Encounter Atlas
Historic encounters / Connecticut
6 old newspaper reports of strange things in Connecticut. Sea serpents and lake monsters (6). Each links to the original page.
Lake Kenosia, Danbury, Connecticut · Dec. 4, 1891
Danbury announced that the famous Lake Kenosia serpent had been caught. Warren Baker, driving along the shore, saw what he took for a big tree limb across the road until his horse shied. The creature was said to be almost twenty feet long and covered with scales.
Probably a hoax or tall tale The Sun printed it in its usual playful style; no specimen was ever described by a scientist.
Long Island Sound off Saybrook Point, Connecticut approx. · Jan. 12, 1896
Crews of the tugs Runyon and Aries, heading east past Saybrook Point, reported a sea serpent at least 75 feet long that stayed in sight for ten minutes before it disappeared.
Saybrook Point, Connecticut · May 10, 1896
John Skipworth, keeper of the new light at the end of the Saybrook jetty, said he watched a monstrous sea serpent playing on the surface of Long Island Sound one Sunday afternoon, and guessed it at hundreds of feet long. His wife and a ship's captain were said to back him up.
Lighthouse Point, New Haven, Connecticut · July 19, 1896
On a Sunday afternoon, more than 200 people at Lighthouse Point in New Haven said a 100-foot sea serpent, about fourteen feet around, swam close past several pleasure boats and headed for deep water. The paper joked that the Sunday liquor laws ruled out the usual explanation.
“Have you seen the sea serpent?”
Stratford Shoals, mouth of the Housatonic, Connecticut approx. · July 30, 1896
Captain Ewing of South Amboy, towing coal barges up the Housatonic, told people at the Derby docks that he had seen a big sea serpent off Stratford Shoals. The paper vouched that he was an honest old salt who did not drink enough to affect his sight.
Long Island Sound, Connecticut approx. · Aug. 7, 1897
Three Hartford men fishing on Long Island Sound, one of them a Sunday school superintendent, said an all-black sea serpent passed their boat, writhed about and then vanished. The paper reported it in a teasing tone.
Newspaper pages: Library of Congress, Chronicling America (US newspapers published before 1927 are in the public domain). Text search: American Stories (Dell, Bryan, Carlson and others, CC BY 4.0). Summaries are our own. Place data: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).