighting report from Sun Valley, California. It resembles an account from nearby Sherman Oaks, in that a large flying creature seems to be glowing. Here’s an excerpt from the Sun Valley report:

It was late in the evening almost dark but not quite there still visible. I was walking from my car to my house [in Sun Valley] and something in the sky caught my eye. My girlfriend also looked up and right away said is that a bat but she wears glasses so she has trouble seeing how close objects are. What caught my eye was the bright radiation like light coming from the belly of this Pterodactyl looking animal. I seen it fly right above us maybe 150 -200 feet  and this thing wasn’t no bat it was bigger with large wing span and when it flapped its wings it was kind of a slow lazy flap kind of gliding through the air. The animal radiated light from the bottom like when something is wet and you flash a light on it the light reflects back and shimmers. . . .

In Orange County, California, this encounter, around 1997, was more of a hearing than a sighting. This account should be read in full: Rancho Santa Margarita Cryptid. In brief, it includes:

“One night I was awakened . . . with the most . . . awful screeching and screaming that I have ever heard. . . . like . . . pigs being slaughtered. . . . I opened the window . . . the sound was accompanied [by] some thrashing around in some hedges or bushes in the backyard of my . . . neighbors  [vacant] house . . . The unearthly screeching continued . . . like . . . [a] struggle to the death. . . . I went into the front yard . . . Chills shot up and down my spine. As I stood holding my breath, a heard a deep, soft, ‘hushing’ sound, like giant wings lifting something heavy into the air. This came from around the side of my house . . . I didn’t ‘see’ so much as ‘felt’ it. Whatever it was swept up and onto the chimney of the next-door-neighbors house. the night sky was incredibly dark so I could not really make out anything, but a large hulking ‘presence’ sat on that chimney. As I stared hard into the dark, trying to make out a shape or a movement, I realized whatever it was was staring right back at me. I left the yard quickly and went inside. . . . The next day I called around and finally got a hold of a wild animal control center in Orange County . . . they told me that it was most likely a great horned owl.”

In itself, this cannot prove that pterosaurs live in Southern California, of course. But it contributes to the accumulating cryptozoological evidence that those who contact me with their experiences are, in general, obviously not hoaxers. I have received similarly vague accounts, occasionally, from various parts of the world, including the U.S.A., Greece, Africa, and Australia. Hoaxers would not try to convince anyone of a pterosaur sighting with such vagueness. But if actual living pterosaurs have indeed been observed (at least on occasion, in various places in the world) then at least a few encounters would naturally include less-clear sightings, with sound-evidence more than visual. This puts one more nail in the coffin holding the hoax hypothesis.

A clearly seen apparent pterosaur, in 2007, in another area of California, suggests a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. That one was seen near the university at Irvine.

Read more about this encounter in the third edition of the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America.

I interviewed the two eyewitnesses separately, by phone, on Sep 23rd (soon after their sighting). Both of them told me that the creature they saw flying about 300 feet above them, at about 10:30 p.m. in the San Fernando Valley, was too big to be a bird. (They had been walking their dog as usual; they had never seen anything like that before, nor had either of them known anything about living-pterosaur investigations.) Less than two weeks earlier, I had spoken with a man who had seen something that may have been similar; it was also in the Los Angeles area, but flying further away from that eyewitness, preventing detailed observations. The date of that sighting, however, and lack of detail about location, make it somewhat unlikely to have been the same individual creature as that seen by the couple.

I found the two eyewitnesses of the Sep 21st sighting quite credible in the substance of their descriptions and manner of speech. To help prevent assisting any potential future hoax, I am withholding most details from publication, for the moment. I would like to find at least one more eyewitness of this particular creature. It was seen near the intersection of Burband Blvd and Woodman, near the border between the cities of Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks. It was flying either east or southeast, either towards North Hollywood or the foothills just south of Studio City (or inbetween).

Should anyone feel any desire to help with this investigation, please contact me:  whitcomb-<at-sign>-livepterosaur.com

Thank you.