Customer Reviews

Thunderbirds: America's Living Legends of Giant Birds

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mark A. Hall's Thunderbirds: America's Living Legends of Giant Birds (2004) is a well intentioned but tepid popular study of the history and folklore of the subject. At 177 light and breezy pages, this material, little of which is new, would have been better suited to a two-part article in Fortean Times. Hall has written about unexplained natural phenomena "for more than thirty years," yet the volume isn't a convincing testament of Hall's dedication to his subject; airy and topical, the book, which begs questions at every turn, cries out for a more thorough critical analysis of its subject.

More difficult to accept are Hall's careless errors. While John Keel did believe there was a relationship between 'Mothman' and the UFOs reported simultaneously in West Virginia in the 1960s, Keel never claimed that 'Mothman' was "something from outer space," a fact that even a cursory reading of The Mothman Prophecies (1975) reveals. In Keel's estimation, not even the UFOs originated on another planet.

Hall believes that the creature that came to be known as 'Mothman' was a large cryptid owl. But several witnesses reported that the creature, without flapping its wings, rose straight up into the air like a helicopter; how could a large owl, or any other avian creature, take flight in such a manner? Many witnesses also reported that the creature had clearly defined human-like legs; is Hall's 'giant owl' so anatomically different from typical owls that it fits this description? If so, he doesn't state this clearly.

In Mothman: The Facts Behind The Legend (2002), key witness Linda Scarberry said of her first encounter, "the body of it ['Mothman'] was like a slender, muscular man, and was flesh-colored. Its wings looked like angel wings...it had arms and legs, like a muscular man...it had one of its wings caught in a guide wire near a section of road close to the power plant, and was pulling on its wings with its hands, trying to free itself. Its hands were really big." The second time that Scarberry saw the creature, it was sitting on the roof of her home "with its arms around its legs and wings folded around itself." Later, upon viewing a "huge, white owl" that someone had killed in the region, Scarberry stated, "I felt like sitting down and crying. You could tell by looking at the owl that it wasn't what was being reported. It wasn't nearly as big, and it was a bird. What we saw was no bird, much less an owl or a crane. Its body wasn't even close to either of those. I could see muscles in the muscles in the arms and legs of the Mothman. They were human-like. Not even close to a bird of any kind." How does Hall reconcile his cryptid owl theory with these and other similar reports? Why doesn't he attempt to?

Hall's entire chapter on the giant owl, which he refers to collectively as "Bighoot," will be problematic for critical readers. Hall reports that several Indian tribes have legends of their tribes being harassed by a creature they referred to as "Flying Head" or "Big Head"; these were literally huge heads without torsos that were covered with long hair. In what sense could these mythological, perhaps metaphorical, creatures have been giant owls? Hall believes that the Indians most likely made the simple error of mistaking the giant owl's feathers for hair, but according to the mythology, this hair was so long that it allowed the creatures to fly in storm winds. Native Americans were generally keen observers of nature, and probably knew an owl, however large, when they saw one.

Hall also quotes West Virginian history professor James Gay Jones' account of "a large bird with the head of a man" as further possible evidence for Bighoot, but completely neglects to address the matter of the reported human head. Though Hall states that the giant owl "would stand several feet tall," he quotes a woman who reported two sightings of "9-10 feet high" owl without even attempting to explain this radical variation in size. If some giant owls are "several feet tall" while others are "9-10 feet," so large that they can easily be mistaken for leafless trees in winter, then Thunderbirds is certainly the place in which Hall should have addressed this important discrepancy.

Hall also quotes Betty Sturgeon, whom Hall says "came forth with a story to tell about killing a giant owl at the time of the Mothman excitement decades ago," but nowhere in the quoted Herald-Dispatch article does Sturgeon herself say that the creature her husband shot and killed was an owl of any kind. The reporter, Bob Withers, only states that Sturgeon "recalls glancing at some kind of big bird." Elsewhere, Withers refers to the animal as "it" and as "the creature." Clearly, if the article specifically referred to an owl, regardless of size, that portion of the story should have been quoted in full.

The "Flatwoods Monster" witnessed in Braxton County, West Virginia in 1952 has famously been explained away by CSICOP's Joe Nickel as being a large owl, a theory that dovetails nicely with the more conservative aspects of Hall's Bighoot theory, so why does this fascinating case go completely unaddressed, when a cautious reading of it would only bolster Hall's giant owl argument?

Elsewhere, Hall reports that "the Quinault Indians found a live whale still thrashing in the mountains and observed the gradual deterioration of its corpse" and that "whales marked by talons have also been reported found in trees." Are readers to believe that thunderbirds can grow large enough to pluck whales out of the ocean? Discussing a 1977 amateur film of possible thunderbirds in flight, Hall states, "perhaps one day a more broad-minded consideration and careful scrutiny of this film will be productive." Why hasn't Hall assumed this responsibility?

Since the disappointing Thunderbirds reads like a cryptozoological primer, the book is best suited to those new to the field.

Don't waste your time reading long, ponderous reviews of this book. Here's the short of it. This book provides an excellent summary of Thunderbird mythology. If the book is flawed in any way, it is the lack of illustrations. However, the text provides a clear, concise overview of both modern accounts of sightings and Native American legends. Recommended.

As the author of THUNDERBIRDS, I want to take this opportunity to thank the many people who have bought my book. I am confident the readers will be happy to learn about the extensive records of American Indian lore and historical reports of giant birds. And I expect that time will prove the survival of the two kinds of fossil birds that I have found to be responsible for those records.

Someone has posted comments here about one of the sixteen chapters in my book. The statement is transparently a hit piece directed from the coterie of CSICLOPS followers who are incapable of being skeptical about the status quo. It contains examples of incredible nonsense and distractions that will not be found in my book. Some quotations highlighted in that statement are unique to one person. My book contains a hypothesis that explains what the other 99% of witnesses have reported. The claim that there are "other similar reports" is more nonsense. I have separated the wheat from the chaff to the dismay of people who will not do so. They invariably take the position that it is all chaff.

Mark Hall is "the" person that has dug up all this important info. I have no idea how the other reviewer on here could say that this is old stuff. This is the only book-length book about Thunderbirds. This person is flying around the wrong trees, methinks.

This is a great book.

Good book if you are in to cryptozoology. Provides interesting stories of documented cases and background information on them. If you like the T.V. show Monsterquest then this is right up your alley.

Very good book. Intriguing. I have read many books on the subject of Cryptozoology, this book was refreshing in that it had a great deal of new and insightful information.

I have looked very hard for some of Mark Hall's previous books but cannot locate any.

It would be nice if Mr. Hall would write another book soon.

Mark Hall has been a mainstay of Cryptozoology for a very long time. How I missed this book the first time it went around I don't know. But it's back and it's great. This book and Nova's show on the Thunderbirds should be all you need to start looking for some huge birds in your neighborhood. A "Must " for any Fortean or Crypto fan's bookshelf.

I'm not saying that Mark Hall's Thunderbirds are Dodos. I am saying that his ability to write a meaningful, logical, and realistic look at Thunderbirds in this book is much like the ability of a Dodo in trying to fly. I am a first time reviewer and I felt the need to warn others about this book. I am very surprised by the positive reviews here. Come on people!! I purchased this book hoping for some insight into Thunderbird folklore much like 1 or 2 of the other reviewers. It was so bad and so laughable that I loaned it to a Native American friend of mine and they laughed so hard they cried! I did some research on the author's website and found a plethora of snake oil books. Stick to the lizardman studies in the swamps and forget the birds. Now that's one big f*&#king chicken!!!

I'm a big fan of anything cyrpto and was excited for this book a few years ago. Although it is full of differenct thunderbird encounters, opinions, and "facts", the book is too jumbled and sloppy. And also the encounters are just paper thin with no opinions or explanations... just the encounter itself. Which left much to be imagined. So if your looking for a book on thunderbird encounters then this should cover it, but if your looking for something more informative then look somewhere else.

Recently purchased this book through Amazon, and am about halfway through. Was delighted to find a crypto book focused entirely on possibly surviving giant/prehistoric birds, and this one contains a wealth of information about the various incarnations of the 'Thunderbird', from distant times to the present. Hall's writing style is fine, and but for one thing I'd be thoroughly satisfied with the book. That's the insistance on following nearly every single reference to size or distance (height, weight, width, miles, etc.) with the metric equivalent. The first few times you see this it's not a problem, but when it repeats, and repeats, and repeats and repeats, page after page, chapter after chapter, it goes from being annoying and distracting to where you have to force yourself to continue reading. Since dimensions and distances are such an important element of the sightings, there aren't usually just one or two but a half dozen or more metric references on each page. Don't know if this would bother anyone else, but it certainly has decreased my enjoyment of the book. As far as I can determine, the author is American, living in the US, so all the metric references just seem unnecessary and pretentious. Include them in editions for the overseas market, but most of us here don't 'do metric', or care to have a good book ruined by their constant inclusion.