Down the rabbit hole

Water Monster · Door County, Wisconsin · 1883

5 documents · 1 independent account

5 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.

The route

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.

4 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:
- Northern tribune & The Brookhaven leader: 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
- Northern tribune & St. Landry democrat: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quoted passages are nearly identical; they describe the same details; they name the same witness; same place; same year
- The Brookhaven leader & St. Landry democrat: the copy detector found the same text in both; their quoted passages are nearly identical; they describe the same details; they name the same witness; same place; same year
- St. Landry democrat & Wessington Springs herald: a person reviewed them and joined them
- The Brookhaven leader & Wessington Springs herald: a person reviewed them and joined them
- Northern tribune & Wessington Springs herald: a person reviewed them and joined them
- Northern tribune & Wessington Springs herald: a person reviewed them and joined them
- Northern tribune & The Brookhaven leader: the copy detector found the same text in both; they describe the same details; they name the same witness; same place; same year

Account 1 5 documents
- Earliest found Northern Tribune (Cheboygan, Mich.) Newspaper · Nov 27, 1884
  Image 8 of Northern tribune (Cheboygan, Mich.), November 27, 1884
- Reprint The Brookhaven Leader (Brookhaven, Miss.) Newspaper · Dec 25, 1884
  Image 3 of The Brookhaven leader (Brookhaven, Miss.), December 25, 1884
- Reprint St. Landry Democrat (Opelousas, La.) Newspaper · Dec 27, 1884
  Image 6 of St. Landry democrat (Opelousas, La.), December 27, 1884
- Reprint Wessington Springs Herald (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) Newspaper · Jan 9, 1885
  Image 5 of Wessington Springs herald (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]), January 9, 1885
- Reprint The Home Advocate (Farmerville, La.) 1885-1??? Newspaper · Feb 11, 1885

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.

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.

Back to the case
its summary, sources and discussion
Back to the map
opened on this case
Water Monster · Okanagan Lake, British Columbia · 1926
Another trail, same creature: 5 documents · 1 independent account
Water Monster · Lafourche Parish, Louisiana · 1914
The next-deepest trail: 5 documents · 1 independent account