Down the rabbit hole

Other Aquatic · Gloucester County, New Jersey · 1912

5 documents · 1 independent account

5 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.

The route

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.

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:
- The Bourbon news & Charlevoix county herald: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; they name the same witness; same place (though their days disagree)

Account 1 5 documents
- Earliest found The Bourbon News (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19?? Newspaper · Aug 16, 1912
  Image 7 of The Bourbon news (Paris, Ky.), August 16, 1912
- Reprint Charlevoix County Herald (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953 Newspaper · Aug 24, 1912
  Image 2 of Charlevoix county herald (East Jordan, Mich.), August 24, 1912
- Reprint Tensas Gazette (St. Joseph, La.) Newspaper · Aug 30, 1912
- Reprint The Vinita Daily Chieftain (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) Newspaper · 2 issues of the same paper: Sep 5, 1912, Oct 10, 1912

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.

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.

Back to the case
its summary, sources and discussion
Back to the map
opened on this case
Other Aquatic · 1837
Another trail, same creature: 5 documents · 1 independent account
Other Flying · Chief Mountain, Montana · 1926
The next-deepest trail: 5 documents · 1 independent account