I just wanted to quickly introduce myself, I've already posted once elsewhere, but wanted to say hello.
I'm from St. Louis, in my 40's. I'm a complete amateur when it comes to paranormal activity, but I do find it fascinating and have an open mind.
I've had two unusual experiences in my life, one I will not talk about but the other I thought I'd share. Sorry it's not sexy, perhaps dull, but I'll never forget it.
Around late winter/early spring of 1995 a friend and I drove up to Alton, Illinois to look at the reproduction painting of the Piasa Bird. It was around noon and it was a beautiful drive as the river was full of floating ice chunks.
We made several stops, including at the Piasa Bird painting, which I assume must have been undergoing a repainting as it was covered up with a very large panel of wood.
We eventually parked the car, sat on the hood and watched the icy river for a bit. It was very calm and relaxing. After a few minutes, something caught my eye towards upriver.
It was a massive bird, a size I've never seen before or since. (It looked nothing like the Piasa Bird, and at that point I wasn't even thinking about it anymore as it was quite the disappointment.) The closest (yet quite inaccurate) description I can give of it pterodactyl-like. From my viewpoint, it flew downstream along the edge of our side of the river. I only remember it flapping it's wings once, it glided the rest of the way and did so extremely slow.
After it passed, which seemed to take forever, I had strong urge to get in the car. Apparently so did my friend as I looked up and saw him opening the car door at the same time I did. I had this gut feeling that it ignored us only because we were both standing very still at as it passed.
That ended our trip early and we didn't say a word to each other until we crossed the river back into Missouri. Then my friend asked me if I had seen anything while we were standing there. I said yes, I think I saw a pterodactyl-ish thing fly by! He seemed relieved as if thought he'd lost his mind. His gut feeling was similar to mine, but also that it was watching us and had intelligence.
A few weeks later I tried to talk to him about it again, but he refused, insisting it was just a regular bird we saw... Considering his love for that kind of topic, that always struck me odd. Since then I've looked at countless photos of birds and have yet to see anything that matches what we saw. I'm not suggesting we saw a Piasa Bird, I've never believed that's what it was. I honestly don't have a clue what we saw.
