Down the rabbit hole
Water Monster · Essex County, Massachusetts · 1886
4 documents · 1 independent account
4 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 4 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 1 independent account behind those documents
- 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.
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 Fairfield news and herald & Morning journal and courier: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quoted passages are nearly identical; they describe the same details; same place; same year
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 4 documents
- Earliest found Morning Journal And Courier (New Haven [Conn.]) Newspaper · Sep 20, 1886
Image 1 of Morning journal and courier (New Haven [Conn.]), September 20, 1886 - Reprint The Fairfield News And Herald (Winnsboro, S.C.) Newspaper · Sep 22, 1886
Image 1 of The Fairfield news and herald (Winnsboro, S.C.), September 22, 1886 - Reprint The Manning Times (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) Newspaper · Sep 22, 1886
- Reprint The Laurens Advertiser (Laurens, S.C.) Newspaper · Sep 22, 1886
- Earliest found Morning Journal And Courier (New Haven [Conn.]) Newspaper · Sep 20, 1886
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 - Flap: Rockport, Massachusetts, Jul–Sep 1886
3 reports close together in Jul–Sep 1886 - Water Monster · River Falls, Wisconsin · 1857
Another trail, same creature: 4 documents · 1 independent account - Other Aquatic · Firth of Forth, Alba / Scotland · 1912
The next-deepest trail: 4 documents · 1 independent account
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts