An original witness to two Thunderbirds, seen in Springfield, Illinois, the day before 10-year-old Marlon Lowe's Lawndale, IL Thunderbird incident, comes forward and emails me in 2012.
I received the following email:
"I saw the two thunderbirds in Springfield, Illinois the day before Marlon Lowe was attacked, in Lawndale, IL. This is no joke! I told my father and family and they all laughed. But in the next day or two when it hit the local news, they changed their tune!
Several friends of mine and I went on a hike following Spring Creek from Washington Park due Southwest about as far as we could until we reached a muskrat dam. We decided to hike back from there. Along the way back, the big birds flew due north directly over our heads as we stumbled along the small trail alongside the creek! And when I say directly over our heads; that means ten feet in the air above us! I have never disclosed this story publicly, but I feel it should be known after seeing the countless shows on TV and the ridicule endured by Marlon and his family.
What more can I say? Probably, a lot more! I met John Huffer briefly, one time at a powwow in Riverton Il. His film at Lake Shelbyville cannot be discounted! I've had enough of the debunker idiots! Until you have stared one down at the proximity that I did; you will never understand what changed your life and perception of the reality we live in! I have looked at websites concerning the phenomenon of Thunderbirds and I'm not quite satisfied with all the results. Much of it is outdated. Nevertheless, I'm still here, and as the show about UFOs said; I KNOW WHAT I SAW! Nowadays; with the proliferation of camera phones and video cams, hopefully, someone will get better footage of the Thunderbirds, Bigfoot, UFOs, and the like! Since the seventies, it has definitely gotten a lot better. How did they say it? Focus! Also, hold the damn camera steady! I only wished I had one that day, but I never expected to see what I saw!
I also recall that the big birds roosted in a large tree similar to John Huffer's film before they flew off. I was trying to figure out how birds with such a phenomenal wingspan could perch in the branches of that tree and not get all tangled up! It appeared that they somehow double-folded their wings under so as to maneuver through the branches! Also, they were in the higher parts of the tree so that when they flew off, they would have the immediate altitude needed to soar off without flapping to death as if taking off from the ground. Again, very similar to the Huffer film. Believe what you will, I'm here to say that even though the number of people who have seen them cannot even come close to the number of people that have seen a UFO does not mean that we just saw a damn turkey buzzard!" TF
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The 1977 Lawndale, Illinois Thunderbird Attack
On July 25, 1977, as 10-year-old Marlon Lowe played outside his family home along open fields near Kickapoo Creek, near Lawndale, Logan County, Illinois, two giant birds passed over. One suddenly swooped down to grab the boy, carrying him a few feet before dropping him, apparently because of his frightened mother’s screams. The mother witnessed the attack and chased after the bird yelling, the bird released the boy and the two birds flew away. The incident occurred in front of seven witnesses, all of whom described exactly the same thing:
“It had a white ring around its half-foot-long neck. The rest of the body was very black. The bird's bill was six inches in length and hooked at the end. The claws on the feet were arranged with three in front and one in the back. Each wing, less the body, was four feet at the very least. The entire length of the bird's body, from beak to tail feather was approximately four and one-half feet.”
The incident makes national news. Marlon is ridiculed at school and dubbed “The Bird Boy”. Ruth finds dead birds on her porch, the obvious work of pranksters. At work Jake now hears a redundant joke, “Hey Jake, FLY over here and fix this!” Mr. Cox, once hearing of the jokes, jabs, and taunts, reluctantly tells his story but insists his actual identity never be revealed. Ruth and Jake enlist a couple of local men to hunt Kickapoo Creek in hopes of finding and destroying the Big Birds. Ruth throws the county game warden out of her house after the warden [allegedly] laughed in her face and called her a liar.
Ruth's also stated:
"Marlon weighs 56 pounds, is almost four feet tall, and has very red hair. We measured the area and determined the bird carried Marlon 35 feet. Our Saint Bernard never barked, the dog barks at everything all the time. The State police came by, three of them, and walked around Kickapoo."
More sightings of big birds continue to be reported in Illinois, plus "Texas" Chief John Huffer now claims to have taped the creatures near Shelbyville, and the film was shown on the local central Illinois news broadcasts. Thought by many to be a turkey vulture, it remains fairly unknown evidence of a possible mystery animal. To date little, if any, evaluation of the film has been done, the Discovery Channel, in their program “Into the Unknown” gave the film some mention but dismissed it fairly quickly as a vulture.
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