Arkansas’ White River Monster - Serpent or Penguin?
The next spate of reported sightings was in 1971.
The locals had noticed that the monster appeared to have about a forty year cycle of making its appearances. There were theories about this. One of the more creative ones was that the creature lived in the Sargasso Sea and swam to the river to lay an egg. The same person told a story about how a monster sank a shipment of gold during the Civil War and theorized that alleged sightings of Japanese submarines in the river during World War II may have been the monster.
Cloyce Warren and two friends were in a boat, fishing, when a water spout appeared about 20 feet from their boat. It was the monster. They said its back was 20 or more feet. Warren took a Polaroid picture of it and sold it to the Newport Daily Independent.
14 inch long and 8 inches wide tracks of a 3 toed creature were found on Towhead Island by a witness who wanted to remain anonymous. Bent trees and crushed vegetation evidenced that something very large had walked there. A CBS news crew arrived in town and went to the island. The police had made casts of the tracks. The witness said he had seen the tracks, sporadically, for the past several years, but had not thought much of them until he heard about the monster sightings.
Bateman, who had seen the monster in 1937, was contacted by the television crew. He declined the interview.
The last sighting was probably the most terrifying. Ollie Richardson and Joey Dupree were in their boat near Towhead Island. The boat bumped into something, then rose out of the water on the back of a huge creature.
February, 1973: Senator Robert Harvey introduced a bill that the part of White River running from Jacksonport to Possum Grape be designated the White River Monster Refuge. The bill passed by vote. It is illegal to harm or kill Whitey.
In 1948, people near Clearwater, Florida were astonished that there was something strange visiting their beach. Whatever it was was gigantic and left large three toed tracks as a calling card. The biggest toe was 13 ½ inches long. It was possible to estimate the creature's weight from the indentations in the sand. Whatever it was weighed about three tons.
Ivan T. Sanderson, an eminent cryptozoologist was doing a TV series for NBC. He and a crew flew to
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