Texas | Live Pterosaur

December 15, 2010

Enlightening the Roadblock of Car Headlights for Marfa Lights

The major roadblock to objective investigations of the mystery lights called “Marfa Lights” is not the strangeness of the bioluminescent-pterosaur interpretation; it is the dogma of car headlights as the only explanation for any lights that might be called “mysterious” around Marfa, Texas.

From the blog post “Headlights and Hard Heads Knock Marfa Lights,” we read:

James Bunnell, in his book Hunting Marfa Lights, has examined, scientifically, the various lights around Marfa, lights that could be called “mysterious.” He has listed quite a few categories. The point is that car headlights, made mysterious by night-mirage atmospheric conditions, are only one type of mystery light near Marfa. Other classifications of what Bunnell calls “ML” (mystery lights) are seen where there are no highways and even no roads. Some ML have combustion-like properties (Bunnell is literally a rocket scientist), very unlike car headlights . . .

Mr. Bunnell, years ago, installed automatic cameras on the lands where ranchers allowed it, photographing many of the Marfa Lights that flew over bushes (not on any highway). Detailed scientific analysis of those non-headlights proved them to be very different, showing things as strange as combustion-like properties, with burn-out and re-combustion during flights. Mr. Bunnell knows what he is talking about, being a rocket scientist who assisted all the Apollo missions that put humans on the moon several times.

October 12, 2010April 7, 2011

Hunting Marfa Lights Book

I now refer to an Amazon.com book review that I wrote for Hunting Marfa Lights (book by James Bunnell, published by Lacey Publishing Company, December, 2009). For the complete review, see the Amazon page.

. . . Many eyewitness reports are included and examined. This includes about three of the reports in light of the possibility of night-mirages, which are demonstrated in pictures. And there are many pictures of the lights and the equipment and much else. This is a deep study.

. . . I did not expect Mr. Bunnell to have researched the ropen light of Papua New Guinea; that would have been extraordinary, beyond reasonable expectations. But I believe that most of the Marfa Lights are caused by animals related to the ropen (apparently a bioluminescent living pterosaur). I was delighted that much of the data in “Hunting Marfa Lights” supports the ropen-light interpretation (I expect he’ll be amused at my suggestion). Some natives in Papua New Guinea have reported something like the dripping of glowing material that falls from the large ropens as they glow during flight. The dynamic pulsating glow of ropens (also the brighter flashes and more than one brightness level) relates to some observations of Marfa Lights.

I did not expect the author to consider the revolutionary idea that the splitting of one Marfa Light into two (with a bright flash) was a ropen-partner turning on its bioluminescence while close to a glowing ropen. They would be coordinating a hunt, perhaps for the Big Brown Bat or for owls or other prey.

I did not expect him to consider that the reason Marfa Lights are rare (only a few event-nights per year in the Marfa area) are because flying bioluminescent creatures in Southwest Texas and Mexico cover a wide area. They search far and wide for easy prey at night, similar to other large predators that hunt on the ground.

I did not expect him to know about the many eyewitness testimonies of ropens in Papua New Guinea. But I was delighted with his thorough examination of much data, showing the difficulties in many other interpretations. It confirmed my belief in the ropen hypothesis, for no other hypothesis seems to match the detailed descriptions of some of these Marfa Lights.

Notwithstanding my opinions about Bunnell’s research and investigations, my last communication with him, in mid-2010, should be noted. At that time, the author of Hunting Marfa Lights found my hypothesis interesting (a number of bioluminescene flying predators), but he told me about several points that he felt did not fit it. I have since found explanations for his points, explanations that would allow for a bioluminescent-flying-predator interpretation. As of October 11, 2010, however, I have not given him those counter-suggestions.

A side note: Bioluminescence is more common with sea creatures than with land creatures, notwithstanding fire flies. But there is nothing unscientific about the possibility of large unclassified bioluminescent flying creatures.

October 7, 2010December 8, 2011

Pterosaur Book About to be Published

The second edition of a nonfiction book on pterosaurs, Live Pterosaurs in America, is nearing completion, probably becoming available on Amazon in November, 2010. Several additions to this cryptozoology book make this revised edition more valuable.

Sighting in Cuba

Although the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba is not part of the United States, the 1971 sighting report of two long-tailed pterosaurs will be included in the book, for those two flying creatures were very similar to some of those reported by eyewitnesses in the United States, and Cuba is just to the south.

Although the marine, Eskin Kuhn, saw bats in caves, on other days, the two pterosaurs he saw in daylight, on one particular day, were not anything like any giant bat. They had long tails and head crests, an unusual combination according to fossil records of pterosaurs, but similar to many descriptions in reports of sightings worldwide.

Texas Pterosaur

For many years, eyewitnesses have reported live pterosaurs in Texas, and the new edition of Live Pterosaurs in America has new sighting reports from that state. Most extraordinary, one chapter, new to this edition of the book, is titled “Marfa Lights of Texas.” How do those strange dancing lights in southwest Texas relate to sightings of apparent pterosaurs? Consider these brief excerpts from the book.

Mr. Bunnell the scientist, has lived around Marfa, Texas, for much of his life. . . . (James Bunnell, apparently, knew nothing about ropens in New Guinea; he considered only Marfa Lights interpretations involving light-sources non-living. I communicated with him by emails, early in 2010.)

[His automatic camera] recorded time-exposed photographs of a light flying west . . . The light resembled rapid on-off states of chemical combustion: starting to burn, almost dying off, then starting up again, with occasional outbursts of greater intensity. Nothing in Bunnell’s description of this event contradicted what might be expected of a ropen-like flying creature periodically secreting something that causes extreme bioluminescence.

On May 7th and 8th, 2003, extraordinary events were photographed . . . I was intrigued at Bunnell’s description of how those two lights behaved, for it seemed consistent with my hypothesis that Marfa Lights are made by flying predators with extreme bioluminescence like the ropen of the Southwest Pacific but used for a different purpose: to attract insects that attract the Big Brown Bat.

Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, nonfiction

The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America was published early in November, 2011: updated and with a wonderful new sighting report from Cuba. Buy your own copy of this incredible nonfiction cryptozoology book.

September 7, 2010February 22, 2011

Sightings of Marfa Lights in Texas

Marfa Light Introduction

Specific sightings of mysterious Marfa Lights, in southwest Texas, deserve notice here. Not all sightings of apparently strange lights around Marfa need be from the same source, of course; not all of them need be actually mysterious (I believe that some of them are the bioluminescence of a flying predator: a species of live pterosaur, maybe similar to the glowing ropen of Papua New Guinea). But the strange appearances should receive more attention, for investigating those lights may result in an important discovery.

Marfa Lights and Ropen Lights (blog post by Jonathan Whitcomb)

(ML photographed in 2003) . . . The flying light appeared to have “on and off states as well as occasional bursts to brightness.” He concluded that it had “the appearance of chemical combustion including at least two re-ignitions and step changes in brightness.”

. . . in 2004, the American cryptozoologist David Woetzel witnessed a strange light flying to the mountains near Lake Pung. . . . “shimmering around the edges.” Other eyewitnesses of the horizontally-flying ropen light have mentioned a pulsating appearance.

The Marfa Lights (qsl.net)

Robert Ellison came to Marfa in 1883 . . . He then drove [his cattle] herd . . . and on the second night out, while camped just outside Paisano Pass, he saw strange lights in the distance. . . . Mr. Ellison searched the countryside by horseback. He finally realized that the lights were not man-made. Other early settlers assured him that they too had seen the lights and had never been able to identify them.

Marfa Lights Seen With Binoculars (testimony of the scientific researcher-investigator Ed Hendricks)

Car lights could easily be discerned by their regular motion and color. Other lights would suddenly appear, move slightly, split into multiple lights, and show a distinctly different color and motion. They were not at all head lights.

Handbook of Texas: Marfa Lights

Mrs. W. T. Giddings, who grew up watching the lights and whose father claimed he was saved from a blizzard when the lights led him to the shelter of a cave, considers the lights to be curious observers, investigating things around them.

In recent years the lights have become a tourist attraction. The Texas State Highway Department has constructed a roadside parking area nine miles east of Marfa on U.S. Highway 90 for motorists to view the curious phenomenon. [Marfa Lights Viewing Platform]

Marfa’s Legendary Lights (by Lee Paul) Includes a fuller account of the 1883 sighting and investigation by Robert Ellison (although he seems to have been a cowboy rather than a scientist)

All day, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains and the mesa between their camp and where the lights had been. They found no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. No tracks, no doused campfires, no nothing. But the next night and the next after that, they again saw the strange lights. Cowboys kept seeing the lights night after night, week after week, and year after year. All attempts at identifying them went fruitless. . . . the cowboys finally decided the lights were [not from people] . . . calling them “ghost lights.”

The Marfa Lights — a Mystery (by Rosemary Williams; related by an email from Janet Christian)

“Well, I first saw the Marfa Lights in 1916, when I was teaching school in Presidio,” says Hallie, who has lived in the Big Bend country for most of her 95 years. “Every time I’d go home to Alpine, I’d have to wait until school was out, and it would be nighttime when I would pass by the Chinati Mtns. That’s where the ‘mystery lights’ would appear,” she says.

The Marfa Lights Mystery of Texas (part of report by Zeke_D)

. . . there is a separate and unique light phenomenon in the area of the Chianati mountain range that I can not explain. Balls of light sitting in a chico bush, atop a small pile of rocks or on the foundation of a removed radio antenna spitting streamers and shifting color from yellow to purple and red, a few flashes of yellow streamers and the light blinks out. The lights in the washes and gulleys that you can only see shadows from really get my heart pumping. I want so much to see what they are doing. Normally you just wait and a few will pop out in plain sight. The color changes and lightning like tendrils are very neat to watch. One I really enjoyed watching moved straight up a cliff face and then rested on top of the mountain changing from bright yellow to a dim red then blinked a couple times and was gone.