We'll forgive you if you've never heard of the White River Monster before; it's not commonly known. What exactly is it anyhow?
The monster is allegedly a large creature reportedly first spotted off the banks of the White River near Newport in northeastern Arkansas.
Sightings of the monster began in 1915. On July 1st of that year, an owner of a plantation near the river saw the monster. He reported it having gray skin and "as wide as a car and three cars long." As the news spread construction of a rope net began, but ended due to lack of money and materials
In the first week of 1937, recreational fishermen noticed that they were finding it hard to land many fish, and the creature was spotted again, and reported to Bramlett Bateman, a nearby plantation owner, who later confirmed the sighting, describing it as having "the skin of an elephant, four or five feet wide by twelve feet long, with the face of a catfish, . . . lolling on the surface of the water."
Feeling the creature was a threat to his crops, he intended to blow up the eddy where the creature was spotted with TNT, but area authorities denied necessary permission. A minor media sensation resulted in visitors from across the nation, some bringing cameras, explosives, and a machine gun, and when no more sightings were made, when a plan to capture it with a giant net failed, and when a deep sea diver failed to find the creature, Bateman was thought to have created a hoax, despite over 100 confirmed sightings recorded during the short period of excitement.
The White River Monster was sighted again in the summer of 1971. That year, eyewitnesses who encountered the creature described it as "the size of a boxcar" with a bone protruding from its forehead. "It looked as if the thing was peeling all over, but it was a smooth type of skin or flesh," said one, and it made strange noises that sounded like a combination of a "cow's moo and a horse's neigh."
Well, to us this certainly sounds a lot like fiction, but there may have actually been something to the claims, considering the large number of people that apparently saw it.
We are fairly confident there isn't an actual "monster" living in the White River, so what was it? Biologist Roy Mackal was persuaded that the monster was an elephant seal. Other biologists disputed that, due to the White River being well out of the range of elephant seals. Others think it may have been a Florida manatee that made it's way up the Mississippi river, and then up the White.
We may never know...unless it appears again.
