By nonfiction-cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb
This cryptozoology book, for readers from eight to fourteen years old is titled The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. I make it clear, on the back cover and inside the book, that this is about living pterosaurs, which are not literally dinosaurs. It should be published by about the middle of November (2018).
This is not just the true-life adventure of a child who sees a flying creature: It explains how Patty Carson was disbelieved at first but gradually came to be believed, and it’s about a number of eyewitnesses, children, teenagers, and adults, who have seen these extraordinary animals.
Table of Contents inside this cryptozoology book
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Quoting part of the Introduction
This is more than a story of one little girl who saw a modern pterosaur. It’s about many persons who have seen these flying creatures: adults, teenagers, and children.
Several persons suggested that “flying dinosaur” would be a poor choice of words in the title. Pterosaurs are not, after all, dinosaurs. But when little Patty Carson ran home to tell her family what she had seen, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965, she probably said something like, “I saw a flying dinosaur.”
Quoting from the last chapter: Conclusion
The first discovered pterosaur fossil examined by a Western scientist was in 1784, when Benjamin Franklin was still alive. Other fossils were discovered, yet none of the scientists were able to connect those remains of pterosaurs with any living animal. It looked like those pterosaur fossils must have come from animals that had become extinct.
Yet we can look closer. We now know about many kinds of animals now living. Some of them, however, were not known to any Western scientist in the year 1800. Let’s consider some of those animals, just a sampling . . .
Nonfiction for middle-grade and early-teen readers
As with most of my nonfiction books, this one [The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur] shows readers evidence, albeit mostly cryptozoological, for recent “dinosaurs” or pterosaurs.
What a wonderful world we live in, a planet that provides for so many forms of life! For many human cultures and in many periods of history, people have had no difficulty in believing in flying dragons [modern pterosaurs].
Regarding a live “pterodactyl” at the Guantanamo Bay military installation in Cuba, the eyewitness Eskin C. Kuhn has recently sent me a letter that puts his report in clearer perspective.
It was good of you to call and tell me about the woman [Patty Carson], who as a girl of six witnessed a very similar species of pterosaur in so close a proximity to my sighting. I can well imagine that a young girl would have been terrified at such an encounter . . .
I really tried to “cram” my study at that time [his 1971 sighting of two pterosaurs in Cuba], focusing on details as well as taking in the overall form and motion of the pair in flight. I tried to memorize the details that would enable me to commit them to paper in a sketch so as to accurately define the creature. . . . the long strands of hair in a tuft at the end of the tail (a brush, not flesh covered as the rest), and that detail has become muted by the many copies of the drawing, the original newsprint type coarse paper . . .
. . . this morning I turned the corner at the base of my property and headed up the hill and saw a relatively familiar sight . . . a Great Blue Heron in flight. . . . The Heron in flight would make many a person wishing to see a pterosaur think they had. It’s great wings, short body, long heavy beak and crooked neck, prow-like chest and very long legs trailing behind with curved toes resembling a tail . . . it puts you in mind of such creatures as pterosaurs . . . unless you have actually seen pterosaurs. Then the differences are dramatic.
The fellow across the road from me once had the arrogant temerity to tell me that what I had seen in Cuba was a “Frigate” [bird]. He had owned property . . . in the Caribbean and assumed he was therefore expert on all the flora and fauna. What I saw looked nothing close to a frigate. Is it any wonder that more people don’t talk about such things?
Summary of Kuhn sighting of 1971
It was a beautiful, clear summer day . . . I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. It mesmerized me! I saw two pterosaurs (or pterodactyls, what’s in a name?) flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them.
The rhythym of their large wings was very graceful, slow; and yet they were flying and not merely gliding . . .
Pterosaurs in Cuba in 1971
The pterosaurs I saw had the short hind legs attached to the rearwardmost part of the wing, and they had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end. The head was disproportionately large, with a long crest at the back, long bill, long neck with a crook in it. The chest of the creatures was similarly prominent, protruding forward like the prow of an old ship.
The vertebrae of their backs was noticeable, mostly between the shoulders. I would estimate their wingspan to be roughly 10 feet. . . . I rotated back to the States not long after that; and for the rest of my tour I never saw them again. — Eskin C. Kuhn, U.S. Marine
Child Eyewitness of a “Pterodactyl” or “Flying Dinosaur” in Cuba
Patty Carson, at about six years old, apparently saw the same species of pterosaur in Cuba as Eskin Kuhn did, only she saw the frightening flying creature six years earlier, in 1965.
. . . sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall, smelled like tar from the boatyard and sulfer from the sandy flats. There were some stagnant pools here and there, a few inches deep in the area. We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up . . . It was at about 2 o’clock [a little to the right of where they were heading] right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound, in a big hurry, more of a scramble, and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.
We went home and I was ALL excited to tell my family I had seen a dinosaur, but they all poo poo’d me and started to tell me it was a pelican or frigate bird. NO WAY! It was as tall as a man when it stood up on it haunches. It was close. It froze for a few seconds so I got a good look.
I know exactly what I saw. . . . [recently] I googled “Pterodactyl in Cuba” and I’ll be DAMNED if that guy’s drawing didn’t come up on the first page, and the word Guantanamo!!! . . . [referring to Eskin Kuhn’s sketch] I looked at his drawing, and if I had to make any changes I would make the tail maybe six inches shorter and the wings maybe 10% longer, maybe even 15%, but the proportions of the head are very good, and the body and the hind legs are exactly as I remember.
Some pterosaurs in North America glow like the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Although the sightings by Carson and Kuhm, in 1965 and 1971, were daylight encounters, those flying creatures may be mostly nocturnal, perhaps even closely related to the ones seen by some eyewitnesses to glow with bioluminescence at night.
In the book Hunting Marfa Lights, by James Bunnell, pages 270-279 contain a table with dozens of ML (mystery light) sightings with much information on dates, times, and weather conditions. The recent excitement on some blogs comes from a recent enlightenment centered on the dates July 14-15, 2006 (Texas time), in particular on the times that those mystery lights first appear each night: Thirty-eight and thirty-seven minutes after sunset respectively. This now seems extremely significant.
Nonfiction cryptozoology books on living pterosaursinclude Live Pterosaurs in America, now in its third edition. This is the leading seller in this narrow field of nonfictions. In the appendix is recorded more in relation to Kuhn’s sighting in Cuba, many years ago:
Did Abyssal the blogger believe there was no such person as Eskin Kuhn, that not just pterosaurs but the U.S. Marine himself was unreal? Then why include a link to a long web page that contains over 800 words of text, the words of Eskin Kuhn himself? That page also includes photos, including one of Kuhn, on the military base, holding a rifle. For those who have seen that page, belief in that young man’s existence is easy, even if belief in the existence of modern pterosaurs is hard. But still Abyssal apparently doubted Kuhn’s existence, for why else would he (or she) write so little about this account, yet mention that “Eskin Kuhn” was spelled differently on other web pages? It makes the marine seem unreal.
At least within the realm of cryptozoology, the 1971 sighting by Eskin Kuhn, of two long-tailed pterosaurs, has been recently supported by another sighting around 1965, by Patty Carson of California. Both sightings were at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (“Gitmo”), which is maintained by the United States. Much has been written about the Kuhn sighting, so I’ll now concentrate mostly on the earlier sighting. (I learned about the 1965 sighting a few days ago.)
Patty was only about six years old when she and her younger brother were walking home on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. I’ll let Patty’s words tell much of this account.
We lived at the end of the road, last house, by the radio tower. We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . . There were some stagnant pools here and there, a few inches deep . . . We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed.
[It was] about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound, in a big hurry, more of a scramble . . .
Patty did tell me, in a phone conversation, that the creature looked at them with apparent intelligence, as if trying to decide whether or not to attack them. The teeth were small but clearly visible, as the creature’s mouth was not quite closed. About those teeth, Patty said that there were “a LOT of them.”
The two children had no inclination to see what was at the place where the creature had been sitting; they ran home and told the grownups that they had seen a dinosaur that had flown away. They “started to tell me it was a pelican or frigate bird. NO WAY! It was as tall as a man when it stood up on it haunches.”
In our phone conversation, Patty explained to me that she was a very intelligent child and that the encounter was ingrained in her memory. She told me that the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vane” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.
Read the whole blog entry (it’s short) and you’ll find not a milligram of evidence for any hoax. It seems to be just another case of a critic ridiculing a concept because it is supported by persons who have the label “creationist.”
I have interviewed Eskin Kuhn (early 2010) by surprising him with a phone call; he had no time to prepare how to respond. The first thing he said to me was something like, “It was a long time ago.” He confirmed that the desciption he gave of the two apparent pterosaurs was an honest report of what he had seen; in early 2010 he had nothing to add, subtract, or change. I was moved by the high credibility of this man . . .
Very recently another eyewitness, a lady living in California, has come forward, supporting the U.S. Marine’s testimony with her own sighting report. Patty Carson observed a single pterosaur, about six years before the sighting by Kuhn, but was disbelieved for decades and unaware that anyone else, other than the ones with her at the Guantanamo Bay installation in around 1965, had seen anything similar.
Consider those eyewitness accounts in which apparent pterosaurs appear to glow at night. Some of those sightings are in North America, and those flying creatures may be related to the ones observed in Cuba.
When a group of intelligent predators has a successful hunt, they may, on the next day (or the next night for nocturnal predators) repeat what was recently successful, assuming the hunting conditions are similar. Applying this to the hypothesis mentioned so often recently (a group of scientifically-unclassified nocturnal flying predators, having bioluminescent capability, hunting, on some nights, around southwest Texas), we would expect to find a few consecutive nights with ML activity and maybe even with a similar start time for the appearances. This has been found and published by James Bunnell, although he has not yet admitted the plausibility of my hypothesis, at least not to my knowledge.
Sightings of long-tailed pterosaurs in Cuba need to be taken in the context of many sightings of pterosaur-like flying creatures in North America.
Regarding the sighting reported by Eskin Kuhn (two pterosaurs flying in Cuba in 1971), according to one blog writer, “The claim is a hoax. I no longer have the patience for dealing with creationist-related debunkings and I have no intention of actually writing up one for this topic.” But read the whole blog entry (it’s short) and you’ll find not a milligram of evidence for any hoax. It seems to be just another case of a critic ridiculing a concept because it is supported by persons who have the label “creationist.”
I have interviewed Eskin Kuhn (early 2010) by surprising him with a phone call; he had no time to prepare how to respond. The first thing he said to me was something like, “It was a long time ago.” He confirmed that the desciption he gave of the two apparent pterosaurs was an honest report of what he had seen; in early 2010 he had nothing to add, subtract, or change. I was moved by the high credibility of this man who has, since his 1971 sighting, been doubted by some critics. But I found strong indications that there was no hoax.
Let us recognize that much ridicule against living-pterosaur investigations has, at its root, a controversay regarding origin philosophies. Those who ridicule the researchers and interviewers often do so because they have adopted a different life-origin paradigm, very unlike that of creationists.
