Rare Monsters

  The Salt Lake Fire Drake is a flying cryptid seen near the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It was seen once in 1903, and again just under a hundred years later, in 2001. This cryptid is often touted as a living pterosaur, however in my research I found this cryptid to be something far stranger. On September 3rd, 1903, a flying creature was seen by multiple witnesses on Stansbury Island, in the south end of the Great Salt Lake. Two hunters, John Barry and Martin Gilbert, gave the most detailed report of the creature. They described it as equal mixes of bat, fish and alligator, having the head of an alligator, the wings of a bat and the tail of a fish. In addition the creature was covered in either thick, rough scales, or salt accretions from the lake. The creature got its name from the fiery rainbow iridescence of its wings, shining with reflected sunlight. The two men described the monster as being prehistoric in nature, although they didn’t specifically say it was a pterosaur. Othniel ...

  In October of 1903 the town of Van Meter in Iowa had multiple encounters with a strange, bird like cryptid, which was later nick named the Van Meter Visitor. The creature had leathery, featherless skin, a bird like head with a beak filled with teeth and leathery bat like wings. The most unusual feature of the cryptid was that it had a glowing horn jutting out from the center of its forehead. Some people reported seeing a more humanoid creature, which stood upright, and had its arms replaced by bat like wings. While others reported a more animalistic and pteranodon like being. Whichever version they saw, people consistently reported the same details about its strange head. The people who reported the sightings were some of the most prominent and upstanding members of the area. The first sighting was witnessed by U G Griffith, a well know businessman in town. He was returning late at night from his work, around 1 o'clock in the morning, when he saw a light on top one of the buildi...