Pterosaurs of the Mind?

I've got a new post up at Mysterious Universe that begins like this:

"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?

Mothman Vs. Mothra

Late last night I watched, for the first time in years, the Japanese "monster movie" Mothra.

And, on doing so, a few things occurred to me that suggested uncanny parallels between Japan's famous, flying, mothy monster and John Keel's acclaimed title, The Mothman Prophecies:

1. Mothra was released in Japan on July 30, 1961. Although Mothman is perceived as being very much a beast of the mid-1960s, John Keel's book tells of a summer 1961 encounter with a winged humanoid on Route 2 along the Ohio River that involved "a woman prominent in civic affairs in Point Pleasant, West Virginia."

2. In the movie, Mothra - after breaking through a dam - causes the collapse of a bridge. And no-one with a sound knowledge of the Mothman affair, surely, needs to be told that a collapsing bridge is a key and integral part of The Mothman Prophecies.

3. The film focuses on Mothra rescuing and acting as protector to a pair of foot-tall, fairy-like girls who are played in the movie by The Peanuts, a Japanese girl-group of that era. John Keel's classic book includes several notable references to fairies, including the way in which centuries-old encounters with such entities clearly parallel more modern day incidents with enigmatic creatures of a fantastic nature.

Fiction anticipating fact? The strange work of a cosmic trickster? Or just a case of coincidence and me seeing something significant that isn't quite so significant, after all?

Whatever the answers to those questions, in pondering on all this, I am reminded of the words of author Colin Bennett, who told me, when I interviewed him for my book, The Real Men in Black: "When we imagine, we create a form of life.”

Is that what happened here? Did a famous monster movie provoke such fascination that a real-life equivalent stepped out of the collective unconscious and imagination and into the heart of the real world?