What many Americans call pterodactyls—those apparently can hunt more than just fish in rivers or bats in caves; a few of them appear to be dangerous to human children, although the evidence at the moment is mostly circumstantial.
The following information is taken mostly from the nonfiction book Missing 411 – Western United States & Canada, by the investigative journalist David Paulides. But from my own perspective, a few individual modern pterosaurs are considered as a potential cause of some of these children becoming missing.
Missing children in Oregon and Washington state
One of the strange cases of persons disappearing in the northwestern USA is that of the two-year-old Keith Parkins. The toddler was visiting his grandparents, who lived in a rugged area of northeastern Oregon. This was in April of 1952, near the North Fork of the John Day River, which is just south of the border with Washington.
Little Keith may have wandered away from the house at about noon, but critical details were not available to Mr. Paulides during his investigation decades later. For some reason, one or more of the searchers decided to look in a creek bed twelve miles away, and that is where they found the unconscious two-year-old, only nineteen hours after he disappeared.
A newspaper reported:
“He was found face down on the chilly ground at 6:40 a.m., nearly nine miles from the farm in a direct line. At the hospital to which he was flown he was reported recovering from shock and exposure. The temperature in his mountain night dropped far below freezing. He crossed at least one icy stream.”
According to the book by Paulides:
“His mother said . . . [his pants] were torn to shreds . . .”
I agree with this author: Searchers looking nine miles away, in a straight direction (twelve miles in walking), only nineteen hours after a two-year-old has gone missing—that is highly unusual. Yet among the strangest of the missing-person cases, this extraordinary ground travel is not so unusual for children of only two or three years of age. I believe that Mr. Paulides and I agree that at least some of these cases involve small children being carried long distances. Carried by whom or by what? That is the question.
But other children have gone missing in Oregon and Washington.
A similar case: Daryl Webley
In April of 1949, two-year-old Daryl went missing from the yard of his family’s home in the Colville area of Washington state. Searchers could not find him until the next day. He was alive but almost nude and badly scratched, in a canyon some distance above where the tracking dogs had found his cap, pants, and one of his shoes.
Like little Keith, this two-year-old, only three years before Keith’s adventure, recovered from his night of cold exposure. This case in 1949, however, has the child himself scratched rather than only the pants badly torn. Daryl was missing for fourteen hours rather than nineteen, yet I believe that relates to survival, not to the cause of disappearance.
How can the 1949 case be explained as an attack from a large flying creature? Perhaps a ropen carried the boy over the canyon, accidentally dropping him into bushes that cushioned the fall. When the animal realized the potential meal was missing, it flew down the canyon, looking for Daryl but failing to find him. The ropen then dropped the clothing where it was later found by the tracking dogs.
I know that this is speculative, but compare this explanation to any other. One of the ropen’s feet had grabbed the boy’s cap, immediately pulling it off, leaving Daryl hanging upside down. How so? The other ropen foot was holding onto both the lower end of one pant leg and the nearby shoe. When the boy fell out of both his shoe and his pants, the creature continued flying a short distance, still holding onto the cap, shoe, and pants. What else explains why those particular articles of clothing were found together but some distance away from where the boy was found?
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A pond near the Columbia River, Oregon
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Missing Persons and Flying Creatures
Before going on, understand that many apparent pterosaurs in the United States have no interest in attacking people. In fact, the Marfa Lights in Texas as said to be friendly with humans, when they give any sign that they acknowledge us.
Attacks From a Ropen in New Mexico
Of the six persons who were missing in one area of New Mexico, three of them were children, in age from three to seven, in June of 1951. Those three kids were lost together and found together, all alive. The other three persons were adults who were never found, and they disappeared in 1982, 1998, and 2009. The following comparisons suggest there is no cause-relationship between the children and the adults . . .
Wikipedia Causes Ropen “Extinction”
It seems likely that one or more of his students or one or more of the readers of his post were involved. Regardless, you will no longer see Wikipedia’s “Ropen” page at the top of a Google search for that cryptid, for that page is now extinct.
Nightmare: Attack in the Dead of Winter
I dare not now describe to you, in detail, this attacker . . . not yet; it requires an introduction that includes the behavior of Marfa Lights. How they fly gives us no direct clue to the appearance of what causes them (yes, I believe they are physical things that glow). But the apparent dancing of those lights, their complex interactions with each other—that shows us they are more than just lights, and the glow and the motions may serve a purpose.
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