ropen – Page 4 – Modern Pterosaur

December 25, 2014March 28, 2016

Missing People and Pterosaurs

comparing a very big fruit bat with a big ropen pterosaur

Some of the strangest missing-persons cases may relate to a few individual animals of one species of ropen in North America, according to what I have read so far in the book Missing 411 Western United States & Canada, by David Paulides.

Please keep in mind that I have read nothing that even hints that Mr. Paulides has considered the possibility of large modern pterosaurs in regard to any disappearance of any missing person. I take full responsibility for the following model, and the evidences, so far, are circumstantial, for such attacks in the forty-eight contiguous states of the USA.

Model of a Ropen Attack (Theoretical)

When a person is alone in a wilderness area in the United States, a large hungry ropen may attack, subduing the human by a mist or vapor that is debilitating when inhaled by prey. This may explain why human victims, when found alive, are asleep or unconscious or in a state that rescuers may describe as “confused” or “disoriented.”

The ropen may grab the person by the coat or pants or shirt or even by the shoes. That is why the body or living person found by rescuers has such clothing missing. It also explains why such clothing is found in other locations and why the pants are sometimes found inside out. The victim falls out of the clothing sometimes but not always.

The ropen flies away with the human victim but not high above the ground. Why not high? It would take more energy and time to ascend high above the ground. This explains why tracking dogs sometimes cannot find a scent and when they do track, it’s only for a limited distance, for the victim may have had limited contact with bushes or even the ground, during the low-level flight.

This low-level flight also explains why people nearby do not see the victim being carried away, for the abduction is obscured by trees or vegetation or by the hills surrounding the creeks or creek beds that ropens use for navigation.

When a body or living victim is found by rescuers, scratches may be found on the person. Those are from the claws or talons of the ropen. When scratches are absent, the victim was fortunate the creature had been holding onto the clothing only or the shoes only.

Falling out of clothing/shoes also explains why living victims may be found in bushes like berry bushes: The fall was cushioned by the vegetation. Remember it’s low-level flight.

This model also explains why children, even toddlers less than three years old, are often found miles away from where they disappeared. Two-year-olds do not climb high mountains and hike many miles across barriers like a river or a fence or a steep cliff. They are carried over all those obstacles through the air.

Some ropens are large enough to be dangerous to people

Sketch by the eyewitness Patty Carson: a flying creature seen in Eastern Cuba

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Missing Children

The case of missing-child Garrett Bardsley has barely enough evidence to even mention in regard to potential attacks from a North American ropen. But even if only one child can be saved from being a victim, it will be worth all the efforts we can muster.

Missing Persons – Coast to Coast

David Paulides was interviewed on Coast-to-Coast on May 18, 2014

“Pterodactyl Attacks”

. . . it brings to mind native accounts from Papua New Guinea, but this is far closer to home, in British Columbia, Canada. For many years, there have been reports of people being attacked in Africa and in Papua New Guinea. I have only recently noticed this news about flying creatures attacking people in British Columbia at night.

September 5, 2014

Ropen Q & A – Modern Pterosaur

Hodgkinson described the field of tall grass where he and his army buddy saw a huge "pterodactyl" (ropen) fly up into the air

Questions and Answers About the Ropen

I just got an email from a reader of my digital nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The man’s questions deserve answers but for everybody, not just this one reader.

Q: In your ebook, the Ropen is almost always described consistently throughout witness testimonies. Are there variations across the region (for example, different behavior, coloration, etc.)?

A: The reader probably refers to the southwest Pacific, including Australia and Papua New Guinea. Even within that geographic area, how deep is this question! We do not yet have enough eyewitness reports to determine variations of species of the long-tailed featherless flying creatures that we call “ropen.” The Perth creature may be a different species than the ones observed by Duane Hodgkinson (1944) and by Gideon Koro (~1994), based upon the apparent differences in rations between wingspan and length of tail (as well as beak-to-tail-end length), but even that is uncertain; different eyewitnesses have different abilities in estimating sizes, even if they all had the same perspective on the flying creatures. Even the capture of several flying creatures would be only the beginning in answering this broad question.

Q: Is it possible that Ropen present sexual dimorphism (color variation between genders, males possessing larger crests/tail diamonds, etc.)?

A: Another difficult question. This may take many years to answer adequately, for we need many detailed photographs and videos, even after we obtain captures animals.

Q: Have [ropens] ever been observed interacting with other animals?

A: This is easier, at least for those few reports that include observations of potential ropens that are catching (or trying to catch) prey. Yet many of these are in North America rather than in Australia or in Papua New Guinea. Many of those reports suggest at least some ropens in North America hunt birds. See the appendix of the most recent edition of Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

Q: Are there accounts of [Ropens] attacking humans?

A: Some areas of the earth have reports of attacks on people, including a valley in British Columbia (Canada) and in Papua New Guinea. I suspect that most of the real attacks have been from rogue ropens, a few creatures that were suffering from something that prevented them from obtaining normal prey.

We should define “attack” here. I leave out those cases in which an apparent pterosaur may have stopped a potential attack after discovering that the intended prey was human. This appears to have been the case with a teenager in Virginia (late 20th century) who encountered a huge flying creature that stopped its predatory dive about twenty feet short of the girl; that was in the dark of night, except for the moon light.

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Ropen Eyewitness Interview

In this Youtube video, Garth Guessman interviews the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson, who witnessed a huge ropen take off into the air in 1944 in New Guinea.

Ropen of Papua New Guinea

“Several Americans have investigated reports of what natives of Umboi Island call ‘ropen,’ including three pioneers. Jim Blume, a missionary in Papua New Guinea for decades, interviewed dozens of native eyewitnesses of pterosaur-like creatures. . . .”

Rhamphorhynchoid Ropen

Around 1965, Patty Carson saw a similar creature at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She drew a sketch of the featherless long-tailed “dinosaur.” A few years after her sighting, the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn saw two “pterodactyls” flying in from the sea at Guantanamo Bay.

June 18, 2014June 18, 2014

Book About Ropens

"Searching for Ropens and Finding God" - front cover - non-fiction book

This book says very little about “finding God,” but boy it says a lot about “searching for ropens.” It’s 354 pages long, yes that’s a long book. Don’t bother even opening it, if you get your hands on a copy, unless you want to spend a lot of time reading. Once you get started, it’s really hard to put it down, and I’m just passing along what other people have said about this third edition and previous editions. I almost forgot to mention the name of the book, Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

The author, Jonathan Whitcomb, is a devout Mormon and makes no effort to cover up that fact. Yet he says more about Baptists than about Mormons, and that’s because so many Baptists have been searching for the ropens. Even so, the book is not about churches. It’s about men who have braved the steamy jungles of Papua New Guinea to get a photo or a bit of video of a ropen. The religious motivations are mentioned but not put on a pedestal. You’ll find a few pages about faith in God, but you’ll find many chapters about the ropens and about the people who see modern pterosaurs, and those eyewitnesses almost never say anything about religion. This is mostly cryptozoology.

Here is the title page:

I’ll tell you what I like best about the title page. “Working with people of other faiths” and “it soars above disputes about religion.” You won’t find much about Muslims, Jews, or Hindus in this book. It’s about Christians of different denominations who work together to find a modern pterosaur. I also like the part at the end: “Speculation that religious bias of investigators has played a big part in sighting reports of apparent pterosaurs—that conjecture has been shot down.”

I don’t mean that there’s hardly anything about religion. You’ll find some pages about that. But the meat of the book is searching in Papua New Guinea and in other countries, searching for pterosaurs.

Here is the first page of the Introduction:

I like this part about helping people avoid suicide:

After reading this book, if one person finds a reason to live and abandons thoughts of suicide, what a reward for all of us involved! This is not a textbook for preventing suicide, yet I suggest each of us can find ways to bring meaning into the lives of persons around us, motivating all of us to keep living and learning.

The book doesn’t say exactly, in so many words, how to help anybody avoid suicide. It’s not in the words exactly, but these men have endured years of ridicule and disappointment, yet they keep living and trying. It’s in their examples, never giving up hope or becoming despondent. The author suffers more failure than anybody else, if you read the book to the end. But he too keeps on going, like everything has to turn out right in the end. I guess readers can follow that example and keep moving forward in their own lives, in whatever they are doing.

New Pterosaur Book on Ropens

My first exposure to a remote tropical island with a giant reptile—when my younger sister Cindy and I were infants—came from Mommy reading Peter Pan. When I was four, the new sister was born, not to the name chosen by Cindy and me, “Captain Hook,” but to a name chosen by compromising parents: “Wendy.”

Searching for Ropens and Finding God—The perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself

You deserve a break from the ordinary routine. Treat yourself to an extraordinary true-life adventure about encounters with flying creatures that most Americans thought became extinct long ago. Find out for yourself what may fly over our heads at night.