Strange Flying Cryptids in the Weird and Wild West, Part II

New Mexico's own Owlman—and a flying horror attacks a locomotive in the Old West…

Snowy Owl, courtesy of Pixabay.

Look no further, reader, for you’ve come to the right place—because I’ve got a pair of Wild West yarns for you, and I think you’ll agree they’re just the sort of thing calculated to make you think twice about trusting those big skies the American West is famous for.

Or at least make you wonder if that’s just another buzzard wheeling around over the sun-scorched desert…or something much, much weirder.

In the first part of this impromptu investigation into the sizable bestiary of flying cryptids in the weird and wild west, we talked a little of the strange confluence of unidentified flying objects and cryptozoological curiosities—in other words, living UFOs that are occasionally sighted amidst the gigantic prairies, rugged mountain ranges, and searing malpaíses of the American West.

It turns out, all you Horatios, that there are more things in heaven and earth—with a decided emphasis on heaven—than are dreamt of in your philosophies. And among these things are counted the ludicrously named Batsquatch of Washington State, and the menacing and sinister West Texas Owlman.

But that’s not all that is strange that flies in the skies of the American West…

So go ahead, cowboy, prop your boots up on the table, light up a cigarillo or two, cock your hat back at a rakish angle, and settle in for a pair of strange tales that only the weird and wild west is likely to produce this side of eternity.

The New Mexico Owlman

Now in our last discussion of flying cryptids in the American West, mention was made of a certain unusual creature that menaced and pursued a passel of bored teenagers in the lonely, dusty West Texas town of Sundown. That was way back in 1981, and the suddenly not-so-bored teenagers only managed to lose their uncanny pursuer when they finally reached Sundown’s main street and single stoplight.

It was a close shave, and those boys only managed to escape the overwhelming menace of the unknown Outside by the skin of their teeth…and you can bet your bottom dollar they knew it.

Whether they ever managed to shake the terror and the trauma of that bizarre encounter…well, that’s another matter altogether.

But what few people know is that, only a few years later, in 1984, something very similar—or at least sufficiently similar to merit the “Owlman” moniker—was seen one state over, in the Land of Enchantment itself. The thing is, this flying cryptid was seen more than once, and though perhaps less sinister than the Texan variant, whatever it was seemed to be just as avidly minded to pursue its human “prey”—even if in a very different fashion.

A fantastic resource—with a little bit of everything.

I discovered the details of this weird story in the pages of Preston Dennett’s excellent UFOs Over New Mexico, which is pretty much what its title suggests—a damn near encyclopedic compilation of close encounters and UFO sightings in the Land of Enchantment, and if you’re so inclined, I urge each and every one of you to peruse it if you ever get the chance.

Now despite the book’s title and stated subject matter, the following story partakes less of the extraterrestrial and more of the downright paranormal and cryptozoological…at least to my thinking. It’s a strange one, no doubt about it, and I suppose I’ll just let the reader make up his own mind.

The story, as Dennett relates it, was recounted by a guitarist in a country western band, pseudonymously identified as “Hayden Scott” in the book. The encounter took place one evening in early May, in 1984, when Hayden Scott was returning to Albuquerque after performing at a gig. He was heading north on I-25, and had just passed the Los Lunas exit, where the highway takes a dogleg to the east, onto the territory of the Isleta Pueblo.

It’s a strange and desolate area, particularly westward of the highway; it remains so even today, with a rugged and lonesome landscape, interrupted only by evidently volcanic features that are not at all inviting to mankind. And it was from a canyon to the northwest, located in this sinister and mysterious country, that Scott beheld a curious light—a sort of “faint glow” in the sky above the canyon.

There were no other cars on the road. Scott imagined it was an aircraft of some sort…a plane or a helicopter. But it was none of these things. It was weird and uncanny—and, little did he know it, the incognizable Unknown was about to enter Scott’s life.

Here’s what he saw, in his own words, as reproduced in Dennett’s book:

“I watched the object move toward me for a minute or so, then I became more interested, as it appeared to move in an intersecting path with my vehicle…I watched it approach and then I became very perplexed as it seemed to be glowing somewhat like a fluorescent bulb, not lighting the area around it, but glowing sort of within itself. In the second it flew directly over my vehicle, I looked upward over the steering wheel to see that the object was actually a living being, glowing white. And at the last split second I looked up, it turned its head slightly and looked down directly at me…I could not make out much detail except to notice that it had two huge black eyes. No wings were visible.”¹

I love this story.

It’s the kind of encounter that, with all its surreality and creepiness and high strangeness, has that undeniable ring of verisimilitude; it’s just the sort of thing that happens when one has unexpected truck with the Outside.

Now don’t you scoff, reader…you’ll understand well enough, someday, if you ever see its like.

It’s as if a gust of wind from the cold of interstellar space blows down your spine, giving you an unstoppable case of the shakes. Hayden Scott undoubtedly saw something strange that night—and he never forgot it.

At first he did what most people do in such circumstances…myself included. He tried to rationalize it. Tried to explain it away. Tried to make sense of it in the only way one knows how in our secular, materialistic civilization. It was a Great Snowy owl, he reasoned. Just an unusually large bird, winging its way south.

The hell it was.

The thing was moving too damned fast for a bird. Besides, its flight was too unerring, too unwavering and mechanical; it never once deviated from its arrow-like course. Plus, as Scott recalled, the thing was “self-illuminated,” and hadn’t a trace of any wings.

It gets even weirder. Oh…you bet your ass it gets weirder.

Two weeks later, Hayden Scott sees the Flying Thing again. This time it was while convoying with his bandmates, in separate cars, across a mountain pass as they headed to Socorro from Magdalena. Scott was driving alone in his car when he witnessed the Thing for the second time…but now he had witnesses.

Again, in Scott’s own words:

“I watched in amazement for a few short seconds…as the same being was again coming towards me…only this time it was significantly lower, possibly only fifty feet above the car. I again peered upward over the steering wheel at the last split second, and again the thing turned its head and looked at me with its big black eyes. Even though it was a lot closer this time, I still could not make out much detail, except to say that the body seemed to be almost trapezoidal, with it tapering toward the head.”²

While stopped in Socorro, Scott asked his bandmates if they had seen anything unusual during the journey across the mountains. The rhythm-guitar player and his wife affirmed that they had—“some sort of big bird or something,” flying fast over Scott’s car.

The hairs on the nape of Scott’s neck began to stand up; this was more than uncanny…this was menacing. One sighting is unusual…but twice, in two weeks? He began to feel like the thing was targeting him.

He began to feel like prey.

It was a feeling that would only increase. Two weeks after that second encounter (there’s that recurring number: two weeks—what can it mean?), Scott was practicing at the home of some of the band members in south Belen. He’d brought his two young children along, his five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. While the adults were practicing, the youngsters went outside to play…and came back almost immediately, terrified by the flying thing they’d seen out there.

It was, apparently, a sort of flying humanoid, with arms, wings, clawed feet, and big dark eyes, and was evidently perched above the door to the house. As Scott recounts: “It bent over them as they approached the house and put one of its hands up to its mouth…saying, ‘Shhh, be quiet…!’”³

That was all…and you better believe Hayden Scott was beginning to feel the terror of the Unknown pressing down upon him and now even his family. Even so, there was a respite for a time; the month of June passed quietly enough, with no further sightings of the Thing.

But all that changed on the Fourth of July, when the “Owlman” made its final appearance. This time, Hayden Scott was returning from a performance at an Independence Day ball in Mountainair, which lies southeast of Albuquerque, on the other side of the Manzano range. He was riding with a bandmate—in fact, the same who had seen the encounter in the Magdalena Mountains—and dozing in the back seat, when he heard the bandmate and his wife discussing, with some alarm, what they thought was an owl in the night sky.

Hayden Scott came suddenly awake at mention of the owl…you can count on that. What happened next was hard to process. But he saw “a large white thing swoop down toward the car, head back up slightly, then dive right toward the windshield.” The car’s windshield was illuminated by a blinding bright light, and there was nearly an accident as the driver took her hands off the steering wheel in instinctive anticipation of the impending impact. But nothing happened…and in the next instant, all was pitch black again outside the car, and the glowing, menacing Flying Thing was gone.

Hayden Scott never saw it again…and to this day has no idea, none at all, as to what it was, what it wanted, and why it took such a keen interest in him and his family during those eventful months in the late spring of 1984.

Flying Serpent vs. Express Train

Our next flying cryptid was encountered in the very heyday of the Wild West.

On the night of January 17, 1882, the Southern Pacific express locomotive puffed its way into the station at Los Angeles, and disembarked a number of pale and sorely frightened passengers. The tale they told, of what happened earlier that day during the express train’s long journey from Yuma, Arizona to Los Angeles, California, would make for some fascinating reading in the Los Angeles Times.

The train’s engineer and fireman confirmed the story…and it’s a doozy. It happened somewhere out in the lonely wasteland of the Colorado Desert, not far from Dos Palmas, California. The engineer, the fireman, and the train’s passengers suddenly descried a strange sight—something like a column of dust or sand approaching the tracks about half a mile up ahead. Maybe it was a posse, tracking outlaws through the sandy wastes; maybe it was a flying column of the US Cavalry, on secret maneuvers in the desert; or maybe it was some Mexican banditos, looking to head off and rob the train and its passengers.

Not a chance of that. This is, after all, the weird and wild west…and it soon became obvious that the dusty disturbance was caused by something very weird and very wild—a flying serpent, to be exact, or something damn near like it, thirty feet long if it’s an inch, and maybe a foot or so in diameter. The thing propelled itself through the air on great, bat-like wings, but apparently neither expertly nor very high, for its tail dragged along the ground, thereby kicking up the column of dust and sand that alerted them to its presence in the first place.

As the clumsy thing crossed the track, the speeding train drove right over its dragging tail, severing it cleanly in half. Now, as you might imagine, the flying serpent or dragon or…well, whatever it was, didn’t take too kindly to this mutilation of its person, and though it previously seemed to pay no mind at all to the locomotive, it was certainly mindful of it now.

It swung about, and launched a vicious attack upon its steel-wrought, steam-belching persecutor…and, well, I can do no better than reproduce the very words of the article that appeared in the Times:

“The train and snake came together but the snake’s tail was not where it should have been and a portion of his lower extremities was clipped off. This seemed to put this flying snake on his mettle and he prepared for war. He wheeled around and gave chase to the flying train. The motion of the animal seemed to change in an instant and he seemed to fly through the air two miles faster than chain lightning. In a few moments, he, she or it, overtook the train and began war after the latest snake style. The angry animal kept over the train and gave the train a lively thrashing, roaring like a cow in distress all the time. After breaking several windows and frightening the women and children almost to death the monster sailed off, followed by a shower of lead from the pistols of the passengers which seemed to have no effect at all, if any of the bullets hit him. This is vouched for by every one who was on the train, and is given for what it is worth.”⁴

Which, honestly, probably isn’t much.

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The Attack of the Dos Palmas Flying Serpent, as creatively imagined in the pages of the Illustrated Police News.

Verdict: So what are we to make of these strange flying cryptids, or interdimensional interlopers, or whatever they might be?

It is, honestly, rather difficult to say. The New Mexico Owlman sighted during that strange late spring and early summer of 1984, by the pseudonymous Hayden Scott, is without question a hard thing to explain…hard even to fathom a meaning to it at all. It seems to be equal parts high strangeness and something natural but uncanny. Despite the nominal similarity, it seems to be an entity of an altogether different nature than the West Texas Owlman.

In many ways, it sounds an awful lot like the Mothman of West Virginia, which had an identical penchant for following or attacking vehicles, and menacing and pursuing those who had made the inadvertent mistake of “noticing” it. Save that in the case of the New Mexico species, it was glowing and self-illuminated, and—in contrast to the taciturn Mothman—was perhaps even capable of speech…or at least a telepathy of some kind.

But I have my own theory. I’ve a strange sort of feeling that the New Mexico Owlman was something from another plane of existence, another dimension or world, coextensive with ours yet totally separate…perhaps the same world inhabited by those mysterious and otherworldly Visitors that appeared one day back in 2019 on the Taos Plateau. Perhaps this being, this denizen of another dimension, was winging through the skies, when something happened—a shift of some sort, or an accidental intersecting of universes. Or maybe it was nothing external like that at all…maybe it was something internal, internal to Hayden Scott himself, which allowed him to suddenly perceive something he wasn’t supposed to.

In other words, he noticed the Owlman, entirely by happenstance, and thereat the Owlman noticed him. Puzzled, intrigued, mystified, annoyed, enraged…maybe all of these things or none of them, the Owlman decided to stick around and investigate this curious earthbound creature that had the galling temerity to discover it.

And what of the flying serpent of Dos Palmas? Now wait a minute…I know what you’re thinking. That it’s just another silly “Snaik Story” such as abounded in nineteenth-century newspapers.

Maybe. Hell…it probably is. But…what if? What if the flying serpent that appeared in the Californian desert in 1882 had something in common with the glowing Owlman that appeared in the Rio Grande Valley south of Albuquerque in 1984? Maybe it too flew inadvertently through some kind of “doorway” or portal, like the Lordsburg Door, from another time—past or future—or from another world, right next door to ours, but unbridgeably sejunct from it. Or maybe, like hapless Hayden Scott, something inward “clicked” in that express train and its passengers, for some reason we’ll never know, and they were enabled thereby to see and interact with—even if just for a short while—the flying horror, the interdimensional trespasser…something they were never meant to behold.

It kinda makes you wonder, don’t it? Like there might be strange things like that all around us, all the time, and we’re never the wiser…except the rare times that a “circuit,” so to speak, suddenly gets tripped in our brains, and then we see the Things from Outside that we ought never to see, and we recoil in terror.

But what the hell do I know? It was probably just another crazy yarn from the Wild West…

1. Preston Dennett, UFOs Over New Mexico: A True History of Extraterrestrial Encounters in the Land of Enchantment. Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.: Atglen, PA (2011), pp. 159-160.

2. Ibid., pg. 160.

3. Ibid., pg. 161.

4. The Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, January 18, 1882, p. 3.