Lore - Episode 59: A Deep Fear

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

H.P. Lovecraft said it best: “…the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. And no other place in the world is as unknown to us as the ocean. It’s dark, it’s deep, it’s full of questions—and maybe something else. * * * Official Lore Website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

At the height of the Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the American Navy was using audio technology to detect Soviet submarines. These high-powered underwater microphones could detect unusual sounds from hundreds, even thousands of miles away, helping the military see far into the depths of the ocean. After the Cold War ended, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, otherwise known as NOAA, built on that old microphone system with the hope of gaining a new understanding of the massive, unexplored world beneath the ocean waves. They studied ambient sounds, geophysical noise, and bioacoustics, the sounds that ocean creatures

make. But in 1997, they encountered a sound that defied explanation. A very low-frequency, very organic, and very powerful sound. So powerful that it was picked up by their microphone system from over 3,000 miles away. Oh, and HP Lovecraft fans might get a kick out of the location they pinpointed. It's roughly 900 miles from the location of the mythical island city of Relya, where Cthulhu is imprisoned, waiting, and dreaming. It didn't help that, at the time, NOAA deemed this sound to be neither man-made nor geological.

It seemed to be organic, with a signal that varied too much to be mechanical. Today, scientists lean toward another theory, though. It's the sound of icebergs scraping against the ocean floor. Maybe. Many people still wonder what the Bloop, as they called it, really was. We wonder because there's something dark and mysterious about the ocean. Even after centuries of exploration, we've only mapped about 5% of the ocean floor. It's crazy, but we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about roughly 70% of our

own planet. There's so much darkness, so much that's unknown, that it leaves us feeling a bit uneasy. We fear the unknown because it's full of questions. Questions are risky, they're dangerous, they prevent us from settling in and feeling comfortable. The ocean is full of questions. But according to some, there's a very good reason to be afraid. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. One of the endearing features of many early European maps is the inclusion of tiny little

sketches sprinkled throughout the ocean. Sketches of beastly green heads protruding from the waves, or long lashing tails reaching out for a nearby vessel. You won't find them on navigational maps from the time, but they were a common feature of the decorative maps that were created for aristocratic homes. They were, above all, entertainment. But there were enough stories told by reputable people to give these decorative maps a bit of credibility.

One example would be the map drawn around 1530 by Olas Magnus. He was the Catholic Archbishop of Sweden, along with being a well-respected historian in his day, so when his map of Norway showed the waters off the coast to be literally packed with sea monsters, people believed him. In fact, when Conrad Gessner published Volume 4 of his Historia Animalium in 1558, sort of a collection of all known sea creatures, he included a number of sketches from Magnus' map, because to him and a lot of other people, they were real. It's not entirely their fault, though.

Scientists have been telling stories of the mysterious creatures of the ocean for a very long time. Almost 24 centuries ago, Aristotle wrote about a creature that he called the deuthus, a gigantic, monstrous squid. Centuries later, right in Magnus' backyard, the Norwegians who lived and traveled through the waters around Norway and Greenland spoke of the kraken. It's a name based on the Norwegian word kraka, which means an unhealthy animal or a creature that's unnaturally twisted.

It's a meaning that fits perfectly with the notion of a mysterious sea monster. And so for a long while, if it was mysterious and dangerous and beneath the waves, it was a kraken. A lot of these old stories can be explained away with an understanding of just how little people really knew about the ocean in the 14th century. When a sailor landed on an island and found the decomposing corpse of a giant oarfish on the sand, he didn't say, hey, it's an oarfish. No, he framed the unusual sight through the lens of folklore.

It was big and serpent-like, so naturally it was a sea serpent. Or a hydra. Or a kraken. You get the idea. Of course, modern science has given us a better understanding of the ocean. We know more than Olus Magnus ever did. We know that the giant squid is a very real, very large creature, although it's taking us a very long time to prove that.

In fact, it wasn't photographed live in the water until 2004 and took another two years before it was ever filmed. And the kraken isn't the only ancient sea creature to be debunked by science. In 1492, while Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he reported sighting something unusual in the waters off the coast of the Dominican Republic. On January 9th of 1493, he claimed to have spotted three mermaids. They are not, he wrote, as beautiful as they are painted, since in some ways they have a face like a man.

Folklore has always portrayed mermaids as part woman, part fish. For thousands of years, humans have been obsessed with the idea of human, fish, hybrid creatures. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the ancient Greeks all told stories about them, as did cultures from Africa, China, India, and Europe. History, if you'll pardon the pun, is swimming with mermaids. And sailors tried to avoid them. They were viewed by some as bad omens, signs that tragedy was about to strike. And for sailors who were notoriously superstitious, that meant mermaids should be avoided at all

costs. But the mermaids that Christopher Columbus sighted in 1493 were more than likely nothing more than a group of manatees, a large aquatic mammal that's fairly common near the coast lines of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. They have fish-like tails, arm-like flippers, and bean mammals, pectoral mammary glands. From a distance and viewed through a few feet of water, they tick all the boxes. But not everything can be explained away so easily. Sometimes the stories are simply too numerous, too detailed, and too documented to be brushed

aside. Some stories hold on tight, long after others have caved in under scientific scrutiny. And no tale from the sea, at least in America, has held on longer than one that began in New England nearly 400 years ago. If it's true, it's more than intriguing, it's downright chilling. In the early days of British settlement of the New World, colonies were often approached as investment opportunities. Financial supporters in England would front the money to hire colonists, buy supplies,

and launch the mission. You might think of it on the same level as a privately funded human mission to Mars. Except for the early colonists, there was profit to be made. Almost 400 years ago, in 1623, a private company was formed in Dorchester, England with the goal of settling a profitable colony in North America. Later that year, the expedition landed in the area north of Boston known as Cape Ann, and it got to work. But life in this New England was tough, and within two years, their funding was pulled.

1628 brought new money and new settlers. Things were looking up. Within two years, progress there was successful enough to warrant sending more colonists. In the decade between 1630 and 1640, more than 10,000 brave souls weathered the Atlantic Crossing to start a new life on the northern coast of modern-day Massachusetts. And more people means more observers. More eyes on this strange new land, full of indigenous people, strange animals, and unknown threats.

Fear is a spark that's fanned by large crowds, and in the right setting it can engulf a culture. And that's just what happened in Gloucester. The first spark was recorded by John Jocelyn, a traveler from England. Jocelyn was a keen observer of the natural world and would later go on to publish his adventures in two separate books in the late 1600s. A few days after his ship entered port in the summer of 1648, one of the colonists told him the most unusual tale. A sea serpent, the man told him, had been seen on the rocks at the northern tip of Cape

Ann. This gentleman described the serpent as an enormous snake, and claimed that it would slither up out of the waters of the Atlantic to coil up there on the rocks. Other colonists had witnessed it as well. Once he said, a boat was sailing near that area with four men aboard, two English settlers, and two Native Americans. When one of the Englishmen saw the serpent moving through the water, he raised his musket to fire at it.

But one of the Native Americans placed his hand on the barrel and gently told him to stop. It was too risky, he said. If the shot didn't instantly kill it, they would all be in danger. In 1641, another man named Obadiah Turner sighted the serpent in the vicinity of Gloucester. He described it as over 90 feet long, with black eyes set into a horse-shaped head, and said that his report could be backed up by a number of other settlers. And he wasn't the last either.

For decades, rumors spread across the cold, harsh coastline, like a stiff ocean wind. That's how a lot of folklore works. There are a handful of experiences, and they give birth to a wider story. And story, as we know, spreads like water. It flows and seeps, and has a way of reaching through barriers. Given enough time, story, like water, will leave its mark and transform a place. And Gloucester was certainly being transformed. One and a half centuries later, on August 6th of 1817, two women were walking near the

inner harbor of Gloucester when they saw something moving through the water, as if following the tide inland from the sea. They stopped to watch it for a moment, before realizing exactly what it was they were looking at. It was a serpent, a monstrously large serpent, too large to be anything they might typically see in the waters there. Naturally, they were frightened and shared their story with others. Four days later on August 10th, others had a similar experience.

Susan Stover was walking with her father when they saw the creature in the water. They described the body as long and serpent-like, and said that its head was long, like that of a dog or a horse. That very same day, Lydia Wanson had her own sighting, except when she saw the serpent, it was coiled up at the water's edge. When it uncoiled itself, Watson claims it was nearly 70 feet long. More sightings followed. Full-man Amos Story claimed to have watched the serpent for at least half an hour.

He only saw portions of it as it moved through the waves, but his impression was one of awe and fear. Henry Rowe, along with his sons, had multiple sightings that week. On August 12th, Solomon Allen claimed that the monster actually circled his boat a few times. He described it in roughly the same terms, 80 feet long, head like a horse, black eyes. He watched it for hours from the side of the ship, and he never felt threatened. In fact, Allen described the creature as almost playful, something he never expected from

such an otherworldly monster. The summer of 1817 was filled with sightings of the Gloucester sea serpent. Every time the tide came in, it seemed, there was something new following it. More whispers, more fear, more first and secondhand reports. But for many tales, that would be enough. Whatever it was, it was already guaranteed a place in local lore. But not this creature. The sea serpent of Gloucester, you see, was far from finished.

In the coming days, the culture in Gloucester would shift. For almost 200 years, the people of the region had whispered about the creature. They warned their children to beware the coast, to keep a watchful eye on the dark Atlantic waters just beyond their door. But as the sightings piled up at an alarming rate, people were beginning to wonder if something else should be done, more than just talk, more than just fear. Maybe they needed to take action. Perhaps, some suggested, they should hunt it down.

It's a very human reaction. When we fail to understand something, we tend to attack it. If it's an unknown, it could be a threat. At least that's our gut reaction in these moments. I'm not saying it's a good reaction, just the natural one. So the people of Gloucester can't be blamed for acting out of character. They were, after all, afraid for their safety. The tipping point seems to have been on August 14th.

It holds the record for the largest number of sea serpent sightings in a single day. Not just in Gloucester, but in all of history. Seventeen, in fact, Seventeen sightings, Seventeen individual descriptions from independent reports. And when that many people have that many frightful experiences, well, it has a tendency to push a society over the edge. That's when Matthew Gaffney decided to take matters into his own hands. He was the carpenter for a local fishing vessel. But on August 14th of 1817, he didn't go out with his crewmates.

Instead, he stayed behind and took his own boat into the waters just south of Gloucester Harbor. And he didn't go alone, either. His brother joined him, as did one of their friends. It wasn't long before the three men found what they were looking for. Both in the distance, they could see it. The dark, undulating shape of the sea monster slipping in and out of the water. So they guided their boat closer for a better look and, of course, a better shot.

As they approached, they could see the creature in more detail. Same horse-like head, same dark eyes. It was apparently a dark green color, modeled with brown, but white on the underbelly. And here it was, the beast that had been frightening the village. The monster that shouldn't exist. Here was the thing they had come to hunt. So he reached for his rifle and took aim. Gaffney fired, and all three of them swore he hit the target, right in the head, in fact.

But nothing happened. They saw no blood. The serpent didn't even flinch. Instead, it dove under the dark waves. And that's when they noticed that it was headed straight toward their boat. Maybe that Native American warrior had been right all along, that if someone was to shoot at it, but not kill it, the creature would become an angry, deadly threat. Gaffney and the others braced themselves for an attack.

But the attack never happened. The serpent resurfaced on the other side of their boat and began to coil and uncoil in the water, moving erratically and stirring the ocean into a cauldron of foam. But it never approached them. In the end, Gaffney and the others sailed home empty-handed. What he didn't know was just how easy it could be to get close to the creature. In fact, just two months later, two boys would accomplish what Gaffney never could. They stood over the serpent's dead body.

Well, sort of. You see, in the late 1700s, there was a Swedish botanist named Carl Linnaeus. He's the person responsible for developing the scientific system for classifying living organisms, the same system we still use today. In the 1790s, Linnaean societies were formed all across Europe and America with the goal of discovering and classifying new plants and animals. So when two boys stumbled upon the dead body of a sea serpent on the rocky beach near Gloucester Harbor in October of 1817, their parents called upon the Linnaean Society of New England to

help study it. What they found was a three-foot-long snake-like creature. It was much smaller than the sightings had reported, but the reason was obvious to the Linnaean Society members standing over the body. It was a baby. The full-grown serpent had entered Gloucester Harbor to lay its eggs, and this was one of the young that didn't survive. They declared it a new undiscovered species of snake, and they called it the Scoliophic

Atlanticus, the Atlantic humped snake. For a while, a few days later, another naturalist, Alexander Lesour, studied the corpse and said it was nothing more than a common black snake. With no specimen left to study today, it's difficult to say who was correct. And then things sort of slowed down in Gloucester. There were only 12 sightings in 1839, and that decreased to nine in 1875. It's not that the town itself was shrinking. To the contrary, Gloucester has grown a lot since then, but the sightings just sort of

faded away. In the first five decades of the 20th century, the frequency of serpent sightings dropped to roughly one per year, a far cry from the golden days of the early 1800s. Whether or not that has been a disappointment to the people of Gloucester is unclear, but there's no more fear, no more worry, and no more cautious glances cast at the dark waters of the harbor. If the Gloucester sea serpent was, in fact, a real undiscovered sea creature, we will most likely never know.

Whatever it was, it seems to have slithered out of reach, only existing now in the dark pages of history. And perhaps in the depths of Gloucester harbor. The ocean is deep and dark and full of mystery. And that's the sort of space that invites fear and stories and superstition. For centuries, sailors have been considered some of the most superstitious people in the world. Their culture is full of bad omens, good omens, mythical creatures, and unique rituals.

It's most likely a side effect of their risky profession. On the open seas, your life hangs in the balance every moment of the day. An unexpected storm, a hidden reef, a concealing fog, anything can sneak up on a vessel and pull it down into the depths of those cold black waters. So it's no wonder that sailors have feared something darker, something more deadly than just the waves. Whether it's been the tentacles of the kraken, the call of the siren, or the endless coils of the sea serpent, the ocean's mythology is home to a dangerous aquatic menagerie.

Thankfully, science has pulled the veil back on a number of these tales. Sometimes, as in the case of mermaids, there really is nothing to fear. Other times, the tentacles are just as long as we might have imagined, but far less deadly. But there's so much about the ocean we still don't know. In many ways, it's the final, undiscovered country. Beneath the waters off the coast of Gloucester, there's a shelf in the ocean floor. It's like a plateau that skirts the mainland, where the water is shallower, maybe 200 or so feet deep.

Further out to sea, it drops to over 3,000 feet, which makes the waters of the shelf a sort of world of its own. That shelf extends all the way up the east coast of North America, and it was there, in the waters of Fortune Bay on the southern side of Newfoundland, that something odd happened in May of 1997. Two fishermen from Little Bay East were in their boat when they saw something large in the water. At first, they assumed it was a collection of garbage bags, floating free after having

fallen from another ship, so they guided their own boat over to retrieve them. When they got there, they quickly realized that the shapes weren't garbage bags. They were the humps of a long-necked creature. The skin color was lighter than the Gloucester serpent, sort of a medium gray, but the rest of the description sounds eerily familiar. 40 or so feet long, large, dark eyes, and a head that both men described as horse-like. As they approached, the creature lifted its head above the water and looked at them. For a moment, no one moved.

No one made a sound, the men or the creature, and then, without warning, it quietly slipped back into the water and disappeared beneath the waves. Our fear of the sea always seems to float just beneath the surface, and if the stories are true, it's not alone. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marsette Crockett. Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season

of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.

And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.