Cuba – Cryptid Eyewitness

October 22, 2018

Important Ropen Sightings

A significant number of the eyewitnesses of ropens have given their real names, and most of them are still living, as of early 2018. Here is a list of sightings of these long-tailed modern pterosaurs, although this is only a partial list of the more important encounters, by eyewitness name, or by place if the eyewitness is anonymous:

Patty Carson

Her sighting was in 1965, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when she was only about six years old. She immediately tried to tell her family about the flying “dinosaur,” but they did not believe her . . . at least not at first. Within about a year or so, however, her sister saw what may have been the same species of pterosaur, and her older brother also had a sighting.

Brian Hennessy

In recent years, he has worked as a psychologist, making it less likely that he had any mental health problem when he saw the large long-tailed flying creature on Bougainville Island, New Guinea, in 1971.

Keep in mind that Mr. Hennessy did not use the word ‘pterodactyl’ while reporting his sighting to Whitcomb in 2006, but on the other hand he did not say anything that contradicted the possibility that it was a pterosaur.

Duane Hodgkinson

With his army buddy next to him, this American saw a “huge” “pterodactyl” in a jungle clearing just west of Finschhafen, New Guinea, in 1944, after all the Japanese military had left that area. The wingspan he estimated as similar to that of a small private airplane.

Gideon Koro

This native of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, was interviewed face-to-face by Whitcomb in 2004, in his village. He estimated the length of the tail of the ropen at seven meters. It was obviously no fruit bat. Gideon was one of seven boys who had hiked up to the crater lake Pung around late 1993 or early ’94. This sighting, by seven boys, was in clear daylight, as the ropen flew over the surface of Lake Pung.

Eskin Kuhn

This U.S. Marine saw two “pterodactyls” flying together at close range to Eskin and at fairly low elevation, in 1971, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Being a talented artist, he commenced sketching, from memory, those two long-tailed pterosaurs, within minutes of the sighting.

Lakewood, California (two eyewitnesses)

Two sisters each had a sighting of a long-tailed dragon-like flying creature, near the same backyard. Their sightings, however, were made with each sister unaware of the other’s encounter, and these views were in different years.

Sandra Paradise

This young lady saw a huge “pterodactyl” that flew in front of her car, while Sandra was driving east of Winder, Georgia, early one morning in August of 2008. She was shocked but quickly phoned a friend to report what she had encountered. She later reported her sighting to Whitcomb

Perth, Australia (two eyewitnesses)

In December of 1997, a couple was taking a walk between two residential neighborhoods, well into the evening, when they saw an approaching flying creature. Even at a distance, it looked huge. As it flew closer, it became obvious that it was indeed gigantic.

The husband, who was a scientist, estimated the wingspan to be between 30 feet and 50 feet. The tail was very long and the creature appeared to have no feathers. It may have had fine hair or small scales, but it was too difficult to make that out completely.

Susan Wooten

This young lady was driving on a major country highway in South Carolina, around 1986, when a huge long-tailed featherless creature flew in front of her car. She was shocked, as a number of drivers in other cars pulled over to the side of the highway.

Sketch by the eyewitness Patty Carson (sighting in Cuba in 1965)

A blog post by the investigative journalist Jonathan David Whitcomb

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New book on eyewitnesses (children & adults) of living pterosaurs

I quote from this nonfiction book, although this is a preliminary form of these sentences in this book, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur [long-tailed ropen in Cuba]

Press release: living pterosaurs in North Carolina

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of nonfiction cryptozoology books, has suggested that flying creatures reported in Raleigh, North Carolina, over several years, may be related to what Americans in other states have reported to him over the past fourteen years.

Ropen sightings in the USA

The author Jonathan Whitcomb looks into a storm channel in Lakewood, California, near where a “dragon-pterodactyl” was reported to have flown in mid-2012.

Live Pterosaurs for Kids

Patty Carson was about six years old when she and her brother saw this animal. Patty is grown up now. She is a good artist and drew this picture of what she saw . . .

Pterosaur encounters in the United States and around the world

I, Jonathan David Whitcomb, proclaim that not only are not all species of pterosaurs extinct but more than one species is living, and they range in extensive areas of the planet. During the past fifteen years, I have received reports of apparent living pterosaurs from six continents, most of which reports were directly from the eyewitnesses themselves. [Direct accounts were received by Whitcomb from five continents.]

Nonfiction books about the ropen

From the author: “Both nonfictions include the two sightings in Cuba, encounters by Patty Carson (1965) and Eskin Kuhn (1971), both of which were at Guantanamo Bay. [The books referred to on this site are Searching for Ropens and Finding God and Live Pterosaurs in America.]

Not all pterosaurs are extinct

Many species of pterosaurs have lived on this planet at some time in the past. What evidence is there that all of those species have become extinct? NONE!

May 5, 2014November 5, 2014

Pterosaur Sightings in North America

pile of nonfiction books: "Searching for Ropens and Finding God" - by Jonathan Whitcomb

Reports of living pterosaurs, also called pterodactyls, come from many parts of the world, including North America. Let’s examine just a few of the many reports from this continent, using the nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God as the major reference.

Page 87 of the book (Jonah Jim’s sighting on Umboi Island)

Although this sighting was in the southwest Pacific, rather than in North America, it ties together the pterosaur appearance and the apparent bioluminescent glow of at least some of these strange flying creatures.

During an outdoor family gathering one night, this young man saw the ropen not as a vague, distant light but as a creature—close. In addition to the glow, he saw the long tail. I recorded no notes, for his description resembled Gideon’s, but later I would realize how important was Jonah Jim’s testimony: The glow that flies around at night is the same kind of long-tailed creature seen by Gideon and his friends. We had assumed that; now direct eyewitness testimony made it obvious.

Now let’s look at North America:

Page 165 (sighting in Canada)

. . . across the river from Detroit, in April of 2012, about one hour after sunset, a man saw something like a flying bat, but it was six times too big and it had a long tail. He sent me an email just a few hours after the sighting—I’ll call the eyewitness “DK.” He impressed me with his objectiveness: During our email exchanges, he kept searching for some way that he might have misidentified a non-ropen for what had looked more like that cryptid than anything else.

Page 163 of the book (encounter in Mexico)

I received the following Youtube message in 2007:

“ok. we are from Guadalajara jalisco in mexico… my inglish its a little bad… here in Guadalajara are ‘la barranca de huentitan’ search in google , its a canyon…

“at that time she lived near the site… she was with her mom at dusk, the two frightened by what they saw, just describe it as something very large and with a long tail it was flying in circles not far from them, she said that gave them a lot of fear and they get in to his house, obviously was not a bird or anything they have seen before, and what they remember most is a long tail, shaped diamond at the end.”

Page 183 (sighting at night in Virginia)

“I was seventeen at the time of this encounter. It was very late at night . . . I have no plans to be held in ridicule by my family, friends or the general population for that matter. I would REALLY like a logical explanation for what I saw . . . in the summer of 1999. [I’m] open to the possibility that there is another explanation . . . it was certainly not in my imagination, as there were two of us who saw, felt and heard something that night.

“I went swimming with a friend at a local reservoir where there was a tree with boards nailed into it for a ladder and a plank for a diving board. . . . located in the back of a U-shaped inlet . . . My friend went back there along the edge of the waterline trying to locate [the tree]. . . . I was standing straight up in the middle of the U section with the water about as high as my hips . . .

“It came from the direction of the moon and . . . all I saw was its silhouette. I could see it was big even before it was close. . . . [It] mostly glided but it came very fast. “I have not before nor since ever been so petrified in my life. . . . I felt incapable of moving my legs. I just stood there, facing it until it literally got about 20 to 30 feet away and it ‘stopped’ and hovered . . .

“The wings were somewhere between 15 and 20 feet wide . . . bat shaped without feathers, the head’s silhouette looked like a point . . . but what I was looking at more than anything else was its large, sharp talons. Right before it started hovering, in those few seconds I had, I thought it was going to pick me up.”

From the size of this nonfiction book, Searching for Ropens and Finding God, it has been labeled “the Bible of modern pterosaurs.”

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Five Eyewitnesses of Pterosaurs in Cuba

. . . four kids, in three separate sighting encounters, saw a large flying creature that was most likely the same species as the two that would be seen in 1971 by the U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn.

Sightings of Pterosaurs in and Around Kentucky

Last July, I was visiting my friend at his home. It was just a little after sunset, so it was still daylight outside. . . . We were outside, sitting on his deck . . . My friend shouted . . . ‘what in the blue h*** is that?’ Approaching us from the east . . . were two very large animals. . . .”

St. Louis and North Carolina

. . . something HUGE above me in the sky. It looked like a pale greenish white and smooth-skinned. It didn’t appear to have any feathers, and it had the tail with the diamond shape on the end. . . . I just looked up the Rhamphorhynchus . . .

May 17, 2011June 27, 2011

Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaurs in Cuba

Fossils of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs in Cuba is not news; but in the twentieth century, corroborating eyewitnesses, with sightings about six years apart, in the same area of Cuba, observing the same apparent species of long-tailed pterosaur—that is news.

A few days ago, I had a long phone conversation with a registered nurse who lives in California. She feared for her life one day when she was a child at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The creature had small teeth but many of them, and when it stood up, it was about as tall as a man. The long tail with a diamond at the end—that made the featherless winged creature very unlike any bat; the teeth made it very unlike any bird in Cuba, indeed very like any bird anywhere.

When the child tried to tell her family about the “flying dinosaur,” they disbelieved her; after all, she was only a child. But six years later, in 1971, the U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn was stationed at that same base at Guantanamo Bay, and he saw, in clear daylight, two “pterodactyls,” at close range, flying together, and Kuhn was no child. He immediately sketched what he remembered—he was a talented artist—making public his encounter. I interviewed him by phone, last year, and found him to be highly credible. I have no doubt that he saw the same kind of creature seen by Patty Carson, perhaps one of them being the same identical creature as the one the child had seen.

I think it timely to refer to several resources on modern living pterosaurs.

Flying Dinosaur

From 1994 through 2009, about nine Americans have intermittently (and usually two or three at a time) visited remote islands of Papua New Guinea, searching for flying creatures: a living pterosaur. On Umboi Island, it’s called “ropen,” but it’s also known as “duwas,” and “seklo-bali.” Most of the evidence they have gathered is native eyewitness testimony.

Extinction of Pterosaurs (or non-extinction) A Reply to Glen Kuban

A flight instructor, with over 13,000 hours of airplane-flying experience, had seen, in 1944, a giant “pterodactyl” with a tail that was at least 10-15 feet long. Duane Hodgkinson lives in Montana.

Pterosaur and Ropen

Is this flying creature, seen and sketched by the U.S. Marine Eskin C. Kuhn, a ropen, like those seen in Papua New Guinea? The two that Mr. Kuhn saw were flying in daylight, in Cuba, in 1971.

In South Carolina, Susan Wooten’s sighting of a giant pterosaur was shocking. It was between Columbia and Florence, in about 1989, on a remote highway surrounded by some swamps and wooded areas.

Giant Bat or Living Pterosaur?

Jonathan Whitcomb, a U.S. forensic videographer who interviewed native islanders in 2004, reported that the “ropen” of Umboi Island is at least similar to a long-tailed pterosaur.

Many other characteristics distinguish the ropen from bats. The giant creatures that appear like Rhamphorhynchoids do not seem to hold themselves upside-down; some natives on Umboi Island described a ropen holding itself upright on a tree trunk. And ropens glow brightly at night with what at least some investigators believe is intrinsic bioluminescence.

Gitmo Pterosaur

This eyewitness of the “Gitmo Pterosaur,” Patty Carson, made it clear in her interview with Whitcomb that she did not see the head crest at first, for the creature’s head was facing her and her brother. But that perspective soon changed as the creature prepared to fly away, and Carson was then able to see the head crest. In addition, she verified that the sketch drawn by Kuhn was very similar to what she had seen, so we can take it as the same type of flying creature, seen in the same area of Cuba, a few years apart.

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Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two pterosaur species have survived, uncommon, not so much rare as widely and thinly distributed.

Read the details of these amazing sighting in many states of the U.S.: California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and many other states: Read the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America.

Nocturnal pterosaurs have always lived among us, but hidden by something. Enter now the realm of a new branch of cryptozoology, a branch overshadowed by the dogma of a “universal extinction.” How did scientists miss living pterosaurs? Get the answers here, hidden secrets about how these amazing flying creatures of the night have gone mostly unreported: Until recently, almost nobody would listen to eyewitnesses; but for the past seven years many of them have been interviewed by the author of this book.

This book of true eyewitness encounters includes details about the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sighting by Eskin Kuhn in 1971.

February 26, 2010April 7, 2010

Two pterosaurs seen by Eskin Kuhn

Kuhn's sketch of Cuban pterosaurs — Pterosaurs seen in Cuba

I gave Eskin Kuhn a surprise phone call this morning. His response (what he said and how he said it) confirmed that his account of the 1971 sighting at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was no hoax; I have no doubt that he saw what he said that he saw: two long-tailed pterosaurs flying in daylight.

Rather than repeat the entire “Out of place artifacts” web page (Kuhn told me that he had nothing to add or modify from his previous interview-comments and cryptid-descriptions), consider some excerpts:

“I was [stationed] . . . [to the] 8th Regiment (reinforced), H&S Co., 106mm recoiless rifle platoon . . . I had been in Cuba for perhaps 4 months [1971] . . . [during] a free time period, in the middle of the day . . . I was outside and witnessed the Pterosaurs.

” . . . most of the platoon was in the new barracks . . . I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight . . . I saw 2 Pterosaurs (or Pterodactyls…what’s in a name?) flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet . . . I had a perfectly clear view of them. The rythym of their large wings was very graceful, slow ; and yet they were flying and not merely gliding . . . 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 vertebrae of their backs was noticeable, mostly between the shoulders. I would estimate their wingspan to be roughly 10 feet . . . They came in from the direction of the sea and flew inland.”

The many details that Kuhn gave in his original desciption make it obvious that the creature had no feathers; his sketches also make this obvious. His composure of speech, during his phone conversation with me, was compelling: He is telling the truth.