Marfa Lights and James Bunnell

It seems odd to me that Wikipedia makes almost no mention of the name "James Bunnell" under the heading of "Marfa Lights." What scientist has done more research and conducted more searching for Marfa Lights than he has, with at least two nonfiction books on the subject? What other investigator of ghost lights in southwest Texas has been granted permission to set up remote automatic cameras on the private property of ranchers?

Bunnell's recent book, Hunting Marfa Lights, deserves attention here, with a quotation from Amazon:

Hunting Marfa Lights reports the results of an eight-year investigation (2001-2009) into mysterious lights seen near Marfa, a small West Texas town. This is, to date, the only long-term, extensive study of these phenomena. Reports of unusual lights east of Marfa extend back to the 1800s. Based on data collected, the author finds that while most of the observed lights in this area can be explained, about 3 percent are truly mysterious and of unknown origin. In addition to frequent on-site observations and photography, the author installed three automated monitoring stations equipped with a total of nine cameras, to collect nightly video records. Included in this 311-page book are 34 firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses and more than 120 illustrations and photographs. Of particular interest are compelling stories told by people, including the author, who have encountered these mysterious lights and have been astonished and amazed by the experience.

Although Mr. Bunnell may not yet have accepted the possibility that CE-III mystery lights near Marfa, Texas, are from bioluminescent flying predators, his enormous contributions, documented in his recent book, have made a wonderful contribution. That said, much has been written, online, about the pterosaur possibility:

Bats and Bioluminescent Predators

. . . when one of the bioluminescent predators has been glowing for awhile, not far above the ground, it will be joined by another of its kind, which will then turn on its own glow. After insects have been attracted to that area, the two creatures will separate, which appears to distant human observers to be one light splitting into two. The predators will fly away from each other for some distance, then turn back and fly together. During the separation, bats may begin feeding on the concentration of insects before being caught from two sides by the larger predators.

Are Marfa Lights Headlights?

To the best of my knowledge, no scientist who has studied or researched or observed any lights around Marfa, Texas, (including James Bunnell, Edson Hendricks, and Norman Huntington) objects to the idea that some spectators at the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform sometimes observe car headlights and have assumed that they had seen "Marfa Lights." . . . But that is not the point. Other lights that occasionally fly around this part of southwest Texas appear quite different; they are not mirages of car headlights.

Marfa Lights of Texas

The cryptozoological possibility seems weird, but there are similarities with the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea, and there the lights are said to be nocturnal flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs: ropens.

"Marfa Lights Solved" - Is it a Giant Bird?

Did those students of the University of Texas at Dallas really solve a controversial mystery? I think not. Ask the right question in the beginning, for it can lead us into enlightenment; asking the wrong question (even if answered correctly) can lead us into ignorance. This appears to be a critical error that doomed those students to failure, for they seemed to have formulated a question like, “Can car headlights near Marfa, Texas, appear mysterious?”

Marfa Light Madness?

Leaning heavily on sarcasm does more than guarantee a writer's work will be forgotten. It puts the writer's opinion in doubt, for reasoning should come first. The person who wrote the above critism may have had something worthwhile in mind, before writing; but the comment itself throws the possibility of deep thinking into doubt.

The overall evidences, from the truly mysterious (and somewhat rare) Marfa Lights (not the night-mirages of car headlights, which are common) suggest intelligent nocturnal predators, bioluminescent, and possibly related to the ropen or indava of Papua New Guinea.

Are Marfa Lights Headlights?

A recent post on Modern Pterosaur ("Scientific Skepticism and Marfa Lights") mentions only briefly the car-headlights explanation for the mystery lights of southwest Texas. That post was in response to another post, one by Brian Dunning, on Skeptoid ("The Marfa Lights: A Real American Mystery"). I recommend the first post, not the one by Dunning.

To the best of my knowledge, no scientist who has studied or researched or observed any lights around Marfa, Texas, (including James Bunnell, Edson Hendricks, and Norman Huntington) object to the idea that some spectators at the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform sometimes observe car headlights and have assumed that they had seen "Marfa Lights." There is adequate studies to make this clear: Night mirages of car headlights can sometimes appear mysterious. But that is not the point. Other lights that occasionally fly around this part of southwest Texas appear quite different; they are not mirages of car headlights.

Dunning, in his post "The Marfa Lights: A Real American Mystery," falters in two ways when he sells car headlights or exchanges them for mysterious Marfa Lights. But his double trip-up can be overlooked for the moment, for the research of James Bunnell calls for a closer look. What about the strange lights that greatly differ from car headlights?

On pages 168-169 of Bunnell's book Hunting Marfa Lights (available at a discount on Amazon), we find the definition of "CE ML." They "exhibit chemical or combustion-like properties with electromagnetic attributes." Bunnell says that those Mystery Lights (ML) "are truly mysterious and do not fit into Mirage . . . categories." He should know about chemical and combustion-like properties, being literally a rocket scientist.

Bunnell's remote automatic cameras have recorded amazing flying light behaviors, including one flight at low altitude for eleven miles. This kind of ML he classifies as "CE-III." Some flights have been obviously unrelated to any automobiles, traveling where there are no roads or highways. But also telling is the nature of the light from these flying things, for a series of explosions seems to be involved, whether or not it relates to propulsion (which I discount). Not just flight directions or explosive characteristics distinguish these lights from car headlights, however; CE-III's can fly around in colors nothing like any car headlights.

Now back to Dunning. How did he falter regarding car headlights? First, he assumed that if strange lights existed around Marfa before the advent of cars, somebody would have written about it in some permanent form before any cars appeared. He seems to be confused about the significance of various kinds of evidence. If somebody had written, in a book, before there were any cars, about mysterious lights around Marfa, it would be clear evidence against the car headlight hypothesis. But the absence of an old written record does not make second-hand reports of nineteen-century sightings of mysterious lights worthless; it just makes it less decisive against car headlights. Evidence is rarely considered either proof positive or worthless; most evidence is somewhere between those extremes.

Dunning also trips up on a brief study (much briefer than Bunnell's investigations) by a group of physics students. Their conclusion was not that all lights ever seen as mysterious around Marfa are from car headlights. They concluded that the lights that they had personally seen were car headlights. But the CE-III and similar non-mirage lights seen by Bunnell and other scientists do not appear every night like the predictable car traffic on a nearby highway; they appear only a few times each year. Apparently, the CE-III lights did not show up when the college students were looking at car headlights on those two or three nights: unlucky for the students, but they were apparently unaware of their bad luck.
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This post contains the opinions of the author, Jonathan Whitcomb.

See also the post about Marfa Lights and Pterodactyls

See also Ropens (live pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea)

See also Marfa Lights in the Houston Chronicle

See also Marfa Lights not Car Headlights in Texas

Are Marfa Lights "Pterodactyl" Lights?

On the blog post "Ghost Lights Versus Science?" it says, "It may seem like science is pitted against the mystery of those Marfa Lights of southwest Texas, but in truth scientific investigations are making progress in unraveling the mystery, notwithstanding one hypothesis that makes the result appear to be science fiction." It then tells us about the research and searches of James Bunnell, a scientist who has been unable, after years of work, to explain what is happening with those mysterious lights in southwest Texas.

Other scientists have tried to tackle the mystery, with no success, notwithstanding their many conjectures about things like earth lights and geologic features that have some kind of energy release. Some of those lights fly around together in ways so strange and complex that local ranchers and others refer to them as "dancing devils" or "ghost lights." They behave in ways suggesting some general intelligent cause or individual purpose for each light in a group.

Evelyn Cheesman, a British biologist who is now known as the first woman to be a curator at the Regent's Park Zoo in London, witnessed strange lights during one of her expeditions in the southwest Pacific. She wrote about them in her 1935 book The Two Roads of Papua. But in her lifetime she never realized the potential significance of those lights to biology. In the early twenty-first century, a few cryptozoologists began suggesting the "Cheesman Lights" were made by flying creatures related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

Now the Marfa Lights are being evaluated for their potential as flying predators, and bioluminescent ones at that, similar to the ropen lights. All of them, including the Cheesman Lights, are probably bioluminescent flying predators, and eyewitness sightings in daylight indicate at least some of them are large living pterosaurs, called by some Americans "pterodactyls."

Marfa Lights Keep Flying

Comparing Marfa Lights with ropen lights may be speculative, but the potential for a dramatic scientific discovery is thrilling. What at potential! Living bioluminescent pterosaurs in Texas! Even if the flying creatures turn out to be something other than pterosaurs, it would be a wonderful discovery of such incredible glowing flying predators.

Headlights and Hard Heads Knocking Marfa Lights

So why do some blog writers and blog-post commenters still insist that all mysterious lights seen around Marfa are from car headlights? What could it be other than careless thinking? For those who would like to really learn the truth about what is known and about the possibility (however probable or improbable) of Marfa Lights coming from large bioluminescent flying predators, read one or both of these nonfiction books: Hunting Marfa Lights by James Bunnell and Live Pterosaurs in America, second edition, by Jonathan David Whitcomb. Both books are the result of years of research and investigation.

Science and Marfa Lights

. . . scientists have tried to know and understand Marfa Lights: observing, testing photographing, and theorizing. Interesting ideas have emerged; none but one, however, seems to come close to adequately explaining the apparent intellegence associated with those flying lights, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas.

Ropen Chasing Ropen in Marfa, Texas

I'll call it the "Huntington Hypothesis" (HH), this conjecture that the May 8, 2003, sighting by James Bunnell involved one flying predator that was chasing another one for many miles. Consider this carefully; I see no problem with this hypothesis. It involves a male flying predator chasing off a rival male, in a chase that lasted eleven miles.

Pterodactyls in Texas (including Marfa)

With mammals the size of houses diving deep under the surface of the oceans, with not-quite-so-large mammals having noses many feet long, with birds that can swim, with spiders that catch small birds, with so many wonderful forms of life on this earth, why not pterodactyls in Texas?

Marfa Light Madness?

One commenter on a recent blog post responded briefly to my two long comments with, "Dude, you are a certified whack job. Pterodactyls? Fie and pshaw!" He then sarcastically referred to "glow-goblins" as the cause of Marfa Lights. (Houston Press blog post by Richard Connelly, Dec 7, 2010; comment by "Doc")

A timely note before proceeding: Sarcasm is not satire.

Leaning heavily on sarcasm does more than guarantee a writer's work will be forgotten. It puts the writer's opinion in doubt, for reasoning should come first. The person who wrote the above critism may have had something worthwhile in mind, before writing; but the comment itself throws the possibility of deep thinking into doubt.

One definition of "whack job" is this: "an extremely erratic or irrational person." In my two lengthy comments (over fifty lines of comment, much longer than the blog post by Richard Connelly) I said much about Marfa Lights and the work of the scientist James Bunnell. I said little about pterosaurs. But for those who have read much of my writings, it is obvious that I rely on eyewitnesses, for I have never seen anything like a living pterosaur (although I hope and pray to see one before leaving this world). If the writer of sarcasm really believes me to be insane because I believe in the words of persons who declare that they have seen living pterosaurs, what about Brian Hennessy?

Several years ago, this Australian reported to me his 1971 sighting of a "prehistoric" looking flying creature. It had no sign of feathers but a long tail. The long beak and long tail made it very unlike any bat; the lack of feathers made it very unlike any bird. If I am insane for believing him, what about Hennessy? Why believe he is mentally healthy? The problem with labeling this Australian with "whack job" is that Brian Hennessy is a professional psychologist.

See also "Those Mysterious Marfa Lights."

Can Satire Backfire?

According to Wikipedia, "satire is primarily a literary genre or form" in which "vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement." I suspect that some writers enjoy using satire to be humorous; also, some writers want to make a point without actually reasoning on the point, by using bulverism (whether or not they know the meaning of that word). Although satirical writing is common, satire about new scientific ideas is uncommon.

A recent use of satire in Texas, however, may have backfired, with potential consequences unforseen by the blog writer. Prompted by a press release about a new interpretation of the Marfa Lights of Texas, and the publication of a nonfiction cryptozoology book with a chapter devoted to those strange ghost lights, the blogger ridiculed the idea that the source of those lights are bioluminescent flying predators that may even be living pterosaurs. I wrote both the press release and the book it promotes.

On that blog post by Richard Connelly, I replied with two comments, neither of which referred to bulverism or satire. My comments mostly emphasized the error of assuming there are no strange lights around Marfa (Connelly had assumed car headlights account for all reports of strange lights there). I used that bloggers two links, demonstrating that careful reading of his references result in meanings different from what he had assumed: Those two scientific studies do not support Connelly's assumption.

I said little about pterosaurs in those two comments. After writing books on the subject of living pterosaurs, I have given up on the possibility that even the best-formulated comment or the most thoughtfully prepared article can, by itself, convince all readers that their culture has wrongfully indoctrinated them into the assumption of universal extinctions of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. My best hope is that a single comment or article will awaken most of the readers to the possibility of modern pterosaurs, and Connelly's blog post seems to have done something similar, contrary to his intention.

I am grateful that comments were allowed for that post. I believe that some readers notice the comments, and in this case I have an audience that I would not have had without Connelly's remarks.

For those interested, the blog post of Richard Connelly is not itself the best example of bulverism (it is, however, a clear example of satire); the third comment, by "Doc," is a better example: Referring to me, he said, "Dude, you are a certified whack job." Of course, that commenter's idea is hardly original: that I am a hopeless lunatic; it seems to be a common misconception. But for those who desire to reason on a subject, I suggest actual reasoning, not bulverism.

Pterosaur Extinction . . . or Non-Extinction

How often are we exposed to the word "extinction" when dinosaurs or pterosaurs are mentioned! Extinction is declared as if it were a scientific fact. Facing into the wind of those declarations, look for yourself at the possibility that pterosaurs, in at least a few species, are still living (dinosaurs set aside for the moment).

There is no scientific evidence for universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs. Not a speck of evidence. Consider only a few eyewitness reports, then decide if you would like to investigate further, looking more deeply into those sightings and other similar sightings. I have been investigating pterosaur sightings for over ten years, and the evidence continues to accumulate, both in quantity and quality. I believe the credible eyewitnesses.

I do not set myself up to be more intelligent than the paleontologists who disagree with me. But investigating reports of living pterosaurs is outside the speciality of paleontology, and I have probably spent more hours on this obscure branch of cryptozoology than all the paleontologists in the world combined. Please, if you doubt that any species of pterosaur could be now living, at least consider the length of my experience, before dismissing this idea outright, and look at the eyewitness accounts that I have analyzed.

We could start with Duane Hodgkinson, but his report has been written about and analyzed for years, so let's just take a brief look here (see other blogs and web pages for more information). Hodgkinson was not drinking---he has never been a drinker---when he saw the giant long-tailed "pterodactyl" in a jungle clearing just west of Finschhafen, New Guinea (now the nation of Papua New Guinea). He was not alone, for his army buddy was with him. It was not an indistinct vision in the dark of night, for it was the middle of the day. It was not too brief to be sure, for the two men saw the creature take off into the air before flying away, and it flew back over that same clearing, allowing the two soldiers to get a second clear view of it. It was not far away, for they were in the same clearing as the creature that took off into the air and that clearing was less than 150 feet across. It was not a bird, for there was no sign of feathers. It was not a fruit bat, for the tail was "at least ten to fifteen feet" long. That creature was a clearly observed Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, notwithstanding it was a giant size and the fossils we now have of Rhamphorhynchoids are much smaller.

Consider excerpts from the second edition of my second nonfiction book, Live Pterosaurs in America [to be published within the next few weeks, probably before Thanksgiving]

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! I almost crashed my bike! They were about 50 ft from me; the first thing I noticed was their heads . . . I would have to say it [the head] was maybe 4 ft long with the beak . . . the wings looked like black rubber. . . . their wing span was about 20 ft tip to tip . . ." [Washington state]

“Hello, my name is [RA] and I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend, who now has a masters in biology, were hiking during the midday sun at [a] box canyon and something blocked the sun for a moment. . . . “It had a 20-30 foot wingspan and was about the same length long. It had a long tail with [a] seeming spike at the end. Its head was very pterodactyl shape . . ." [New Mexico]

So consider this: When a flying creature is clearly seen to resemble a pterosaur, maybe it is a pterosaur.