Monsters You Never Heard Of Read Online Free PDF

held back, howling more loudly than ever. The demon hunter looked at him and said, "The boy prays." At that, they all turned off in pursuit of some other soul.

CHAPTER 7

    BIG-BIG BIRD

    The American Indians have a legend about a creature called the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird is supposed to be gigantic. According to some legends, it could darken the entire sky as it flew by.
    Most people think that the Thunderbird is completely a legend. It has been suggested that the idea of the Thunderbird was based on the condor. The condor is a very large vulture-like bird. It has a wingspan of from six to eight feet. The condor was once found throughout the American West. Today it is very rare. It lives only in the mountains of California. It is so rare that many scientists fear that it will soon become extinct. A somewhat larger condor lives in South America. But neither bird is anywhere near the size of the Thunderbird of Indian legend.

    The condor

    There are a few people who claim that the Thunderbird is more than a legend. They say that the stories are based on a gigantic, but unknown, bird. This bird may have existed until just a short time ago. And some think it may still exist today.
    Unfortunately, the best piece of evidence for the existence of the Thunderbird has been lost. Perhaps it never even existed.
    Here is the story. In 1886, a group of ranchers from Tombstone, Arizona, shot and killed a monster bird. They nailed it up, wings outstretched, on a barn. Then six men stood in front of the bird with their arms out, fingertips touching. This was to give some idea of the bird's size. Six average-sized men with outstretched arms would cover a distance of between thirty and thirty-six feet.

    American Indian Thunderbird design
    Now this astonishing scene is supposed to have been photographed. And the photograph was supposed to have been printed in the Tombstone newspaper. The paper had a very appropriate name, the Tombstone Epitaph . A lot of people say that they have seen the picture. The problem is that no one seems to be able to find it. A check of the files of the Tombstone Epitaph , which go back to about that time, reveal no trace of such a photograph.
    One well-known monster hunter said that he had a copy of the original picture in his files. But he loaned it out, and it was never returned. To whom did he loan it? He couldn't remember.
    There is another Big-Big Bird story from Tombstone that was supposed to have taken place at about the same time. It may be just another version of the original story. This time, however, the monster is winged, but has no feathers. It is supposed to have been smooth and hairless, its enormous jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth. The wings, which measured up to 160 feet, were thin membranes of skin. This creature was supposed to have been shot, or at least seen, in the Tombstone area around 1890.
    The whole idea could be dismissed as just a wilder version of an already wild legend—except for one thing. This creature sounds more like one of the ancient flying reptiles called pterodactyls than it does like a bird. Pterodactyl-type creatures had the largest wingspread of any flying creature ever known. Actually, the pterodactyls probably didn't really fly. They would just glide along on air currents. They were very light, but their huge wings—30 or 40 feet from tip to tip—would keep them up in the air.

    Some think the Thunderbird was some kind of giant flying reptile.
    The trouble is that pterodactyls died out at about the same time the dinosaurs did—60 million years ago.
    Giant bird stories come mainly from the American West. But there are a few interesting accounts from the East as well. In May, 1961, there was a report by the pilot of a private plane who was flying in New York State's Hudson Valley. He spotted what appeared to be another and slightly larger plane nearby. Suddenly this "plane" turned and tried to chase him. The pilot was surprised and frightened, but he circled back