Category Archives: Other People’s Stories

1942 Duane Hodgkinson Sighting

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During World War II, an American soldier walked into a clearing near Finschhafen (New Guinea) with his buddy. Duane Hodgkinson and his army buddy had obtained permission to visit a village west of Finschhafen. On the way, the local native guide had gone ahead as the two Americans looked at some large ants in a jungle clearing. Soon after entering the clearing, a wild pig (probably startled by the men) ran through the grass. That pig running through the jungle clearing was probably what startled a creature that then starting running and flapping its wings. It flew up out of the clearing and away over the trees. The two soldiers were talking about what it could have been when it flew back over the clearing, giving them another chance to look it over. Hodgkinson was fascinated by the long horn- like appendage coming out of the back of the head of the huge flying creature. He centered his attention on the head of the “pterodactyl,” so he did not notice what other eyewitnesses have seen: a diamond-shaped flange at the end of the tail. During interviews, years after the sighting, the American World War II veteran gave an estimate of the wingspan of the apparent pterosaur: similar to that of a Piper-Tri Pacer airplane (about 29 feet).

Duane Hodgkinson was a weather observer during his military service in 1944. He had lived on a farm in the midwestern United
States, during his teenage years, before World War II. As he and his army buddy entered the jungle clearing, just west of
Finschhafen (on the mainland of what was then called New Guinea), on a clear day, nothing much looked strange. The grass was
about two feet high and some large ants were crawling on a nearby log; the two men were looking at those ants, for they were
bigger than any seen back in the States. The point is that nothing prevented Hodgkinson from getting a feel for the size of that
clearing: the other side was about 100 feet away: an ordinary little clearing. . . . almost.
What happened next was not, at first, extraordinary: A wild pig, probably startled by the human intrusion, ran through the grass
nearby. Then followed the epitome of strangeness: On the far side of that clearing, something was startled by that pig, something
that flew up into the air, revealing a wingspan of close to thirty feet. Hodgkinson was fascinated by the long horn-like appendage
at the back of the creature’s head, yes, “creature,” for it was obviously not a bird taking flight. It flew out of view briefly, but
returned, perhaps to gaze at the two strange beings who gazed back from the clearing.
Many interviews, many years later, have gleaned more details from Hodgkinson’s experience: the “pterodactyl” (labeled so, right
after it flew away) was dark and had a long pointed beak and a long neck; the tail was long, too: at least ten or fifteen feet; there
was no evidence of feathers. But how critical is the distance between the men and the creature, and how! At 100 feet away, the
farm boy could hardly have badly mistaken the size of the creature. Besides, without feathers it was no bird, and with a very long
tail it was no bat: very strange.
What could be more extraordinary than this 1944 sighting? It is that many eyewitnesses relate encounters with a large or giant
pterosaur-like creature around the Southwest Pacific. These accounts come not from hallucination, for eyewitnesses come from
different countries, from different cultures, and from different educational backgrounds (they would not all hallucinate the same
thing). Accounts come not from hoaxes, for most of those who have spent the most time searching for a modern pterosaur
(commonly called “ropen”) have seen little or nothing that would directly show that what they had seen was a pterosaur (hoaxes
normally involve maybe one or two proponents who lie that they saw what they did not; many explorers who say they saw almost
nothing–those are not hoaxers). Accounts come not from any mental health issues, for insanity does not cause persons of different
backgrounds to describe similar appearances and activities of an animal; besides, one of those eyewitnesses is Mr. Brian Hennessy,
a professional psychologist who works at a medical university:a poor candidate for insanity.
Could Hodgkinson have exaggerated the length of the tail of the “pterodactyl?” Half a century after this encounter on the mainland
of New Guinea, on a small island to the north, seven boys (around ten to fourteen years old) climbed up to a  crater lake near their
village on Umboi Island. Soon after they had arrived, a giant “ropen” flew over the lake, and the boys ran home in terror. About
ten years later (in 2004), in their own village, I interviewed three of those young men. Gideon Koro told me about the tail of the
ropen: seven meters long (22 feet). Even if this was greatly exaggerated, the tail of the creature he saw was extraordinarily long. In
addition, Gideon told me that the ropen had no feathers. (No bird, no bat.)

1930 Lucy Evelyn Cheesman (1881–1969) was a British entomologist

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Evelyn Cheesman and Strange Flying Lights

In one of her expeditions in the southwest Pacific, the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman witnessed some strange horizontally-flying lights deep in the jungles of New Guinea. This may have been early in the 1930′s, or possibly in the late 1920′s, for she wrote about it in her book The Two Roads of Papua, which was published in 1935.

How is that related to my expeditions on the mainland of Papua New Guinea? The strange lights that the British biologist observed were just a couple of mountain ranges or so north of where I recorded my sightings decades later. It seems very likely that I recorded the same kind of flying lights Cheesman had seen.

Consider what Cheesman wrote:

While at Mondo I witnessed a most curious phenomenon which I could not understand; nor could I later hit upon any satisfactory explanation for it. It was a very close, still evening; thundery conditions, yet no storms . . . It was moreover clear; there were no cotton-wool clouds roving round which is rather a rare occurrence. . .

I spent much time in leaning over the veranda, and gazing across at the flat monotone of jumbled hills against a purple sky. When suddenly I saw a flash of light somewhere below the horizon. It was rather a slow flash, and might have been made with an electric torch by someone with a finger on the
switch to prolong it perhaps four seconds.

. . . in a moment it came again, and this time I counted; yes, about four or five seconds, but that flash had been a little distance away from the first. Flashes continued at intervals.

. . . by no possibility could there be human beings out there using flash-lamps at intervals. . . . I measured my position carefully against the veranda-post . . . and also where the spots appeared, so that in the morning I should have some idea of how far off they were. . . . By daylight I took up precisely the same position on the veranda, and measured off against the post where I had seen the lights the evening before. . . . the flashes had been following a certain ridge of hills. Three ridges are visible one above the other in that direction, the highest one on the horizon. It was on the middle one that this phenomenon appeared, and it seemed as if the flashes must have kept closely to the top of that one ridge. About a week later precisely the same thing occurred. . . .

It may be dismissed at once that the flashes were due to any human agency. Even if they had strong flashlights in their possession there could be no incentive for bushmen to stand at intervals—and I reckoned there would have to be nearly thirty individuals—for two or three miles along a ridge, flashing them where they could not be seen by one another. . . .

I include these details from Cheesman’s book because we need to understand that a scientist has made details notes about these strange flying lights and we need to discover what causes them.

 

Big bird kills a wild pig in 2005

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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.