19th Century’s Vermillon Beast

The following from a South Dakota exchange revives the Missouri sea serpent story of 1875-6 near Vermillion when many people really were frightened at its appearance: “There is a genuine ‘sea serpent’ or more properly a river serpent has its home in the Missouri [River], not far from Sioux City. It was seen by Mr. Edwin Philbrook and two others a few days ago. It was seen to emerge from the water in a slough, crawl across a sand bar and plunge into the river. It was over thirty feet long, had several fins, and was scaley and ugly in appearance. It plowed a furrow in the sand where it crossed the bar that looked like a trough.”
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This is thanks to Jerome Clark. Theo Paijmans notes he has been trying to track down specifics for ages on the “Vermillon Beast” that allegedly terrorized the area. Clark first heard of the story from a short reference in John Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time and Space. This news item fills in the picture a bit more.

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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