Expeditions in Papua New Guinea – Page 6

November 2, 2011November 3, 2011

Pterosaur News for the Beginning of November

The first news is about a new site called “Zyc Pterozaura,” which is Polish for “live pterosaur.” It’s mostly about Whitcomb interviewing the three Lake-Pung eyewitnesses. The news is not in details about that sighting in the early 1990’s. It’s the fact that a site in the Polish language is mostly about this sighting of the ropen. If you’re interested in seeing this in that language:

Zyc Pterozaura

W 2004 roku Jonathan Whitcomb zbadać wyspę. Umboi Island ma zwierzę latające. Nazywa się “ropen.” Większość świadków widać tylko światła latające. Kilku świadków było bliżej do zwierząt, że leci.

W 2004 roku Jonathan Whitcomb wywiady wielu naocznych świadków, w Papui Nowej Gwinei.

Cryptozoology Book News

The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is now published. The extra pages added since the second edition have been at the back of the appendix, but they are significant. They are about the sighting by Patty Carson in Cuba, and one page has her sketch of what is coming to be called the “Gitmo Pterosaur.”

The book has a number of related sightings that were long ago published as news in at least one or two newspapers in central California. The following is taken from the book:

I cannot prove all the accounts were genuine, for they were recorded secondhand in the early 1890’s. . . . In the summer of 1891, southeast of Fresno, several eyewitnesses reported two featherless flying creatures with wingspans of fifteen feet. Reportedly reputable residents around Reedley described the two “dragons” for the newspaper: broad heads, long bills, and large eyes. “On the night of July 11 . . . their peculiar cries and the rustling of their mammoth wings were heard as late as 10 o’clock.” Two nights later, the “monsters” were held responsible for attacking chickens, with “many of the hens being bitten in two and left partly devoured.”

It could be difficult to sort out the truth from the fiction in those 19th century accounts in the newspapers. The feasibility of modern pterosaurs living in California is strengthened by recent eyewitness reports, however. I know of some news about possible pterosaurs being sited in San Fernando Valley, just a few years ago. The sightings were at night.

October 27, 2011November 1, 2011

Dracula Vampire Conjecture

Regarding this press release, I don’t dispute this possibility for the origin of the Dracula myth in Transylvania, that it involved one or more observations of a large pterosaur standing on the ground at night. But it is speculation. Perhaps a closer examination is called for.

Tales of Dracula and Pterosaurs

The cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Long Beach, California, has written many press releases on the subject of modern pterosaurs. This is the latest, dated October 26, 2011. The full title is “Author Jonathan Whitcomb Asks if Tales of Dracula Come From an Animal.” For the company contact information, I guess few people would know what “PSL” means. It stands for “Pterosaurs Still Living.” But he does not use that URL on this press release contact box, instead using the “Live Pterosaur Media Center” home page.

The release has two sightings, both from Texas, the first from San Antonio:

We noticed something flying around across the road . . . the creature was flying just above the phone lines. It would go one direction, turn, and swoop back. The shape was wrong for any large bird of the area, and the size was much too large to be any bat I have ever seen . . . anywhere from 6-10 feet across.

The second sighting is from Brownsville, Texas, with an approximate date of 1995. Brownsville is in the most southerly portion of the state. The witness involved was a 12-year-old girl at the time.

“Next door, in the neighbor’s backyard, was what she first thought was a tall man . . . He was ‘draped in a long black coat or cape,’ facing away from her. ‘Dracula’ came to mind as GR tried to understand what she was looking at. The ‘man’ turned, and revealed a face that terrified the child: It was non-human.

The girl became confused when the thing turned its head and revealed a head like a “pterodactyl.” To make the story short, she ran into the house as the thing glided towards her. In terms of cryptozoological credibility issues, I see nothing especially wrong with anything in either of these reports. Both eyewitnesses mentioned the word “Dracula” in their reports to Whitcomb. But there is something speculative with that.

The Dracula myth about a “vampire bat” transforming itself into a human form, and visa-versa, may be different in Transylvania than is known in Texas. This means there may not be much of a connection between those two sightings in Texas and the European myth.

On another subject is a new web site that ties together the ropen sighting of a Mr. Cottingham with the “Cheesman Lights” observed in the 1930’s:

Cottingham Sighting

One night, near Lab Lab on the southeast coast of Umboi Island, he saw a flying light that lasted four or five seconds . . . The ropen light of Umboi Island has been compared with the flying lights observed by the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman in the 1930’s, but her expedition was on the mainland of New Guinea, many miles to the west. According to what she wrote in her book The Two Roads of Papua, the flying lights she observed lasted about four or five seconds.

Now that is what I call a correlation.

October 5, 2011

New Sketch of Gitmo Pterosaur

Patty Carson, as a child and with one or more other children, saw this flying creature about six years before Eskin Kuhn’s 1971 sighting, also at the Guantanamo Bay military installation. The following sketch may not be complete, for it is still undergoing revisions. In some doubt is the final color selection and the precise shape of the beak. I am very fortunate to have a connection that allows me the privilege of having access to the images.

We are indeed fortunate that Patty Carson has both a good memory and a talent for sketching what she has seen, in this case surely the same species that Eskin Kuhn saw at that same military installation in Cuba. Jonathan Whitcomb has been interviewing Carson and has interviewed Kuhn.

Carson has been clear about both the absence of feathers and the presence of teeth. That eliminates, for practical purposes, any misidentification of any bird. This sketch, in the beak and the head crest, eliminates any misidentification of any bat, even if the huge size of the flying creature is not taken into account. That leaves, outside of a hoax or hoaxes, only one logical choice: a modern pterosaur.

Regarding the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, I have already written about the hoax possibility. See below. I don’t know if anybody has disputed his 2004 expedition, insinuating that he never even traveled to Papua New Guinea. As I had written, that expedition surely took place, for reasons mentioned. If he had any inclination to perpetrate any hoax, surely he would not have taken so much trouble, and at such expense, to travel to Papua New Guinea. He would also not have returned with an admission that he never saw anything like a modern pterosaur. He made it clear that he did not even see the flying ropen light, although his interpreter saw it when Whitcomb was asleep. Surely he has not been perpetrating hoaxes.

Kongamato Pterosaur and Hoax Possibility

To find out if Whitcomb has been carrying out a hoax, we need to go back to when he first became involved. His 2004 expedition in Papua New Guinea . . . If he were carrying on a long hoax he would probably have invented a trip to Papua New Guinea as well. But Garth Guessman and David Woetzel had their expedition to the same island . . . and it was only a few weeks after Whitcomb’s . . . explorations there. The difficulty with proving Whitcomb has been carrying on a hoax, including a false expedition on Umboi Island, seems to be insurmountable when we consider that the other two Americans talked with natives who had remembered Whitcomb’s recent visit. In addition, Whitcomb videotaped many interviews on Umboi, with his own voice in the audio track of those videos.