Sky Serpents
The flying snakes that terrorised America!
Text: Jerome Clark / Images: Alex Tomlinson
One day in early 1833, a native chief approached two Western missionaries working on the Indonesian island of Sumatra to relate a bizarre experience. The chief, Tam Basar by name, swore that he and a companion had seen a snake flying through the air. Fearing that it was danger*ous, they killed it when it landed near them. When the missionaries expressed incredulity, the chief insisted that he was telling the truth. He added that the snake, 4ft (1.2m) long, had no wings, which to the listeners only made the story more far-fetched.
A year later, in January 1834, one of those missionaries, NM Ward, happened to be walking through a forest near the Pedang-Bessie River, a mile or so (1.6km) from the location where the flying snake had allegedly appeared. He and a companion stopped to study a particularly tall tree. Looking up, they were stunned to see a flying snake, exactly as described by the native informant. Four feet long and wingless, it was moving rapidly through the air from the tree they were standing under to another about 240ft (73m) away.
“Thus,” Ward wrote in the Missionary Herald of March 1841, “was I convinced of the existence of flying serpents; and, on inquiry, I found some of the natives, accustomed to the forest, aware of the fact.”
Ward went on to write that Dutch natur*alists working in the area didn’t believe him, any more than he had believed Tam Basar. The sceptics, however, were wrong. There are five species of “flying” snakes in South and Southeastern Asia; flying is in quotes because the creat*ures are actually gliding or parachuting. Herpetologists do not dispute their existence, and many photographs, films, and videos exist, as do collected specimens. What Ward saw, in other words, was nothing otherworldly.
But what about this?
In June 1873, a farmer identified as Mr Hardin, who lived a few miles east of Bonham, Texas, observed, along with workers in nearby fields, an “enormous serpent… as large and long as a telegraph pole… of a yellow striped colour”, in the words of the Bonham Enterprise. That would have been remarkable enough, except that this was floating in a cloud heading in an easterly direction. The witnesses “could see it coil itself up, turn over, and thrust forward its huge head as if striking at something, displaying the manœuvres of a genuine snake”.
At Fort Scott, Kansas, not long afterwards, at mid-morning on the 26th of the same month, two persons, unnamed but described as “reliable parties” willing to swear to it by affidavit, reported seeing a “huge serpent, apparently perfect in form” encircle the Sun. It was clearly visible for a short time, then vanished from sight.
The New York Times took note of the two stories in successive editions on 6 and 7 July. It called the Bonham sighting “the very worst case of delirium tremens on record”. In the following edition, noting the Kansas report in the wake of the equally implausible one from Texas, an editorial writer sputtered: “It will soon be time for a national prohibitory liquor law, if this sort of thing is to continue.” [
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