Snakes on Plains
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 15th, 2006
The ultimate snake on a plain, The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio may represent a giant snake swallowing an egg.
Accounts of giant snakes have circulated throughout the United States, across the plains, into the forests of Middle America, and from coast to coast. Reports from the area around Bridgewater, Massachusetts, tell of CCC workers in the 1930s encountering huge coiled serpents along the pathways through the Hockomock Swamp. From Hastings, Michigan, comes tales of the twenty-foot-long Carter’s Snake, so named because it was always seen near Carter’s Lake. Near another lake, Reynold’s Lake in Kentucky, local people began to take their hogs inside for fear that their giant snake would devour their livestock after it got its fill of frogs. The era of a snake as “large as a stovepipe” is gone only because nobody uses stovepipes any longer, but the reports of giant snakes continue.
One of the most famous giant snake sighting series was that of the “Peninsula Python.”
In the summer of 1944, a huge snake known as the Peninsula Python caused excitement along the Cuyahoga River in the wooded valley between Akron and Cleveland, Ohio. The creature first appeared on June 8, 1944 when Clarence Mitchell saw it sliding across his corn field. The Peninsula Python left a track the width of an automobile tire, and Mitchell reported the creature to be about 18 feet in length. Two days later, Paul and John Szalay reported a similar track in their fields, and two more days later, Mrs. Roy Vaughn called out the fire department when the giant reptile attacked her hen house. The snake had climbed the fence to her chicken coop and devoured a chicken.
Now that the snake was accepted as fact, theories abounded as to where it had come from. Two years earlier, a carnival truck had supposedly smashed up in a cemetery in the valley and it was speculated that the python might have escaped from this wreck. As I have discovered many times before in my investigations of “circus train wrecks” as the source of any given mystery animal report, the story could never fully be tracked down.
The Indian rock python, a subspecies of the Burmese, is well within the range of how big the the Peninsula Python seems to have appeared.
The Cleveland and Columbus Zoos offered rewards for the live capture of the Peninsula Python, and the news services began to carry the story, which aroused overseas interest from servicemen whose families lived in the valley.
On Sunday, June 25th, the sirens blasted to report the creature had been sighted near Kelly Hill. The town emptied as countless residents headed off to the hill in search of the Python. The hunters trampled through tangled thorn bush and burrs only to learn later that it was a false alarm.
Two days later, on June 27th, the snake leaped down out of a dead willow and frightened Mrs. Pauline Hopko. It so frightened her milk cows that they broke their halters and ran off across the fields, while her dogs cowered under Mrs. Hopko’s skirts. Mrs. Hopko was left holding the milk pail. The snake was also sighted by Bobbie Pollard and some other boys at this time, but it disappeared before the Mayor’s posse arrived on the scene.
After another two days, Mrs. Ralph Griffin saw the snake rear up human-high in the middle of her back yard. Again, the creature avoided the posse. Then Mrs. Katherine Boroutick saw it in her back yard; it came crashing down out of her butternut tree when she was out by the river throwing out some trash. The posse found broken tree limbs and another track to the riverbed. Professional searchers came into the area and the snake was reported a few more times in the fall. However, hunters said they never got word fast enough to get a shot at the snake. By first frost, residents waited for the buzzards to find a huge carcass of a snake dead of the cold, but the Peninsula Python was never sighted again, dead or alive.
The above was taken from Mysterious America, copyright Loren Coleman.
Tales of Giant Snakes are found in old folklore from many lands, even America.
Update
Readers from part one of this blog (above) have emailed and commented that you wanted to see other well-known images regarding giant snakes. Therefore, please click on Snakes on Plains – Part Deux
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.
I used to have nightmares with snakes so ‘Snakes on a Plane” or whatever the title is NOT on my must see list!
By the way, unless I am mistaken, 1944 tires were not as wide as modern ones, anybody know how wide a 1944 tire track was?
I remember watching an Arthur C Clarke Mysterious Universe episode once that featured giant snakes.
There was a quite clear photo of an enormous snake, monsterous even, taken from the vantage point of either a helicopter or small plane.
Amazing to say the least.
There are alot of strange things in the Hockomock Swamp.
I read about giant snakes in PA a while back here:
http://www.strangeark.com/nabr/NABR5.pdf
Actually, all the NABR issues are filled with strange stuff.
Bennymac is right. The Hockomock Swamp is the center of the Bridgewater Triangle. Apparently, it is full of all kinds of strange stuff like Bigfoot, UFO’s, ghosts and the like.
In northwest Iowa last fall, as the internet story went, a farmer was harvesting his crop and saw what he thought was a large tractor tire ahead of him in his field. Puzzled, he stopped, looked at it, kicked it and then realized it wasn’t a tire! He supposedly went back to the farmstead and got a tractor with a loader and a buddy then went back out and picked up the coiled ‘thing’ and took it to town. At the local grain elevator a crowd gathered as the story spread, it turned out to be recognized as a Burmese Python they figured someone has as a pet that got to large to handle and then had dumped in the country, they thought it had probably migrated into a field where it survived on mice, etc. or so the story went, I think it might have been in the Des Moines Register but am not certain.
Anyway, here is a true story: I was raised on a farm in eastern Iowa near a small river, we had lots of water snakes in the backwaters and all the Bull snakes in the fields a kid could want. The biggest snake I ever saw was a Bull snake, head to toe across the gravel road next to our south-sloping cornfield. It was in 1958, the road was 20′ m/l from edge to edge, the snake was sunning itself with its head in the grass on one side and tail on the other. Make your own length decisions here, folks. My Dad and I were hauling a load of hay down the road and we stopped so as not to run over it, for a Bull snake is valuable to farmers as it devours field rats and mice that destroy crops. It looked like a small telephone pole with splotches, Dad laughed and said he was geting ready to molt his skin so he gently picked up its tail and it slowly crawled across the road and into the ditch, then a hayfield. As it moved away from us, the waving grasses were an interesting giant ‘S’ that I’ll never forget. Wish I could have found that skin!
We frequently saw them in bales of hay and straw as they would be in the fresh-cut windrows ready for baling, they would be stalking field mice then get caught in the baler and stick their head out when we grabbed the bales from the machine, always a surprise!
That was almost 50 years ago, sad to say I have only seen two Bull snakes in the last 3 years, most have changed habitat now and are only seen in dense low areas away from heavy fieldwork activity, if at all.
very interesting indeed for a snake lover like me. that photo loyalfromlondon mentioned was a copter and apparently the snake tried to grab the copter. it was estimated at over 40 feet if memory serves and I believe it was in some part of Africa or South America, although I could be mistaken.I have no doubt that giant snakes around and my money is on the Amazon river area.
‘Giant’ snakes are a very real possibility. The longest snake known is the reticulated python, at a maximum length of around 30′ (9.144 meters for you metric folks). I, personally, have never seen a snake that large, and do not know of anyone who has in recent history. The longest snake in captivity is a 27′ (8.2296 meters) burmese python, named Baby (I think). Although, most giant snake stories imply that the snake was an anaconda; the green anaconda is the largest snake as far as width is concerned, sometimes up to 4′ (1.2192 meters) around.
I believe that snakes grow for as long as they live, so ‘giants’ are not all that unreasonable.
If the giant snake mound is portraying a giant snake, what kind of enormous egg is it eating? I would say that it’s a giant portayal of a regular snake, unless you want to argue for a cryptozoological double play and theorize that it’s a giant snake eating a thunderbird egg.
My father, brother and I had a close encounter with a very large snake a few years back while riding motocycles on our land in mississippi. Came across a beautiful indigo snake laying across the road, and I mean across the road. Its head was on a stump on one side while its body went down into the ditch across the road (10′) through the ditch on the other side and its tail was up on the bank on the other side. I’d have to estimate that it was at least 12′ long. We had to get off our bikes because he wouldn’t move. We walked all around him and got to look him over from top to bottom, a beautiful snake though they’re listed as endangered now though. The biggest snake I’ve seen that’s native to the US.
that we know of, of course 🙂
This is a great topic , great story loren. Snake Topic good choice, There are enormous snakes around the world i too agree the place THE AMAZON RIVER. Quite a prehistoric look to it. Heres a thought what if that the ogopogo, champ some of the other lake dwellers are really enormous water snakes? Im not saying they are im just mentioning could be a possibility? just something for everyone to think about its an interesting topic to chat about.
I’ve been collecting stories from here in North East Indiana, my ancestors turned the swamps to fields. One newspaper account tells of serpent from Blue Lake near Busco being sent off to San Francisco.The serpent had small rear legs. My great grandmother told a story of sitting on one thinking it was a log. The river that feeds into Blue Lake is known as the EEL River. Blue lake is not far from Oscar’s hometown Churubusco. I do believe that at one point in the history of the midwest there were several types of snakes that became extinct do to agriculture changing there ecosystems.
I know there’s some debate as to how large certain species of snakes can grow. I don’t think zoos can be used to properly measure this. Diet, stress, unnatural enviroments, all can affect growth patterns.
Anacondas, for one, continue to grow as they age. Certainly there has to be old timers swimming about, free from predators, that have grown well pass 30 feet. I wouldn’t be shocked if that footage was doubled or more.
I have a question to throw out to anyone. my mother lived on a farm in near Fort Wayne, IN and actually talked of green tree snakes, they weren’t giant but I have never heard of tree snakes in the U.S.?
I’am from the greater Cleveland area.I remember hearing this story as a kid. It was great telling it around the campfire in my scouting days. Sometime within the last 5 or 6 years the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a local fisherman hooked onto a very large but dead snake in the Rocky River which is the next river west of the Cuyahoga. It was speculated that it was someones pet and it had frozen to death as it was late fall when this happened. The story should be able to be found in the papers archives. As a kid of maybe 11 or 12 (mid 1970s) I witnessed a large black colored snake while at summer camp in Lake County Ohio. The snakes body crossed the entire road and extended into the woods on either side. I estimate at least 15′. The camp director wanted my friends father to drive over it but he wouldn’t do it. The snake eventually crossed the road as we watched.
Steelfox, what your mother likely remembered are green snakes from the genus Opheodrys (O. aestivus & O. vernalis)…not at all uncommonly found in or near trees and shrubs, where they spend most of their time.
As I lived many years of my life in the amazon basin, I too believe that that is the place to look for giant snakes. I am a firm believer. I also believe that there are new giant species of snakes as yet undiscovered in the amazon.
I remember reading of a minor myth of giant snakes around the european alps.
I mention this only because my mother, who was in Germany during the war, stated that she once saw a gigantic serpent of some sort. She remembered it as 100 ft or so long.
I know it’s unlikely, but if you think about it, all that bombing might have forced something nocturnal up into the daylight once.
Thought I’d just mention this simce snakes were the subject. I’d love to hear if anyone else ever mentioned anything like that.
thanks for the info toirtis
I’m working on a book about Kentucky cryptids as we speak, trying to pin down the Reynolds Lake sighting, but it’s proving very difficult. From what I can tell so far, after consulting the USA Place Names Gazeteer online, there is no lake by that name anywhere in KY.