WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness, Bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:05.439 The truck's been quiet for the last hour. That's what 14 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:08.239 happens when you cross into northern New England after dark. 15 00:01:08.879 --> 00:01:12.480 The radio stations thin out, the exits get farther apart, 16 00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:15.319 and the trees start crowding the shoulder like they're checking 17 00:01:15.359 --> 00:01:18.959 your plates. We came up root one out of Portsmouth 18 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:22.719 over the Piscataqua River Bridge, that big green arch that 19 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:25.760 drops you into Kittery, and the second the tires hit 20 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:31.040 Maine asphalt. I rolled the window down salt pine, cold 21 00:01:31.079 --> 00:01:34.519 air with an edge to it, even in summer. Welcome 22 00:01:34.599 --> 00:01:37.319 to our latest stop on the backwoods cryptid road trip. 23 00:01:37.959 --> 00:01:40.560 I've honestly stopped counting how many states we've been to 24 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:43.400 at this point. The map in the glovebox has more 25 00:01:43.400 --> 00:01:46.840 coffee stains than legend at this point, and the cooler 26 00:01:46.879 --> 00:01:51.640 in the back seat has been riding shotgun through swamps, deserts, hollows, 27 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:55.480 and now, finally, the ragged edge of the North Atlantic 28 00:01:56.239 --> 00:01:58.560 Main is different from every state we've hit so far, 29 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:01.319 and I want you to understand and why before we 30 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:05.239 get one mile farther up this coast. Every other stop, 31 00:02:05.400 --> 00:02:10.319 the monster had somewhere to hide. Sure, a swamp, a ridgeline, 32 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:14.159 a cave system, But you could, in theory, walk in 33 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:16.840 after it. You could put boots on the ground where 34 00:02:16.879 --> 00:02:19.439 the witness stood and follow the thing's trail until the 35 00:02:19.439 --> 00:02:24.319 trail quit. Not here, not with this one, because Tonight's 36 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:27.159 monster lives in the ocean, and the ocean doesn't give 37 00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:30.960 anything back unless it feels like it. Casco Bay drops 38 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:34.520 away from those postcard rocks into black, cold deep water, 39 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.439 and whatever slides beneath that surface is gone the moment 40 00:02:38.479 --> 00:02:42.520 it decides to be gone. No tracks, no hair samples, 41 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:46.199 no trail cameras, just to swirl on the water and 42 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:48.319 a story. The witness has to carry a loan for 43 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:51.960 the rest of their life. They call her Cassie, the 44 00:02:52.039 --> 00:02:55.400 Casco Bay Sea Serpent. And before this night is over, 45 00:02:55.719 --> 00:02:58.280 we're also going to leave the water line and walk 46 00:02:58.280 --> 00:03:01.599 into the biggest unbroken forest in the eastern United States. 47 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:05.360 Because Maine doesn't just have a sea monster. Maine has 48 00:03:05.439 --> 00:03:09.840 sasquatch reports going back generations, tucked into logging camps and 49 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:13.039 potato country and the deep silence north of Moosehead Lake. 50 00:03:13.879 --> 00:03:18.280 Two monsters, one state, water and woods. We're heading up 51 00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:20.960 the coast to Portland, and the FOG's already coming in. 52 00:03:21.719 --> 00:03:23.960 Let me set the table, because if you've never stood 53 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:26.800 on the main coast, I can almost guarantee your picturing 54 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:31.400 it wrong. Forget the smooth sand beaches farther south. The 55 00:03:31.439 --> 00:03:35.319 main coast is granite ledges and shelves and broken slabs 56 00:03:35.319 --> 00:03:38.039 of rock stacked up like something got dropped from a 57 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:41.240 great height a million years ago and nobody cleaned it up. 58 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:44.280 The water that hits those rocks in July will still 59 00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:47.960 take your breath if you fall in fifty five maybe 60 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:51.240 sixty degrees on a good day, cold enough to kill 61 00:03:51.240 --> 00:03:53.360 you in an hour or two if the boat goes 62 00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:57.000 over and nobody comes. Casco Bay sits right in the 63 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.560 middle of the southern Maine coast, with the city of 64 00:03:59.599 --> 00:04:03.400 Portland on its western shore. It's not a small body 65 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:06.400 of water. The bay runs roughly twenty miles along the 66 00:04:06.439 --> 00:04:09.759 coast and reaches back miles deep into the land, and 67 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:12.879 it's littered with islands. They used to call them the 68 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:16.079 calendar islands because an old story claimed there was one 69 00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:18.879 for every day of the year. The real count is 70 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:22.079 lower a couple hundred or so, depending on how generous 71 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:24.600 you are about what counts as an island versus a 72 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:28.959 big rock with an attitude. But the point stands Casco 73 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:33.399 Bay is a maze channels, ledges, deep holes, shallow flats, 74 00:04:33.800 --> 00:04:36.560 all of it braided together, all of it swept twice 75 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:39.720 a day by tides that move enormous volumes of water 76 00:04:39.800 --> 00:04:42.279 in and out of the Gulf of Maine, and the 77 00:04:42.279 --> 00:04:46.160 Gulf of Maine itself is the engine behind everything. It's 78 00:04:46.199 --> 00:04:49.399 one of the richest, most biologically productive bodies of water. 79 00:04:49.480 --> 00:04:53.319 In the Atlantic, cold currents come down from the Labrador Sea, 80 00:04:53.720 --> 00:04:56.600 mix with warmer water and stir up nutrients that feed 81 00:04:56.680 --> 00:05:00.680 everything from herring to humpback whales. What Ever swims the 82 00:05:00.680 --> 00:05:03.560 North Atlantic can wander into the Gulf of Maine, and 83 00:05:03.639 --> 00:05:06.399 whatever wanders into the Gulf of Maine can nose its 84 00:05:06.439 --> 00:05:09.759 way into Casco Bay chasing bait. The people who work 85 00:05:09.839 --> 00:05:14.839 this water aren't tourists. Lobstermen out of Portland, Falmouth, Harpswell 86 00:05:14.879 --> 00:05:17.160 and the islands run their boats and fog you couldn't 87 00:05:17.160 --> 00:05:20.160 see your hand through in seas that would send most 88 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:23.000 of us crawling for the dock. These are folks who 89 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.319 look at the water all day, every day for forty 90 00:05:26.399 --> 00:05:29.560 or fifty years. They know what a sealhead looks like 91 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:32.800 at three hundred yards. They know a basking shark fin 92 00:05:32.920 --> 00:05:35.560 from a porpoise, roll from a half sunk log without 93 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:39.040 slowing the boat down. Their livelihood depends on reading the 94 00:05:39.079 --> 00:05:41.920 surface of the ocean correctly. So when one of them 95 00:05:41.959 --> 00:05:44.360 comes in and says he saw something he can't explain, 96 00:05:44.959 --> 00:05:47.600 that's worth more to me than one hundred blurry photos. 97 00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:53.800 That's the setting. Cold water deep channels, working boats, and 98 00:05:53.839 --> 00:05:57.279 a horizon that hides more than it shows. Now, let's 99 00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:00.879 go back, way back, because as he didn't show up 100 00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:03.920 out of nowhere in the twentieth century, New England has 101 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.319 been reporting sea serpents for as long as there have 102 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:09.920 been Europeans on this coast to write things down, and 103 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:12.360 for a long time before that, if you listen to 104 00:06:12.439 --> 00:06:17.439 the people who were already here. Start in sixteen thirty nine, 105 00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:20.199 an English traveler named John Jocelyn came to the New 106 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:22.959 England coast and later wrote up his voyages in a book. 107 00:06:23.759 --> 00:06:26.360 In it, he passed along an account he heard from 108 00:06:26.439 --> 00:06:29.480 men on the coast north of Boston. They told him 109 00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:33.240 about a sea serpent, a huge snakelike thing that lay 110 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:35.920 coiled up on a rock at Cape Ann, which is 111 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:38.800 the big granite fist of land that sticks out into 112 00:06:38.839 --> 00:06:42.720 the Atlantic below the main border, right where Gloucester sits today. 113 00:06:43.759 --> 00:06:46.360 Two Englishmen in a boat with some Native men wanted 114 00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:50.240 to shoot at it. The native men stopped them. They're warning, 115 00:06:50.279 --> 00:06:54.000 as Jocelyn recorded, it was simple. If the men fired 116 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:57.079 and didn't kill it, they'd all be in danger. Don't 117 00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:01.759 wound something like that, Don't even try The Englishmen were surprised. 118 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:05.319 The native men were not. They already had rules for 119 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:09.079 this animal. You don't develop rules for something you've never seen. 120 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:13.160 The Wabanaki peoples of what's now Maine had their own 121 00:07:13.199 --> 00:07:16.480 traditions of enormous serpents in the lakes and along the coast, 122 00:07:17.279 --> 00:07:20.600 water beings with their own names and their own reputations, 123 00:07:21.160 --> 00:07:25.480 long before a single English keel scrape these rocks. The 124 00:07:25.480 --> 00:07:28.519 colonists didn't import the sea serpent. They walked into a 125 00:07:28.560 --> 00:07:34.000 coastline that already had one. Moved forward seventeen fifty one 126 00:07:34.120 --> 00:07:36.959 Broad Bay, in the area of what's now Walderborough on 127 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.639 the mid coast, German settlers reported an enormous serpent in 128 00:07:40.680 --> 00:07:44.839 the water. Scattered accounts run through the seventeen hundreds, most 129 00:07:44.839 --> 00:07:47.800 of them a sentence or two in somebody's journal, A 130 00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:50.839 thing seen off a point, a great snake in the bay, 131 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:53.439 And then the writer moves on to the price of 132 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:57.199 salt fish, because life was hard and paper was expensive. 133 00:07:58.040 --> 00:08:00.680 Then comes the one I love because of who the 134 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:05.920 witness became. Seventeen seventy nine, during the Revolutionary War, in 135 00:08:05.959 --> 00:08:10.160 Panopscot Bay, farther up the main coast, a young midshipman 136 00:08:10.199 --> 00:08:13.319 was serving aboard in American warship when the crew spotted 137 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:16.079 an enormous serpent lying on the surface of the water. 138 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:19.160 The captain ordered a boat over the side and sent 139 00:08:19.199 --> 00:08:22.360 the midshipman with armed men to go after it. They 140 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:26.279 rowed toward the theme, actually pursued it until it slid 141 00:08:26.399 --> 00:08:30.399 under and was gone. That midshipman's name was Edward Prebble. 142 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.759 If you know your naval history, you know where this goes. 143 00:08:34.840 --> 00:08:37.440 Preble became one of the most respected officers in the 144 00:08:37.480 --> 00:08:41.679 early United States Navy. A commodore, the man who commanded 145 00:08:41.679 --> 00:08:45.159 the squadron against Tripoli, the officer a whole generation of 146 00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:48.960 famous captains called their teacher. There are ships named after him. 147 00:08:49.480 --> 00:08:52.080 There's a fort named after him, guarding, of all places, 148 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:55.879 the entrance to Casco Bay. His sea serpent story survived 149 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:59.559 because his biographers recorded it. And think about what that means. 150 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:02.720 This wasn't a drunk on a wharf. This was a 151 00:09:02.759 --> 00:09:05.679 story attached to one of the most credible military names 152 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:10.879 of the era, a man whose entire reputation rested on judgment, discipline, 153 00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:17.919 and accurate observation. Did he embellish it? Maybe did his biographer, possibly, 154 00:09:18.639 --> 00:09:22.360 but the account exists. It's specific, and it places a large, 155 00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:25.960 unknown animal in Maine coastal waters almost two hundred and 156 00:09:26.039 --> 00:09:29.399 fifty years ago, with a future commodore in a rowboat 157 00:09:29.519 --> 00:09:33.360 chasing it. Now, all of that was prologue, because in 158 00:09:33.399 --> 00:09:36.879 August of eighteen seventeen, about thirty miles down the coast 159 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:39.799 from the main line, the sea serpent stopped being a 160 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:43.679 sailor's yarn and became for one strange season a matter 161 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:50.960 of official scientific record. Gloucester, Massachusetts, August eighteen seventeen. Gloucester 162 00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:54.240 was a serious fishing town, one of the oldest in America, 163 00:09:54.879 --> 00:09:57.039 full of men who spent their lives on the water, 164 00:09:57.720 --> 00:10:00.759 and over a stretch of days that August, dozens of them, 165 00:10:01.039 --> 00:10:04.559 then hundreds of people in total, watched an enormous serpentine 166 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:07.200 animal work the harbor and the waters off Cape Ann 167 00:10:08.039 --> 00:10:12.679 not one siding, not one witness, day after day, witness 168 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:18.000 after witness, from boats, from wharves, from the shore. With spyglasses. 169 00:10:18.799 --> 00:10:22.600 The descriptions lined up to a remarkable degree. A dark 170 00:10:22.679 --> 00:10:27.320 animal enormously long estimates commonly ran from forty feet up 171 00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:31.080 past eighty a head raised out of the water, often 172 00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:34.039 compared to a horse's head or a big dog's head, 173 00:10:34.039 --> 00:10:36.840 in shape held a foot or two above the surface 174 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:40.240 and behind the head. The detail that shows up again 175 00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:43.360 and again for the next two centuries a series of 176 00:10:43.399 --> 00:10:47.200 humps or bunches breaking the surface in a line, moving 177 00:10:47.240 --> 00:10:50.600 with a vertical motion up and down, not the side 178 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:53.960 to side sweep of a snake or an eel. Witnesses 179 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.679 said it moved fast, startlingly fast, faster than any whale 180 00:10:58.679 --> 00:11:02.519 they knew. A ship's carpenter named Matthew Gaffney got close 181 00:11:02.639 --> 00:11:04.519 enough in a boat to fire a musket at its 182 00:11:04.559 --> 00:11:07.000 head from what he judged to be thirty feet or less. 183 00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:10.960 He was sure he hit it. The animal reacted, turned 184 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.440 toward the boat, sank, passed under them, and came up 185 00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:20.080 again one hundred yards off, apparently unbothered. Gaffney's account scared people, 186 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:23.320 and it should have. That's a man shooting a large, 187 00:11:23.399 --> 00:11:26.159 unknown animal at point blank range and watching the shot 188 00:11:26.279 --> 00:11:29.840 mean nothing. Here's the part that separates Gloucester from every 189 00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:33.960 other monster flap you've ever heard of. The Lenaean Society 190 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.519 of New England, a genuine learned scientific body in Boston, 191 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:41.639 took it seriously. They sent a committee. They had witnesses 192 00:11:41.679 --> 00:11:46.159 examined under oath before a Justice of the peace, sworn depositions, 193 00:11:46.519 --> 00:11:51.799 legal instruments, Amos' story, Solomon Allen Gaffney and others sat 194 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:55.080 down and swore to what they saw in detail, with 195 00:11:55.200 --> 00:11:59.720 the questions and answers written out, Where were you, what time, 196 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:03.919 how far, how long did you observe it, what color? 197 00:12:04.519 --> 00:12:08.360 How did it move? Those documents still exist. You can 198 00:12:08.399 --> 00:12:11.919 read them today, and they read like careful people describing 199 00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:15.440 a real animal, disagreeing on the small stuff the way 200 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:18.799 honest witnesses always do, and agreeing on the spine of 201 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:23.559 the thing, long, dark head like a horse, humps in 202 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:29.039 a line vertical motion fast. Then the Lenaean Society made 203 00:12:29.080 --> 00:12:31.559 one of the great unforced errors in the history of 204 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:35.840 American science. That fall, somebody killed a small black snake 205 00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:38.679 near the shore at Cape Ann, a snake about three 206 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:42.759 feet long with a strange, bunched, humped deformity along its body. 207 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:46.559 The society's men examined it, decided it must be a 208 00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:50.320 juvenile of the great serpent everyone had seen, dissected it, 209 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:53.600 and formally announced a new species. They gave it a 210 00:12:53.639 --> 00:12:59.600 scientific name Sculiophus atlanticus, the Atlantic humped snake. They published 211 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:04.240 it was a common black snake with a diseased, deformed spine. 212 00:13:04.360 --> 00:13:07.279 Naturalists in America and Europe took the whole affair apart, 213 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:10.440 and the laughter that followed didn't just bury the little snake. 214 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:14.720 It buried the depositions. It buried Gaffney and Story and 215 00:13:14.759 --> 00:13:19.320 Allen and every sworn word they'd given from that point forward. 216 00:13:19.639 --> 00:13:22.919 Sea serpent testimony carried the smell of that blunder, and 217 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:26.799 it never fully aired out. Scientists learned the lesson that 218 00:13:26.840 --> 00:13:30.639 touching this subject could end a reputation, and honest witnesses 219 00:13:30.720 --> 00:13:33.360 learned that coming forward brought you nothing but a nickname 220 00:13:33.399 --> 00:13:37.000 at the wharf. The Society's mistake was real, and it 221 00:13:37.039 --> 00:13:39.879 was bad, But the mistake was in the dead snake, 222 00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:44.519 not in the living testimony. Those depositions were taken before 223 00:13:44.559 --> 00:13:48.200 the snake ever turned up. Whatever hundreds of people watched 224 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:51.559 off Gloucester in August of eighteen seventeen was never explained. 225 00:13:52.120 --> 00:13:55.240 It was only embarrassed out of the conversation. And here's 226 00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:59.639 your main connection. The animal or animals didn't stay in Gloucester. 227 00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:04.440 Sightings continued in eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen, enrolled up 228 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:07.600 and down the New England coast for decades off Nahant, 229 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:13.039 off Boston, off Portsmouth, and yes, off Maine. The Gulf 230 00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:16.480 of Maine was the highway, whatever it was, it commuted. 231 00:14:17.159 --> 00:14:19.720 The nineteenth century main papers are where this thing really 232 00:14:19.759 --> 00:14:22.279 settles into Casco Bay. And I want to read you 233 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:24.279 some of these accounts the way they would a run, 234 00:14:24.759 --> 00:14:27.879 because there's a flavor to old newspaper sea serpent reporting 235 00:14:27.919 --> 00:14:30.720 that you have to hear to appreciate. These are the 236 00:14:30.799 --> 00:14:34.159 kinds of items that filled coastal papers through the eighteen hundreds, 237 00:14:34.320 --> 00:14:36.840 when a serpent story was news the same way as 238 00:14:36.840 --> 00:14:40.879 shipwreck or a big halibut was news from a Portland paper. 239 00:14:41.200 --> 00:14:46.360 Summer eighteen thirties, Sea serpent again. The monster, which has 240 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:49.519 for some seasons past visited our coast, was seen on 241 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.600 Thursday last off the mouth of the Harbor by several 242 00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:56.720 gentlemen of unquestioned veracity, among them Captain Small of the 243 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.639 schooner Dove, who observed the creature at a distance of 244 00:14:59.759 --> 00:15:03.159 not more than fifty rods. Stay tuned for more Backwoods 245 00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:08.960 Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Captain Small 246 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:11.519 states that the animal appeared of the thickness of a 247 00:15:11.559 --> 00:15:15.039 barrel of a dark brown color, and that portions of 248 00:15:15.039 --> 00:15:17.559 its body to the number of eight or ten were 249 00:15:17.639 --> 00:15:20.360 visible above the water in a line of some sixty feet. 250 00:15:21.080 --> 00:15:24.720 Its head, which it carried erect resembled that of a horse. 251 00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:28.759 It moved with great rapidity toward Cape Elizabeth and disappeared. 252 00:15:29.759 --> 00:15:32.240 Captain Small is a temperate man, and his statement may 253 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:35.679 be relied upon you hear it. Every one of these 254 00:15:35.679 --> 00:15:40.200 accounts has the same bones the named witness, the character 255 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:45.039 reference temperate man, gentleman of veracity, because the editor knew 256 00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:49.039 exactly what readers would suspect, the measurement in rods or 257 00:15:49.039 --> 00:15:52.320 in comparison to a barrel or a hogshead, because these 258 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:56.039 were people who measured the world in working objects. The 259 00:15:56.120 --> 00:16:00.840 humps counted the horse head, the speed, and then the vanishing, 260 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:04.679 always the vanishing toward Cape Elizabeth or Seguan or the 261 00:16:04.679 --> 00:16:08.639 open sea down east had its own file. In the 262 00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:12.120 summer of eighteen seventeen, the same season Gloucester was boiling over, 263 00:16:12.519 --> 00:16:15.360 reports came out of the Eastport area, way up at 264 00:16:15.399 --> 00:16:18.120 the eastern end of the main coast near the Canadian 265 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:21.159 line of a great serpent seen in the passages around 266 00:16:21.159 --> 00:16:26.639 Passamaquaddi Bay. Different witnesses, hundreds of miles apart, same season, 267 00:16:26.919 --> 00:16:30.759 same animal on the page. Either the story traveled faster 268 00:16:30.840 --> 00:16:34.000 than the coasting schooners that carried the newspapers, or something 269 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:36.919 with a long, dark back was working the whole Gulf 270 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:40.679 of Maine that summer and letting itself be seen. Here's 271 00:16:40.679 --> 00:16:44.759 another one, the serpent. Once more, we are informed by 272 00:16:44.799 --> 00:16:49.159 mister Josiah Truffon of Harpswell, a fisherman of thirty years standing, 273 00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:52.679 that on Tuesday morning last, while hauling his trolls off 274 00:16:52.759 --> 00:16:55.679 Mark Island, he and his boy observed a creature of 275 00:16:55.720 --> 00:16:58.960 prodigious length passing to the eastward at the rate as 276 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:03.399 he judged, of ten knots or better. Mister Trufont states 277 00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:05.920 that the animal carried its head, which was of the 278 00:17:05.920 --> 00:17:09.440 bigness of a flower barrel, some feet clear of the water, 279 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.440 and that its wake was such as a small steamer 280 00:17:12.519 --> 00:17:16.279 might make. The boy was for pulling after it, mister 281 00:17:16.279 --> 00:17:19.480 Trufont was not. He observes that he has hauled his 282 00:17:19.519 --> 00:17:22.359 gear in these waters, man and boy since before the war, 283 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:25.680 that he never saw its like before, and that he 284 00:17:25.799 --> 00:17:28.640 is in no great hurry to see it again. We 285 00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:31.440 give the account as we received it, and remark only 286 00:17:31.480 --> 00:17:34.279 that mister Trufont's word is good at every store in 287 00:17:34.319 --> 00:17:37.400 the town. His word is good at every store in 288 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:40.839 the town. That's a credit rating and a character reference 289 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:43.680 in one sentence, and it tells you exactly what the 290 00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:47.119 editor knew he was up against. Nobody spends their good 291 00:17:47.200 --> 00:17:49.599 name on a joke, not in a town where your 292 00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:53.000 name is the only collateral you've got. The papers ran 293 00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:57.480 items like this for decades. Some seasons brought clusters of them. 294 00:17:57.680 --> 00:17:59.839 A serpent seen off Booth Bay by the crew of 295 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:02.920 a coaster. A serpent seen from the beach at Old 296 00:18:03.079 --> 00:18:06.680 Orchard by summer visitors, which the locals dismissed because summer 297 00:18:06.759 --> 00:18:08.960 visitors would report a mermaid if you gave them a 298 00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:13.200 spyglass and a slow afternoon. A serpent that passed a 299 00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:16.519 fishing boat off monhegan so close the men could hear 300 00:18:16.559 --> 00:18:19.599 the water part around it, and the skipper asked why 301 00:18:19.640 --> 00:18:22.039 he didn't give Chase answered that he was in the 302 00:18:22.039 --> 00:18:25.480 fish business and intended to stay in it. That last 303 00:18:25.519 --> 00:18:28.240 line or something very close to it shows up more 304 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:30.640 than once in the old accounts, and it might be 305 00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:34.440 my favorite detail in all of this. These were practical men. 306 00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:39.039 They saw something enormous and unexplained, and their overwhelming response 307 00:18:39.119 --> 00:18:41.920 was to keep a respectful distance and get back to work. 308 00:18:42.759 --> 00:18:47.279 That's not how hoaxers behave. Hoaxers chase attention. Fishermen then 309 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:50.200 and now mostly wished the thing hadn't picked their boat. 310 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:55.319 By the late eighteen hundreds, the reports thinned, steam replaced sail, 311 00:18:55.839 --> 00:18:59.240 the coastal papers changed, and the Great Atlantic Sea Serpent 312 00:18:59.319 --> 00:19:02.000 slid out of the news columns and into the folklore shell. 313 00:19:02.799 --> 00:19:05.799 A lot of people assumed the story died there. It didn't. 314 00:19:06.519 --> 00:19:10.400 It just went quiet, and in June of nineteen fifty eight, 315 00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:12.519 in the waters off Cape Elizabeth, at the mouth of 316 00:19:12.559 --> 00:19:16.960 Casco Bay, it cleared its throat. The witness in nineteen 317 00:19:17.039 --> 00:19:20.680 fifty eight was a fisherman named ol Mickelson, a Dane 318 00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:24.960 out of Portland, a working captain, not a publicity seeker. 319 00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:28.240 By his account, he was out near Cape Elizabeth in 320 00:19:28.279 --> 00:19:31.640 the approaches to Casco Bay when he noticed something following 321 00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:37.000 his boat, not crossing his path. Following he described a 322 00:19:37.039 --> 00:19:41.240 creature of great length, dark serpentine, with its head held 323 00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:43.839 out of the water. And he watched it long enough 324 00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:47.279 and close enough to rule out the ordinary suspects. He 325 00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:51.160 knew wales, he knew sharks, he fished for a living 326 00:19:51.240 --> 00:19:54.799 in these exact waters. He said this was neither. And 327 00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:57.440 he said it trailed him for a considerable time before 328 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.400 it fell away and sank from sight, and he did 329 00:20:00.400 --> 00:20:04.160 not enjoy a single minute of it. Mickelson's siding got 330 00:20:04.200 --> 00:20:06.640 picked up in the Portland press and it became the 331 00:20:06.680 --> 00:20:10.519 anchor of the modern era for this animal. Years later, 332 00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:14.440 the researcher Lauren Coleman, who eventually settled in Portland himself 333 00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:17.839 and opened his cryptozoology museum right there in the city, 334 00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:23.319 gave the Casco Bay serpent the name that stuck Cassie, 335 00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:26.640 a friendly, almost affectionate name in the tradition of NeSSI 336 00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:30.279 and Chessie and Champ for an animal whose actual descriptions 337 00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:33.799 are anything but cuddly. I've got mixed feelings about the 338 00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:38.039 cute names. Honestly, they make the subject approachable. An approachable 339 00:20:38.039 --> 00:20:42.079 means people keep talking, and talking is how reports get preserved. 340 00:20:42.799 --> 00:20:45.200 But a name like Cassie can trick you into forgetting 341 00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:48.680 what the witnesses actually describe. Nobody who's looked at a 342 00:20:48.680 --> 00:20:51.680 horse shaped head rising off black water at dusk has 343 00:20:51.720 --> 00:20:55.319 ever described the experience as cute. So that's the lineage 344 00:20:55.880 --> 00:21:00.200 Wabanaki water beings, Joscelyn's coiled serpent at Cape Anne in 345 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:04.519 sixteen thirty nine, Prebley's row boat chase in seventeen seventy nine, 346 00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:09.759 the Gloucester depositions of eighteen seventeen, a century of newspaper 347 00:21:09.799 --> 00:21:14.079 items Mickelson in nineteen fifty eight, and behind the famous 348 00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:17.880 names a long, quiet sediment of reports from lobstermen and 349 00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:21.880 ferry passengers and people standing on rocks, most of which 350 00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:24.680 never got written down anywhere except in a family's dinner 351 00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:28.880 table repertoire. The next few stories are modern era encounters. 352 00:21:29.400 --> 00:21:31.960 The first one comes from a lobsterman I'll call Roy. 353 00:21:32.960 --> 00:21:35.359 Roy fished out of a harbor on the eastern side 354 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:39.519 of Casco Bay for over thirty years. Third generation. His 355 00:21:39.599 --> 00:21:42.839 grandfather fished under sail. Roy's the kind of guy who 356 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:45.119 can tell you the depth under his hull within a 357 00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:48.319 fathom just by looking at the shoreline, and he'll tell 358 00:21:48.359 --> 00:21:50.680 you straight out that for most of his career he 359 00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:53.799 thought sea serpent stories were for the tourists and the 360 00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:58.559 gift shops. Late September, some years back, Roy was hauling 361 00:21:58.599 --> 00:22:00.839 his last string of the day off the backside of 362 00:22:00.839 --> 00:22:03.480 one of the outer islands, where the bottom drops off 363 00:22:03.559 --> 00:22:08.319 quick into deep water, flat calm evening, which matters. A 364 00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:12.039 flat calm sea is a lie detector. Nothing moves on 365 00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:15.200 it without showing itself. He just dumped a trap and 366 00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:17.400 was idling toward the next boy when he saw what 367 00:22:17.480 --> 00:22:19.599 he took for a line of pot boys where no 368 00:22:19.720 --> 00:22:23.599 pot boys should be four dark shapes in a row, 369 00:22:23.599 --> 00:22:27.759 maybe two hundred yards off, evenly spaced. His first thought 370 00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:30.640 was that somebody had set gear in his territory. And 371 00:22:30.680 --> 00:22:33.720 if you know lobstermen, you know that thought arrived with 372 00:22:33.799 --> 00:22:37.400 some heat behind it. Then the boys moved all four 373 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:42.480 of them together in a line against the tide. Roy 374 00:22:42.519 --> 00:22:45.960 cut the throttle and watched the shapes rose a little higher, 375 00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:49.519 and he could see now they weren't separate objects. They 376 00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:53.319 were connected under the surface humps of one continuous body, 377 00:22:53.839 --> 00:22:57.720 dark wet, smooth looking. Each hump maybe the size of 378 00:22:57.759 --> 00:23:01.839 an overturned dory, rolled forward with an up and down motion, 379 00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:05.920 and the water between them stayed disturbed, a long, slick 380 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.640 line of turbulence, maybe fifty sixty feet from end to end. 381 00:23:10.599 --> 00:23:15.680 Roy had seen thousands of whales, finbacks, minkeys, humpbacks, the 382 00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:19.480 occasional right whale. He'd seen basking sharks by the dozen, 383 00:23:19.880 --> 00:23:22.839 seen their fins wobble on the surface, seen two of 384 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:25.839 them swimming in line, and understood exactly how that could 385 00:23:25.880 --> 00:23:29.640 fool somebody. He stood there, running the checklist out loud 386 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:33.279 to himself in the empty boat. No blow, no fin, 387 00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:38.519 no fluke, wrong motion. Whales roll one arc at a time. 388 00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:42.880 This was four arcs at once, holding formation like the 389 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:46.039 animal was too long to fit into one arc. The 390 00:23:46.119 --> 00:23:48.440 humps ran parallel to him for what he guessed was 391 00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:52.079 thirty seconds. Then the lead hump dipped and the rest 392 00:23:52.119 --> 00:23:55.319 followed it down, one by one, front to back, like 393 00:23:55.400 --> 00:23:58.799 a chain being pulled off a table. The slick sat 394 00:23:58.839 --> 00:24:02.160 on the surface for a while. Afterward he finished his string. 395 00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:05.440 He's a lobsterman, but he told me the part that 396 00:24:05.480 --> 00:24:08.519 stayed with him wasn't the humps. It was the size 397 00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:11.720 of the swirl where the last one went down. He'd 398 00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.119 seen the footprint a diving finback leaves on the surface 399 00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:19.799 that big, smooth boil of displaced water. This was bigger, 400 00:24:20.359 --> 00:24:22.599 and a finback is one of the largest animals that 401 00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:26.319