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When you say "paranormal," people always think ghosts. I tell people I'm a paranormal investigator, and they immediately assume I spend all my time in haunted houses. (Between my place and the Ross Library, this is essentially true. But it's still an assumption.)
The paranormal, however, covers a lot of territory. UFOs are considered paranormal. So are unexplained monsters. The Mothman, Bigfoot, the Giwoggle.... all paranormal.
Some of the most fascinating ones are the water monsters. And I'm not the only person who thinks so. I recently received a request to write, once again, about Clinton County's water creature.
The story goes back over a hundred years.
On February 27, 1897, the Daily Democrat published the first part of a multi-part article reporting a mysterious creature swimming around in the waters of the Susquehanna River, near Kettle Creek.
Just for background, Kettle Creek is in the northern part of the county, in Noyes Township. It runs through a couple of counties, but I'm only really concerned with one. The same one where The Democrat was in circulation.
Written by a man who went under the pseudonym "John of York," this article ran for three days, each day describing more about the monster. The West Branch Dugong was one name for it. The Kettle Creek Monster was another. But my personal favorite is the Susquehanna Seal.
The article began, "A marine animal or sea monster is said to have inhabited the dead water... making his home down in its depths among the big, black rocks."
You can basically use your imagination to fill in the blanks on what the creature looked like; the articles didn't describe it physically very much.
The story was fairly clear, however, on the concept that it swam in during some flooding, and was trapped in the river when the water went down. Maybe not exceptionally likely, but plausible enough.
The next obvious question would be, what the hell?
I have a friend who is a marine biologist, but I'm a little embarrassed to call and ask her.
The creature was said to have gone inland along the Susquehanna, pursuing fish up the river. It finally stopped at the mouth of Kettle Creek, where it found a steady supply. During this time, two things happened. First, the water level went down, stranding the monster where he was. Second, the monster had been feeding easily for quite a while, and found itself too fat to navigate back out to the ocean, so it stayed. (Fat-shaming a cryptid, John of York. Really classy.)
At that point, it was reported to have been frequently seen in the water. It overturned rafts, and was known to splash through the river. The locals heard noises, especially at night. The article describes these as "strange sounds that emanate from the deep, dark water like the groaning of some expiring giant, then like the struggling and snorting of some big hippopotamus."
John of York claimed that scientists had differing opinions on what animal it may have been. He doesn't explain where these scientists came from. Or if they advocated vaccinations and global warming. But they had suggestions, such as a leftover dinosaur, or an ocean creature, like a shark or whale. Many suggested it was a sea lion, based on the sound of its roar.
When the flood of 1889 occurred, some said the creature had finally made an escape, floated out to sea. Others suggested he was still there, and there were incidents of rafts being bumped and overturned up into the early 1900s. Mr. York's article suggests that there may have been a series of underground caverns the monster retreated to during various types of bad weather.
This is perhaps more plausible than it might sound. At the same time this article was published, the scientific papers published a series of articles about caverns that reached hundreds of miles to the ocean. According to the articles, animals could conceivably swim through them and reach far inland.
And maybe it's still there. I'd like to think so. I love the water monsters. If you do, too, and you're in the mood to hunt for one, you don't need to fly all the way to Loch Ness. Just go outside, and take a walk along the river.
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Lou Bernard is a Lock Haven resident with a keen interest in the history of this area. He is adult services coordinator at Ross Library and may be reached at ross13@rosslibrary.org or 570-748-3321.