Water Monster · Chicago, Illinois · 1874
IL-1874ID case-5a1614a663Fallback locationAdded to map Nov 5, 2026
- Creature
- Water Monster
- When
- Jun 1874to the month
- Where
- Chicago, Illinoisfallback location
- Reports
- 6 documents1 independent
The account
Witness reports seeing an animal with fur, a flat wide face resembling a fox but larger, and prominent ears in the water near Bear Lake, which dove and resurfaced.
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
- Chicago, South Chicago Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States
mapped to town level · from the newspaper's printing town, not where it was seen
Fallback location (drawn hollow on the map): this is the newspaper's printing town, not where it was seen. - When
- Jun 1874
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source (6 documents; copies and reprints are not confirmations)
- Added to map
- Nov 5, 2026
- Case id
- case-5a1614a663
Place lookups use data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via Nominatim. All credits
Source trail (1)
Down the rabbit hole → 6 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 5 of Chicago daily tribune (Chicago, Ill.), June 1, 1874
Newspaper · 1874-06-01
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.