Thunderbird Road

In 1890, a small provincial newspaper in Tombstone Arizona printed a story .....

Tombstone Epitaph - 1890

....... decades and years later, that story was being touted as evidence of the the mythical 'Thunderbird' of American West fame.

The idea in its simplest form, is that first nation Americans had known of an incredibly large bird like creature that flew the skies of North America, and that were associated with storms and lightning, and had depicted said creature in cave art and in bead work.

This type of fanciful news story was not unusual for the time, as the Illustrated London News had reported an equally fantastical tale in 1856 (some reports say 1858), from somewhere near Nancy in France, where workers on the railway line between the St.Dizier and Nancy lines had claimed that a large bat like creature had been loosed from some limestone rocks and promptly expired after trying to fly. 

The report allegedly said that the creature had a wingspan was 10 feet 7 inches, and had four legs joined by a membrane, like a bat. Where the feet should have been were long talons, and the mouth was arrayed with sharp teeth. The skin was like black leather, thick and oily and had been identified as a pterodactyl by a local Palaeontology student in the nearby town of Gray. 

Another Thunderbird (Pterodactyl type) Photograph

The claim was that the pterodactyl had been trapped in the rocks for 100 million years in some sort of suspended animation. It was of course later exposed as a complete hoax. However is illustrative of this type of story being published in Newspapers of the period (and indeed later). 

Thunderbird Illustration

So the story from the Tombstone Epitaph was not very unusual, and frankly would have simply disappeared amongst a plethora of similar monster stories, such as mighty sea serpents and other wonders being reported in the press of the time ..... but (and there's always a but isn't there), this story was linked to another claim, which was that the paper had later reported another such creature being killed in 1900, and this time had printed a photograph of the animal nailed against the wall of the Tombstone Epitaph. Its wingspread was reportedly measured to 36 feet, and the picture apparently showed six men, with outstretched arms touching, standing under the bird to give it perspective (as per the image above).

More Thunderbird Pictures

A lot of people on the web cited the book 'Mysteries of the Unexplained,' as being where they originally saw the lost image (but none have ever been able to find it again) .... maybe that will ring a bell with some people. I did a bit of side digging in to this book, which obviously I don't own, and it appears from the web to be a Reader's Digest book from 1982 (which doesn't seem very old to me, but is 42 years ago) - but the index only mentions mysterious sky falls of small birds (apparently with a photo on page 205), and nothing else that I could see. 

I suspect that this book is simply wrongly being cited as the source, and that if the image was ever reprinted, it would have been something from the 1950's, rather than a later book. 

Jack Pearl Story May 1965 Saga Magazine

I understand that the first ever modern mention of the image existing was by Jack Pearl in the May 1965 Saga Magazine, in his article 'Monster Bird That Carries Off Human Beings,' so the image (if it ever existed) must pre-date that year, for him to be able to say that he had seen it.

Even More Thunderbirds 

However, despite many people claiming to have seen this exact picture in various books and periodicals before and since the article (including famous investigator John Keel - who stated that he saw the image of the creature nailed to the barn with men standing in front of it. He said it dated to the 1880s and that the photograph appeared sometime before 1966), none of them have been able to produce the image in any old book or magazine, nor on the Internet. This has led to many people hunting for this 'lost' image with whole collections of copies of Argosy, Sage, and other such men's magazines being looked through by various researchers and groups .... but none has ever successfully produced a copy of the lost image.

Yet More Thunderbird Images

Personally, despite my advancing years, I have no recollection of the 'lost' image ever crossing my eyeline, but still retain an interest in the subject, and so I was galvanised in to another search for the image ... alas to no great effect. But, I decided to collect a number of the fakes that I had found, and pass them on to you readers, as I suspect many of these images are actually what many people are recalling, when they discuss seeing the lost image in their youth. There are even more images out there on the web, including the civil war Pterodactyl type images that did the rounds a few years ago.

Last Thunderbird Images

The hunt for this allegedly 'lost image' has now now entered the collective zeitgeist of some groups, with many saying the image was in books and magazines that they had seen recently. This collective memory of something that can't later be proved to have happened, has been attributed to the Mandela Effect, after a popular belief that many people hold, which was that at some point in time, they had heard Nelson Mandela had died in prison (and before he was later released to become South African president).

For those who want to read more, the web is full of groups and stories but this article discusses the origins of the legend in the Tombstone Epigraph of April the 26th, 1890, and the lost photograph. For those interested in a modern alleged sighting, this film from 2007 shows a couple of allegedly giant birds (rather than Pterosaur's) ... although I wasn't convinced (at all).

But maybe we should all simply settle for a non photo-shopped image ......