image_pdfimage_print

Marfa Lights on Consecutive Nights

In the book Hunting Marfa Lights, James Bunnell reveals, “On rare occasions I have observed MLs [mystery lights in the Marfa area of Texas] repeat their location but only on consecutive nights.” (See the middle of page 165). One instance of that phenomenon was recorded late in 2008 and found to be from a night-mirage effect on a ranch light, but what about other recordings?

Temperature inversions, which can cause night mirages, may be common in this desert area of southwest Texas. But night mirages only occur within a limited viewing angle, clearly eliminating this explanation in some cases.

For example, the November, 2000, Marfa Lights were observed by eyewitnesses who were five miles apart: about 80 degrees. In addition, the May 8, 2003, were observed by eyewitnesses seven miles apart, and those lights were photographed by one of Bunnell’s cameras from a third location. Obviously, mirage conjectures fail to explain those ML sightings. Bioluminescent flying predators, however, remain in contention.

The May 8, 2003, ML sighting was the second consecutive activity night, with first appearances at 1:19 and 1:38 (hours/minutes) after sunset respectively. This fits quite well with the hypothesis of highly-intelligent nocturnal bioluminescent flying predators that hunt in the same general area on a night following a very successful hunt.

Modern Pterosaur

“Analyzing Data for a Marfa Lights Interpretation”

Over a period of months, some of the nocturnal hunting excursions may be especially successful, even if the prey is a species of small animal like a bat . . . What can we predict after an especially successful hunt? The next night may see those predators hunting in the same area or a nearby area. If the successful hunt were early in the evening, soon after sunset, the second night may also be early in the evening.

We now examine some of Bunnell’s data for camera recordings of significant mystery light appearances from late 2000 through late 2008.

What is most important is this: 75% of those one-night successions involved starting times less than twenty minutes apart, for example one hour and nineteen minutes after sunset on May 8, 2003 and one hour and thirty-eight minutes after sunset on May 9, 2003. On July 15-16, 2006, mystery lights first appeared only about one minute apart: thirty-eight and thirty-seven minutes after sunset, respectively.

That appears to be dramatic circumstantial evidence for a group of nocturnal flying predators that hunt as a group in southwest Texas.

(Marfa Lights are sometimes called “ghost lights.”

Intelligent Marfa Lights

To begin, the nonfiction book by James Bunnell, Hunting Marfa Lights (HML), gives no hint of any pterosaur involvement with the more mysterious flying Marfa Lights. Still, although he admits having no clear explanation, his book firmly proves that some of the mysterious lights seen flying near this part of Texas are not from any car headlights, and that leads us closer to the truth. My own book, the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, has one chapter on the Marfa Lights; it explains that some of them are quite likely from a group of bioluminescent flying predators, possibly even pterosaurs similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea: intelligent flying predators.

But why believe that Marfa Lights are directed by intelligence? For the moment, let’s set aside pterosaurs, and concentrate on sighting reports that Bunnell classifies “CE-III.”

Let’s begin with a “legend” reported on page 15 of the book HML:

Hiking in this part of Texas, a college professor got lost late one afternoon. Being lightly dressed, he realized the danger of being stranded in the cold high desert at night. Soon after sunset, he saw a light, and assuming it was a ranch light, followed it for awhile, until he found that it had led him back to his truck. Then the light went out.

I realize that without careful interviewing of this professor, some aspects of his encounter may have become distorted through retelling. Nevertheless, if his experience is anything close to this summary, it seems very unlikely that following a non-living light, one without any intelligent direction, would lead a lost person back to their vehicle at night. Bunnell offers no explanation. Of course, all this assumes that this professor was a real person, not just a legend.

Marfa Lights that Chase Cars

Four sighting stories in HML may be related. Each involves a light witnessed by the driver of a car that seems to be chased by the light. These are obviously real persons, with names, including “Bunnell.” He offers “Fata Morgana” as a possible explanation but admits his own sighting (one of those four) does not fit that type of mirage phenomenon very well. But another of those four sightings seems to defy the Fata Morgana explanation.

Linda Armstrong, at about 8:45 p.m., on October 8, 2008, was driving from Alpine to Marfa when she noticed a bright white light approaching from behind. Thinking something was about to collide with the back of her car, she accelerated, but the light simply passed her, following the curvature of the road ahead of her. That alone may discredit the Fata Morgana explanation, but there’s more: “It then left the road and flew through Mitchell Flat south of the View Park.” That was a real Marfa Light.

Forgive me if I state the overly-obvious: An intelligent fast-flying creature never collides with the trunk of a fast car.

How do car-chasing lights in Texas relate to living pterosaurs? Consider the restaurant waitress who saw a “mutated pterodactyl” flying alongside her car, as she drove on I-75, outside Atlanta, Georgia. Also consider that many eyewitnesses have seen glowing pterosaur-like flying creatures in various parts of the world.

Adding More:

Return of the Marfa Lights

. . . reports of living pterosaurs here in North America keep coming to my attention, and those strange flying Marfa Lights keep returning. Strange as it may seem to most people in this country, there seem to be a number of scientifically unknown animals in North America, and the ropen, even a long-tailed pterosaur, may be one of them.

Marfa Lights Unmasked

Many other eyewitnesses, in Texas and other states, describe a long tail on a featherless flying creature.  How does that relate to strange flying lights in the  southwestern area of Texas? In Papua New Guinea  and other countries, strange flying lights have been  seen to be large or giant pterosaurs with long tails,  when the eyewitnesses have been close enough to  observe detailed features of the flying creatures.

News: Pterosaurs Seen in the United States

Reports of modern living pterosaurs keep coming in, and most of them appear to be unrelated to any hoax or misidentification.

A Real Pterosaur in Pennsylvania

I noticed a large black bird in the sky . . . I called my students attention to it and they were both instantly mesmerized. The wingspan appeared to be at least six feet . . . you could clearly make out a long “horn” or “cone” type protrusion coming out of the back of its skull . . . It flew over top us and landed in the water . . . Carrie ran around the building . . . There are always ducks in that water as well as rats and other things. [She returned] . . . she said it had taken off, Carrie said it was in the water splashing and eating or grabbing something in its mouth.

 All About Marfa Lights and Pterosaurs

This has recent news about ideas on the Marfa Lights, how they resemble other lights that have been connected with sightings of living pterosaurs. (Texas)

What an extraordinary idea! Marfa Lights come from glowing pterodactyls? How could such a wild idea have any merit? Consider what critics have written about that idea; you may be surprised. When the sarcasm is brushed aside, as we eventually must do to all sarcasm, the arguments against the bioluminescent-pterosaur idea appear weak.

Another Pterodactyl in California

It’s not new news, coming from a 2007 article in The Signal of the Santa Clarita Valley; but the original report is much older, a Los Angeles Times article about sightings in the 1880′s.

The creature . . . was “as big as a horse, had wings like an oversize bat, big bulgy eyes the size of mushmelons . . . and a long, woolly tail.”

Pterosaurs and Marfa Lights

Perhaps the case for Marfa Lights being living pterosaurs is somewhat speculative. But how speculative are the criticisms of those who insist that pterosaurs cannot be living! One critic went so far as to suggest that whiskey is the cause for hundreds of eyewitness accounts of strange lights around Marfa, Texas.

Although the case for a group of bioluminescent living pterosaurs flying around Marfa appears tenuous, let’s consider the origin of this idea. This involves both sightings of apparent living pterosaurs and the nature of the more mysterious flying lights of Marfa.

Pterosaurs have been reported north, south, east, and west of Marfa. My book Live Pterosaurs in America goes into details. The apparent lack of such reports close to Marfa does not rule out the possibility of a relationship with neighboring areas.

Some characteristics of at least some of the CE-III mystery lights around Marfa—those characteristics include bright lights that fly at mostly low altitude and appear in various colors: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. That is how eyewitnesses sometimes describe the ropen light of Papua New Guinea, although natives in various areas of those tropical islands have various local names for what may be the same large nocturnal flying creature. In addition, the speed of flight has sometimes been described in similar ways (for both ropen lights and Marfa Lights): faster than ordinary bird-flight.

But one more significant fact remains: No other explanation (for the CE-III mystery lights around Marfa) comes close to appearing adequate, when compared with the conjecture of large bioluminescent flying predators, and what fits that description better than “ropen.”

“Marfa Lights Solved” – Is it a Giant Bird?

I reply to a blog post (Houston Press Blogs) by Richard Connelly: “Marfa Lights Solved!! It’s a Giant Bird!!” His brief remarks of December 7th were surely occasioned by the December 6th press release about my hypothesis on Marfa Lights. I don’t mind the brevity of his post, for it was just ridicule. I commented twice, in detail, on his blog, but more detail seems in order here. (By the way, “Giant Bird” is Connelly’s invention; I never used that expression.)

The first problem, appearing to me to need immediate clarification, relates to a misunderstanding about the basic nature of the true ML (James Bunnell’s designation for “Mystery Lights”) around Marfa, Texas. It seems Mr. Connelly needs to read Bunnell’s book, Hunting Marfa Lights, more than he needs to read my book, Live Pterosaurs in America. I quote part of my comment on Connelly’s blog:

. . . the investigation by the Society of Physics Students at the University of Texas at Dallas. It’s brief and easy to read. Note that those two nights of observations were done with the assumption that car headlights were the cause of all the appearances of strange lights. Since they assumed “car headlights,” that is where they looked on those two nights: [towards] Highway 67.

Did those students of the University of Texas at Dallas really solve a controversial mystery? I think not. Ask the right question in the beginning, for it can lead us into enlightenment; asking the wrong question (even if answered correctly) can lead us into ignorance. This appears to be a critical error that doomed those students to failure, for they seemed to have formulated a question like, “Can car headlights near Marfa, Texas, appear mysterious?”

What scientist or investigator doubted the possibility of night mirages of car headlights? None of which I am aware. Perhaps the best that can be said of the student experiment is this: It confirmed that visitors passing through the Marfa area, when they stop at the viewing platform, often see distant car headlights on highway 67 and find their appearance mysterious.

Questions about the true ML near Marfa could include, “Is it biological or geological in origin?” The flat assumption of Richard Connelly, that there are no mysterious flying lights near Marfa—that may have come from his avoiding any critical evaluation of that student experiment and his eagerness to ridicule a strange-sounding interpretation.

“Big Bird” may have been avoided, in favor of “Giant Bird,” for the Sesame-Street-sounding name is the title of a nonfiction cryptozoology book about sightings of strange flying creatures (at least some of which are like pterosaurs), especially sightings in the state of Texas. Indeed Big Bird (the book, not the Sesame Street character) competes with my own nonfiction cryptozoology book, Live Pterosaurs in America.

American Ghost Lights

Chapters Four and Five of Live Pterosaurs in America are titled “Flying Luminescence” and “American Ghost Lights.” The lights have been seen in many states, some of them for generations, with names like Marfa Lights (Texas), Hornet Spook Light (borders Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma), Brown Mountain Light (North Carolina), Yakima Lights (Washington state), and Bingham Lights (South Carolina). The book deals more with Bingham Lights and Yakima Lights. [Update: the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, published late in 2010, has a whole chapter about the Marfa Lights.]

Of course not all these “ghost lights” need be from the same source, and even in one area, unidentified lights need not all be from the same source (Yakima in particular, according to the book). But the regularity, over many years, of the light-sightings in some locations strongly suggests that in at least each area, the source is the same (for many lights) over the history of that area.

My associates and I have a unique perspective, having studied the ropen light of Papua New Guinea. We know,  from many eyewitness testimonies, that those nocturnal lights correlate with sightings of glowing flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. We suspect that some American “ghost lights” are from living pterosaurs; some flight behaviors, such as a fast dive from the sky without any fast ascent, obviously fit a diving creature more than a ball of gas.

From my investigations (including analyzing eyewitness testimonies over several years), I believe that some of these American “ghost lights” come from at least two species of bioluminescent pterosaurs. All the species are rare, not necessarily endangered. Of course, not all apparent pterosaurs seen in daylight need be bioluminescent at night, but when a ghost-light location is nearby (note the Susan Wooten sighting in South Carolina), it deserves consideration for that particular creature.

Regardless of the degree of rarity of modern living pterosaurs in North America, how rare the scientist who has interpreted strange flying creatures or ghost lights as potential living pterosaurs! This is not in itself evidence against the hypothesis, for our society indoctrinates us into universal-extinction-of-all-dinosaurs-and-pterosaurs. The evidence for living pterosaurs (including perhaps bioluminescent ones in North America) includes rare sightings of the creatures in daylight, when they are obviously non-bird and non-bat. This deserves serious consideration, in light of the continuous invesigations that continue to involve new sighting reports.