Down the rabbit hole
Water Monster · Lake Champlain, Vermont · 1929
6 documents · 3 independent accounts
6 documents tell this story. They trace back to 3 independent accounts.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 6 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 3 independent accounts 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:
- New Britain herald & Der Nordstern: a person reviewed them and joined them
- New Britain herald & South Bend news-times: they describe the same details; same place, same day; one retells the other
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 4 documents
- Earliest found New Britain Herald (New Britain, Conn.) Newspaper · Jul 16, 1929
Image 12 of New Britain herald (New Britain, Conn.), July 16, 1929 - Reprint The Indianapolis Times (Indianapolis [Ind.]) Newspaper · Jul 16, 1929
- Reprint The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.) Newspaper · Jul 16, 1929
- Reprint Imperial Valley Press (El Centro, Calif.) Newspaper · Jul 16, 1929
- Earliest found New Britain Herald (New Britain, Conn.) Newspaper · Jul 16, 1929
- Account 2 (Separate account) 1 document
- Earliest found South Bend News-Times (South Bend, Ind.) Newspaper · Jul 18, 1929
Image 4 of South Bend news-times (South Bend, Ind.), July 18, 1929, (PART ONE)
- Earliest found South Bend News-Times (South Bend, Ind.) Newspaper · Jul 18, 1929
- Account 3 (Separate account) 1 document
- Earliest found Der Nordstern (St. Cloud, Minn.) Newspaper · Jul 25, 1929
Image 12 of Der Nordstern (St. Cloud, Minn.), July 25, 1929
- Earliest found Der Nordstern (St. Cloud, Minn.) Newspaper · Jul 25, 1929
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: Lake Champlain, Vermont, Jul–Sep 1929
3 reports close together in Jul–Sep 1929 - Water Monster · Lower Chain Lake, Maine · 1892
Another trail, same creature: 2 documents · 1 independent account - Dogman · Caswell Gameland, North Carolina · 2021
The next-deepest trail: 4 documents · 2 independent accounts
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts