by Noe Torres
Inside the mysterious cave, a very strange creature sat cross-legged on the floor. The being looked like a man, except that it was very large, muscular, and hairy. The man-beast was entirely covered in long, shiny, black hair, except for its palms and an area around its eyes. Also, the creature seemed to have no neck, its head appearing to rest directly upon its shoulders.
Despite its frightening appearance, the monster did not seem aggressive or dangerous. As Wyatt and the Native American approached, the creature sat contentedly, eating his meat. In fact, Wyatt said he went back to visit the creature on more than a dozen occasions. Unfortunately, Wyatt’s diary gives no details of his other visits and does not say if he ever tried to communicate with the creature in any way. Curious about the man-beast, Wyatt asked the tribesmen questions about their mysterious “guest.” Finally, after trading one man two pounds of tobacco, an axe and a compass, one of the tribesmen relented and told Wyatt the origin of their hairy visitor.
The tribesman took Wyatt to a high rock pinnacle and told Wyatt that men came down from the sky in “a small moon” and dropped off several hairy creatures, which the Indians called “Crazy Bears” to the earth. The tribesman said this had happened several times before in the past.
He also said that men from the small moon looked like normal human beings, but they had short hair and wore tight-fitting, silver clothing. According to the tribesman, the men even waved to the Indians in a friendly manner before closing the door to their spaceship and flying away!
After the “Crazy Bears” were dropped off, the Indians would round them up and escort them through their village. The Indians at the time believed that the Crazy Bears were capable of “powerful medicine,” which is why they fed and cared for them in the nearby caves. The tribesman apparently never told Wyatt what happened to all the other Crazy Bears that had been dropped off in the past, as he only saw one such creature during his time with the tribe.
Why would aliens drop off these Bigfoot creatures on the earth? Wyatt’s grandson, James Wyatt, told paranormal investigator Brad Steiger that the aliens may have been conducting some sort of experiment.
Artist’s Conception by Jared Olive
Many people believe that Bigfoot may be the descendant of an extinct species of giant ape called Gigantopithecus, which stood nine feet tall and was covered in a thick layer of hair.
If the Crazy Bears were descended from these ancient apes, perhaps they originated on Earth and not in outer space. Or maybe the visitors who rode the “small moons” picked up the apes, experimented on them, and then returned them to the Earth in a genetically-altered condition.
The story of the Crazy Bears is not the only tale to associate Bigfoot with UFOs. Many other Bigfoot sightings have occurred at the same places and times that UFOs were spotted. Some witnesses have even claimed to have seen a Bigfoot creature vanish into thin air, as if it had stepped into another dimension. Perhaps this is why a Bigfoot has never been captured in the wild. The photo shown above is of a statue of Bigfoot at Klamath National Forest in California. It is courtesy of Barbara Torres and the U.S. National Park Service.
If the story told in Wyatt’s diary is true, then perhaps Bigfoot really does come from outer space. It is certainly noteworthy that in many cases, Bigfoot-type creatures have been seen loitering around the area of a significant UFO sighting. In any case, the Crazy Bears story is one of the Old West’s most interesting tales concerning UFOs and mysterious creatures.
1888 Map of Humboldt County, California (National Park Service)
7. The Pterodactyl That Terrorized Tombstone (1890)
Judging by the title of this chapter, you may be wondering what it’s doing in a book about UFOs. After all, doesn’t the word UFO always refer to a flying saucer? It is true that most UFOs are always thought to be flying saucers or other types of mystery craft, but technically a UFO can be any sort of unknown flying object. Anything you see in the sky and cannot identify can be considered a UFO.
What two cowboys saw outside of Tombstone, Arizona, one day back in 1890 might be called a PFO, or
Prehistoric Flying Object.
Tombstone had been made famous back in 1881, during the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral where Lawman Wyatt Earp shot it out with various bad guys. The local newspaper was appropriately named the Epitaph, since an epitaph is what you call the writing on someone’s gravestone. It was in the April 26, 1890, edition of the Tombstone Epitaph that the story of the Pterodactyl was reported.
The story goes that on April 20 of the same year two cowboys were riding through the Huachuca desert located between the Whetstone Mountains and the Huachuca Mountains outside of Tombstone. In the long lonely stretch of desert they came upon a weary traveler, or perhaps a weary monster we should say.
On the dusty earth was an exhausted creature with a huge pair of wings the Epitaph described as, “A winged monster, resembling a huge alligator with an extremely elongated tail and an immense pair of wings…The creature was evidently greatly exhausted by a long flight…”
The story continues that the startled monster leapt to the sky and the cowboys chased it across the desert in an exciting horseback chase. Eventually the monster tired again and fell to the ground. The two cowboys then used their Winchester rifles to shoot at the monster. The bullets seemed to have little effect and the monster turned on the men, snapping its long tooth-lined beak at them.
The men backed up their horses and kept their dis- tance from the wounded animal. The Epitaph continues, “After a few well directed shots the monster partly rolled over and remained motionless. The men cautiously approached with their horses snorting in terror and found that the creature was dead.”
According to the article the two men measured the creature at 92 feet in length! It also said the monster had only two feet, and the head was eight feet long with strong jaws lined with sharp teeth. Because its wings were folded under its dead body, it was difficult to measure the wings, but the two cowpokes estimated them to be 160 feet from wingtip to wingtip!
They said the creature was completely featherless, and hairless for that matter, and the wings were made of a thick, nearly transparent membrane. The skin was very smooth and could be cut off easily, which is why the men sliced off one of the wing tips to take back to Tombstone with them.
The Epitaph concludes, “Late last night one of them arrived in this city for supplies and to make the necessary preparations to skin the creature, when the hide will be sent east for examination by the eminent scientists of the day. The finder returned early this morning accompanied by several prominent men who will endeavor to bring the strange creature to this city before it is mutilated.”
But did the men ever succeed in their mission to bring the monster to Tombstone? Maybe and maybe not. There exists a similar story about a photograph being published in an Old West newspaper, possibly the Epitaph of six men standing side by side with outstretched arms. Behind them is a huge bird nailed to a wall, its monstrous wings outstretched and its head hanging limp. The monster all in all stretched out to about 36 feet.
There are two problems with this photograph though. It was supposedly published in 1886, four years before the story of the cowboys killing a winged monster in 1890. Second, no one is able to find this alleged photograph and researchers have been searching for years. Several researchers claimed to have seen the photograph at one time or another, and one researcher even claimed to possess a copy of the photo. Only he had loaned it to someone that never returned it.
However, don’t get too excited if you search the internet for the photo and think you’ve found it. Many people aware of the so-called missing pterodactyl photo have attempted to recreate it, and some are quite convincing.
Does the fact that no one, including the modern day offices of the Epitaph can find the photo, mean that either story is a hoax? Not necessarily, while the Epitaph likely exaggerated the monster of 1890’s 160 foot wingspan, that doesn’t mean there’s no truth to the story.
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br /> In 1910, a witness surfaced who claimed to know the two cowboys that shot the monster. Harry McClure was a young man when he lived in the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico, about 97 miles northeast of Tombstone. McClure had known the two ranchers who told him the Epitaph account was greatly exaggerated. In reality the monster’s wingspan was a more realistic (for a pterodactyl anyway) 20-30 feet. Further, the ranchers said the monster’s two legs were horse-like, and it had large bulging eyes. Nor did they kill it, their bullets had little effect. The monster was able to fly away from them twice. The second time they let it go on its way, wherever that was.
But from where would such a creature have come? Coincidentally, Lordsburg, New Mexico, is a hotspot for UFO activity. Residents there claim that there is a portal in the sky they call the “Lordsburg Door” that UFOs fly out of. Some suspect the UFOs are really airplanes from the future, involving some sort of time travel. Presuming the Lordsburg Door might be some sort of time travel portal, did a dinosaur fly through the Lordsburg Door in the past only to be transferred to the future of the Wild West?
Probably not, but it is fun to speculate. There is another theory regarding where the monster came from. For years there had been a flying monster terrorizing people and animals in Lake Elizabeth, California. The flying monster was said to feed on chickens, cows and even horses!
The frustrated owner of the animals, Don Felipe Rivera, often shot his gun at the monster to little or no effect. It would simply fly into the air and then splash into the water where it would hide. Rivera’s pterodactyl agitator was last seen in 1886, flying towards the East. Tombstone is east of California, which is why some speculate perhaps this was the same pterodactyl shot by the ranchers.
This story also isn’t necessarily the only case of a living pterodactyl in the Old West. Most everyone has heard of the car the Thunderbird. But did you know where the car got its name? From a pterodactyl! Well, sort of. The Thunderbird was an animal said to exist by various Native American tribes across North America. It was a bird so huge it was said to be able to carry away men, and in one exaggerated story it picked a whale from the sea! One night the giant bird was struck by lightning, and the Indians therefore called it the Thunderbird.
Famous pioneer Daniel Boone even claimed to have witnessed a Thunderbird once carry away a five year old Indian boy. Boone says dozens of arrows were shot into the monster with no effect.
Some cryptozoologists, researchers and scientists that study monsters like Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster) and Bigfoot, now think the Thunderbird may have been a Pterodactyl or an extinct form of giant condor called the Teratorn.
8. UFO Explodes Over Texas Cotton Gin (1891)
In January 2008, several residents of Erath County in North Texas saw a huge UFO in the skies above them. The object, estimated to be about half a mile long, was seen near the towns of Stephenville, Texas, and Dublin, Texas. After this happened, some of the older residents remembered a UFO case that took place many years earlier, back in 1891. That was when a flying object exploded in the sky above a local cotton gin.
The UFO sighting took place on Saturday, June 13, 1891, a quiet summer day, in the small town of Dublin, Texas. At that time, the town had a population of about 2,000 people, and one of its major businesses was the Wasson & Miller flour mill and cotton gin.
Simulation of Explosion over Cotton Gin
The gin was closed for the weekend, and several towns-people were out for a walk near it when they suddenly noticed something very unusual in the sky above the gin. Witnesses saw a bright, oblong-shaped object hovering about 300 feet up.
An eyewitness, whose name was not given, told the local newspaper that what he saw looked like “a bale of cotton suspended in the air after having been saturated in kerosene oil and ignited, except that it created a much brighter light.”
The witness said that the light was so bright it “dazzled” people who were standing several hundred feet away from the light. This is a mystery, since bright artificial lights did not exist in the year 1891. Although electric light bulbs had been invented a few years before, they were not widely available yet.
In the 1890s, the common sources of light were kerosene lamps and campfires. Neither of these was very bright.
Some people think that the brilliant light might have been caused by an electrical fire or explosion inside the UFO. Maybe the flying object had overheated, causing it to glow brightly before the whole thing blew up in the sky.
Although the local newspaper later described it as a “meteor,” the UFO did not look or behave like a meteor. It seemed to “hover” over the gin, and it gave out an extremely intense light. Also, it shattered into pieces before it hit the ground.
The witness continued watching the bright light until the flying object suddenly exploded. After the explosion, chunks of a strange, burning-hot metal fell to the ground, setting the grass and weeds on fire. The explosion of the UFO was so loud that it was heard by “nearly everyone in that portion of the city,” according to the newspaper.
The man who witnessed this event was so scared by what he saw that he ran away from the gin and hid himself. Later, when he was asked to provide the exact size and appearance of the UFO before it exploded, he could not. He said he was too scared to pay close attention.
After returning to his home, the witness continued thinking about the UFO and was not able to sleep well. He decided that he would return to the scene of the explosion early the next morning – Sunday, June 14, 1891.
The witness was embarrassed at having run away, and he wanted to conduct an investigation into what happened. When he went back, his eyes beheld an amazing sight. Scattered across a field of burned grass and weeds were strange pieces of metal. He described them as “fragments of the most remarkable substance ever known to explode.” The metal was of the same color as lead. He also saw some “peculiar stones” that looked like lava from a volcano. And there was something else – even more mysterious. As the witness looked around, he found several small pieces of what looked like paper with strange writing on it.
The Old Cotton Gin (Right) As It Looks Today (Courtesy of Mark Murphy)
It looked like torn pieces from a newspaper, but the writing on it was not English. In fact, nobody could identify what language it was. “The language … was entirely foreign to him, and, in fact, no one has yet been found who has ever seen such a language before,” said the report about the incident, which appeared later in the Dublin Progress.
Original Newspaper Article from 1891 (Courtesy of Mark Murphy)
After finding the scraps of paper with the strange writing, the witness became completely “bewildered.” The newspaper reporter said that the witness “worked himself up to such a pitch of excitement” that he could not answer any more questions. He would not show any of the wreckage to the reporter or talk any more about it.
The cotton gin where the UFO exploded still exists today. The local museum in Dublin, Texas, hopes to restore the building and preserve it as a historical landmark. Dublin is well known in Texas as the town where the soft drink known as Dr. Pepper got its start. The very first Dr. Pepper bottling plant was built there in 1891.
Until now, nobody has tried to find any of the strange pieces of metal that fell to ground. Some of the fragments may still be there, buried under the surface. It is possible that someday, the material will be found. In addition, nobody has ever found traces of the paper with the strange writing on it. Maybe it still exists today in somebody’s attic?
9. The Crawfordsville Flying Monster (1891)
Back in the 1800s there weren’t really any serious UFO researchers like there are today. One of the first men to take accounts of strange creatures and unidentified flying objects seriously was a man named Charles Fort.
Fort was born in 1874 and as an adult he began going through and collecting old newspaper articles from earlier days, specifically the strange ones. Fort eventually published his findings in several books. As a result people began to
refer to strange things as “Fortean events” after the famous researcher. In a similar manner are creatures called Fortean monsters, which are so strange looking they make Bigfoot and Nessie look downright normal in comparison.
One such Fortean Monster believed to possibly be from outer space researched by Fort was the flying monster of Crawfordsville. Fort read about the beast in the September 10, 1891 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle. Fort was so perplexed by the creature’s appearance that he assumed it to be a hoax. To see if this was the case or not, Fort wrote a letter to one of the witnesses of the monster mentioned in the newspaper. To Fort’s surprise the man, Reverend G.W. Switzer, was a real person. While Fort proved that Switzer was real, he unfortunately could not do the same for the monster.
The story originally reported in the Crawfordsville Journal in early September of 1891 went like this:
It was midnight on Saturday, September 5, 1891, and Reverend G.W. Switzer of the First Methodist Church in Crawfordsville, Indiana, had gotten up to get some water from his well when he saw what was surely the strangest sight of his life.
Snaking through the air was an almost formless creature comprised of hundreds of white fluttering fins. Rev. Switzer awakened his wife who also got to see the creature which they both said was, “[swimming] through the air in a writhing, twisting manner similar to the glide of some serpents.”
At one point the couple describes the monster as swooping so close to the ground that it nearly touched the lawn of Lane Place before it continued its flight over the town.