Down the rabbit hole
Water Monster · Boothbay, Maine · 1831
3 documents · 2 independent accounts · 1 cited source we haven't found yet
3 documents tell this story. They trace back to 2 independent accounts. 1 cited source we haven't found yet.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 3 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 2 independent accounts behind those documents
- 1 copy reprints or cross-posts of the same text: not extra witnesses
- 1 cited source named in the documents: 1 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
- 1 copy: 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 liberator & Phenix gazette: they describe the same details; same place, same day; one retells the other
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 2 documents
- Earliest found Phenix Gazette (Alexandria [D.C.]) Newspaper · Jul 8, 1831
Image 2 of Phenix gazette (Alexandria [D.C.]), July 8, 1831 - Reprint The Arkansas Gazette (Arkansas Post, Ark. Ter.) Newspaper · Aug 24, 1831
- cited, not yet found Portland Courier (Newspaper) · named in Phenix Gazette (Alexandria [D.C.]), Jul 8, 1831 search for it ↗
- Earliest found Phenix Gazette (Alexandria [D.C.]) Newspaper · Jul 8, 1831
- Account 2 (Separate account) 1 document
- Earliest found The Liberator (Boston, Mass.) Newspaper · Jul 9, 1831
Image 4 of The liberator (Boston, Mass.), July 9, 1831
- Earliest found The Liberator (Boston, Mass.) Newspaper · Jul 9, 1831
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 · Gloucester, Massachusetts · 1817
Another trail, same creature: 2 documents · 2 independent accounts - Other Flying · Darlington County, South Carolina · 1888
The next-deepest trail: 3 documents · 2 independent accounts
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts