Georgia | Live Pterosaur

December 31, 2012January 3, 2014

“Pterodactyl” Sightings in 2012

We now review sightings in 2012, although the following are only a fraction of the encounters this year. Statistics for “pterodactyl” sightings in general (for all years) include a surprising result: For those reporting the number of eyewitnesses to a sighting (85%), only 47% involved a lone eyewitness; 53% of the sightings involved multiple eyewitnesses. This suggests hallucination-contamination of reports has negligible influence, if any, on the data.

Now for some sightings in 2012 (most of them with English corrections by me):

Bioluminescent Flying Creature in Caribbean

My husband and I were on a cruise sailing from Tortola to Saint Martin [March of 2012] and my husband was sitting on the balcony around 11:30 pm and saw a glow in the sky and then woke me up to see it . . . I witnessed the flying bird glow and fly toward the ship glowing, glowing, glowing. To our amazement we were the only ones who witnessed this site and no one seems to believe us.

Pasadena, Texas

I have seen them; they look like bats but flap their wings way different than birds do… And they have a red-orange bioluminescent body… First time I spotted one was somewhere on Nov, 2011; last time I saw two of them together, a week ago [mid-March, 2012].

Sighting by Truck Driver in Oklahoma

The truck driver also noticed something at the end of the tail, what he called a “blunt end.” He could not make out any detail, but acknowledged that it could have been what other eyewitnesses describe. In other words, he was sure that there was some kind of structure at the end of the tail.

The flying creature in Oklahoma was not likely a Frigate bird, for the eyewitness examined photos of that kind of bird and told me, “not close at all.” (I had sent him a number of photos of Frigate birds.)

“Ropen” catching fish in Arizona

I was visiting Arizona [in June of 2012] and I . . . [paddled] around a lake . . . While on the lake I noticed some very large birds in the sky. I thought they were vultures at first but these birds were landing on the sides of a shear cliff like a spider on a wall. These were creatures I had never seen before. I took photographs. . . . After investigating online, I learned that I was looking at a lost creature I was watching a ropen.

These creatures were very active around dusk. They were feeding off of small fish along the shoreline. And it appeared that they lived in crevices on the cliff.

Sighting in Franklin, Georgia (unedited) — It had a long tail

Wed 18 2012 my two sons n i was traveling down Hwy 27 n Franklin Georgia around 8:15 or so in the morning…when i looked up n saw a flyin dinosaur..I was so shocked at what i was seein i started yealing to my sons to look up look up..i ask my oldest ..do u see what im seeing..n he goes..Wow..in i go what do u see..cause i wanted to make sure i could belive my own eyes n he goes..it looks like a Terradactyl…in i go…yeah it looks like a dinosaur to me too and dats my n my son story n we’re stickin to it.

Sightings in Virginia

I have recently [had] two sightings. One a couple of weeks ago [mid-July, 2012], by myself I saw two flying. Then this Sunday in about the same place, my daughter and I saw one fairly close up flying in the opposite direction. These were all seen while traveling on a highway.

The most obvious feature was the diamond or spade tipped tail, I have not found any creature that compares. My first sighting was far enough away that I couldn’t rule out man made gliders, imitation, but the last sighting moved in such away that it was highly unlikely to be fake.

Country highway in Virginia

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Whitcomb on Radio Talk Show in Australia

On September 25th [2012], I was interviewed, by telephone, by Aaron Wright of Mysterious Universe, in Australia. It was not a live radio show but was audio-edited and broadcast (or published) on a podcast . . .

May 16, 2012May 16, 2012

More Sightings Near Winder, Georgia

In the third edition of my nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America, I gave several pages to the two sightings near Winder, Georgia. When that edition of the book was published, however, the eyewitness was anonymous, and I had no knowledge of her subsequent sightings in that area. In addition, she had not yet given me permission to publish any of her sketches. Those things have changed.

flying creature roughly sketched by eyewitness Sandra Paradise

First two Sightings (from third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America)

She told me a bit about Winder and about her commute, which is about twenty-five miles through a partially forested area.

[Sandra Paradise] drove to work on August 27, 2008. She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house at 6:45 a.m., with the sky still overcast from the last remnants of the storm. I believe this weather disturbance may relate to her daylight encounter with an animal I believe to be nocturnal.

. . . 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 looked up at a “very long” tail that had a strange shape at the end.

“Dive-bombing my car,” is how she described the flight path, as it crossed the highway in front of and slightly above her. “Curved, like a hammer,” is how she described the head, which had a crest that she thought was “solid, not feathery at all.”

“The thing made perfect sense as it flew;” other eyewitness have also been struck by the gracefulness of flight [of modern pterosaurs].

[She] looked at the online page her friend had recommended and searched through online photos of herons and other birds . . . Negative. Everything about the bird photos was wrong, including the color and shape. Her friend later asked about planes; she pointed out that the creature flew under the tree tops.

Two weeks later, the lady had her second sighting: a flying creature similar to the first one only bigger. It was a little later in the morning: obviously not two identical tricks of sunlight striking a bird. Her sightings reminded me of the South Carolina sighting, by Susan Wooten, years earlier.

Hammerhead Ropen in Georgia

“. . . you don’t have to go to New Guinea. Far as I can tell, you can sit on a hill outside the town where I live in the mornings and see them. One sighting was at 7 in the morning, and one was at 9 am. Both days were overcast . . .”

More Sightings in Georgia

From an email I received from Sandra Paradise early in May, 2012

. . . it was around october of the same year [2008]. I was driving the same road, had just passed the point of my second sighting. looking ahead and up a hill I saw a flock of crows cross the road, from right to left, followed by –yep, you guessed it. The pterosaur was in perfect silouhette, wings outstretched, distinctive head in full view, pad on the tail. . . .

. . . about a year and a half ago, maybe a little more, I saw what I believe to be the same animal from directly below, traveling fast, with a distinctive, quick, 1,2,3 rest (with wings outstretched) 1,2,3, rest wingbeat. Birds don’t do that. The tail is what riveted me, you could see the shape on the end; instead of rippling along, this time it stuck straight out. . . .

With both the third and fourth sightings (above), she tried to drive after the creature, but with no luck. Having a camera on hand does not guarantee that a driver can get a good photograph while driving. Neither will parking near the sighting location cause the creature to fly back to you.

February 25, 2012March 30, 2012

Pterosaurs in the Southeastern Coastal States

Sightings have been reported in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, in addition to surrounding states.

In 2010, I received a report from a lady in North Carolina:

I was driving home from dropping a friend off at school. When I was almost home (passed the Food Lion on Commerce Rd, going towards Country Club Rd in Jacksonville, [North Carolina]), I saw something HUGE above me in the sky. It looked like a pale greenish white and smooth-skinned. It didn’t appear to have any feathers, and it had the tail with the diamond shape on the end. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I knew no one else really would. It was probably . . . 100 ft away. I just looked up the Rhamphorhynchus and it was definitely similar to what I saw. It was headed towards Highway 17 and coming from Jacksonville Mall area (flying made the route different since it could fly passed all the things we had to drive around).

South Carolina Pterosaur

It was huge, as big as a plane, and looked very similar to the sketch created by Susan Wooten on your website. . . . I saw a huge pterodactyl looking creature, flying very high in the sky. The strangest thing about the sighting was how slow the wings were flapping and how high it was flying. . . . I remember shouting “that was a pterodactyl!”, but everyone else [around me] that saw it, seemed to shrug it off in disbelief.

Pterosaurs in Georgia

. . . my 16 year old son and I both saw [something that] resembled a small pterodactyl. Very large wingspan, but the odd thing was it had no discernible feathers. My son saw it better than I as I was driving, albeit slowly. He said it was a leathery-looking skin. Pointed head, diamond shape at the end of the tail. It appeared to me that its legs were kind of pointed backward.

Sighting in Jupiter, Florida

Late in 2008, I received an email from an eyewitness in Florida:

“Maybe about six years ago I was sitting outside my house with a buddy of mine talking (it was about 2 or 3 in the morning) and all of a sudden something caught both of our attention, above our heads. It was a flying creature that flew over our heads towards my backyard (behind us over the roof of the house) it was a biege brownish color, pointed wing tips, no feathers pointed beak and what made me think pterasoar was that long pointed thing protruding from the back of its head . . .. I live in Florida so I’ve seen my share of cranes and what not, but this WAS NOT a bird. . . .”

Susan Wooten's drawing of the large pterosaur she saw in South Carolina

Susan Wooten’s amateur sketch of the “huge” pterosaur that she observed in South Carolina (it flew over a highway and into a wooded area)

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California child care

December 2, 2011

Pterosaur Sighting Extremes

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.