THUNDERBIRDS - Giant Birds Alive Today

THUNDERBIRDS - IN QUEBEC, ILLINOIS, NEW YORK, PENNSYLVANIA, WEST VIRGINIA - BIGHOOT THE GIANT OWL

"BIGHOOT, THE FLYING HEAD" by MIKE SMITH

ALASKA REPORTS IN OCTOBER 2002

IS THERE AN OLD THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH?

Make no mistake, the Thunderbirds have been caught on film. In 1977 they were filmed at Lake Shelbyville in Illinois. The problem with that record is that there is no obvious scale in the images to demonstrate the true size of the birds.

For decades a search has been on-going for a copy of a very old photograph said to show a dead bird displayed beside several people. Here is the background to that search.

The legend of the Dead Thunderbird Photograph began in 1963. A single paragraph in a SAGA Magazine article by Jack Pearl told the story in these words:

"In the year 1886, the Tombstone, Arizona, EPITAPH, which helped make Wyatt Earp famous, published a photograph of a huge bird nailed to a wall. The newspaper said it had been shot by two prospectors and hauled into town by wagon. Lined up in front of the bird were six grown men with their arms outstretched, fingertip to fingertip. The creature measured about 36 feet from wingtip to wingtip."

We now know that much of this is erroneous. The EPITAPH has no such photograph so don't waste any more time looking for it there. Pearl confused this story with an incident that was reported in the EPITAPH on 26 April 1890. An exaggerated account was printed about two cowboys seeing and firing upon a large pterodactyl-like creature that got completely away. There was no photograph there either.

We can conclude that Jack Pearl did not actually see this photograph for himself. He heard about it and he wrote about it. If he had a copy it would have appeared in the SAGA article. It did not.

No such photograph has appeared in the last forty years of "true mystery" books either. Some people have memories of seeing it in one book or another. Memories can play tricks on us. There are many photographs of dead birds strung on wire fences and birds held up by hunters in nature books, and those seem to have contributed to false memories of seeing this much-discussed picture. Also, artistic reconstructions and outright hoaxes have now been published to show large winged creatures. All those images add to the possible confusion.

We are looking for a photograph published sometime before 1963. Any valid image will have to be found in that context.

Famously, Ivan Sanderson claimed to have obtained a copy of this image around 1966. He miscalculated when he loaned his copy to two young men looking into Thunderbirds in Pennsylvania. They lost it. Only those of us who have never misplaced anything are free to condemn them for this. Ivan soon found that replacing this image was not an easy task. A lot of people said they thought they had seen it, but no one could produce a copy. Decades later, this is still the case.

Is there such a picture at all? I have always held out hope that such a picture does exist and can be found. Otherwise I would not have spent hours fruitlessly searching for it in old books. I suspect that 95 percent of the people who have a memory of this image are in error. The other 5 percent could have seen a genuinely old image of a dead Thunderbird that was killed and photographed, probably in the American West in the heyday of American lumbering. If the memories of that 5 percent are correct, there will not be a lot of information about this picture where it was published. It might appear in a collection of old photographs that is simply a rare book.

What has plagued us all along is that the people who saw this old picture did not know the meaning of it at the time. Only later did they learn of the interest in finding it, and then it was too late for them to put their hands on it once again.

- Mark A. Hall

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

"Swooping Thunderbirds" artwork On Coast to Coast AM 20 July 2006 Coast to Coast AM on 30 June 2006 COAST TO COAST AM on 15 November 2005 The author of THUNDERBIRDS, Mark A. Hall, was interviewed by Dr. Bob Hieronimus in Baltimore on Sunday, February 20, 2005. You can visit Hieronimus & Company on the Internet at 21st Century Radio.com where there is a lot to see or you can go directly to order a tape of the show.

Buy THUNDERBIRDS at Amazon To the THUNDERBIRDS page at Paraview Press

The nesting sites of the Thunderbirds were once more numerous. Oiseau Rock on the Ottawa River in Quebec is one location associated with these birds. Charles M. Skinner recorded this legend about it in 1899.

"There was an eagle of portentous size that preyed on human beings when it lacked fawns and bear-cubs. They [the Indians] will show you, beside the deepest reach of the Ottawa, a cliff falling for hundreds of feet into the river, with no beach at its foot. It is Oiseau Rock, and to its top this eagle flew with a papoose, the frantic mother climbing after it and bringing the child away in safety. This, by the bye, is a legend that is common the world over."

Oiseau Rock is fully described at the following link. The story of the Thunderbirds is remembered there, though once again the eagles get the blame for the acts of other portentous birds.
All about Oiseau Rock NOW AVAILABLE

The only book on the mysterious giant birds of prey reported in modern times To buy THUNDERBIRDS at Amazon-USA at Amazon in JAPAN at Amazon in CANADA at Amazon in the UK at Amazon in Germany at Amazon in France American Indian legends tell of giant birds that carry off people and large animals. They called them Thunderbirds. Newspaper headlines in the twenty-first century also tell of such birds.

IT BEGAN ON 25 JULY 1977

LAWNDALE

LAKE SHELBYVILLE

A copy of this famous film can be purchased directly from Chief AJ. Go to this link for details.

ODIN

Reprint from Elizabethtown Post

Pennsylvania is the center of Thunderbird reports in the East. The birds have been reported there for over a century. Robert Lyman Sr. began the modern era of Thunderbird research by collecting those accounts. John D. Rasmussen, the Jersey Shore editor for the Lock Haven EXPRESS, spotlighted many reports in his columns. The frights reported there from drivers of automobiles were genuine, but the idea of being attacked was probably mistaken. The giant birds were using the draft of the automobiles to assist them in getting aloft.

In the early months of 1895 the skies were watched cautiously by the people of Webster County in West Virginia. A giant bird was seen to carry off a fawn. A sheep was carried off. One hunter was attacked from the sky. And a young girl disappeared on her way to a neighbor's home. Her tracks were found in the snow where she had turned around and around before the trail of footprints simply stopped.

A large bird was seen to have taken up residence on the inaccessible height of Snaggle Tooth Knob. That was not the first time according to one West Virginian.

"Pap" Tammen, one of the oldest mountaineers in Webster, says that he remembers many years ago, when the county was invaded by two just such birds as the one that is now in Webster, and that they had their den on Snaggle Tooth Knob just as this one has.

He says that the creatures committed all kinds of depredations on the live stock of the people in the county and that they remained in the haunts until the winter was over, when they disappeared and were never heard of again.

Even more mysterious are the Giant Owls that the American Indians also knew. They have made news in modern times as "Mothman" in Ohio and West Virginia. Learn more about Bighoot the Giant Owl in THUNDERBIRDS: AMERICA'S LIVING LEGENDS OF GIANT BIRDS by Mark A. Hall from Paraview Press.

Bighoot has not had the attention given to Thunderbirds. A rare period of notoriety took place in the 1960s. The nighttime activity of giant owls was reported as appearances of "Mothman." Today's Bighoot is a nocturnal creature that does not normally disturb humans. The "Mothman" episode served to define one region along the Ohio River as "Bighoot Country."
To buy THUNDERBIRDS at Amazon

CAMOUFLAGE

Owls are known to conceal their presence by blending into their environment. Long eared owls assume a still posture and mimic the appearance of tree branches to go undetected. The result, as described by Lewis Wayne Walker, is that the body of the bird appears like a stick while the tufts of its feathers add the look of a broken end of a branch.

The giant owls, the likely descendants of Ornimegalonyx oteroi, are so big that they must mimic the appearance of an entire tree. They have been seen to rise from the ground where they would have looked like a log. Also, they have been seen to stand among living trees giving the appearance of a dead tree.

The body of Bighoot might raise the animal to a height of around five feet. With its wings furled above the head additional height is added. The look of a broken and dead tree is imparted at the top by the ends of feathers.

In this manner the giant owls are able to hide in plain sight. They can be detected but one has to have the suspicion that they might be around. The very idea of surviving giant owls is so new that people have not been looking for them.

A word of caution is necessary for anyone who wishes to look for Bighoot. These birds are formidable predators so care should be taken not to molest them. If annoyed the birds are capable of protecting themselves and doing harm to people. If left in peace the birds have shown in modern times that they are no threat to humans.

CHAWAH

Dominica is the largest and most northerly of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. A. Hyatt Verrill lived for a time on Dominica and learned from his hosts their particular beliefs about the inhabitants of the jungle on Morne Macaque, five thousand feet above the sea.

They told him of the Chawah:

EVEN MORE AWESOME THAN LE BUK WAS THE DEMON CALLED "CHAWAH" WHO TOOK THE SHAPE OF AN OWL AND PERCHED BY THE WAYSIDE AWAITING HIS HUMAN VICTIM.

INSTANTLY AT HIS APPROACH, CHAWAH WOULD SWELL TO ENORMOUS SIZE AND SEIZING THE UNFORTUNATE ONE WOULD CARRY HIM OFF TO SOME SECRET LAIR WHERE HE COULD BE DEVOURED AT LEISURE.

From MY JUNGLE TRAILS by A. Hyatt Verrill, (Boston: Page & Co., 1937), p. 122.

VULTURES STRAY INTO THE UK

Griffon Vulture in 2000 Vulture in Wales in 2006

To the March Mystery Profile - The Piedmont Path

SHADOW OF THE THUNDERBIRD by Dallas Tanner Chief AJ pens TSUNAMI TWINS

Thunderbird movie discussed at Cryptomundo.com THE GIANT CLAW also recalled at Cryptomundo.com NOTICE: Spammers have begun targeting Guest Books by posting offensive websites and lists of commercial sites into Guest Books. Removing the View Guest Book option keeps visitors from being exposed to this material. But the amount of spam introduced seems likely to kill this feature on all websites. Visitors are invited to send messages to mhall.bigbirds@att.net where anti-spamming filters are established.

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