![]() Johns River.” Back in the 1910s, “plenty of them” swarmed the St. “Jesse” Hunter replied to Orlando Sentinel columnists, “I thought they were extinct.” He referred to “the discovery of the beast, animal, snake or whatever it was, on the St. Owen Godwin with his anaconda, Big Bertha, and her babies, The Orlando Sentinel, February 21, 1957.įormer Florida State Attorney J.W. Simon says he worked with Owen, an okay guy with whom to do shots, but he didn’t like the way he treated some of his serpents, including the anaconda named Big Bertha and her babies. He’s also doubtful, because of the gender, of the existence of the horn. It bothers Simon Smith they had the gender wrong. Said the Sentinel, “At least six witnesses said he does.” The sea monster must stretch 30 feet long and have a horn like a narwhal or unicorn. Owen Godwin, owner of Godwin’s Snake Village in Kissimmee, Florida, promised to pay five grand for the living monster, or 1K for the slain beast. Johns River monster may be an ugly, terrifying creature but he’s worth at least $5,000 to one man.” That’s about $50,000 today. In October 1953, The Orlando Sentinel reported, “That old St. 1953: Sightings in Central Floridaįrom The Orlando Sentinel, October 22, 1953 ![]() Whom Captain Adams may have been nobody knows. The namesake of Adams Street was the second U.S. It’s not clear who vouched for Adams’s character back in Jacksonville. The infamous 1934 photo of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, was long ago proven a fake. The (in)famous fake photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, 1934 ![]() Though many people “pooh-poohed” the idea, “the English Parliament” had recently “set up a bureau” to investigate the Loch Ness Monster. Vandivier wanted to know whether a “prehistoric beast of the dinosaur age” could exist in modern times and said “documented evidence” existed in Scotland. Vandivier assures readers that “the citizens of Jacksonville” vouched fully for Captain Adams’ character, that “all circumstances” seemed to “favor the idea” of the existence of sea serpents, though scientists had not yet characterized and classified them, and that Jacksonville residents found it “unthinkable” Adams “would invent such a story.” The color of the creature was a dirty brown.” ![]() Its neck tapered from the head of the body and appeared to be about seven feet across the widest part of the back. The monster “lifted its head, which was like that of a snake, several times out of the water and at such times displayed the most of his body, exhibiting a pair of frightful fins several feet in length.” Adams “judged the leviathan to be about 90 feet in length. Johns River on the 18th of February, 1849, “his own and the attention of the crew was riveted upon an immense sea monster which he took to be a serpent.” That day’s “The Way Things Used to Be” column by Verne Vandivier, ostensibly about the Loch Ness Monster, refers to “a monster of the deep” reported by a Captain Adams of a Florida schooner called Lucy and Nancy.įrom a newspaper called The Examiner, the Daily Journal quotes the story of Adams when, at the mouth of the St. He has a clipping, but it’s from October 8, 1970, from the Franklin Daily Journal in Indiana. The first account of Johnnie in a mainstream newspaper, Simon says, was in 1849. Vern Vandivier’s “The Way Things Used to Be” column from the Franklin Daily Journal. He says people have seen Johnnie frequently in the past few years, and probably as reported in my 2016 story, “ Beer Hole and Horse-Legged Fish,” but that people today are smarter than to report that fact to “the lamestream media.” 1849: A legend begins… maybe The abrasions of sand and salt and water and sun on skin contribute easily to such a spectrum. For one thing, he says, “Johnnie is a she,” a fact that “should be obvious to anybody ever studied Marine Science.” He considers various testimonies of Johnnie being black or dark gray or brown or beige or pink nonsensical discrepancies. Simon says people almost always get certain details wrong. Johns River at the end of LaSalle Street in Jacksonville’s San Marco neighborhood. Simon Smith, a keeper of snakes and lizards and an “amateur cryptozoologist” who lives on Old Gainesville Road on Jacksonville’s Westside, claims to have kept track of the St. Someone drew it once, in the 1970s, but the drawing’s not much to go by. It’s been called “Johnnie,” for the river it purportedly calls home, “Borinkus,” inexplicably, by a wisecracking racist state attorney, and other terms ranging from “monster” to “beast” to “a thing.” It’s never been photographed, though several people have expressed regret at not having cameras when they saw it. Johns River Monster, from The Tampa Tribune, January 18, 1976 Article by Tim Gilmore 2020: Here’s Johnnie
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