April 25, 2010

A Spitting Sea Serpent?

Los Angeles Herald

February 18, 1909

SEA SERPENT THAT ‘SPITS LIKE CANNON’ SEEN AT LONG BEACH

Monster is Forty Feet Long, with Head Like Barrel and Eyes Big as a Man’s Fist

[Special to The Herald.]

LONG BEACH, Feb. 17. – A sea serpent forty feet long, with a brown head as big around as a small barrel and eyes as large as a man’s fist, was the frightening object sighted eighteen miles off the coast yesterday by Guy
Griffith, James Harvey and three other fishermen in the launch Reta. The serpent is said to have moved its head from side to side as a snake does and had a big dorsal fin fifteen feet back of the head.

The fishermen say the same monster has been reported within the last few months near the Philippines and along the northern coast of this country.

They furthermore aver that a heavy sinker, which one of the five threw at the sea serpent as the boat was pulling away from the unsafe neighborhood, was caught in the creature’s mouth and spit back with such force as to make a deep dent in the fish box on deck.

“Never saw such a spitter,” said one of the men. “Just like a young cannon.” Long Beach is a “dry” [alcohol sales illegal] town.

Thanks to Jerry Clark.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Filed under Cryptomundo Exclusive, CryptoZoo News, Eyewitness Accounts, Sea Serpents