Water Monster · Illinois · 1867
IL-1867ID case-444dba4658Added to map Oct 30, 2026
- Creature
- Water Monster
- When
- Aug 16, 1867to the day
- Where
- Illinoisto state level
- Reports
- 2 documents1 independent
The account
A fisherman reports seeing a large, dark, oval-shaped creature with a long neck, bony plates, and fins in Lake Michigan near Evanston.
Trace the source trail → every document, in time order, and how they connect
We map claims, not creatures: this is what the sources say, not proof. How a case is built
Details
- Creature
- Water Monster
- Where
- Illinois, United States
mapped to state level · from the report's own words, generalized to a larger area - When
- Aug 16, 1867
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source (2 documents; copies and reprints are not confirmations)
- Added to map
- Oct 30, 2026
- Case id
- case-444dba4658
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Source trail (1)
Down the rabbit hole → 2 documents, and how they connect
Every link goes to where we found the account. The earliest we found is marked; it is the earliest found, not necessarily the original.
- Image 2 of The Ottawa free trader (Ottawa, Ill.), August 17, 1867
Newspaper · 1867-08-17
Earliest found, not necessarily the original.
Further reading
- The Great New England Sea Serpent, J. P. O'Neill (1999)
Account of the 1817 Gloucester sightings and later reports.
Borrow on Internet Archive - On the Track of Unknown Animals, Bernard Heuvelmans (1959)
The founding work of cryptozoology.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Cryptozoology A to Z, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark (1999)
Encyclopedia of reported creatures.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Abominable Science!, Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero (2013)
Skeptical history of the Yeti, Nessie and others.
Borrow on Internet Archive
Books we have not reproduced: borrow them free at archive.org. Listing a book is not an endorsement of its claims.