OWLMAN

Opening

In the spring and summer of 1976 girls near Mawnan church in Cornwall reported a feathered figure on the tower and in the trees, as tall as a man, with claws and a face that was not a face they knew. June Melling and her sister first. Then Don Melling took them away from the village. Later that year Sally and Barbara were on the same ground and described the same kind of bird-man. The tower is real. The drawings went into Cornish papers and into Tony "Doc" Shiels's file.

Mawnan is a small church above the Helford. Owlman sat on that tower the way a gargoyle would if a gargoyle could leave. Police did not recover a hide. Ornithologists offered an escaped eagle owl. The girls did not recant the claws.

The spine of the file is a church tower and two sets of children. Owlman is feathers over Mawnan. It is not a body in a Truro freezer.

Timeline

April 1976. June and her sister, on holiday, see a large winged figure on or over the church. Don Melling hears it, takes the family out of the area, and later talks. A drawing circulates.

July 1976. Sally and Barbara, local girls, on the same ground. A figure in the trees, claws, glowing eyes in some tellings, a hiss. They run. Shiels and the papers take both nights as one type.

Further claims that year and after sit thinner. The tower remains the stage. No shot produces a specimen. The eagle-owl door opens and stays open.

Cornish monster lists keep Mawnan next to Morgawr. That neighbour is later life. The 1976 tower is first.

Key figures

June Melling and her sister are the first pair. Holiday children on a church path.

Sally and Barbara are the second pair, local, same season.

Don Melling owns the decision to leave and the first adult tell.

Doc Shiels owns the later drawings and the press. He is a performer. The girls are not.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 1976 gives you four hard objects and no hide.

One: the Melling girls' account of a winged figure at Mawnan church.

Two: the July account from Sally and Barbara on the same ground.

Three: contemporary drawings and Cornish press.

Four: the absence of a specimen. Cornwall press and witness statements on the Mawnan figure, 1976, are the originating tray.

There is no photograph from the tower. There is no plaster of a claw. There is no ringed owl logged as escaped that week.

It was as big as a man and it had claws and feathers.

Competing explanations

An unknown bird-man on a church. This is the girls' season. It has two nights. It has no hide.

An eagle owl or another large owl, fear doing the rest. The mundane door. Has to carry claws and a tower stance.

A story shaped by a showman. Possible once Shiels is in the file. The first family left before he needed them.

Hybrid caution. Children on a church path saw a feathered figure. Morning had no guest on the battlement.

Later life of the case

Cornish souvenir wings and Shiels reprints. I keep those on the later-life shelf. The 1976 tower stays first.

Finding

Girls at Mawnan church in 1976 described a feathered man-sized figure on the tower and in the trees, and a father took his children away from the village. Believe the girls. A holiday family does not invent claws for a postcard.

What still will not resolve: a photograph from that tower, or a specimen with a 1976 chain. Either one would pin the feathers. The proving object is still the thing on the battlement, held by someone who was not twelve.