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Down the rabbit hole

Water Monster · 1879

4 documents · 1 independent account

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

The route

  1. One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
  2. 4 documents that tell it, as we collected them
  3. 1 independent account behind those documents
  4. 3 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.

Rabbit hole: Water Monster · 18794 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account. Each independent account is one row; time runs left to right. The earliest document we hold in each account is ringed. A full list follows the picture.Account 14 documents · 3 reprintsTIME (when each document was published) →Sep 14, 1879Sep 21Sep 28Oct 5Oct 12Reprint · The Portland Daily Press (Portland, Me.) · Image 1 of The Portland daily press (Portland, Me.), September 12, 1879 · Newspaper, Sep 12, 1879The Portland Daily PressReprint · Ashtabula Telegraph (Ashtabula, Ohio) · Image 1 of Ashtabula telegraph (Ashtabula, Ohio), September 19, 1879 · Newspaper, Sep 19, 1879Ashtabula TelegraphReprint · Ellsworth American (Ellsworth, Me.) · Newspaper, Oct 16, 1879Ellsworth AmericanEarliest found · The Daily Gazette (Wilmington, Del.) · Image 1 of The daily gazette (Wilmington, Del.), September 11, 1879 · Newspaper, Sep 11, 1879EARLIEST FOUNDThe Daily GazetteNewspapersame text (reprint)Earliest found

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

  • 3 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 daily gazette & The Portland daily press: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same day
    • The daily gazette & Ashtabula telegraph: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same day
    • The Portland daily press & Ashtabula telegraph: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; same place, same day

Every document, as a list

  1. Account 1 4 documents

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.

The deepest rabbit holes →

Where next

Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts