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��� ���St. Augustine Monster
Herbert Coles and Dunham Coretter, two St. Augustine,
Florida, residents, found something lying on the beach of Anastasia Island which would
quickly become the center of controversy.� The object was a huge fleshy mass some
four feet tall, 23 feet long, and 18 feet across.
A group of investigators from the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of
Science, led by DeWitt Webb, determined that the mass had been beached for several days.
� The team also found pieces of what seemed to be tentacles: was the creature a giant
octopus?
A.E. Verrill of Yale University, a well-known zoologist who had aided in the acceptance of
the giant squid, rejected Webb's identification of the carcass as that of an octopus; in
the American Journal of Science for January 1897, he advanced
his theory that a giant squid had been beached.� He later accepted Webb's first
identification, and furthermore estimated the size of� the creature during life--an
amazing 200 feet tentacle to tentacle.� He christened the corpse Octopus giganteus
Verrill, even though Webb had done all the investigation.
In January, 1897, Webb successfully moved the carcass 40 feet further away from the shore.
� He also undertook a detailed examination and dissection of the body; his initial
reaction was proven when he found no cartilaginous "pen", which he would have
found had it been a squid.
The mystery of the St. Augustine corpse was forgotten until 1957.� In that year,
marine biologist Forrest G. Wood, Jr. found an old newspaper article discussing the
monster.� Wood was intrigued by the supposed octopus, and soon found a number of
tissue samples from the corpse were kept at the Smithsonian Institute.� After
studying the samples closely, Wood and Joseph F. Gennaro, Jr., concluded that the body
was, indeed, that of a huge octopus.
Wood and Gennaro's giant octopus theory was greeted with scorn and ridicule, however.
� Their findings were published in three installments by the magazine Natural
History, although it was evident that the editors of the magazine were far
from convinced that octopi this huge were swimming around in the world's oceans. �
Wood wrote to the magazine complaining bitterly about this, but the magazine refused to
publish his letter.� And the Ocean Citation Journal Index
reported that the two concluded that the Augustine corpse was a squid.
Roy P. Mackal has conducted his own research into the monster.� He said that the
flesh was "a huge mass of collagenous protein" and definitely "not
blubber".� He concluded that, therefore, the Augustine monster was a corpse of
some sort of cephalopod, and most likely an octopus.
There the story of the Augustine monster breaks off, with a well-nigh unanimous agreement
that the corpse was, indeed, an octopus.� Even the Guinness Book of World
Records has a listing for the Augustine monster as the largest octopus.
Folktales circulate in the neighboring Bahamas of creatures called lusca, which
are reputed to be gigantic, octopi-like creatures inhabiting deep waterholes.� Could
these legends be based on sightings of monsters like those of St. Augustine in life?
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Other of these formless blobs, called "globsters" by Ivan T. Sanderson, have washed ashore over the years.�
In 1948, an Australian wrote a letter to the Sydney Sun about a carcass he and some friends found on a beach at Dunk Island, off the Great Barrier Reef.� According to him, the huge jellyfish-like mass was covered in a tough, furry hide.� It was covered in "slits" and had no apparent eyes.� Also, after told the carcass was a malformed whale embryo, the locals attempted to dispose of it, during which they found it would not burn.� Another was in 1958, when a fishing boat between Melbourne and Hobart turned up a similar carcass, likened to a six foot high bowler hat, with a flat tail, no eyes and what appeared to be gill slits.
In 1960, a 20-foot carcass washed up on Sandy Cape, between Temma and Smithton, Tasmania.� 1965 saw one at Muriwai Beach, New Zealand (30 ft.); in 1988, a gray 8-foot long one in Bermuda; in summer of 1989, one near Godthaab (Nuuk), Greenland; the 12-foot Benbecula, Scotland carcass of 1992, complete with a photograph; � and finally and most recently, a 20-foot carcase at Four Mile Beach, Tasmania.
All of these were similar in appearance to the large photo of the 1998 globster, reproduced below.� Many cryptozoologists, myself included, are utterly baffled as to what these corpses may be of.� The tough hide so often mentioned, though, conjures in my mind images of some sort of mollusk; whether a giant squid or an octopus akin to the St. Augustine specimen, who is to say?� I also am forced to wonder whether these carcasses could be similar to the utterly bizarre South African creature named 'Trunko'.�
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Left to right - two views of the St. Augustine Monster (1896); Benbecula, Scotland (1992); Four Mile Beach, Tasmania (1998).
MACKAL, Roy P.
��� 1980 ������ Searching
for Hidden Animals.� Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
RICKARD, Bob
��� 2000 �������The
Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena (w/ John Michell).� London: Rough Guides.
SHUKER, Dr. Karl P.N.
��� 1999 �������Mysteries
of Planet Earth: An Encyclopedia of the Inexplicable.� London: Carlton.