Water Monster · Cook County, Illinois · 1884
IL-1884ID case-f2cbad2d1aAdded to map Oct 9, 2026
- Creature
- Water Monster
- When
- Nov 26, 1884to the day
- Where
- Cook County, Illinoisto county level
- Reports
- 4 documents1 independent
The account
The steward of the tug Miller reports a huge black object rising under the port bow, followed by Captain Neiman and the engineer corroborating.
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
- Cook County, Illinois, United States
mapped to county level · from the report's own words, generalized to a larger area - When
- Nov 26, 1884
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source (4 documents; copies and reprints are not confirmations)
- Added to map
- Oct 9, 2026
- Case id
- case-f2cbad2d1a
Place lookups use data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via Nominatim. All credits
Source trail (3)
Down the rabbit hole → 4 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 8 of Northern tribune (Cheboygan, Mich.), November 27, 1884
Newspaper · 1884-11-27
Earliest found, not necessarily the original. - Image 6 of St. Landry democrat (Opelousas, La.), December 27, 1884
Newspaper · 1884-12-27 - Image 5 of Wessington Springs herald (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]), January 9, 1885
Newspaper · 1885-01-09
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.