ATS Hunts For The Missing Thunderbird Picture

Although it is a illustration, not seen it directly linked to in the thread: chrissmithillustration.com...

From here:
chrissmithillustration.com...

There is also this at a blog page:
frontiersofzoology.blogspot.co.uk...
Also appears to not be a true photo.

Not much help, but filter out the false, and you might come across the real.

But I did see a lot of other weird images to provide nightmares on sites I ended up on, so for me it was not in vain.

Casandra
First of all, let me say this is an amazing thread.

Now, I have never seen the lost picture but my father has many books similar to the Unexplained Mysteries one, so I thought I should check just to be sure.

Sadly, the picture is NOT in them but I'm listing the names of the books here, just in case anyone else used to have them and starts worrying about it might being in one of them.

There are two series of books in Spanish.

First (4 volume) series: "Grandes Temas de lo Oculto y lo Insólito" by Tomás Doreste. Editorial Océano, 1982.
In volume 2, page 261, there's the Illustrated London News story from 1858, about the huge bird-like creature in France. There are other stories about animals in rocks but nothing about the Thunderbird and no related photo.

Second (4 volume) Series: "Grandes Enigmas. El Fascinante Mundo de lo Oculto" by Tomás Doreste. Editorial Océano, 1991.

Volume 2, page 278, mentions the bird creature from France again, no related picture, more similar cases.

Page 324-325, on a column titled "Enormes pájaros vistos en Norteamérica" (Huge birds sighted in NA) there are cases from native american legends, some from newspaper stories from the early 1900s and one from 1969. No related photos.

I'm sorry I can't contribute with something more useful, I'll keep an eye out for other books.

Would you mind sending my copies of those articles and photo's/sketches of witnesses of the creatures found in France ? I have heard stories of pterodactyl like creatures stuck in rock before but I never saw the original articles. I would be very happy if you would scan them for me. But those pterodactyl like creatures are very interesting and I haven't met a lot of fella's interested in these stories. I live relatively
close to France and I could send some letters to those villages where they are found to look what they know about it. Maybe there are some French papers left which mentions these birds or even maybe I can found out where exactly these creatures where found and maybe there are some bones or other materials left from this creature.

reply to post by Smissen



It doesn't have a picture of the original article, the book just tells the story. I can still scan the page if you'd like, but it says pretty much this:

-First series of books, second volume, page 261.

(Pardon my mistakes in the translation from Spanish)

"The English magazine/newspaper The Illustrated London News corresponding to the date of February, 9th, 1858 (typo there, it happened in 1856, apparently) published a sensational news about the recent discovery of an unknown animal in the surrounding area of the French town, Nancy.

A group of workmen was excavating a railway tunnel that would connect this city with Saint-Didier. Suddenly, what looked like a bat or huge bird came out flying, it had more than a 3 meter wingspan. The strange being made high pitched screeching noises and died instantly.

A natural history professor that arrived at Nancy to see the animal said it had all the looks of being a Pterodactyl, meaning, a flying reptile closely related to dinosaurs. The rock from which the animal emerged was over a million years old.

The workmen found a hole in the rock that matched exactly with the shape of the body. It's too bad that, as it usually happens in these cases, nothing was kept of the pterodactyl. The only news that has persisted was published in the magazine/newspaper from London. Was it made up by a journalist wishing to increase sales? Was it the only case of suspended animation?"


-Second series of books, second volume, page 278-79:

(It starts telling pretty much the same as the other, what the name of the newspaper was, the town, etc. Then it has a description of the animal)

"The strange animal had the shape of a dark colored goose, a long neck, hideous head and sharp teeth. It had four legs, united by a membrane and its skin was oily.

The recently deceased fossil was immediately taken to the town of Gray, near the Saona river, where a man who claimed to know paleontology declared it was a pterodactyl. The cavity found on the rock matched exactly the body of the strange being, and the terrain seemed to belong to the Jurassic period."



I've looked for the original article but can't find it. What I have found, though, are several sites that seem to indicate this story was a hoax:

As noted by cryptozoologist Karl Shuker5, natural history hoaxes were common in English periodicals of the day. This pterodactyl story indicated that a naturalist identified the creature as "Pterodactylus anas" but there is no pterosaur species with that name. Nor would there be, since Pterodactylus is a genus of small (mostly robin-sized) pterosaurs (Figure 2), whereas the creature in the story was reported to have a wingspan of 3.22 meters (about 10 1/2 feet). Moreover, the word "anas" is Latin for duck. The French word for Duck is canard, which means a hoax or invented story.

"Living Pterodactyls?"

In Dr. Karl Shuker's book, From flying toads to snakes with wings, published in 1997 by Llewellyn, St. Paul (Minnesota), the author says there is no such species as Pterodactylus anas. Shuker points out that anas is Latin for “duck”. The French word for duck is canard, which in English is a word used for an unfounded or invented story. The Illustrated London News report put a heading on its story that said: “Very like a whale”. This expression appears in Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and gives a further clue that the story is false.

Was the “living pterodactyl” report a hoax?

The palaeontologically-aware naturalist of Gray, we are told, lost no time in identifying the unwholesome-looking, newly-expired corpse as that of Pterodactylus anas.
[...]
Besides being Latin for duck, ‘anas’ was the root for several other words for that bird in European languages, notably French – le canard. Here is where the punster comes into his own, for in English popular speech, ‘canard’ has a highly amusing meaning: it means ‘false news’ or ‘hoax’.

The French Pterodactyl: a Fortean Folly


I also found a website by someone that has a collection of the Illustrated London News. It says there that if you give him the specific date and subject you're interested in, he'll look it up for you and, if you want, you can buy a high resolution image of the article.


I hope this helps.

It just occured to me that there seems to be many thunderbird pictures from around the same time period.
Are we to believe that they all had nothing better to do back then but somehow make fake pterodactyls out of something , just to hoax pictures ?

bluemooone2
It just occured to me that there seems to be many thunderbird pictures from around the same time period.
Are we to believe that they all had nothing better to do back then but somehow make fake pterodactyls out of something , just to hoax pictures ?

Well they didn't have the Internet!

I'd imagine it was a fad that a lot of people jumped on. It just became the cool/fun thing to do at the time. Like the big UFO contactee movement in the 60s when everyone was meeting with beautiful women from Venus and getting amazing close-up photos of Pleiadian ships or in the 90s when making crop circles became all the rage. Or even in our current age where so many people photoshop UFO and cryptid photos and videos to post online.

I'm not sure if it helps but not only do I rememeber seeing these two photo's, (the one with a couple of men standing in front of a creature nailed (?) to a small shed behind them and the other, possibly more important one, is of the inside of a barn with several men standing with arms outstretched to show a good size comparison with the huge bird hanging from the wall and rafters behind them) But i used to have them on my hard drive..... strange thing is, i remember looking for them several years ago when this very subject came up in another post on ATS and even though i knew i down-loaded the pics weeks before they were no where to be found.

I distinctly remember, as well as the memory of a close friend, seeing those pics and thinking how eerily real and genuine they looked.

I'm pretty sure that not only have I seen this mysterious missing Thunderbird (Pterosaur) pinned up against barn doors photo somewhere on the web, I actually was so impressed with its apparent authenticity, I downloaded it to my desktop collection of anomalous images. I will try to produce the evidence, or at least trace its metadata, to the source, when I find it. The other photos I viewed in previous posts, are not the image in question. It was some type of prehistoric Pterodactyl or something similar. As an aside, my hobby of photographing and videotaping Aircraft, Raptors, and Unidentifieds, sometimes interfaces with anomalous occurrences such as a large eagle, with a huge wing span, flying after midnight directly across my field of vision, over a fenced yard, while one of my dogs was in it. Not really registering at the time the possibility of encountering a Thunderbird, I remember relating this to my former girlfriend not to leave the dogs out in the yard at night unattended, because of its size. I could see its profile as it flew past me approximately at my height, while standing on the back deck, and it definitely looked like an Eagle, not a Vulture or Condor. I just happened to be videotaping some UFO activity here in Pennsylvania that evening, and I remember panning the camera around after the initial pass, as it continued south, past a large pine tree in our yard, with one large swoosh, I heard as it flapped once, and continued on its way. I live in a semi rural area, and see hawks, eagles, and vultures quite frequently, but never after midnight. Another experience while playing frisbee with the dogs nearby, in an open meadow, appeared to be some type of strange flying pterosaur flying at a very high altitude, with pointed, angular wings. I remembered thinking that it had to be huge, to appear that way at such a high altitude. Maybe the size of a Cessna. "Strange but True."

It's not this one is it?

Netflix, "The Real Story: Indiana Jones", 35:01 into the film.

Is an old B&W picture of a huge bird being held up by 3 or 4 people....

Sure some must have seen it, but did not find it in this thread, unless I missed it.

reply to post by ravenshadow13


Have you tried the Smithsonian Institute ??

After researching the author further...
I have come to the conclusion that Carroll C Calkins is not a real person,
no authors profile found after extensive research,
the only information I could find is that Carroll C Calkins is a female.
I found another Carroll C Calkins who was a soldier in WWII.
Which also got me thinking, that's a unique enough name that whoever chose the pen name probably knew the real Carroll C Calkins.
My second theory proposes Carroll Calkins was a man who after being a soldier became an author and they just have his information wrong, either way he is probably deceased by now if that is the case.
More reason to be intrigued as he was an air force man and has probably seen some wild stuff in his day.


have a good day, and happy hunting everyone

Wow, where did you find this??

i don't recall having seen this exact picture but it is very similar this one seems a little hoaxy, but still a great find!!!!!

reply to post by theantediluvian

reply to post by charlyv


I watched the documentary a few weeks ago and couldn't help but think the same thing, and the pieces more or less fit many of the descriptions of the photo. While there is no barn, the film is old and the people are in expedition clothes. Also there is a dinosaur connection as the whole undertaking lead by Roy Chapman Andrews was into the Gobi Desert looking for fossils. For some reason ATS uploads isn't working for me but here is a link to a screenshot I took:

i124.photobucket.com...

So you have a big bird, old film, an expedition relating to rare animals and dinosaurs, people in clothing that might be misconstrued in people's minds as civil war era or not long after. The only thing missing is the barn but as has already been suggested there might be dozens of photos taken of big birds being held up, it appears to have been common in the past to show off the wingspan of a newly discovered species or just a bird that they thought was big when they killed/caught it.

bluemooone2
Are we to believe that they all had nothing better to do back then but somehow make fake pterodactyls out of something , just to hoax pictures ?

I think at least one of the hoax photos is from a Civil War recreation. Some guys having fun. I'm not sure where most of them come from. Some of them are Photoshopped for sure. I'm afraid I don't remember where I picked this one up. Quite a few years ago probably from some paranormal site that may not even be around anymore. But it's obviously fake. Anybody remember this one?

I occasionally will go into old collectible stores and look through their old magazines, hoping to find the photo everybody thinks is from True or Argosy, or one of those other old men's adventure magazines. Haven't found it yet. It's fun to look, though.

a reply to: Blue Shift
Found the original from a reverse google search. Re-uped here just in case:
imgur.com...

source:
www.viewsofthepast.com...

KEEP THIS THREAD ALIVE!

I don't post often here, but I too have always remembered seeing this photo in the 60's but have never found it since. I thought about the photo and looked for it in the 70's and 80's, always having an interest in cryptozoology.
I only much later learned about the wide-spread belief of so many other people that they had seen this "Thunderbird" photo and could never locate it again later. I've never experienced this feeling before or about anything else.
To me, this has been the "best evidence" not so much of the Thunderbird, but of the "altered timeline" or Parallel Universe theories. Not very strong evidence, perhaps, but discomforting.

Reply to antediluvian

Before we get any further, the following photo is not to be taken seriously:

This is not an exterior shot, it is an interior theatrical set. The "Pterodactyl" is a fullscale mechanical special effect from an Edgar Rice Burroughs movie done in the middle 1970s. This is not an original "Thunderbird" photo, it is a mock up of what the original photo was imagined to be like as of the later 1970s and afterwards.
Quote from The Mandela Effect site.

I found it!

[pic]cs53d9349b.jpg[/piclppp

files.abovetopsecret.com...

I was super intrigued when I first lurked this thread quite some time back. I, like many here had the same vague recollection of OP's photo. I came across this in a tumblr post while searching for "Deep Web pictures" (bored at work lol). I am almost sure this is it. Reverse image search came up with 5 other hits.

a reply to: tzeker

So was this the actual photo or not?

a reply to: TheThracian

not the one i remember