Down the rabbit hole
Bigfoot · North Adams, Massachusetts · 1879
5 documents · 1 independent account
5 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.
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
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:
- The Canton advocate & River Falls journal: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same day
- The Canton advocate & The Manitowoc pilot: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quotes overlap; they describe the same details (though their days disagree)
- Helena weekly herald & River Falls journal: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quotes overlap; they describe the same details; same place (though their days disagree)
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 5 documents
- Earliest found The Cincinnati Daily Star ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) Newspaper · Oct 30, 1879
- Reprint The Canton Advocate (Canton, D.T. [S.D.]) Newspaper · Nov 6, 1879
Image 2 of The Canton advocate (Canton, D.T. [S.D.]), November 6, 1879 - Reprint River Falls Journal (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) Newspaper · Nov 6, 1879
Image 2 of River Falls journal (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.), November 6, 1879 - Reprint Helena Weekly Herald (Helena, Mont.) Newspaper · Nov 13, 1879
Image 1 of Helena weekly herald (Helena, Mont.), November 13, 1879 - Reprint The Manitowoc Pilot (Manitowoc, Wis.) Newspaper · Nov 13, 1879
Image 1 of The Manitowoc pilot (Manitowoc, Wis.), November 13, 1879
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 - Bigfoot · Washington, District of Columbia · 1929
Another trail, same creature: 5 documents · 1 independent account - Other Flying · Petoskey, Michigan · 1887
The next-deepest trail: 5 documents · 1 independent account
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts