"Just a few days ago, at my World of Whatever blog, I wrote a post that addressed just a few of the uncanny parallels between the Japanese 1961 monster-movie, Mothra, and some of the cases and events featured in John Keel’s classic book, The Mothman Prophecies. But, what I also did was to focus on the possibility that perhaps art – whether movies, novels or whatever – can fire up the imagination to such an extent that the collective unconscious can externalize into quasi-physical form those 'things' purely born out of fiction. As noted Fortean author Colin Bennett told me: 'When we imagine, we create a form of life.'
"And, I have been doing a bit of further digging into this area of fiction and Forteana, and one of the most notable issues to have caught my attention is that concerning a 1969 movie, The Valley of Gwangi. It stars James Franciscus, Gila Golan and Laurence Naismith who get caught up in a monstrous caper involving still-surviving dinosaurs that inhabit a hidden valley in Mexico. Among those same dinosaurs are an Allosaurus, an Ornithomimus and a Styracosaurus. And there’s another beast, too: a vicious pteranodon that circles the skies menacingly.
"Well, it so happens that from the 1970s onwards there has been an intriguing number of reports of pterosaur-style creatures in and around the Texas/Mexico border and certain other parts of south Texas."
Could it be that these '70's sightings were provoked by the movie in a similar “When we imagine, we create a form of life"-type scenario?
I once asked the great Ray Hatrryhausen about Gwangi and if he was supposed to be an Allosaurus or a Tyrannosaurus rex. Heseemed too small in comparison to the people and other dinosaurs to be a Tyrannosaurus but too bulky to be an Allosaurus. In fact Ray animated him as a hybrid between the two.
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