Connecticut River Monster

Austin Rice of East Deerfield, Conn., is a plain unimaginative farmer, who for nearly fifty of the seventy years of his life has resided in his quiet home on the banks of the Connecticut river, says that nothing on earth can convince him that he did not see a snake in the river a few days ago that answers all the descriptions of the far-famed sea serpent. Farmer Rice’s story:

“I don’t expect that people who do not know me will believe the story, but those who do know me will believe I am telling the truth.

“I was near the bridge a little over a week ago when I heard what seemed to me like a grunt, followed by a splash. I looked out into the river, and not more than twenty-five feet away I saw a big snake. Its head was out of the water and its body raised some six or seven feet.

“At the neck the snake was about as large as a man’s leg at the thigh, and the body was about as large as an ordinary stovepipe. His eyes were as large as those of a horse, and his mouth, which was open, was nearly a foot across. The color of his body was black, and a white strip [stripe?] around his mouth extended down onto his belly.

“I followed the snake, trying to keep alongside. At one place he started for the bank and I away from it. His power of locomotion was so strong that he had no trouble in keeping still in the river against the current.

“When he got alongside a boat house, where some boys were hammering, he heard the noise and raised himself about ten feet into the air and then fell back into the water and disappeared.”

Mr. Rice’s reputation for veracity among his neighbors and acquaintances is good, and he never drinks.

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.

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