whiteriver

From about 1915 through the early 1970's, residents of Newport in northeastern Arkansas occasionally reported seeing a
"monster" in the White River, which flows through the town. Sightings were not continuous but tended to occurs in spates. In
July 1937, for example, a number of local people either saw strange disturbances in the water or caught a glimpse of the
cause.

One witness was Bramblett Bateman, who in an affidavit swore he had seen, on or around July 1, "something appear on the
surface of the water. From the best I could tell, from the distance (375 feet), it would be 12 feet long and four or five feet
wide. I did not see either head nor (six) tail, but it slowly rose to the surface and stayed in this position for some five minute.
It did not move up or down the river at this particular time, but after ward on different occasions I have seen it move up and
down the river, but I never have, at any time, been able to determine the full length or size of said monster."

Jackson County Deputy Sheriff Z. B. Reid was with Bateman when the creature appeared later that July 1. They saw, Reid
testified, "a lot of foam and bubbles coming up in a circle about 30 feet in diameter some 300 feet from where we were
standing. It did not come up there but appeared about 300 feet upstream. It looked like a large sturgeon or cat fish. It went
down in about two minutes."

The next publicized sighting occurred in June and July 1971. One witness reported seeing a "creature the size of a boxcar
thrashing ... the length of three or four pickup trucks" and two yards across. "It looked as if the thing was peeling all over, but
it was a smooth type of skin or flesh," he said. Other sighters, one of whom took a blurry photography of a large surfacing
from on June 28, described (as had witnesses in previous decades) a roar associated with the creature's appearance, a
combination of a cow's moo and a horse's neigh. On those rare occasion its face was seen, if only briefly, it was said to
have a protruding "bone" on its forehead.

In the most frightening encounter, Ollie Ritcherson and Joey Dupree were cruising near Towhead Island looking for the
monster when their boat collided with something. The boat rose into the air on the back of some huge animals which they
were not able to see clearly. The two had come to the site because two weeks earlier huge tracks leading to and from the
river had been found on the island. Each of the three-toed tracks was 14 inches long and eight inches wide, with a large
pad and another toe with a spur extending at an angle. There was evidence, in the form of bent trees and crushed
vegetation, that a large animal had walked on the island and even lain down at one point.

According to biologist Roy P. Mackal, "The White River case is a clear-cut instance of a known aquatic animal outside its
normal habitat or range and therefore unidentified by the observers unfamiliar with the type. The animal in question clearly
was a large male elephant seal, either mirounga leonina (southern species) or Mirounga angustirostris (northern species)."
Mackal suggests that the creature wandered up through the mouth of the Mississippi River to the White River, which
branches off from the Mississippi in east-central Arkansas. A more startling hypothesis was suggested by another
maverick biologist, Ivan T. Sanderson, who labeled it "a truly gigantic penguin."

Bibliography: Clark, Jerome. (1993). Unexplained!. Washington, D.C.: Visible Ink Press.