Category // 9 files

Aerial

Winged silhouettes with red eyes, thunderbirds, allegedly surviving pterosaurs: aerial cryptids leave no footprints and no carcasses, only seconds-long accounts aimed at the sky. These are the most fleeting files — and the ones ornithology solves most often.

• Case file Nº004 1966

  Mothman

  Aerial / 38.85°N 82.14°W

  A red-eyed winged figure reported around Point Pleasant in 1966-67, tied to the Silver Bridge disaster only after the fact.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº018 1909

  Snallygaster

  Aerial / 39.44°N 77.55°W

  Maryland's dragon-bird — a documented 1909 newspaper hoax grafted onto German-American folklore and weaponised in the Jim Crow era.

  Class 5

• Case file Nº021 Folklore ancien

  Thunderbird

  Aerial / 40.22°N 89.28°W

  Impossibly large birds reported across the United States — waves of testimony, but not one feather or verifiable photo.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº022 1994

  Batsquatch

  Aerial / 46.99°N 122.23°W

  A winged, ape-faced giant reported near Mount St. Helens — a file resting almost entirely on one 1994 witness.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº056 1925

  Ahool

  Aerial / 6.71°S 106.73°E

  A giant bat said to haunt western Java's volcanic forests — most likely a misjudged flying fox or a large owl.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº058 1923

  Kongamato

  Aerial / 11.73°S 24.43°E

  The 'breaker of boats' of Zambia's swamps, read as a pterosaur; big waterbirds and bats account for the case.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº069 1994

  Ropen

  Aerial / 5.59°S 147.87°E

  A glowing “living pterosaur” of Papua New Guinea pushed by creationist expeditions; frigatebirds and bats explain most of it.

  Class 4

• Case file Nº070 1976

  Owlman

  Aerial / 50.10°N 5.09°W

  An owl-man reported by Mawnan church, Cornwall, in 1976; an escaped eagle-owl or a hoax remain the strongest explanations.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº097 1994

  Rods

  Aerial / 33.27°N 104.38°W

  'Flying rods' caught on video worldwide turned out to be an optical artefact — motion-blurred insects, reproducible on demand.

  Class 5