Strange Tales of Thunderbird Photos

Strange Tales of Thunderbird Photos

Mar 19th in Cryptozoology & Featured by Nick Redfern

Back in the 1960s, a photograph, said to date from the late 1800s, appeared in the pages of a popular newsstand magazine of the day – possibly True, Saga, or Argosy – and displayed the deceased remains of a gigantic, monstrous bird, pinned to a pair of barn-doors somewhere in rural North America – the exact location is, just like the picture itself, a matter of some debate.

Numerous researchers, investigators and authors of a whole range of anomalies claim, with absolute unswerving certainty, that they personally saw the priceless picture when it was published. The big problem, today, however, is that despite the fact that the pages of all the above-magazines, and many others too, have been carefully and dutifully scoured – even to the point of near-obsession – the picture cannot be found, anywhere at all. It’s almost as if it never even existed in the first place.

What was the alleged winged nightmare? Possibly nothing less than a legendary Thunderbird. And, if you’re not acquainted with the phenomenon, I refer you to the words of my good friend – and fellow creature seeker and co-author with me on our Monsters of Texas book – Ken Gerhard, who says the following of the mighty, flying beasts:

“These creatures are likened to enormous eagles and are prominent in numerous, Native American folklores and totems. The name Thunderbird is derived from the sound that is apparently produced as a result of the thunderous beating of the mighty wings of the creature. Surprisingly, these mythological beasts are occasionally still reported flying around in our modern skies, and, incredibly, are described as having wingspans comparable to that of a small airplane.”

Well, in the same way that there is a distinct enigma surrounding the missing 1960s-era Thunderbird photograph, so there is  a similar aura of weirdness surrounding the photo of a Thunderbird that appears in my and Ken’sMonsters of Texas.

Like all authors, Ken and I wanted to ensure we had a good and varied selection of photos to accompany the text of the book. And that included, if possible, Thunderbird-themed imagery. But, we didn’t want to simply go down the easy and lazy path of just pulling pictures from Wikipedia or somewhere similar, or using images that were well-known and/or well-used. So, the hunt was on for something relevant and new. But, it was no easy task. Or, rather, for a while it wasn’t.

One afternoon, just a month or so before the book had to be submitted to the publisher, I was speaking on the phone with my dad, and he asked what I was up to. I told him that the writing of Monsters of Texas was coming to a close, but that we were having a hard time finding a Thunderbird photo. Given that my dad’s interest in Cryptozoology is  not exactly huge, he almost flummoxed me when he said, words to the effect of: “I can send you a picture; I have an old painting of a Thunderbird in my garage.”

This sounded almost too good to be true. Amazingly, it wasn’t. Like all young men his age in the early 1950s, my dad had to serve three years of what was then called National Service (or, in the U.S., the Draft). But, his stint in the British Royal Air Force aside, my dad spent his working career as a carpenter. In the late 1970s, the company he was then working for secured a contract to rebuild and renovate the lobbies of a well-known hotel chain in and around the London area.

When the work was completed, my dad and his colleagues were presented with gifts, as a sign of appreciation for the work. In my dad’s case, his gift was a circular piece of stone, on which had been painted a brightly colored Thunderbird catching a fish. I vaguely remembered seeing this as a young teenager, but didn’t realize the significance of it back then, and promptly forgot about it – chiefly because it was never on display in my parents’ home, and apparently remained buried amongst a mass of stuff in the garage for decades.

So, my dad dug out the circle of stone, dusted it off, and took a picture of it for me – the very one that accompanies this article. But, there’s something else, too. I find it very curious that while I was diligently searching – but ultimately failing – to find what I considered to be a good, previously unseen Thunderbird image for the book, I should finally get one from, of all people, my very own dad, all as a result of a chance conversation. Or, was it all down to chance?

I am a big believer in the phenomenon of Synchronicities – so-called “meaningful coincidences” that appear to be the result of something stranger than mere random actions. And, I’m very inclined to place this affair into that same category.

And, of course, I can’t ignore the fact that this represents two Thunderbird-connected photographs that seem to have distinctly Fortean overtones attached to them – one of which seemingly disappeared from the pages of one or more magazines years ago, and another that appears in Monsters of Texas! Maybe I should keep careful watch, just in case the latter picture starts to mysteriously disappear, too, from each and every copy of the book…

Deja-vu Blogfest: The Thunderbird photo and False Memory Syndrome

Today I'm participating in the Deja-vu blogfest, where bloggers are reposting their favorite old post. I first published this one back in 2009 on my blog Grizzled Old Traveler. It's a travel blog that I don't update anymore now that I blog professionally for Gadling. There are still some good posts on there, though. This is my favorite. My second favorite isTen Reasons the Moon Landing Conspiracy theory is Stupid.

Yesterday I was chatting with a fellow writer about a book she's writing on legendary beasts. One of my favorites is the Thunderbird, a giant dinosaur-like winged creature that haunts the American Southwest, and the conversation turned to the strange role I've played in the story of this mysterious creature.


Let me say at the outset that I don't think the Thunderbird is real. With all the aviation, birdwatchers, and development in the United States in the past century, no giant flying monster could have remained undetected. My skepticism, however, makes this story all the more interesting.

The Thunderbird is part of Native American religious belief, but that creature is like a giant bird with feathers. The more modern Thunderbird is always described as reptilian, which makes some cryptozoologoists (people who study unknown animals) think it's a pterosaur. Supposedly there was an article in the 26 April 1890 edition of the Tombstone, Arizona, Epitaph, about two cowboys shooting a creature with leathery wings like a bat and a head like an alligator. They dragged it back to town and nailed it up to a barn, its wingspan covering the barn's entire length. I haven't seen this article myself, but I know that frontier journalism often played with the truth. Mark Twain got started on fiction while working on his brother's newspaper in the Nevada Territory!

Some photos have turned up over the years. The most famous one shows a giant Thunderbird nailed to a barn with some cowboys standing nearby. I can't show it to you because it doesn't seem to exist, at least not anymore. Many investigators claim to have seen it or even owned a copy, but nobody has one now

This is where it gets weird. I remember seeing that photo. My memory is of a fairly clear black and white image of a Thunderbird nailed to the roof of a barn, its wingspan almost equal to the barn's length. Men in old western costume are lined up on the roof and in front of the barn. I remember it looked like a rather poor cut-and-paste job. It was common for frontier people to pose next to and on a barn after a barn raising, so perhaps someone added the Thunderbird to a real photo. I even remember where I saw it, in a paranormal magazine at Bookman's, a used bookstore I used to work at in Tucson, Arizona. For some reason I didn't buy the magazine.

This must be a false memory. If the picture existed in a paranormal magazine, it would have been located by dedicated cryptozoologists by now. My experience is just like other people's, in that I have a very clear memory of the event and I no longer have the photo. Some people claim to have seen it in the possession of someone else. Others had a copy and lost it. In my case, I saw it in a magazine I didn't buy. I have unwittingly become part of an urban legend.

Weird, huh? What's going on here? Paranormal investigator Jerome Clark theorizes that the idea of the image is evocative enough to implant a false memory. Perhaps I read about the photo and created the memory? I wonder if ten years from now my writer friend will be writing another book on monsters and will be pulling her hair out trying to find that image of the Thunderbird she remembers seeing.

Oh, and not all memories of this photo are alike. This article includes the memory of a different image of the Thunderbird, and other reports say the creature was nailed to the wall of the barn, not the roof.

While I'm careful to use only public domain photos in this blog, I'm not sure these are. If they are really as old as they appear to be, then they are in the public domain. They could simply be old fakes. If they are modern fakes, then I'm in breach of copyright, but the only way the creator could sue me is if they admitted faking the photo! I'll take that chance. :-)