Water Monster · Shelby County, Tennessee · 1877
TN-1877ID case-ab5ffb3a66Added to map Nov 1, 2026
- Creature
- Water Monster
- When
- Oct 12, 1877to the day
- Where
- Shelby County, Tennesseeto county level
- Reports
- 3 documents1 independent
The account
Captain John Carraway and his crew reported seeing a large aquatic creature with a pelican bill and bull-dog head pursuing their tow-boat on the Mississippi River.
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
- Shelby County, West Tennessee, Tennessee, United States
mapped to county level · from the report's own words, generalized to a larger area - When
- Oct 12, 1877
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source (3 documents; copies and reprints are not confirmations)
- Added to map
- Nov 1, 2026
- Case id
- case-ab5ffb3a66
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Source trail (1)
Down the rabbit hole → 3 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 1 of The Eaton Democrat (Eaton, Ohio), October 18, 1877
Newspaper · 1877-10-18
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.