Down the rabbit hole
Jersey Devil · Hightown, Virginia · 1910
2 documents · 1 independent account
2 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 2 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 1 independent account behind those documents
- 1 copy 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
- 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 North Platte semi-weekly tribune & Anadarko daily democrat: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quotes overlap; they describe the same details; they name the same witness; same place; same year
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 2 documents
- Earliest found The North Platte Semi-Weekly Tribune (North Platte, Neb.) Newspaper · Mar 4, 1910
Image 6 of The North Platte semi-weekly tribune (North Platte, Neb.), March 4, 1910 - Reprint Anadarko Daily Democrat (Anadarko, Okla.) 1908-191? Newspaper · Mar 9, 1910
Image 3 of Anadarko daily democrat (Anadarko, Okla.), March 9, 1910
- Earliest found The North Platte Semi-Weekly Tribune (North Platte, Neb.) Newspaper · Mar 4, 1910
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 - Jersey Devil · Burlington, New Jersey · 1909
Another trail, same creature: 14 documents · 1 independent account - Dogman
The next-deepest trail: 2 documents · 1 independent account
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts