Someone Asking About Thunderbird Pix?
mael...@nf.sympatico.ca
Just before I took off for a few weeks, someone posted asking about
the rumored picture of a thunderbird with six cowboys standing in
front of it. It sounded tres familiar but, until I got back, I couldn't
find this particular citation for you.
Here's the article. All typos mine.
Cite: _Unexplained!_, Jerome Clark, Visible Ink, ISBN: 0-8103-9436-7,
1993, pp. 367-369.
"THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH
In April 1890 two riders sighted an enormous flying creature -- which
Indians would have recognized immediately as a thunderbird -- alighting
in the Arizona desert. The beast had the body of a serpent, immense
wings, two clawed feet, and an alligatorlike face with saucer-sized
eyes. The men got as close to it as their terrified horses would
allow. They proceeded on foot, rifles in hand, but the creature saw
them and flew away, only to land again not far away. This time it came
down on one of its wings and so was unable to escape as the men pumped
bullets into it.
When measured, the wings were found to span an incredible 160 feet. The
body, 92 and 1/2 feet long, was smooth and featherless, more like a
bat's than a bird's. The men cut off a portion of the wing and brought
it with them to Tombstone.
That at least is how the _Tombstone Epitaph_ told the story in its April
26, 1890, issue. That was the extent of its coverage; there was no
follow-up article. To all appearances this is simply yet another of the
tall tales with which newspapers on the American frontier regularly
regaled readers. What distinguishes it from many others, however, is
that it gave rise to an odd modern legend.
The story was revived in a 1930 book, Horace Bell's _On the Old West
Coast_. Thirty-three years later, in a sensationalistic article in the
men's action magazine, _Saga_, Jack Pearl wrote that in 1886 the
_Epitaph_ "published a photograph of a huge bird nailed to a wall. The
newspaper said it had been shot by two prospectors and hauled into town
by wagon. Lined up in front of the bird were six grown men with their
arms outstretched, fingertip to fingertip. The creature measured about
36 feet from wingtip to wingtip."
Pearl further claimed that in 1889, after being ridiculed in a Tombstone
saloon, one of the prospectors challenged his harassers to go after the
bird themselves. "There's plenty more of 'em nesting in the tops of
them mountains," he is supposed to have said. The drunks set out into
the desert, but, when one went into the bushes to relieve himself, his
companions heard him screaming, "It's got me!" They ran to investigate
and found his footsteps vanished in the middle of a clearing. All they
could hear was his anguished voice coming from above them and finally
fading out.
[Cut references to the Oliver Lerch disappearance.]
In any case, in a letter published in the September 1963 issue of
_Fate_, H. M. Cranmer, of Renova, Pennsylvania, mentioned the
photograph, which he said was taken "about the year 1900." The
creature's 36-foot wings were "nailed against the wall of the _Tombstone
Epitaph_.... A picture showed six men, with outstretched arms touching,
standing under the bird. Later, a group of actors dressed as professors
were photographed under the bird, with one of them saying, 'Shucks,
there is no such bird, never was, and never will be.'" In another
letter in the March 1966 issue, Cranmer indicated he had received his
"splendid account" from a "lady in Tombstone." In neither this nor the
previous letter does Cranmer indicate that he had actually _seen_ the
photograph, though now he declared, "This picture was circulated in
papers all over the United States."
Ivan T. Sanderson, a biologist and writer on natural anomalies, now
claimed that he once possessed a photocopy of the picture but had lent
it to two associates, who lost it. The editors of _Fate_ thought they
may have published the picture in an early issue (the magazine started
in 1948), but a search through the existing issues indicated otherwise.
Meanwhile, after the original _Epitaph_ story (which mentions no
photograph) was revived in a 1969 issue of _Old West_, reader Harry F.
McClure wrote in to say he had personally known the men who killed the
thunderbird.
Responding to numerous letters from inquirers, the _Epitaph_ conducted a
thorough search which uncovered no such photograph in any issue of the
newspaper. An extended survey of other Arizona and California papers of
the period came to similarly negative results.
Still, as late as 1990, writer John A. Keel insisted, "I _know_ I saw
it. And not only that - I compared notes with a lot of other people who
also saw it.... It was either in one of the tabloids or one of the
men's magazines.... it looked like a pterodactyl or something.... The
guys were all wearing cowboy boots and cowboy hats and they were all
kind of scrungy, like they had been out riding the range." That same
year, W. Ritchie Benedict swore that he had seen Sanderson displaying
the photograph on a Canadian television show. "As I recall," he wrote,
"the creature had a very pointed head and its eyes were closed."
In a review of the episode, Mark A. Hall wrote, "The simple description
of the photo - the six men posed to show the size of the dead bird --
seems to create a vivid mental image in the minds of many, causing
people who have always been particularly curious and eclectic in their
knowledge to think it somehow familiar, even when they are unlikely to
have ever seen it. Enough people have independently confessed to this
reaction that I suspect is has contributed to the mistaken ideas about
this photograph. People may think they have seen it when they truly
have not."
[Cut alternate/split universe theory by Charles Wiedemann.]
END OF ARTICLE
Just as a sort of personal postscript to this piece, when I first heard
this photograph described, I immediately flashed to an existing, real,
photo from the same period, that was evidently meant to illustrate the
size of the redwoods in California. In that picture, six men, looking
pretty ragged after chopping down one of those monster trunks, stand
fingertip to fingertip in front of it. According to the Beaman
Collection, who hold the copyrights to the redwood photo, that is one of
the era's most often reprinted images.
My own interest in this topic actually sprang not from the later
references to a photograph, but to the mention, in the original article,
of an actual piece of the wing that would have been available for
inspection when the article was written. I've often wondered why, if
the wing piece existed, it wasn't commented upon further by the
_Epitaph_ writer who did the first article....? Or, for that matter, if
such an amazing artifact did exist (the writer after all doesn't say,
"but the men failed to produce it as this writing" or anything to that
effect), where the heck did it go?
Hope some of this proved helpful,
Mael