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Mystery

Mysterious New York – Washed up Creatures, Finger Lake Beasts and Sewer-gators

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New York is a US state found in the northeastern United States and it is bordered with the US states of Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, it also has a border with the nation of Canada and has coasts on Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean and also with Lake Champlain where some also claim to see the Champ lake monster which we talked about in the previous series post on Vermont. New York state also has a maritime border with the US state of Rhode Island. The state capital is Albany and the largest city is New York City which is also the most populous US city.  

When people think of New York it is most often their mind will go to New York City only, but the state’s geography is much more than just a busy city full of people found in the Atlantic Coastal Plain, like any other state it also has many other features such as in the northeast of the state or Upstate New York where there are the Appalachian and Adirondack Mountains and in the west of the state is the Great Lakes Region where Lake Erie and Ontario are found and also the world-famous Niagara Falls, then in the central part of the state are the Finger Lakes which are a common tourist attraction.  

New York state has a very strong economy with New York City being an important major contributor to this economy due to its tourist attractions, major financial center, entrepreneurship, Silicon Alley in the city which is the High Technology industry, there is also Tech Valley in the state capital Albany. Media and entertainment are also a major part of New York City and play a large role in the economy. As well as that the rest of the state through state parks, monuments and other natural wonders also attract tourism. The state is also a major exporter of goods.

So now, as always, let’s us go on to the strange and the unexplained of New York State.  

First up is something called the Manhattan Monster or otherwise also called the East River Monster. The encounter took place in July of 2012 when Denise Ginley and her boyfriend were walking to a market. On the way their they went past the East River where they saw something quite frightening washed up on the shore, appearing to be some kind of dead animal.  

But this animal didn’t look like any kind of ordinary animal, with it being hairless and smooth with pig-like ears, a gaping mouth full of jaggered teeth and four short legs with five claws on each, one would at first glance assume it to be a pig that has been horribly disfigured by the water but also with its snout appearing to have been ripped off, but what doesn’t make sense with this explanation is that the animal does not have any hooves, but as already explained it has claws.  

The couple, who were horrified by their discovery, went back to fetch a camera as Ginley was a photographer and she took a few pictures of the carcass of the unidentified creature, proving it exists but still leaving it up for debate as to what it could be. A number of theories include it being a bloated and disfigured raccoon, dog or rodent while others have gone for more fanciful explanations of it being some kind of undiscovered cryptid or some kind of animal experiment that went wrong and was dumped in the river.  

Others have also compared it to the Montauk Monster, a similar unidentified animal carcass the was found washed up on Long Island in the state in 2008 and was also photographed as well, this washed up carcass did look similar-ish such as being almost hairless and smooth, but there were some differences such as a more visible jaw, it is also much more widely believed that this carcass was a raccoon that had been horribly disfigured by the water and natural elements, although others continue to disagree, choosing to believe it was some kind of undiscovered water cryptid or again some kind of animal experiment gone wrong.  

Could there be a monster in Cayuga River? Photo in Public Domain.

Next, we head over to New York State’s Finger Lakes where a number of visitors and tourists have claimed to see unexplained creatures in some of the lakes, with the first being known as Old Greeny which is said to be found in Cayuga Lake. There are eleven finger lakes found in central New York State and Cayuga Lake is the longest of them all (slightly longer than Seneca Lake) and the 2nd largest in surface area (slightly smaller than Seneca Lake). The lake is 38 miles in length and 3.5 miles in width with an average depth of 182ft and a max depth of 435ft.  

The legend of Old Greeny goes back to the 1800s. The Ithaca Journal, named after a settlement next to the lake, is from which where the name Old Greeny originated from and articles on the creature within this journal are the first known recorded sightings of the creature, it is said that employees of this journal would also refuse to do jobs near to the lakes shore in fear of the creature.  

An 1897 article from the journal included an alleged sighting made by an inhabitant of the settlement who was driving near to the lake with a friend who both claimed to see the creature. In 1929 a report from this journal claimed that a 2nd lake monster had also appeared in the lake and that it had managed to get there by travelling through a subterrean tunnel from another nearby finger lake, the journal in-fact claimed that both sea serpents had travelled to the lake from Seneca lake (where lake monsters have also been reported) in this fashion, scientists have though dismissed the existence of such a tunnel.  

One big sighting of the creature took place in 1979 when a man called Jack Marshall was boating on the lake with some friends, at some point he saw what he first thought was a fallen tree floating in the lake, Marshall said to cut the boat engines as they were on a collision course with it, and as they were gliding to a stop the object then begun to slowly submerge into the water, with the group realizing that it was not a fallen tree, but some kind of creature, which was described at 30-35 feet in length.  

One of the scariest alleged encounters took place in 1974 when a teenager called Steven Griffin claimed to have been attacked by the creature while swimming in the lake, he described it as an eel-like creature and that its jaws were powerful enough to break his arm.  

One explanation is that the sightings are merely sturgeons, which as I have said before is a common explanation for many lake monsters.   

Or maybe a monster in Seneca Lake? Photo by Scieri12 from Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0. Source.

Next up we stick with the Finger Lakes and move over to Seneca Lake, which is slightly shorter than Cayuga Lake but slightly larger in surface area, making it the largest of the Finger Lakes, it has an average depth of 291ft and a max depth of 618ft, which is great for US Naval testing of equipment, the lake is also known for its trout.  

The Seneca Lake Monster, as it is simply called, has claimed to have been existing in some form in the lake for centuries, with Native American’s believing that some kind of creature existed within the lake, which they also believed the lake to be bottomless, they warned settlers of this and also of the monster. The Native American’s believed the creature to have an unpredictable mood.  

There is a story legend relating to the creature that involves a steam boat called the Otetiani which at the time was being captained by a man called Herendeen, the story was reported by the Rochester Herald in 1899. The story goes that the Otetiani was steaming down the lake with many passengers when they suddenly came upon a large object in the water.  

The captain eyed it with his telescope and then slowed the steam boat down as to not hit the object, which at first was believed to be a capsized boat, when they came around the object the steam boat’s crew begun lowering boats to rescue survivors of what they thought was an accident, but this then prompted the object to quickly move away, the captain ordered the steam boat to go full speed and they came around the thing, which then raised its head out the water and opened its mouth to display two rows of large pointed teeth.  

A geologist who happened to be on board the steam boat gave a description of the creature, saying it was estimated four feet in length and had a triangular shape, with a long mouth which had two rows of large triangular white teeth, describing them as being as sharp as a sharks, but that their shape were more comparable with the teeth of a sperm whale. The geologist went on saying that its body was covered in a horny substance which he compared to that of a carapace of a terrapin, the horny substance was brown with a green tinge, its belly though was cream white and its eyes were round like a fish and it didn’t wink/blink. The geologist believed the creature to be some kind of North American fish-eating marine lizard believed to be extinct.  

The steam boat sped up and collided on purpose into the lake monster, the ram knocked many of the passengers over but was forceful enough to apparently rip a hole into the side of the serpent and kill it, to try and prove what happened the crew apparently tried to tow the carcass back to shore but it slipped out and sunk into the lake, never to be seen again… quite typically.  

Some believe the lake monster still exists or that there are more than one lake monsters in the lake, with some nearby residents claiming to see large unidentified creatures surfacing on the lake from time to time.  

Is the town of Pine Bush in New York State an alien and UFO hotspot? Image by Javier Rodriguez from Pixabay

Next up we are going to go on to something a bit different to usual in this series and it centers around a town known as Pine Bush found in Orange County. The town is said to be a hub for extreme UFO and extra-terrestrial activity with many residents claiming sightings and encounters and alien abductions are said to have happened a number of times. Not only though does the activity center around UFOs and aliens from outer space though but also other strange and unexplained entities and occurrences, such as strange sightings of humanoid figures with odd proportions and behavior and other oddities that don’t make sense.

The height of the activity, in regards to UFOs and extra-terrestrials, is said to have been the 1980s and 1990s before it hit a plateau and calmed down in the coming years, although such UFO and alien activity is still described as higher than usual in the average town or city in the United States or anywhere else even to this day. The town’s culture has also embraced its odd history with things out of this world, for example a café called the cup and saucer, with the saucer being an alien UFO.

It is certainly a place to go for those who are interested in getting a possible UFO or even alien sighting or perhaps a sighting of something more unusual, such as a headless cat which some residents have claimed to see roaming the streets. Pine Bush certainly sounds like one of those places that would have been made up for a fantasy book or TV show that’s set in the real-world and focuses around unusual activity.

It’s one of those things that deserve its own blogpost as there is so much to it.

Are there alligators in the sewers of New York City? Photo by Kimberly Cadena from Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source.

Finally, I could not finish this off without giving mention to the well-known urban legend of alligators living within the sewers of New York City. The urban legend has existed for decades, since at least the 1930s and it has stemmed from belief that people owning alligators illegally in the city flushed them away down their toilets to get rid of them, leading to the alligators going into the sewers and surviving off of rodents and any other food source they could find down there.

The legends themselves are said by many to have been mainly started off by Teddy May, a sewer commissioner for the city in the 1930s, where he is said to have given interviews about finding alligators in the sewers are checking in the sewers himself due to worker complaints, it is said that he ordered the use of poison to kill the alligators down in the sewers and that they were eradicated by 1937, although stories differ.

It is argued that although alligators could survive for a short time in the sewers they could not survive long enough to breed and would soon die due to toxicity from human feaces down in the sewers. Many have argued though that the alligators may have mutated and adapted to the toxic sewer environment.


And there you have it. Next up we will look at the strange and the unexplained of the US state of Pennsylvania.

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