Spine-tingling action! Tear-jerking romance! Head-scratching pseudo-science! It’s the Weird Things Lake and River Monster Round-up – an occasional roll call of aquatic serpents that gives you, the reader, three lake monsters in three days. That’s almost two a day!

Today: “Whitey” – Arkansas’ White River Monster

The white river monster’s dominion over northeastern Arkansas – and the winding tributary of the mighty Mississippi that runs through it – supposedly began in 1915, the year a man saw the sinewy form of some fearsome, serpentine leviathan rise to the surface of the murky water. The witness, one George Mann, avows that he saw neither the creature’s head nor its tail, but only a crusty, gray-hided expanse of accursed flesh that issues a repulsive blowing sound from some horrid, unseen orifice.

One can only imagine how compelling this account would have sounded in 1915, coming in gasped breaths from the stuttering mouth of an arm-flailing maniac. And imagine one must – as it stands, the testimony was offered 22 years after the fact, in response to Arkansas farmer Bramlett Bateman’s 1937 encounter with the creature. In fact, before the ink dried on Bateman’s sworn monster-attesting affidavit, a variety of townspeople suddenly volunteered their own tales of the aquatic behemoth. While Mann’s 1915 account remains the oldest, Little Rock native Ethel Smith swore that she saw the creature in 1924, and three other townspeople, including Bateman’s wife, also signed cryptid-sighting affidavits, two of which merely stated that the signer had witnessed disturbances in the water.

Monster mania ensued – an ad hoc hunting committee began constructing a massive net to ensnare the animal; tourists from as far away as California swarmed to the White River area; the chamber of commerce collected a 25 cent monster-watch fee from excitable adventure seekers; professional divers were brought in to scour the riverbed; people state-wide spread bizarre rumors that the creature had enthusiastically overturned a gunship during the Civil War. But the monster failed to appear. As abruptly as it began, sea serpent fever ended. Restless hunters moved northward, following the first whisperings of Bigfoot. The net-building cabal ran out of money, their half-finished rope weave catching only the wind-blown remnants of amateur monster sketches and homemade signs offering “Binoculars for rent.”

Then, in July of 1971, startled onlookers witnessed a giant, snake-like creature thrashing in the current of the White River. The group shuttered as the animal’s giant, catfish-like head shrieked out, making a sound like the whinnying of a horse mixed with the lowing of a cow. Over the next year, multiple similar reports of the creature – dubbed “Whitey” by local media – were filed by campers and fishermen. Scientists continue to insist that the so-called monster was simply a lost, ocean-dwelling elephant seal that accidentally found its way into the Mississippi. The Arkansas State Legislature, which created the White River Monster Refuge in 1973, disagrees. To this day, according to Arkansas law, it is illegal to “molest, kill, trample, or harm the White River Monster while he is in the retreat.” All I have to say that is – it’s about damn time. Also, something something kill whitey. Thanks, folks. I’ll be here all week. Really.

Wednesday – North Carolina’s Lake Norman Monster – Prehistoric Monster + 20th Century Man-made Lake = What the What?

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