The ancient Israelites, at the time of Moses, were terrified by the fiery flying serpent that caused many human deaths. Recent investigations suggest the fiery flying serpent of the Old Testament was not actually a snake but a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. Even more recently, “pterodactyl attacks” against humans in Canada have been reported in a nonfiction cryptozoology book, Bird From Hell, by Gerald McIsaac. This author believes that many human deaths may have been caused by attacks from what some Native Americans in British Columbia call the “devil bird.”
The “pterodactyl attacks” do not seem to come just from the imagination of the author of Bird From Hell, although he displays a keen sense of imagination in his writing (not necessarily in any negative sense of “imagination”). He reports quite a few cases in which residents of a sparsely-populated area of British Columbia have been attacked at night by a large flying creature.
From the Book “Bird From Hell”
(From page 23)
This horse was not killed by a bear, a wolf, or a cougar. . . . None of these animals carries part of their dinner to the top of nearby trees, and they certainly have no reason to break branches on those trees.
Page 52 tells of an encounter between a “Devil Bird” and a “large” girl who thought that another kid was sneaking up to tease her one night:
She charged over to the misguided soul who was irritating her. As soon as she got close, she realized her mistake. It was not one of the boys, but it was her worst nightmare, a devil bird. She realized she was attacking what she feared the most. She was not the only one who was scared. The devil bird [feeling it was under attack] decided to retreat, and it did in a manner that left the girl astounded. [It] released a cloud of smoke, flapped its wings, and flew away.
After reading that page with “released a cloud of smoke,” I phoned the author and told him something of what I knew about that behavior. The mist (“cloud of smoke”) is not to hide the flying creature; it is a poisonous vapor that is very harmful if inhaled, probably used in both defense and attack. It may be the main tool the creatures have for overcoming animals (or humans) that are much heavier than they are.
How could the author have known about that behavior of some of the modern flying cryptids that investigators believe are living pterosaurs? I have written more about apparent living pterosaurs, in the past eight years, than any other cryptozoologist in the world, to the best of my knowledge, with over a thousand web pages and blog posts and several editions of two books, yet I have almost never, if ever, mentioned “smoke” or “vapor” or “mist.” Until a couple of weeks ago, I had rarely mentioned this obscure detail to anybody, and a researcher, using Google searches, could have searched for a year, doing not much else besides Google searching, without finding any reference to a modern living pterosaur ejecting a poisonous vapor (either for defense or offense). To the best of my knowledge and memory, the world’s leading expert on that narrow subject has not yet published anything on it and he still remains anonymous (I will not reveal his name). Years ago I had the privilege of talking with him face to face and listening to what he had learned from his research. During my phone conversation with Gerald McIsaac, however, I learned that the (anonymous) researcher had also spoken with McIsaac by phone (probably after reading that same page in Bird From Hell, like I had done). The “Devil Bird” may be more dangerous than McIsaac had imagined, and I told the author just that.
I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert . . . we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”
Flyover in Southern California was no Joke
An eyewitness in San Diego, California, reported to me a sighting of two large flying creatures, apparent ropens, that he and his friend saw flying overhead on November 4, 2011. I believe that this is no joke, that they were pterosaurs. I quote some of what he wrote to me (with spelling and other corrections):
It was about 8 pm. I was at my friend’s house. The sky was super clear. We were standing on the street. I was watching the stars when from the west came this large dark object overhead. As it got closer, we noticed its huge wingspan; each wing was about 10 to 15 ft. It was gliding right above us . . . about 40 yards above us [but he said, "thirty yards" later, in a phone interview]. I began yelling at it to get its attention. We actually were excited; we had never seen anything like it. Then it suddenly stopped and turned around. . . . Then . . . we saw another one above us. It was like it was waiting for the other one to catch up, then they both left east.
He sent me more information by email, and I phoned him two days ago, asking questions and assessing his credibility. His phone demeanor and answers led me to believe that he was telling the truth, with no sign of any hoax. What he said and did not say were highly in his favor, and I have enough experience (over the past eight years of interviews) to make a judgement. I hope to soon talk by phone with the other eyewitness.
The man did not say explicitly that there were no feathers on the flying creatures, but some of his other descriptions suggest that they were featherless. There was enough moonlight and they were close enough: The eyewitnesses had a good view, considering it was at night.
Pterodactyl Joke North of San Diego
Here is the big problem. In August, three months before the sighting in San Diego, somebody in northern San Diego County played a dramatic joke with a statue. Tourists and others found a giant model “pterodactyl” grabbing the body of a surfer (the statue). Now I find it can be practically impossible to get any newspaper reporter in San Diego County to take me seriously. Who would now believe that two giant pterodactyls had flown over San Diego?
Prehistoric flying creature lands on Cardiff surfer statue
. . . on Saturday, early-morning joggers, surfers and power walkers spotted the most elaborate redesign yet: a huge prehistoric flying creature, a pterosaur maybe, swooping down over the surfer, with a painted backdrop of a volcanic eruption for context. Also, small palm trees and two velociraptors.
Hoax Potential – Pterosaur Wingspan
No hoax or combination of hoaxes played any significant part in ninety-eight eyewitness accounts of apparent pterosaurs. Those reports came from decades of records, taken mostly from my own interviews and accounts given to me directly from eyewitnesses.
Two different pages on Wikipedia mention “sixty-five million.” Let’s examine both “sixty-five million copies” of a book and “sixty-five million years” since the “extinction” of pterosaurs. I believe that both ideas are mistakes.
The Alchemist, a short novel by Paulo Coelho, was acclaimed, at least before January 18, 2012, on Wikipedia and elsewhere, as having sold sixty-five million copies. I had just finished reading the book and noticed the back cover of the paperback (English edition printed a few years ago); it conflicted with what I had read on Wikipedia. I looked deeper and, sure enough, found that my suspicion was well founded, for Coelho’s own web page reveals that twenty-one million copies had been sold worldwide. I believe that the back cover of the paperback I had read was correct, that the “sixty-five million” was the total number of sales of all Coelho’s novels (not just this one short novel) up until that paperback printing of the English version of The Alchemist (a few years ago). I believe that by the beginning of 2012, about a hundred million copies had been sold of all his many books, including The Alchemist. Still, twenty-one million is a lot less than sixty-five million, and the subject of the Wikipedia page was that particular novel, not all the novels by that author. The subject now involves mistakes on Wikipedia.
On rare occasions I edit Wikipedia pages, and on January 17, 2012, I edited The Alchemist page, to correct that mistake. So why think of it? To most ordinary persons, who will never sell any millions of anything or be famous for anything, twenty-one million seems practically the same as sixty-five million. The problem lies in casual thinking: Too many of us rely on others to think for us, and we do so too often, too much, and in matters too important. I don’t expect many persons to spend half a year on mathematical calculations to test Darwin’s idea that natural selection causes small simple organisms to evolve into large complex ones (I did so with my Evolutionary Boundary), but I expect more persons to be more open-minded to the possibility that the minority may sometimes be correct and the majority may sometimes be incorrect; even the majority of biology professors may be mistaken regarding a common assumption.
I googled “sixty-five million Alchemist” (not in quotes) and saw the influence of Wikipedia. The third entry, by an online bookseller, quoted Wikipedia’s mistake (quoting Wikipedia’s paragraph as it stood before I corrected the error). The fourth entry found by Google quoted Publishers Weekly: “Sixty-five million readers can’t be wrong. The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes, and Coelho’s other books will easily carry fans . . .” At least Publishers Weekly does not look at Wikipedia when a number is critical. The fifth entry mentions twenty-one million copies of The Alchemist that were sold worldwide. The seventh entry, another bookseller page for The Alchemist, says, “It has sold more than sixty-five million copies.” (It appears that booksellers might rely too much on Wikipedia.) A brief glimpse at the second-page results from the Google search seems to confirm that Wikipedia’s influence is great, even when a number is far from correct.
Sixty-Five Million Years Without Pterosaurs?
Pterosaur extinction has been taken for granted, for generations, in Western countries like the United States. So why doubt extinction? Countless eyewitnesses, from around the world, have testified and continue to testify that this featherless flying creature still lives. Not every species of pterosaur became extinct long ago. Countless repetitions of something like “they all became extinct by 65 million years ago” (referring to dinosaurs and pterosaurs) does not prove even one species became extinct; it does not even accumulate evidence for that dogma. But increasing numbers of eyewitnesses of living pterosaurs—they accumulate evidence for life and discredit the universal-extinction doctrine.
An oblique response can lead to unintentional injury to reasoning. If a human who was bitten by a snake felt like the wound was burning, why label the snake with that sensation? It seems to me much more likely that “fiery” refers to something like fire in the animal, for that is what is being labeled: It is the animal.
In II Corinthians 13:1, we read (King James Version), “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” We now have three nonfiction cryptozoology books, three witnesses of living pterosaurs in North America. The three authors, each with his own philosophy or religious inclination, independently wrote about sightings of apparent pterosaurs in North America, even though the three books give three different perspectives. What do they have in common? They provide readers with eyewitness accounts that clearly suggest pterosaurs are not extinct but living, even in North America. How are they different? In part, they concentrate on different sources and at least somewhat on different locations of sightings.
Let’s take a glance at these three cryptozoology books about modern living pterosaurs in North America, including some key positive reviews.
Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition) by Jonathan David Whitcomb
My third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America mentions the word “Bible” only four times, for this really is a cryptozoology book, not a religious book. Nevertheless, a few sentences mention the contributions of Biblical Creationists whose faith in the Divine preservation of species has made possible their explorations and research in the hope of the discovery of living pterosaurs. But those few sentences make up less than one percent of the book. Since writing the first edition of my first book (Searching for Ropens), I have decided to keep religious ideas mostly in religious books, not in publications that are primarily of the cryptozoology genre.
Part of one of the Amazon reviews of Live Pterosaurs in America:
I couldn’t put this book down. It is absolutely fascinating to read about eyewitness accounts of the people who have seen these creatures. To learn about these testimonies from such an open minded perspective is refreshing in the extreme! . . . People should know the truth about what is going on. No one ever hears anything about this unless they conduct extremely specific internet searches, even then, information is minimal. Jonathan Whitcomb needs to write more books! (Review of second edition by StrangeDream)
Bird From Hell (second edition) by Gerald McIsaac
The author seems to have no problem with ideas about pterosaurs living millions of years ago, so I doubt that he is a Young Earth Creationist. Not every page is directly related to sightings of living pterosaurs, but the book is mostly related to sightings of apparent pterosaurs in Canada.
A five-star Amazon review of Bird From Hell, first edition:
There’s something out there and this guy knows it! Won’t be long before he finds a live specimen.
Big Bird by Ken Gerhard
Although this book is not limited to apparent pterosaurs, much of it is about possible pterosaurs in Texas. I don’t recall anything in Big Bird related to religion or the Bible, but that is not a judgement call, only an observation that living-pterosaur investigations can be done by cryptozoologists of various origin-beliefs, not just by Biblical Creationists.
One of the five-star reviews of Big Bird:
I was thoroughly intrigued by the author’s account of sightings and other evidence of the existence of these fascinating creatures. A highly enjoyable reading experience!
The scientific works of Isaac Newton are not dismissed because of his belief in the Bible; why dismiss the work of modern cryptozoologists who investigate eyewitness accounts of apparent living pterosaurs?
New Form of Living-Pterosaur Investigation
Now, at the dawn of 2012, it is becoming obvious that cryptozoological investigations of reports of living pterosaurs is no longer just a YEC quest. The eyewitness sighting reports from North America alone have resulted in three nonfiction cryptozoology books being written by three authors, apparently none of whom is a YEC Creationist, at least in the strict sense.
New Form of Living Pterosaur Investigation
Now, at the dawn of 2012, it is becoming obvious that cryptozoological investigations of reports of living pterosaurs is no longer just a YEC quest. The eyewitness sighting reports from North America alone have resulted in three nonfiction cryptozoology books being written by three authors, apparently none of whom is a YEC Creationist, at least in the strict sense.
A driver from a child care home picked up his appointed kindergartener from school one morning. As they stopped at a fast food drive-in to pick up hamburgers for the child care, little Sofia began to test the driver’s math skill. “How much is a hundred plus a hundred plus a million . . .” she asked. The driver used one hand to tally the hundreds; the other hand, the millions. Sofia was surprised that he had an answer. “How did you do that?” After learning the secret, she said, “This time don’t use your hands.”
“How much is a million plus a million . . .” she asked; it was another a long sum. This time, the driver admitted that he wasn’t sure but gave an estimate of what the total might be. When asked, “How did you do that,” he replied, “I used my head.” Little Sofia then said, “This time, don’t use your head.”
How dearly we in the Western countries need to remember to use our heads! That doesn’t mean we’re always sure of everything: We can make estimates. But from infancy, almost, we are bombarded with declarations that cannot be questioned, including high-definition television that is deaf, devoid of ears. When a preschooler turns to a parent, the response is often just a reflection, a culturally-correct answer. Why don’t we use our heads more often? Do we really have no time?
How can we question the universal extinctions of all dinosaurs and pterosaurs? No opposition allowed—that slammed the door, long ago, on common objective reasoning between opposing opinions. How dearly Westerners now need to just be aware that there is another possibility, an alternative to mindless assumptions, ideas that include lightning striking a mud puddle that creates future human civilizations!
I won’t mention the name of the cryptozoologist who criticized me a few years ago, for I’m examining a culturally-inherited fault in his own reasoning and I have no time now to praise, in worthy balance, his many contributions to cryptozoology. He appeared to question my ability to think clearly because I had done a mathematical simulation, years earlier, called “An Evolutionary Boundary.” He gave no indication that he had read anything that I had written on this subject, including my original report on my findings; he simply questioned my ability to reason well in cryptozoological matters because I had questioned standard models of evolutionary biology. But must everything be wrong that appears to contradict the most popular ideas of a particular culture? Must popular Western cultural assumptions about the origin of life be correct?
We must remember to think for ourselves and encourage others along the upward path. In most cases of human contention, neither side need be completely wrong or completely right, and when all aspects of an issue have been considered, without fear and without judgement of a participant, truth has room to break out into the open, blossoming into understanding. It’s not free; eternal vigilance is the price: Don’t forget to think.
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No hoax or combination of hoaxes played any significant part in ninety-eight eyewitness accounts of apparent pterosaurs. Those reports came from decades of records, taken mostly from my own interviews and accounts given to me directly from eyewitnesses. A minority of those ninety-eight were taken from nonfiction books (like cryptozoology books), newspaper accounts, and online reports. One key to eliminating any hoax possibility comes from fifty-seven of those reports, the ones in which an eyewitness gave an estimate of the wingspan.
In the above graph, the verticle indicates the number of sightings within a particular range of wingspans. The letters indicate those wingspan estimates, for example: b=3.25-6.25 ft. (ten sightings) and f=15.25-18.25 ft. (six sightings). Actually, this graph seems to exaggerate the three-foot-to-six-foot range, for twenty-six eyewitness estimates were from 6.25 to 18.25 feet (c, d, e, f). In another graph (below), wingspans are divided in every two feet, showing a less pronounced peak on the left:
In the second graph, the higher elevations around “e” and ”f” (8.25 feet to 12.25 feet) demonstrate the honesty of the great majority of these eyewitnesses, for hoaxers would not have inadvertantly caused the high instances of estimates that are too large or too small, according to common ideas about pterosaurs. (And it defies reason to imagine hoaxers, over several decades and from various parts of the world, giving lies about wingspan estimates based on their foresight that some future investigator would analyze the overall estimates in this way.)
If some hoaxers gave “estimates” based on standard beliefs about long-tailed pterosaurs, and some hoaxers gave “estimates” based on standard beliefs about giant pterosaurs, the graph would have shown two peaks, with a deep valley in the top graph around “d,” (“e” and “f” in the lower graph), far different from the actual data collected. The fifty-seven wingspan estimates coorelate very well, however, with the following:
A number of species of modern pterosaurs live in various parts of the world, with smaller ones outnumbering larger ones and the giant ones being rare. Eyewitnesses who estimate wingspans are generally making those estimates with random errors, for many of the sightings involve flying creatures previously unknown to those eyewitnesses, making it difficult to judge distance and size.
Wingspan Estimates Eliminate Hoax
To put it in a nutshell, the fifty-seven wingspan estimates show a fairly smooth curve downwards toward the giant wingspans, and it is far too shallow a curve to have come from hoaxers who would have tried to fool people into thinking that the hoaxers had seen long-tailed pterosaurs. The reason for that is that those Rhamphorhynchoids are commonly believed to have been smaller pterosaurs with wingspans generally less than seven feet. The statistics show something far different.
