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The term 'thunderbird' is applied (sometimes quite loosely or even unwisely ... ) to multiple historical / folkloric topics or entities such as:

- a mythical creature in Native American religion / folklore;
- prehistoric giant birds; and
- sightings of giant birds reported to this day.

Even though these applications of 'thunderbird' are often thrown in the mix when discussing the MIA image, they are not necessarily relevant to the topic of the 'thunderbird photo' per se.

The photo is a legendary piece of evidence for a specific incident involving the killing of a huge flying creature. The photo is an image of the carcass and people (presumably including the killers) illustrating its size and how real it was.

The story of the killing-a-'thunderbird' (whatever ...) traces back to the 1890 Tombstone newspaper article. The story of the MIA photo derived from the story of that particular incident. As far as anyone's been able to establish, the first claims there'd been a photo taken back in 1890 didn't surface until the 1960s. No one's identified any account from the original 1890 article up until Pearl's 1963 article in Saga that claims there ever was a photo.
Since the original the original article neither has nor mentions a photo, if there IS a genuine 19th century photo of a large bird / lizard, it's not necessarily connected to the article. Indeed, if any such photo does have a large bird, it presumably could not be connected to the article, which describes something even stranger than a pterodactyl - more like a part-grown Game of Thrones dragon without the fire.
 
@MercuryCrest @Cochise @Nosmo King

Does this much resemble what you saw?

thunderbird.jpg
 
Yes it does. If we were doing an identikit I'd say the birds wings were somewhat narrower front to back, with a bigger wingspan proportional to the body, and black rather than grey. It was definitely an outside shot and the wings were close to the width of the barn but less than the full width.

I don't clearly remember the position of the humans, but they were trying to indicate the size of the bird, although some may have been holding rifles as well. The window (or more likely door into the hayloft) I do remember.

Not that I'd like to go in to a court of law on this - I've explained the distance back in time since I saw this. On the other hand its strange I remember this quite vividly but not much else from the book - I think it had the Tower of London haunting/manifestation and the house somewhere in London's City or West End that has a particularly deadly haunting. Pretty sure it had Borley Rectory as well.
 
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Yes it does. If we were doing an identikit I'd say the birds wings were somewhat narrower front to back, with a bigger wingspan proportional to the body, and black rather than grey. It was definitely an outside shot and the wings were close to the width of the barn but less than the full width.
I don't clearly remember the position of the humans, but they were trying to indicate the size of the bird, although some may have been holding rifles as well. The window (or more likely door into the hayloft) I do remember.

Sorry to be pernickety but didn't you say that you thought the wingspan was about 12ft? Wouldn't slightly above 12ft be very narrow for a barn?
 
Mark Chorvinsky - the late editor of Strange Magazine - invested considerable effort in investigating the story of a thunderbird photo. Part 1 of his multi-part series on the investigation and its results can be found in issue 21 of the magazine. I've finally found an online source for Part 1 of his report at:

Cowboys & Dragons: Unravelling the Mystery of the Thunderbird Photograph: Part One
Mark Chorvinsky
Strange Magazine, Issue 21
http://www.strangemag.com/strangemag/strange21/contents21.html

The most relevant part is:

Section 6: Searching for the Source of the First Thunderbird Photo Mention
http://www.strangemag.com/strangemag/strange21/thunderbird21/thunderbird6_21.html

Chorvinsky confirms there doesn't seem to be any published mention of the photo prior to Pearl's May 1963 article in SAGA. However, in delving deeper he outlines a reasonable, if not conclusive, case that if Pearl didn't invent the story himself he may well have based his photo claim on a similar claim by an H. M. Cranmer of Pennsylvania, whose Septeber 1963 letter in FATE seems to have been the second-published mention of a photo.
 
Sorry to be pernickety but didn't you say that you thought the wingspan was about 12ft? Wouldn't slightly above 12ft be very narrow for a barn?
Yes , probably. I shouldn't have really put a wingspan on it. I don't know what wingspan say, a Condor or Bald Eagle actually does have. What I would say is that it looked very large but not ridiculously giant?

In your drawing you've got it at about , what 20ft?

What would be feasible for a small country barn? The one I used to own (in the UK) is about 15ft wide - I could only get a normal length car in it from the side door by slewing the back of the car on a jack. Would that be ridiculously small for a small farm in the US? I seem to remember some quite small barns when I lived in New England. That's I guess what I had in mind when I was throwing 12ft in to the air.

My barn incidentally had exactly the classic profile shown in your drawing with a hayloft door in the gable. Except it was stone, so nailing your Thunderbird to it would present some problems :)
 
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Since the original the original article neither has nor mentions a photo, if there IS a genuine 19th century photo of a large bird / lizard, it's not necessarily connected to the article. Indeed, if any such photo does have a large bird, it presumably could not be connected to the article, which describes something even stranger than a pterodactyl - more like a part-grown Game of Thrones dragon without the fire.
Agreed, but ... If such a 19th century photo were to be discovered the credence anyone might give it would depend on determining its back story and verifying its age and authenticity. Trick photography was feasible and widespread as of the late 19th century.

My point is that a photo without an explanation / back story is not necessarily any more convincing than the current situation - a story without a photo.
 
Agreed, but ... If such a 19th century photo were to be discovered the credence anyone might give it would depend on determining its back story and verifying its age and authenticity. Trick photography was feasible and widespread as of the late 19th century.

My point is that a photo without an explanation / back story is not necessarily any more convincing than the current situation - a story without a photo.
Agreed. But the chase is fun. :twothumbs:

Edit: Our posts are crossing. 36ft would definitely be considerably larger than the bird I remember, trying to recall proportions of humans to bird. So revise my attempt at identikit work to say the body of the bird should be considerably smaller and even if the wingspan approaches say 30 ft (which i think is too much) the wings will still have to be narrower. Give me an hour or so and I'll try and find the modern lashed up photo / artwork that is nearest to what I remember.
 
Ok, there is no single pic closer than the two above ( drawing and the fake end-of-barn pic). Someone would have to photoshp these together -
This bird has the right proportions.

1633018736501.png


This picture has the right 'scale' as it were:

1633018964528.png


And this picture has the correct general layout:

1633019106593.png


Obviously I know the second and third pictures are fake. So imagine a barn something like the size of picture two, with a door to the hayloft and a bird looking like picture one nailed to it in the layout of picture three, except the wings of the bird are stretched out straighter than whatever nonsense creature is depicted in picture three.
 
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So many layers to this onion! The most interesting part for me is the memories people have of the photo in a book. Most of those folks are, I think, my contemporaries. I read every one of those kinds of books that I could get my hands on as a kid and even later, but have no memory of such a photo. There seems to be one back in the dim reaches of my memory now, but I've seen several attempts at simulating the "original" photo and I have no doubt that's just normal conflation and confusion. I think I learned of the mystery of the photo back in the 80s or maybe before then, and I had no such memory filed away at that time.

I'm surprised the MIA photo was discussed in 1963. The people with the memory of the photo back then would be quite a bit older than me. It's easy enough to write the original story off as yet another 19th century newspaper yarn, but there seem to be a lot of people who swear they saw the picture in a book. Of course the picture could have been anything, most likely "art". At this point, I'm sure an example of whatever publication it might have been in should have surfaced by now. It's a curiosity on many levels.
 
Ok, there is no single pic closer than the two above ( drawing and the fake end-of-barn pic). Someone would have to photoshp these together -
This bird has the right proportions.

View attachment 45880

This picture has the right 'scale' as it were:

View attachment 45881

And this picture has the correct general layout:

View attachment 45882

Obviously I know the second and third pictures are fake. So imagine a barn something like the size of picture two, with a door to the hayloft and a bird looking like picture one nailed to it in the layout of picture three, except the wings of the bird are stretched out straighter than whatever nonsense creature is depicted in picture three.
Could to be either of these?

Moth617.PNG.png

Moth618.PNG (1).png
 
The lower one is close in general layout. but not a barn and in this case the bird is a bit small.

Look, for all I know the picture I'm remembering is an artists impression or another fake. But I DO remember it and it was in a book that must have been printed in the (late) 1960's or 1970's because I left home in 1979.

Edit: Does the lower one have any provenance? It does look like a real photo, although obviously it could have been 'enhanced'.
 
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It's kind of a pity there are fakes and mock ups, it's a story that flourishes in the imagination and the mind's eye.
 
Yes they were holding the bird up with its wings spread

You're definitely not conflating it with this:

stork.jpg


I don't think you are ad you've likely seen the above image more than once, just checking for clarity.
 
You're definitely not conflating it with this:

View attachment 45900

I don't think you are ad you've likely seen the above image more than once, just checking for clarity.
You are correct, I have seen this photo and its not the one I remember, the one I remember was a group of maybe 6 or more, prospector types standing behind and holding a huge raptor up by the top of its spread wings outdoors, no buildings in sight.
 
I find it interesting that Cochise mentioned condors several times - they do have the thinner wings he remembers. The California condor can have a 9 and a half foot wingspan, and the Andean (which I have seen a live specimen of) can get close to 11 feet. This isn't so far off his estimate of 12, so perhaps, @Cochise, you did see a picture of an abnormally large condor. Not as exciting as a thunderbird, but still an exceptional creature.
 
Within the specific context of any story originating with the April 1890 Tombstone Epitaph ...
Here is the earliest known graphical depiction of the monster which may have eventually been translated into the 'thunderbird' of missing photo fame:
1890-tombstone-monster-X.jpg

This illustration did not appear in the Tombstone Epitaph. It first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on 8 June 1890, alongside that newspaper's publication of the Tombstone story. The connection between this image and the Tombstone story is made in a September 2021 blog entry quoting yet another 1890 story from San Diego:
AN AERIAL MONSTER

What Judge Dillar's Little Boy Claims to Have Seen.

The Sunday Examiner contained an account of a winged monstrosity that had been shot and killed by some men in Arizona. It was described as a species of animal hitherto totally unknown in the world, with enormous bat-like wings, the beak of a crocodile, an elongated body and a tail twisted like a coil of electric wires. The story read like an Examiner fake, but a semi-corroboration is furnished by a local incident.

Several days ago the young son of Judge Dillar ran pale and frightened to the house, exclaiming, "Papa, I have just seen the devil!" He declared that while out on the hills in the City Park he saw an enormous creature flying through the air with bat-like wings, a long bill and a tail twisted like a doughnut. His father laughed at such a notion, but the little fellow stoutly held to his story. He said it flew toward the east. Yesterday he was questioned again about it and repeated just what he had said previously. On being shown a picture of the monster reported to have been shot in Arizona he declared it looked just like the creature he had seen.

Of course both stories are improbable, but the coincidence is just a trifle peculiar.
(Emphasis added)
PUBLISHED IN: San Diego Weekly Union, June 12, 1890.

The blog entry (which refers to the Tombstone monster as 'Tommy') explains the connection as follows:
Right away, it should be noted that the Examiner to which this article refers is certainly The San Francisco Examiner, which published the Tombstone Epitaph monster report in its pages on Sunday, June 8, 1890. The picture mentioned is not a photograph but the wonderful illustration that accompanied the article ... , most certainly the earliest visual depiction of Tommy (as it did not appear in the original Epitaph article).
SOURCE: https://thunderbirdphoto.com/f/a-previously-unknown-adventure-of-the-tombstone-thunderbird
 
Hi all, I hope you found my previous article on the San Diego Dragon interesting. In my latest article, I attempted to gather all the known candidates for the Missing Thunderbird Photo in one place, along with their corresponding backstories. This post was a huge undertaking to compile, and I hope everyone finds it useful! :)

Thunderbird Photos Exposed! (A Gallery of Fakes & Recreations)
 
Hi all, I hope you found my previous article on the San Diego Dragon interesting. In my latest article, I attempted to gather all the known candidates for the Missing Thunderbird Photo in one place, along with their corresponding backstories. This post was a huge undertaking to compile, and I hope everyone finds it useful! ...

Out-STAND-ing! Thanks for investing the time and effort to compile the various photos into one web presentation. :clap:
 
Hi all, I hope you found my previous article on the San Diego Dragon interesting. In my latest article, I attempted to gather all the known candidates for the Missing Thunderbird Photo in one place, along with their corresponding backstories. This post was a huge undertaking to compile, and I hope everyone finds it useful! :)

Thunderbird Photos Exposed! (A Gallery of Fakes & Recreations)
I haven't had the chance to read it all yet but it's obvious this was an extraordinary undertaking that's resulted in an invaluable resource. Well done!
 
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