The Gargoyle from Camp Okubo, Japan, 1952

The Gargoyle from Camp Okubo, Japan, 1952

Location. Camp Okubo near Kyoto Japan
Date: 1952 Time: night
Air Force Pvt. Sinclair Taylor was on guard one night. The moon was full and he could make out the figure of the guard Private Anthony Groves, on the next post which was over 100 yards away. He had stopped to light a cigarette when he heard a loud flapping noise. He looked up toward the direction of the noise and what he saw gave him cold chills. Coming down out of the moonlit sky was a bird larger than any bird he had ever seen.
In panic he swung his carbine from his shoulder and pulling off the safety he put a round in the chamber. The bird, or thing, came closer. It happened so suddenly that he really didn’t have time to be inquisitive as to what it was. He only acted fast as he had been trained to do. He threw the weapon to his shoulder and as he was about to fire the thing seemed to stop and hover in the air, as a bird will do when it is undecided where to alight. He felt its eyes on him. He made out its form more clearly and what he saw was no bird. The thing, which now had started slowly to descend again, had the body of a man. It was well over seven feet from head to feet, and its wing spread was almost equal to its height. He started to fire and emptied his carbine where the thing hit the ground. But when he looked up to see if his bullets had found home there was nothing there.
The sergeant of the guard came running over and asked him what the trouble was. When he told him what he had seen he was not as skeptical as a Sinclair had thought he would be. In fact he never even smiled. He looked around and when he came back he told Sinclair that maybe he was pulling his leg, but he doubted, because about a year before another guard had claimed to see the same thing.

HC addition # 365
Source: Janet & Colin Bord, Unexplained Mysteries of the
20th Century citing Fate Magazine Type: E