Hi Paul,

My name is Casey Walker. In June 2005 I spent about 1 month in Papua New Guinea with my wife and in-laws. My father in law is an eye surgeon and at the time was working with Christian Blind Mission doing remote cataract surgeries throughout the country. We traveled through most the provinces of the country by car, plane and vessel and spent about 1 week in the village of Finschafen.

At the time I was only engaged to my wife, so she and her parents shared a room and I slept in the kitchen of a small shack at the top of a bluff overlooking the ocean in Finschafen. There was a large avocado tree next to the shack and a ravine behind it. On 1 particular night at approximately 3 AM I awoke to a pig squealing down in a ravine about 200 feet from the shack. There was also a great deal of thrashing and an unfamiliar animal noise I estimated to be a large bird. The first thing I thought was cassowary or something. I then thought perhaps the locals were doing a sacrifice with an animal or something. The pig stopped, but the thrashing continued. Then for approximately 15 minutes I heard an incredibly loud flapping in the ravine behind the shack I was sleeping in. Each flap was about 2 seconds long. I had seen countless fruit bats at this point and am certain what I heard was not a fruit bat. I know what I heard was a large wing flap. I was actually a little scared because it was so loud and awkward. I grabbed my flashlight and went out to the front porch. Admittedly, I was a bit scared so I didn’t wander far around the house. The flapping slowed down while I was outside, but the object was too far from my shack to see anything. I stepped back into the shack and listened to the flapping for another 30 minutes or so only for it to end abruptly. Not surprisingly, my wife and in laws slept through everything, which is amazing given how loud the flapping was. I spoke with them the next morning about it. I was still worked up about it, but at the expense of sounding like a nutball to my fiancé and future in-laws, I decided to stop discussing it with them. However, I did write about the experience in my travel journal, which I still have. My wife and in-laws remember me discussing it with them on that morning.

A few years ago I saw a special on the History Channel about the “Ropen,” My heart rate jumped and I instantly was brought back in time to that night in Finschafen, PNG. I am certain that I heard a large winged creature in Finschafen PNG in 2005.