Jonathan Whitcomb Flying Fox and Pterosaurs Whitcomb Expedition of 2004 Pterosaur New View on the "Fiery Flying Serpent" Live Pterosaur
Whitcomb-Paina Ropen Expedition
© Jonathan Whitcomb 2011-2015
A real place loved by C. S. Lewis
By Jonathan Whitcomb
My interpreter Luke Paina and I were there to videotape or photograph a ropen. Discovering a living pterosaur proved more difficult than I had hoped, but we discovered a life of hope in the human inhabitants of Umboi Island, a faith in God revealed to them from the Bible. During those two weeks on that remote island in Papua New Guinea, I saw no pterosaur, but Luke saw the flying light that the natives call “ropen.” For a few seconds, with the village leader Mark Kau, Luke watched the light as it flew across Mount Bel, well below the summit (in defiance of common meteors that fly much further away and in the sky): the ropen. With several villagers from the Gomlongon- Opia area, Luke and I headed into the bush for our first excursion: towards Mr. Tolo, near the crater lake Pung. We never made it to the lake where seven island boys had seen the giant ropen in about 1994. (For details, read the fourth edition of Searching for Ropens and Finding God.) But the second excursion brought us the success of interviewing eyewitnesses of the ropen, including eyewitness Gideon Koro. He and six other boys had been terrorized by the huge ropen years earlier.
Gideon Koro had no idea that an America was coming to his village, to interview eyewitnesses of the ropen.
Photo by Whitcomb
Photo by Whitcomb
The children of Opai Village, Umboi Island, were delighted, in 2004, to see their images in the viewfinder of the American’s camcorder: a rare treat.
In the vaste tropical wildernesses of the islands of Papua New Guinea, countless hiding places may be home to countless unclassified flying creatures, even pterosaurs
Lake Pung, Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, where the nocturnal ropen sometimes flies, at least once (around 1994) even in daylight (seen by seven boys)
Photo by Garth Guessman
The ropen of Papua New Guinea may be related to the “Gitmo Pterosaurs” (Cuba) witnessed by Eskin C. Kuhn in 1971.
Two pterosaurs were seen at Guantanamo Bay
The American cryptozoologist and explorer Paul Nation also searched for the ropen of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, on an earlier expedition (seen here in 2002).
Mark Kau and his two sons (Umboi Island, 2004)
Luke Paina (left) and Jonathan Whitcomb, as they wait for the cargo-passenger ship on the mainland
Native describes the flight of the bioluminescent ropen, how the large flying creature passed overhead (earlier expedition)