Thunderbird · McLean County, Illinois · 1948
IL-1948ID case-5502b432d7Added to map Oct 6, 2026
- Creature
- Thunderbird
- When
- Apr 9, 1948to the day
- Where
- McLean County, Illinoisto county level
- Reports
- 1 document1 independent
The account
Two witnesses near Belvedere, Illinois claimed to see a massive bird with a long neck and trailing feet, describing it as prehistoric.
See the source ↓ one document so far, so there is no trail to follow yet
We map claims, not creatures: this is what the sources say, not proof. How a case is built
Details
- Creature
- Thunderbird
- Where
- McLean County, Illinois, United States
mapped to county level · from the report's own words, generalized to a larger area - When
- Apr 9, 1948
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source
- Added to map
- Oct 6, 2026
- Case id
- case-5502b432d7
Place lookups use data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via Nominatim. All credits
Source trail (1)
Every link goes to where we found the account. The earliest we found is marked; it is the earliest found, not necessarily the original.
- 1948 'Monster Bird' Sighting | Project Blue Book Investigates Thunderbird Account
YouTube
Earliest found, not necessarily the original.
Further reading
- On the Track of Unknown Animals, Bernard Heuvelmans (1959)
The founding work of cryptozoology.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Cryptozoology A to Z, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark (1999)
Encyclopedia of reported creatures.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Abominable Science!, Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero (2013)
Skeptical history of the Yeti, Nessie and others.
Borrow on Internet Archive - In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, Karl Shuker (1995)
Borrow on Internet Archive
Books we have not reproduced: borrow them free at archive.org. Listing a book is not an endorsement of its claims.