Down the rabbit hole
Water Monster · Washington, District of Columbia · 1854
5 documents · 1 independent account · 2 cited sources we haven't found yet
5 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account. 2 cited sources we haven't found yet.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 5 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 1 independent account behind those documents
- 4 copies reprints or cross-posts of the same text: not extra witnesses
- 2 cited sources named in the documents: 2 not found yet
Copies are not confirmations: thirty papers printing one story is still one account.
Each shape is one document; open it to go to where we found it. The same graph as a list is below.
Why these records are connected
- 4 copies: the copy detector found the same words in a later document, so it sits in the same row as the account it copies.
- Why these documents are one case. The case matcher joined them because:
- Daily national intelligencer & Weekly national intelligencer: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quoted passages are nearly identical; they describe the same details; same place, same month
- Daily national intelligencer & The Athens post: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same month
- Weekly national intelligencer & The Athens post: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same month
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 5 documents
- Earliest found Daily National Intelligencer (Washington City [D.C.]) Newspaper · Oct 23, 1854
Image 3 of Daily national intelligencer (Washington City [D.C.]), October 23, 1854 - Reprint Danbury Times (Danbury, Conn.) Newspaper · Oct 26, 1854
- Reprint Weekly National Intelligencer (Washington [D.C.]) Newspaper · Oct 28, 1854
Image 5 of Weekly national intelligencer (Washington [D.C.]), October 28, 1854 - Reprint The Athens Post (Athens, Tenn.) Newspaper · Nov 3, 1854
Image 1 of The Athens post (Athens, Tenn.), November 3, 1854 - Reprint Southern Shield (Helena, Ark.) Newspaper · Nov 11, 1854
- cited, not yet found Charlestown Free Press (Newspaper) · named in Daily National Intelligencer (Washington City [D.C.]), Oct 23, 1854 search for it ↗
- cited, not yet found Dunkirk Journal (Newspaper) · named in Daily National Intelligencer (Washington City [D.C.]), Oct 23, 1854 search for it ↗
- Earliest found Daily National Intelligencer (Washington City [D.C.]) Newspaper · Oct 23, 1854
How to read this
- Time runs left to right by publication date. Very long empty stretches are cut short (the axis shows how many years were skipped); undated documents sit in their own column.
- One row per independent account. A reprint, re-upload or cross-post carries the same text, so it stays in its account's row and never counts as a second witness.
- Earliest found (ringed) is the earliest document we hold for that account. It is not proof of the first telling: an earlier one may exist that we haven't collected.
- Arrows run from a document to a source it names. A dashed shape is a source a document cites that we haven't found yet; its link searches a public archive for it, and a hit there is a lead, not a confirmation.
About the numbers
- Only documents we've collected are counted; retellings elsewhere on the web aren't counted yet.
- Documents are matched by shared text and by the sources they name, by plain rules with no model in the loop. A match can be wrong; tell us.
Where next
- Back to the case
its summary, sources and discussion - Back to the map
opened on this case - Water Monster · Oakland, Maryland · 1887
Another trail, same creature: 5 documents · 1 independent account - Other Aquatic · Gloucester County, New Jersey · 1912
The next-deepest trail: 5 documents · 1 independent account
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts