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A new press release mentions four eyewitnesses of possible pterosaurs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the mid-twentieth century. Two of them have been mentioned before on this blog: Eskin Kuhn and Patty Carson.

Pterodactyl in Cuba

In February of 2010, Whitcomb gave Eskin C. Kuhn (living in Ohio) a surprise phone call, questioning him about his report of two creatures he had seen flying over the U. S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1971. . . . Whitcomb became convinced, before the end of their conversation, that Kuhn was telling the truth. . . .

Two large long-tailed flying creatures, apparent pterosaurs, caught the Marine’s attention. He later reported that they were “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 of them.” He noticed that the “structure and the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . .” He had no idea that anybody else had seen such a creature. . . .

In April of 2011, Whitcomb began email and phone conversations with Patty Carson, of Riverside, California, who had lived as a child at the military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965. . . . She told Whitcomb, “We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up . . . All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . . 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.”

The other two eyewitnesses in Cuba, Tom Carson (brother of Patty) and an anonymous eyewitness, had less-clear views, although Tom did mention that the flying creature he saw had a tail like that of a shaved tail of a dog.

Kuhn Pterosaur in Cuba

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.

Pterosaur in Cuba

Yesterday, I spoke by phone with Tom Carson, the brother of eyewitness Patty Carson. His 1966 sighting sighting, about one year after Patty’s, seems to have been a smaller creature of the same species. This brother and sister never spoke with each other about their sightings until 2011, after I began interviewing Patty by emails and telephone, but each of them told their father about the creatures soon after the sightings.

Tom’s sighting lasted only about three seconds, and the dark grey-tan creature flew almost overhead, at maybe a hundred feet high, perhaps a little less. It appeared to have no feathers, with a moderate-length tail that seemed odd, like a “shaved dog tail.” The creature appeared to be larger than a pelican.

Pterosaur in New Jersey (email send to Jonathan Whitcomb)

“In the summer of 2009, I saw something that I didn’t quite understand, in the pinelands of New Jersey. . . . The following year, on the same stretch of highway, I definately saw something clearly and without doubt. . . . I saw a giant bat-like bird, dark brown without feathers, something prehistoric . . . a long thin head, a long tail, [and a] kind of leathery dark brown skin. The body seemed to be the size of a good-sized man; the wind span, maybe 12-15 feet across.”

Pterosaur in Idaho

After the man learned about web sites and research regarding living pterosaurs, he told me about his 1991 (or thereabouts) encounter.

I don’t recall the exact time of year. Early summer is my best guess, maybe May or June.  I was with a friend the same age and my parents. We were traveling in central Idaho and spent the night on the Snake River just outside Lewiston. My friend and I were sleeping outside and my parents in the back of the pickup with a camper shell. The moon was full or near full as I remember. I recall waking up during the night and seeing two large creatures flying in a circle above us. They were fairly high up, I would say at least 2-300 feet. The distance and wingspan are the two things hard to be certain of, as they could be higher and therefore larger or closer to the ground and smaller.

. . . As they circled, they crossed over the moon multiple times, and I was struck by the outline of the wings which seemed very bat-like to me. Certainly did not give the appearance of a feathered wing. . . . [The creatures] let out a shriek. Not high-pitched or extremely shrill, just a multi-tonal screech.

Patty Carson’s final sketch of the ropen of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, shows interesting details, as well as a serious facial expression; from my interviews with this eyewitness, I do not think she was intending to create an angry glare for the creature, but only an indication of an eye more like a bird’s eye than a fish eye. This sketch, according to Carson, is quite similar to what she remembers of her encounter in 1965:

Compare this sketch by Carson, based on her memory of a flying creature that was only about thirty feet away from her, with the 1971 sketch by U. S. Marine Eskin C. Kuhn:

First consider the differences. Carson’s sketch she drew over forty years after her sighting; Kuhn’s, just minutes after his sighting. Carson saw one creature that was only about thirty feet away; Kuhn saw two creatures at “close range,” but probably much further away than Carson’s encounter. Carson may have startled a creature on the ground; Kuhn was probably not noticed by the two creatures he saw. Carson saw teeth in a partially-opened mouth; Kuhn saw no teeth, possibly because the mouths were closed in flight. Carson was a young child; Kuhn was a young adult. Carson was with a brother; Kuhn was alone.

Now consider the similarities. Carson’s 1965 sighting and Kuhn’s 1971 sighting were at the U. S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both sightings were in daylight. The head crest is very similar in the two sketches.  Carson saw that the flying creature had a long tail with a diamond-shaped structure at the tail-end; Kuhn drew a structure at the end of both tails. Neither eyewitness saw anything like any feather. Both of them were disbelieved by others, but Carson and Kuhn continued to believe in what they had seen. I found both of them highly credible, over the course of a number of phone interviews.

Carson’s sighting deserves a brief review:

1965 Sighting by Patty Carson

“ . . . 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.”

Modern Pterosaur Verified in Cuba

Patty did tell me, in a phone conversation, that the creature looked at them with apparent intelligence, as if trying to decide whether or not to attack them. The teeth were small but clearly visible, as the creature’s mouth was not quite closed. About those teeth, Patty said that there were “a LOT of them.” . . .

She told me that the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vane” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.