Claude Schaeffer collected
several accounts from the Blackfoot Indians of Alberta, Canada, and
in the state of Montana. In 1879 Mary Jane, daughter of Red Paint,
and her husband (a white man), witnessed four giant birds on the
Chief Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana.
In 1897 Big Crow
and his wife saw a large bird with a feathered collar and a bald head
soaring over the Southern sector of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation.
The most recent sighting dates back to 1908.
Many researchers
recall to have seen the photograph of a Thunderbird hanging on the
outside of a barn with some cowboys posing near it. It was about
1880. It seems that this photograph was published in a magazine of
the Old West in 1960, but nobody today has managed to find a
copy.
Karl Shuker believes that perhaps people might have been
confused with an old picture of a Marabu stork
(Leptoptilos Crumeniferus)
that three African men were holding with the wings outspread.
Mark
Chorvinsky however discovered a news about two rancheros
of the Huachuca Mountains, Arizona who had allegedly shot a huge
winged monster. The article was published on the Tombstone Epitaph in
1890, but showed no photograph. Chorvinsky believes that the lost
photograph belongs to Hiram Cranmer from Hammersley Fork,
Pennsylvania. Cranmer claimed to have seen a Thunderbird in
Pennsylvania in 1922.
The
story of the “lost photograph” is perhaps the most controversial
of those related to the North American Thunderbirds. On April 1890
two cowboys had allegedly a giant winged creature which had smooth
skin, bat-like, featherless wings, and a head similar to an
alligator.. The description fits with that of a Pterodon – an
animal that was already known at the time. The two men dragged the
carcass to the village, then hung it upon the outer wall of a barn
with the wings spread, and the creature covered the whole side of the
structure. They stood next to the bird and a photograph was taken to
record the event. The picture was supposedly published by the
Tombstone Epitaph but nobody, to the present day, has been able to
find it.
Mark Hall claims that the Epitaph had actually
published the story about a large-sized flying creature being
captured (on Aprile 26, 1890,) but none has been able to confirm that
the event was real. It could be an urban legend, a sort of fictional
tale that was quite common to find in the journals at the time.
The
photograph seems to have never existed, although cryptozoologist Ivan
T. Sanders declared to have owned a copy of it, but then he lent it
to one of his acquaintances in 1960, and never saw it again.
Jerome
Clark, author of several books on mysteries and unexplained
phenomena, suggests that the fundamental description of the image –
men posing next to a winged creature nailed against a wall – is
evocative enough to implant into the minds a kind of “fake memory”
that would prompt people to “remember” vaguely about a similar
photograph seen somewhere, sometime in the remote past.
Researcher Loren Coleman wrote
about a series of sightings involving the Thunderbird which would
have occurred in the 40s.
On April 10, 1948 three people from
Overland, Illinois, saw what they initially thought to be a plane,
but after it flapped the wings, it was clear that they were looking
at something else.
Few weeks later in Alton, Illinois, a man and
his son witnessed a giant bird with a torpedo-like body flying at
least 500 feet above the ground. The creature cast a shadow as large
as that of a little passenger plane.
Similar sightings occurred
at the same time in St. Louis, Missouri. After the mayor received a
number of letters of protest, the local administration set traps on
the attempt to capture the creature, but to no avail. Those years
were the peak season for the sightings of Thunderbirds. In some cases
large footprints were found on the ground, along with other alleged
evidence of the existence these flying creatures.
Another
quite unexplained case occurred on July 25, 1977 in Lawndale,
Illinois, at 9pm local time.
Three kids were playing in their
residential park when two large birds approached and chased them. Two
kids escaped, but the third one, Marlon Lowe of 10, was taken by the
bird’s claws, lifted off the ground of about 2 feet, and dragged
away for a while. Lowe fought the beast, and eventually it let him
go.
Some thought this story was only a prank, but the way the
witnesses described the bird match with that of a Andes’ Condor, a
large black bird with a wingspan of up to 9.84 feet. However the
Condor’s claws are not that strong to take on heavy objects. The
witnesses were personally interviewed by Loren Coleman and her
brother Jerry.
The
most recent sightings of a Thunderbird occurred on:
–
October
2002, seen by residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak,
Alaska, who reported the creature having a wingspan of 14 feet,
making it the size of a small airplane;
–
Januray
2007, San Antonio, Texas, seen by Guadalupe Cantu III who said, “This
thing's all feathers, all black. Much bigger than me. It looked at
us. It had very stooped-up shoulders”;
–
May
2013, near Bryn Athen Castle, Pennsylvania. Two friends were walking
in the woods when they saw a huge black bird sitting above them on
the branches. Then it flew about 100 feet to another branch. Its
wingspan was reportedly at least 10 feet, and its overall size of
about 4 feet tall;
–
January
2018, Alaska, by a woman who was driving and described the creature’s
wingspan almost as wide as the road
The African version
of the Thunderbird is the Kongamato, or “Boats Destroyer.” It is
a creature similar to the Pterosaur that was sighted by both the
villagers and the explorer of the Mwinilunga District; in particular
the creature is said to dwell the swamps of Jiundu, Western Zambia,
as well as in Angola and Congo. The only evidence we have about its
existence are the deep wounds the victims suffered, and the accounts
of the eye witnesses.
In his book “In
Witchbound Africa”
(1923), Frank Melland describes the Kongamato as a creature living
near freshwater streams, extremely dangerous, and which often attacks
small boats and everyone who enters its territory. The Kongamato is
of red or black color, with a wingspan between 4 and 7 feet. The
Kaonde tribe pointed at the picture of a Pterosaur to identify the
Kongamato when Melland showed them a book of dinosaurs.
Ivan T.
Sanderson claimed to have encountered a Kongamato in 1930.
In
1956 J.P.F Brown, an engineer, said to have seen the creature at Fort
Rosebery near Lake Bangweulu, North Rhodesia (today Zambia.) It was
about 6p.m. when Brown spotted two winged creatures flying over his
head. Observing them, Brown noticed the prehistoric features of their
body, and estimated their wingspan in 2.95-3.60 feet wide and a
length of 4.59 feet from Beak to tail. The latter was long and thin,
the head narrow with a long muzzle similar to that of a dog.
In
1957 a patient was admitted in one of the Fort Rosebery hospitals. He
had deep cuts on his chest. He said he had been attacked by a large
bird in the Bangweulu marshlands. He was asked to draw the bird, and
he drew a creature very similar to a Pterosaur. Unfortunately the
sketch appears to have gone lost over the years. Further accounts of
Kongamato sightings come from Angola, Zimbabwe, DRC, Namibia,
Tanzania, and Kenya.
In 2016, during one of my business trips to
Nairobi, Kenya, I spoke with three local people who told me they knew
about the story of the “Thunderbird,” and that somewhere upon the
central plateau of the country, bones of a giant bird which died less
than a hundred years ago was still kept by a local tribe.