Tag Archives: thunderbird

284 – Death From Above: When Big Bird Attacks

Gigantic birds. They’re fricking terrifying . And there might be some kind of genetic memory (or epigentic inheritance) as to why when CNN posts headlines like “Bones reveal Neanderthal child was eaten by a giant bird”. We’ve had Seth Breedlove talk about his Terror In The Skies documentary which talks specifically about giant birds in Illinois, but in this episode we wanted to widen the net.

Photo Credit: Burfalcy 2008

First of all, we recorded this episode in Alton, IL during the American Hauntings 2020 Dead of Winter event. Alton is famous not only for birthing the tallest man in the world, but for a giant scary bird mural on the side of a cliff on the Mississippi River. The “Piasa Bird”

We’ve discussed in the past where the word Piasa came from and the original Indian legends surrounding it but Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts has some really interesting research in how the Piasa bird might not have originally been a bird at all, but a very different monster of Indian legend and can even trace its origins to a very real predator. So, is the Piasa monster really supposed to be a scary giant bird? We delve in.

Then it’s time to talk about other monster bird attacks in history and actual newspaper reports and eyewitness sightings. My personal favorite is this one in Texas where you can just hear the racism dripping off this Police Captain’s words…

However this next story is a little too sad and this 1926 article about a 2 year old infant being murdered by a giant condor in Argentina was too much for even a stone heart like mine to take.

We also tell the story of our cousin who saw a Thunderbird himself in the late 80s while in a Southeastern Wisconsin hospital awaiting the birth of his first son. Here’s how he describes the size of what he saw:

In this episode, we tackle all these giant bird stories as well as coming up with a brand new Sunspot paranormal rock song.

Winston Churchill famously said, “He who controls the skies controls the war.” and as earthbound creatures, there’s something extra terrifying about being attacked from the sky. Airborne predators pick their targets from far away and swoop in to snatch their prey. The stories of these giant bird attacks are certainly arbitrary and horrifying. It makes us realize how precarious and precious our life is when we we live on a knife edge of randomness. Whether it’s cancer, tsunamis, car accidents, or gigantic condor kidnappings, we all live under the constant threat of “Death From Above”.

Scratch marks on the shoulders
clawed holes in the chest
A victim of capricious randomness
Mice under the eagle
picked off from the dirt
carried somewhere far beyond the earth

The thief in the night
that takes everything you love
There’s a killer in the sky
Death from above

Chance and serendipity
and the consequence of luck
We’re just fate and fury
Death from above

Until you’re back on solid ground,
You just can’t let it go
terra firma, illusion of control

A casualty of chaos that was
cast out of paradise
To pacify, we need a sacrifice

The thief in the night
that takes everything you love
There’s a killer in the sky
Death from above

Chance and serendipity
and the consequence of luck
We’re just fate and fury
Death from above

252 – Terror In The Skies: Hunting Thunderbirds & Truth With Seth Breedlove

My skeptical take on the Chicagoland Mothman flap has confounded some, but thankfully Seth Breedlove from Small Town Monsters decided to include an interview with me in his new film anyway. Entitled Terror in the Skies, the documentary explores historic and contemporary reports of winged weirdies over Illinois. At the time of this writing, Terror in the Skies has recently become the # 1 documentary film new release on Amazon Prime.

So why did Seth include me in his newest movie? I definitely should have asked him that question! We’ll maybe because he understands that I’m not actually a noisy negativist, as we joke about in this interview. Maybe he understands that I really care about the advancement of the paranormal field and that’s why my expectations are high.

I do expect investigators to check witness statements against basic facts. Far from excluding the incredible, vetting witness reserves an important a place for the truth, above and beyond the everyday muck. If every claim is treated the same and given the same importance, you’ve uncovered nothing but mud. It becomes nearly impossible to tell what is real and what is a hoax.

If something truly incredible has occurred, you better believe those who protect the status quo will try to hide it in plain sight. Just how do they do that? Disinformation.

Authentic phenomena may have occurred during this Chicagoland Mothman flap, but how will we ever know? How will we ever find the proverbial needle in the haystack, if the haystack itself is entirely constructed of momentarily convincing replicas, but ultimately fake needles?

Seeking an authentic needle in a haystack of convincing look-alikes? Good luck! It’s a mess!

That’s how disinformation works. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s cheap. It’s effective. And it may be what has occurred here.

Perhaps most telling is that not one supposed witness to the Chicagoland Mothman came forward to be interviewed for Terror in the Skies. Elsewhere in the film witnesses share testimony about Thunderbird sightings. Even so many years later, several witnesses still participated in Small Town Monsters’ Mothman of Point Pleasant, appearing on-camera to contributing their eye-witnesses statements. It bears remembering that over 100 witnesses bravely attested publicly to their encounters during the original 1966-67 flap.

So what could that one true anomaly in this mess of the Lake Michigan Mothman saga have been? What might at least one of the reported witnesses actually have seen?

Nearly 20 years ago I interviewed Wisconsin witnesses reporting encounters with strange creatures with impossibly large wingspans. Is history repeating itself? Might these manifestations follow a cyclical pattern? Is there a migratory route that spans Illinois, Wisconsin, and other states.

This certainly comes up in our conversation with Seth in several instances. For example, we discuss the 1977 Marlon Lowe Lawndale, IL case as well as a very similar newspaper report from 1909 in St. Charles, IL. In both cases, birds of unusual size attempt to carry away unsuspecting children playing just outside their homes.

The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin), May 3, 1909

Another example hits even closer to home. Kevin Walkowski, my very own cousin and Mike’s godfather had his own sighting in 1988. I interviewed him and contributed his story to several books including Weird Wisconsin. Kevin’s description which compared the wingspan of this massive bird to a Piper Cub plane still resonates in my memory and was echoed in a witness statement from the Illinois Big Bird flap of 1948 featured in Terror in the Skies.

Belvidere Daily Republican, April 26, 1948
Kevin Walkowski describes the size of a possible Thunderbird he spotted in the skies over Brookfield, WI in 1988. We recorded his recollections on video in 2015. I plan to make the full video available on at http://www.youtube.com/mothman. Subscribe to get a notification.

In fact, tales of such anomalies extend into the prehistory of the Midwest and can still be seen in petroglyphs and vibrant tribal traditions. Something strange flies in Midwestern skies. Keep your eyes on the skies and those patterns that repeat throughout history and we may just uncover something authentic yet extraordinary.

Watch me and Troy Taylor in Terror in the Skies. Listen to this episode. Then visit me, Mike, and Wendy Lynn at Troy Taylor’s Haunted America Conference this weekend. As usual, Mike and Wendy will be bringing the paranormal rock, and this year I’ll be speaking about Midwestern cases of poltergeists and demonic possession.

The song this week is inspired by Seth’s movie and the fantastic legends of the “Thunderbird”!

From the four winds
I’m flying
in your visions
i’m fighting
From the mountain you’ll hear my voice in the storm
voice of the storm

The battle’s harbinger
The spirit’s messenger
The cloudburst in my eye
To Honor the fallen and punish evil men
I am here to break the sky’

You can crush my bones
and you can pound my head
take me so far from home
and just leave me for dead
But when I spread my wings
with the lightning burn
I am the flood and fire
The Thunderbird

The serpent rises
I’ll attack
Terror in the skies
I’ll be back
On the horizon you might see my wings in the storm
wings of the storm

The battle’s harbinger
The spirit’s messenger
The cloudburst in my eye
To Honor the fallen and punish evil men
I am here to break the sky’

You can crush my bones
and you can pound my head
take me so far from home
and just leave me for dead
But when I spread my wings
with the lightning burn
I am the flood and fire
The Thunderbird

ROC, ROPEN, SCISSORS: TERRORS OF THE SKY

Roc, Ropen, Scissors: Terrors of the Skies

Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a bird… It’s a plane… it’s a… cryptid?

Monsters are not just confined to the woods and water. As it turns out, there are a variety of Fortean folktales about giant flying creatures that can swoop down and pluck helpless mortals off their feet and carry them off to unimaginably horrible demises. Here in the U.S., these days Mothman grabs all the headlines, but it wasn’t always so. In fact, if you counted up legends and sightings, he’d easily be dethroned from his pop culture throne by the true reigning champion of aeronautical cryptozoology: the Thunderbird.

Thunderbirds have been sighted all across the United States and North America, long before Europeans fled religious persecution in their homelands and settled here. The native tribes had many legends of these giant birds, and many descriptions as well.

If you read the blog earlier this month, you might have caught mention of winged reptiles swooping down on the surprised citizens of the Southwest in the 1970s. And then there was the tale of a young man in Illinois who was nearly carried off by a strange bird of enormous proportions, much like a scene from the movie “The Valley of Gwanji”. But there’s more to the Thunderbird and its winged cousins around the world than some amazing cinematic stop animation. Nor does the Thunderbird rule its skies—other flying creatures have struck terror into the hearts and minds of the Earthbound, all around our globe:

The Roc is a legendary winged beast from Africa and the Middle East, reported in some instances to be large enough to carry away elephants.

The Ropen is a modern day, extant dino-bird, hailing from Southeast Asia, with reports still surfacing to this day.

Here in the U.S., Illinois was once home to a legendary, chimera-like creature called the Piasa that was described as being as large as a calf with horns on their heads like a deer, a beard like a tiger’s, a face somewhat like a man’s, a body covered with scales, and a long fish’s tail.

But by far, the widest reported of all the sky terrors was an enormous bird with a wingspan far surpassing that of any vulture or condor—a black-feather avian powerful enough to lift a small child.

Before we scoff at a report like this, we need to examine whether or not it’s even possible for a feather bird to be big enough to carry a small human. Condors and Turkey vultures are definitely big enough to carry away squirrels and even small house cats, but they have a wingspan that just isn’t wide enough to hoist anything bigger than that.

That wasn’t always the case, though. Turning to the fossil record, scientists have theorized a bird that would make even the inhabitants of Sesame Street shake in terror: Argentavis magnificens. Discovered in Argentina, this giant raptor was estimated to have a wingspan up to twenty-four feet wide. How much could such a beast lift up into the sky? That is debatable, as some scientists have speculated the avian’s own weight may have forced it to run into strong winds to even get aloft. But, if we consider that the Osprey, with a wingspan of up to 26 inches can pluck a fish weighing as much as 10 ounces from the water, it isn’t that much of a stretch to consider that the Argentavis could lift something considerably larger.

If Argentavis doesn’t fit the bill, there was one other bird even larger: Pelagornis sandersi, with a wingspan of up to twenty-four feet and a head that looked more dino than dodo.

Now that we know it was at least once possible for a bird to be big enough to grab a boy, we should look for other accounts of it happening. And, terrifyingly, there are.

Reports may be few and far between less horrible bird stories, but there are tales of Stellar Sea Eagles (with only 8 foot wingspans) attacking children and carrying off small dogs. The Golden Eagle (with a slightly smaller wingspan) is also reported to have attacked children, as in this video from Kyrgyzstan

The girl attacked wasn’t carried off, or harmed all that much, but the point here is that yes, large birds will attack people—and their pets.

Years ago, I read two accounts of Eagles actually attacking children. I can’t find them now, but the first involved a Stellar Sea Eagle attacking a small child, while the second was a report of Eagles plucking babies from the huts of their parents in Africa and killing and eating them.

Sound preposterous? Not really, when you consider that a small deer can be the same size as a baby, and there’s video of Eagles flying one back to their nest and eating it:

But don’t think that means the Thunderbird (so called for the sound it’s wings make, or in some tales it’s ability to summon thunderstorms) doesn’t have a hankering for longpig.

While the Piasa of Illini Indian legends doesn’t look much like an Eagle, it was reported to prefer a Manwich over Bambi. As the legend goes, the Illini unsuccessfully tried to kill the creature, until the Great Spirit appeared in a vision to the chief Ouatoga, telling him how to kill the monster. The chief stood in a clearing, as bait, then twenty of his warriors hid and waited. When the Piasa swooped down to eat Ouatoga, it was instead riddled with poison arrows. In today’s modern age of firearms, the Piasa definitely wouldn’t stand much of a chance, nor would its fellow sky-terror, the Thunderbird.

So, where are all the Thunderbirds? Some have suggested the beasts preyed on the buffalo before it was hunted to near-extinction. Of course, they might still be here, dining on all those missing pets we hear about regularly. Looking up, into the sky, with nothing to judge its size against, it would be hard to distinguish a massive bird from just a large one—unless you happened to be flying alongside it.

G Is For Gillman: When Paranormal Life Imitates Art

On March 3, 1972, Officer Ray Shockey, of the Loveland Police Department reported seeing something truly bizarre: a large, frog-like creature, measuring 3 to 4 feet in length. This wasn’t the first time creatures like this were reported in Ohio: stories go back to the mid-1950s about 3 to 4 foot tall, bipedal creatures sighted near the Little Miami River. And, Ohio isn’t the only source of reptilian creature stories. A variety of reports exist from around the country, and the world, of upright-walking “lizard men”. But what is really interesting about these sightings is their alternatives in the world of art, or to be more specific, film.

Debuting in 1954, The Creature from the Black Lagoon impressed audiences for decades with its amazing 3D underwater photography and a creature, the Gillman (as fans call him), who was surprisingly advanced compared to other monsters of the genre. In the film, explorers (played by Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, and Richard Denning) journey to the Amazon and encounter an upright, amphibious creature that seems to be intelligent.

In 1955, following the Creature’s box-office success, the first of two sequels was released: Revenge of the Creature. In this sequel, the Gillman (or possibly another Gillman—the film doesn’t really specify) is again located in the Amazon, but this time is captured and transported back to America and put on display in a Marine park. As expected, the Creature escapes and wreaks havoc as he makes his way to the ocean to escape civilization. Of note in this film are the many sequences where the Creature is seen by surprised, incredulous citizens and the police, including a sequence where he crosses a road at night.

Could Revenge of the Creature have inspired later sightings of frog/lizard/reptile men? Did this very popular movie embed itself in our psyches and in akind of amphibious pareidolia cause people surprised by the unexpected to imagine something not just fantastic, but Fortean?

A single instance of paranormal life-possibly-imitating-art wouldn’t be good evidence that this can happen. Afterall, seeing the Gillman crossing a road is a lot different from seeing Jesus on a potato chip. But this isn’t the only known instance suspect sightings possibly based on fiction. And, in a weird case of synchronicity, another such incident, also involving Richard Carlson, may have happened in the 1970s…

Released in 1969, The Valley of Gwanji saw Richard Carlson again returning to the screen to fight the Fortean, this time in the form of a very angry Allosaurus (the titular “Gwanji”) located in a remote, forgotten region of the Mexican desert, at the turn of the 19th-20th Century. Under the direction of Champ Connors (Carlson) and his employer, T.J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan), and assisted by Tuck Kirby (James Francisco), a talent scout for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, the Breckenridge Wild West Show takes a page from the Gillman/King Kong and captures the extant Dinosaur and puts it on display for all to see. Of course, things go wrong, Gwanji eats people, rampages in a Mexican city, and ends up burning down a church.

Now, as far as I know, no one has reported a real-life version of these events, although there are stories of the “Kasai Rex”, Mokele Mbembe’s carnivorous cousin, out of Africa. However, Gwanji’s lost valley wasn’t just home to the reigning Allosaur—it was also home to a prerodactyl-like dino.

In one particular scene of the movie, the pterodactyl swoops down and tries to carry off Lope’, a local boy-merchant who was assisting in the expedition into Gwanji’s valley. There is an extended sequence of the Pterodactyl trying to carry Lope’ away, but the scrawny little entrepreneur is just too heavy.

Fast forward to 1977, and Lawndale, Illinois. There, young, ten-year-old Marlon Lowe was outside, minding his own business one evening, when out of the sky swooped a giant bird that grabbed the boy and tried to carry him away. Fortunately for Marlon, his mother Ruth heard his scream, ran outside and drove away the giant bird and its bystanding companion.

I’ll note that Illinois is known for another giant, flying creature: the Piasa bird of Alton, Illinois, represented by Native American cliffside drawings above the Mississippi River and local legends. However, I also will note that I too was ten years old in 1977, and I vividly recall seeing The Valley of Gwanji on TV many times during the 1970s—it was one of my favorite movies, and still is.

Was Marlon Lowe the victim of a Thunderbird? Or perhaps an out-of-place Stellar Sea Eagle, or a famished, confused Turkey Vulture? Did Marlon and his mother concoct this story after seeing Gwanji’s pterodactyl brethren? Or did they partially-hallucinate/embellish a sighting of a large bird attacking Marlon, with no attempt to carry him away? Yes, there are accounts of large birds carrying off small pets and even attacking children, but there are also accounts of large hawks defending the area around a tree they have a nest in—going so far as to dive-bomb people just walking by.

The Gillman and Gwanji are surely not the only instances of art possibly inspiring the paranormal. The Legend of Boggy Creek was released in 1972. It inspired an increase in Bigfoot sightings thereafter—even one of my own cousins, in rural Southern Indiana, was convinced he saw a ‘squatch not long after seeing Boggy Creek at the drive in. And even the September 20, 1961 Betty and Barney Hill story of alien abduction (which they only remembered after hypnosis) is suspect when one considers the 1951 release of It Came From Outer Space, a film about aliens abducting Earthlings.

Life does indeed imitate art, but perhaps, more often than we’d like to admit, it is inspired by it.