Asian Flying Humanoids
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 15th, 2011
Location: Camp Okubo near Kyoto Japan
Date: 1952
Time: Night
What happened: Air Force Pvt. Sinclair Taylor on duty saw a giant winged man like being descending towards him; it then hovered near him, looking intently at his direction. The being was about seven-foot tall with a similar wingspan. The panicked guard began firing his weapon towards it but when he looked at the spot where the being had been hovering, it had vanished.
Source: Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century by Janet and Colin Bord. (Does anyone have more details on this old sighting?)
We have noted that the flying men stories of 1948 have been revisited by researchers in recent years. No reason some of these others should not be, as well. And Theo Paijman may have a surprise in the coming years from his extensive research on the data. In the meantime, let’s look at another Asian case.
Amazing Stories cover, 1931.
The Japanese case sounds similar to the “Vietnamese Flying Woman” sighting, written about by John Keel and others. Keel noted:
The case was investigated by Don Worley, an experienced student of the unknown, who interviewed the witness in depth.
“He is a reliable observer,” Worley notes, “and he swears that this event is well beyond the capacity of his imagination.“
Earl Morrison, the witness, was serving as a private, first class in the marine corps in Vietnam in the summer of 1969.
He and two buddies were sitting on top of a bunker near Da Nang on a warm summer evening.
“All of a sudden—I don’t know why—we all three looked out there in the sky and we saw this figure coming toward us. It had a kind of glow and we couldn’t make out what it was at first. It started coming toward us, real slowly. All of a sudden we saw what looked like wings, like a bat’s, only it was gigantic compared to what a regular bat would be. After it got close enough so we could see what it was, it looked like a woman. A naked woman. She was black. Her skin was black, her body was black, the wings were black, everything was black. But it glowed. It glowed in the night—kind of a greenish cast to it.
“There was a glow on her and around her. Everything glowed. Looked like she glowed and threw off a radiance. We saw her arms toward the wings and they looked like regular molded arms, each with a hand, and, fingers and everything, but they had skin from the wings going over them. And when she flapped her wings, there was no noise at first. It looked like her arms didn’t have any bones in them, because they were limber just like a bat.
“She started going over us, and we still didn’t hear anything. She was right above us, and when she got over the top of our heads she was maybe six or seven feet up.
“We couldn’t do anything. We didn’t know what to do. We just froze. We just watched what was going over because we couldn’t believe our eyes. … So we watched her go straight over the top of us, and still she didn’t make any noise flapping her wings. She blotted out the moon once—that’s how close she was to us … As we watched her—she got about ten feet or so away from us—we started hearing her wings flap. And it sounded, you know, like regular wings flapping. And she just started flying off and we watched her for quite a while. The total time when we first saw her and could almost define her until we lost sight of her and were unable to define her was between three or four minutes.”
Source: The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, who credits FSR Case Histories, No. 10, June 1972.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Has anyone asked the Vietnam witness who his two buddies are and tried to track them down?
I am somewhat familiar with this The Japan account.
Taylor had originally thought the creature to be a giant bird at first. It was not until it drew closer that he realized it had a humanoid body. Also, at first it had been flapping its large wings (the sound of this flapping was what first alerted Taylor to the creature’s presence), but upon coming closer, the thing began to hover instead. Depending on the report you read, there is also mention of glowing eyes. However, it is difficult to say if this was in Taylor’s original report or an embellishment added later.
Taylor was also not the only witness to whatever this thing was. When he reported it to his sergeant, it was revealed that a guard had seen what was apparently the same thing the year before. Although Taylor did not know of this other sighting and had had no contact with the other eyewitness, the descriptions of the creature were remarkably similar.
In addition to these sightings by personnel on the base, there were other strange happenings occasionally reported in the vicinity of Camp Okubo. Residents in the area had reported seeing what they believed to be giant birds, and there were sporadic reports of strange lights in the sky as well.
The sightings all seem to have happened over just a couple of years, and seemed to stop as suddenly as they started.
According to some accounts, during the Vietnam War, some obviously female night flyers were ‘detained’ by the CIA and interrogated.
I really got to do that Freedom of Information paperwork about this incident one of these days.
This sounds similar to the legend about flying people in China. There was even a Japanese made movie about this legend called “The Bird People in China” from 1998
Mibs, some Asian vampire myths have flying people too. Sometimes they’re just flying heads, other times they are women or creepy monsters (scaled or furry). To say the least, such myths and legends are likely linked to various sightings of unknown cryptids or animal mistaken for something else.
Odd that they didn’t shoot it. They were Marine soldiers correct? In fact, completely unbelievable. Here’s three guys (Marines trained to kill) in 1969 (lotta LSD going around at this time too and it was SUPER plentiful in Nam!) sitting on a roof top after being recently stationed in Vietnam during a nasty war. They see something undetermined flying directly at them and they sit there doing nothing but drooling and watching as it gets closer??? Me thinks, green glow or whatever, NOT!
Mothman!