The Water Horse of San Francisco Bay

Mysterious SF does not go to a lot of parties, but the ones he does go to are interesting. Several years ago, at a party MSF met David, who claims his friends have seen sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.

Mysterious SF asked David exactly what his friends saw. David started to describe the head, but before he could get anything out, MSF asked him, Head like a horse, right? David looked at your area blogger funny and said, Yeah, exactly. 

Several years ago, Mysterious SF was sitting on someone else’s toilet, flipping through a copy of Outdoor Life Magazine. He read a letter from an woman who claimed to have seen a sea serpent while on a boat off the Farallone Islands in the 1960s. The creature, seen from the neck up, had large eyes, a mane of long hair, and generally looked much like a horse. After observing it for a period of five minutes, the creature slowly slipped underneath the waves, never to be seen again. 

Soon after she saw the creature, the eyewitness spoke to another man who claimed to have seen an identical creature ten years earlier and hundreds of miles south off the Santa Catalina islands. The accompanying illustration, done by the magazine's cartoonist, was of a smiling cross between a horse and a whale. 

In August of 1997 Mysterious SF attended a lecture by Prof. Paul LeBlond of the University of British Columbia on the subject of cadborosaurus willsi, or "Caddy", a sea serpent-type species that has allegedly been seen several times in and around Cadboro Bay, British Columbia, for so long the local Native Americans have record of it. LeBlond thinks that Caddy is not only a zoologically sound species, but that it actually exists. 

According to LeBlond, eyewitnesses report Cadborosaurus' head looks like--you guessed it--a horse. 

Mysterious SF grilled David rather thoroughly about what his friends had told him. David related  the following:  

1. The creature is long and serpentlike, with the head of a horse. On both occasions the creature was estimated to be at least 30 feet long. 

2. The creature is seen in the very early morning, usually around 5 or 6 am. I didn't find out where in the bay, exactly, and it was implied that the persons who allegedly saw such a creature were on a boat.

3. These two individuals have seen the creature at least two times, in 1960s and 70s.

4. There are allegedly "a lot" of people who have seen the creature over the years. 

5. The two individuals were writing a paper on their experiences, and claim to have photographs of the creature.

I decided to dig a little deeper into the subject. Benard Heuvelmans, a zoologist who wrote the 1965 book, In The Wake of The Sea Serpents, mentioned not only a Caddy-like creature, but also of a creature seen off Santa Catalina island numerous times by sport fishermen. Heuvelmans repeats a passage from the book Tight Lines, authored by veteran California fisherman Ralph Bandini. In the 1930s, Bandini had been secretary of the elite southern California big game fishing club The Tuna Club, and in his book wrote of sighting the creature while fishing for marlin. 

All of a sudden I saw something dark and big heave up. I seized my glasses. What I saw brought me up straight!

A great columnar neck and head, I guess that is what it was, lifting a good 10 feet. It must have been five or six feet thick. Something that appeared to be a kind of mane of coarse hair, almost like a fine seaweed, hung darkly. But the eyesthose were what held me! Huge, seemingly bulging, round at least a foot in diameter!

We swung toward it. Then, even as I watched through the glasses, the Thing sank. There was no swirl, no fuss Just a leisurely, majestic sinking and it disappeared, about a quarter of a mile away. 

The time of the sighting is recorded as eight a.m. Most Caddy sightings take place in the early morning or dusk. And as David reported, the San Francisco Bay serpent had only been seen in the early morning or at dusk. 

Comparing sightings of Caddy, the Santa Catalina monster, and the creature seen in San Francisco Bay, further parallels emerge. Firstly, they are generally described as having horse or camel-shaped heads. A mane is always mentioned, as are large eyes. Most eyewitnesses describe a critter between five and fifteen yards long (although as noted Bandini says he only saw a ten foot long neck.) Finally, the creature's preferred means of escape from the view of humans is not to spectacularly dive underneath the surface like a whale, but instead to gradually sink out of view. 

Publicly, Mysterious SF says:  Points #4 & 5 are usually the last one ever hears from someone who claims sightings and the evidence to back them up. Usually the hoaxer, realizing that he has painted himself into a corner, slowly sinks from view, never to be seen again. Just like the water horse. 

Mysterious SF is all for this creature existing. The correlations of physical characteristics and behavior could have a common point of origin. Furthermore, he's all for it existing outside of San Francisco Bay. (More on that later.) And occasionally, some such animal may enter the bay following the seasonal fish migrations--anchovies, herring, salmon, striped bass, halibut, etc. But he has an awfully hard time picturing this thing as a permanent resident. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: I have this sinking feeling these things are smarter than most people think. 

Mount Davidson, Again.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 1950.

3 Batches of Saucers Turn Up

Flying saucers may be piloted by little greeen men from Mars, but don't worry about them. They're obviously fun-loving little creatures.



Of three batches of saucers reportedly seen yesterday, only one V-shaped formation of three was sticking to business.



The rest were playing tag.



About 8 a.m. Mrs. Gordon J. Grey, wife of an insurance salesman, spotted two saucers coming toward her Mission street home at an "incredible speed" from the direction of Mt. Davidson.



And then, while she listened to a 15-minute radio program and gazed out the window, the disks rose vertically, swooped, and hovered in a game of tag that looked like loads of fun.



Over at Terra Bella in the San Joaquin Valley, a little later, Ralph Burke, a rancher, spotted the second batch of saucers while he was irrigating a field.



He said they were accompanied by a flight of airplanes, but were much faster-a distinct edge in a game of tag. Like Mrs. Grey's disks, they circled, dipped and rose vertically. But unlike hers, they let out spurts of nasty black smoke as they climbed.



Two 15-year old high school students spotted the third batch of "things" while riding on the Big Dipper at Playland-at-the-Beach.

While Bob Jones, of 628 25th avenue, and George Elkington, of 763 47th avenue, rose vertically and dipped on the roller coaster ride, they saw the formation of three saucers whizz over from the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge and out toward the Farallones.



"They were very high," said Jones, "looked about the size of a dime and were a dirty gray color."



Meanwhile, the saucers, disks, and "things" received whimsical attention from San Francisco's representatives in the Assembly at Sacramento.



Assemblyman Edward M. Gaffney, taking note of Mayor Robinson's "frantic trip to Washington to seek succor for civillians in his city," asked Assemblyman Thomas Maloney to give the Mayor "his plan for transporting the Southern California smog to San Francisco to aid in the blackout if such a measure is necessary."



Two pilot members of the Assembly were asked to scour the California skies and bring back a saucer for the inspection of Mayor Robinson and Assemblyman John B. Cook, a submarine veteran, was asked to "lay aside his cigar and forthwith bring in the mysterious subs that are prowling the Pacific."

The last sentence is interesting. Few people remember this, and it isn't widely known, but at the time there were numerous scares about "mystery submarines" prowling the western coast of the United States. The implied source of these submarines was the Soviet Union, doing everything from preparing to interdict shipping at the start of World War III to landing communist agents meant to infiltrate American society. Some believe that these "mystery submarines" were actually UFOs, which have a long history of being seen entering and leaving bodies of water.

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: Mt. Davidson, again. This is probably less significant than it sounds, as Mt. Davidson is a prominent reference point for people describing things in the sky. Mysterious SF doubts there are any secret UFO bases there.

Privately, Mysterious SF says: UFOs that rose vertically, spewed out nasty black smoke, and were accompanied by regular airplanes. You don't say?

Those Little Green Grooloos

From the archives of Mysterious SF, an article from what he considers the northernmost reach of his jurisdiction.

Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, March 12, 1968.

Sebastopol

Sonoma County

High school students call it the "Grooloo".

They've seen the dancing green light in an apple orchard. So have the owner of the orchard and a high school teacher.

John Morrison, a Greyhound bus driver who owns the property two miles from here, said the Grooloo is about as big a large flashlight beam.

"When the light moved toward the fence," said Morrison, "I heard a loud screeching sound of wire. Afterwards I found my pasture fence damaged. And there weren't any footprints."

Russell Beach, a teacher at Analy High School, thought it was either marsh gas or one of his students' practical jokes, and went out to investigate.

"It was a green light," said the former Air Force pilot. "That's all I can say."

"Sheriff's Sergeant Joseph Jackson said the green light could have been the reflection from a deer's eyes. But he couldn't understand how a deer could skip around a pasture without leaving any hoofprints in the damp soili. 

Sheriff's Sergeant Dick Gore, said yesterday that deputies have been called to Morrison's orchard three times since the Grooloo  was first reported Wednesday.

"But none of our men has seen anything," said Gore.

Our Correspondent.

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: Flashlight beam. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: Really, who knows. 

Unexplained Falls

Sometimes in the San Francisco Bay Area it rains chunks of flesh and rocks. (You were not...aware of this?)

"According to the San Francisco Herald of July 24, 1851, blood and flesh, with pieces ranging in size from a pigeon's egg to a small orange, descended in a two-to three minute shower on an Army station at Benicia, California, covering a spot of ground 30 yards wide and 300 yards long.

Source: Clark, Jerome, Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Physical Phenomena, Detroit: Gale Research Inc, 1993, pg. 272. 

Oakland, 1943: stones fall from the sky from no apparent source.

Source: Clark, Jerome, Unexplained! Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1993. p. 125.

More on the latter if I can get a hold of it.

The Benicia location is apparently the former location of the Benicia Arsenal, and the present location of the modern-day museum. Fun tidbit: this was one of the few locations of the United States Army Camel Corps. 

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: It's hard to imagine a scenario that even makes blood and flesh falling from the sky even remotely plausible.

Privately, Mysterious SF says: More artifacts from Magonia. 

The Black Panthers of Marin

Most people don't know this, but there's a long history of black panther sightings in the Bay Area. Not the "Power to the People" type of black panthers, but actual black cats. No, not cats as in guys with berets and shotguns, cats as in real cats. Black--look, black mountain lions! Is that clear enough for you?

Yes, black mountain lions. No...they don't have shotguns. Forget about the shotguns! 

Back to our point. There have been many reported sightings of black panthers in the Bay Area, particularly around Mt. Tamalpais and Mt. Diablo. 

[Bet you didn't know about that, did you? Well, that's why Mysterious SF is here, and has been called a crackpot for years.]

Black panthers are not common to North America, and we probably don't have to tell you it would seem farfetched that one would be seen in the Bay Area. 

And yet...such sightings pesist.

A larger examination of the black panther phenomenon is for another post, but for now we'd like to just link to some (relatively) fresh news. Chronicle outdoors writer Tom Stienstra reports A BLACK MOUNTAIN LION has been sighted in Marin. 

"This lion was not darkish, not a brownish-tawny like some I've seen since, but jet black," said John Balawejder, a longtime reader and avid hiker and wildlife watcher whose daughter, Alani, has written an academic paper about the sighting

Interesting, no? On April 24th, as a follow-up, Stienstra reported that someone claims to have a photograph of a black panther, and he was trying to get a look at it. Two weeks after that, Stienstra relays a reader report of a sighting.

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: what we may be seeing is evidence of a small band of melanistic mountain lions. Melanism, a condition that renders jaguars completely black, is common within six percent of the jaguar species. However, it should be said that according to the Missouri Department of Conservation, "no melanistic (sic) of mountain lion has ever been documented by science." Rather than pound a square peg into a round hole, Mysterious SF asks, are these "mountain lions" actually jaguars?

Privately, Mysterious SF says: there may be more to the black panther phenomenon than meets the eye. Worldwide, black panther sightings have been sighted in the company of UFOs, Bigfoot, and large black dogs. No, none of it is simple to explain, and yes, it is all connected. Except none of them carry shotguns.

Bigfoot in Mill Valley

This one's a real gem. Bigfoot in Mill Valley. This originally ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 23, 1980.

Eerie Screams

Marin Mystery--A Night Creature

By Peter Stack 



There was talk in Mill Valley yesterday that an "animal-like" figure that screeched horribly during an encounter with two policemen was the legendary hairy Bigfoot of Mount Tamalpais.



"It was a weird thing all right, but I never said anything about Bigfoot--somebody must have made that up," said Patrolman Dan Murphy.



Murphy and his partner, Edward Johnson, were dispatched at 1:16am last Friday to investigate a report by a frightened woman that something was "screaming and screeching and growling" below her hillside home.

The woman, [name redacted long ago--MSF] said she couldn't discern whether the sounds were human or animal. 


For years there have been rumors of periodic sightings of a large, hairy humanoid prowling hills and valleys of Marin's Mount Tam region. The existence of the omnivorous nomad, sometimes known as Sasquatch, has never been confirmed, but there have been frequent reports of him throughout the Pacific Northwest.



Murphy said he and Johnson answered Morris' call like any routine assignment. 



"When we got there, we heard the sounds too. They were strange, high-pitched sounds like something was screaming or howling viciously," Murphy said yesterday. 



The two officers nervously hiked down the wooded slopes while training their flashlight beams through the underbrush. It was pitch dark and windy. 



"I heard this heavy breathing ahead of us," Murphy said, adding that there were, "crackling and rustling noises as if something was approaching through the brush." 



According to official reports, Officer Johnson warned Murphy that he heard something coming from off to one side of them as well as from dead ahead. 

The two policemen drew their service revolvers and slowly retreated uphill. But as they withdrew, Murphy caught a glimpse in the beam of his flashlight of a "large, dark-colored THING."

"It was walking on its hind legs," Murphy said. "I saw it climb an eight-foot retaining wall and dissapear into the brush." 



Later that morning, the two officers returned to the woodsy setting under the first glimmer of dawn. Once there, they found a thick trail of blood, which they followed through the heavy brush.



Suddenly looming before them was the disemboweled and badly mangled carcass of an adult deer. The animal's neck had been ripped open and its belly torn open.

"There were no tracks or anything around," said Murphy. 



The deer's carcass was removed by the Marin Humane Society, but no autopsy was made, so only speculation remained as to what killed the animal.

The humane society guessed the attack was probably by a mountain lion.

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: there is a long history of Bigfoot sightings in Marin. Development in Marin lagged for years and only really took off in some places after World War II and the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

On the other hand, people were doing a lot of cocaine in Mill Valley in the 1970s. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: Several years ago, while hiking the Dipsea trail into Mill Valley, Mysterious SF was startled to see a life-sized statue of Bigfoot in the glass foyer of a rather expensive house. It was unmistakably Bigfoot, and Mysterious SF was quite impressed, finding no fault with it. Mysterious SF also thinks the statue's location is no accident. If you know of this statue, please let us know and send us a picture if possible. 

Project Blue Book and the Bay Area

Project Blue Book, the United States Air Force's seventeen year study of the UFO phenomenon,  studied more than twelve thousand alleged UFO sightings. Ninety four percent of those sightings were explained as airplanes, birds, meteorites, clouds, airplanes, helicopters, swamp gas, or the planet Venus. 

Six percent were classified as "unknowns"--that is, defying obvious explanation as any of the above. 

Several of those "unknowns" were from the San Francisco Bay Area. 

July 6, 1947; Fairfield-Suisun Air Base, California. Daytime. Witnesses: Army Air Forces Capt. and Mrs. James Burniston. Watched for 1 minute while one object having no wings or tail rolled from side-to-side three times and then flew away very fast to the south east.



July 29, 1947; Hamilton Air Base, California. 2:50 p.m. PDT. Witnesses: Assistant Base Operations Officer Capt. William Rhyerd, ex-AAF B-29 pilot Ward Stewart. Watched for unknown length of time while two round, shiny, white objects with estimated 15-25 foot diameters, flew 3-4 times the apparent speed of a P-80, also in sight. One object flew straight and level; the other weaved from side-to-side like an escort fighter.



Sept. 23, 1948; San Pablo, California. 12 noon. Witnesses: Sylvester Bentham and retired U.S. Army Col. Horace Eakins. Two objects: one, a buff or grey rectangle with vertical lines; the other a translucent "amoeba" with a dark spot near the center. The arms of the "amoeba" undulated. Both objects travelled very fast.



Dec. 3, 1948; Fairfield-Suisun AFB, California. 8:15 p.m. Witness: USAF Sgt., control tower operator. One round, white light flew for 25 seconds with varying speed, bouncing motion, and finally a rapid erratic climb.



May 6, 1949; Livermore, California. 9:35 a.m. Witness: C. G.Green. Two shiny, disc-like objects rotated around each other and banked. Then one shot upwards with a grey trail and rejoined the other. The sighting lasted 5 minutes.



Mar. 13, 1951; McClellan AFB, California. 3:20 p.m. Witnesses: USAF lst Lt. B.J. Hastie, Mrs. Rafferty. A cylinder with twin tails, 200' long and 90' wide, turned north and flew at incredible speed. Two minutes.



Sept. 6, 1951; Claremont, California. 7:20 p.m. (not really clear). Witnesses: S/Sgt W.T. Smith, M/Sgt L.L. Duel (?). Six orange lights in an irregular formation, flew straight and level into a coastal fog bank after 3-4 minutes.



April 15, 1952; Santa Cruz, California. 7:40 p.m. Witness: Mr. Hayes, brother of Master Sergeant. Two faint objects observed flying fast along the horizon for 6-8 seconds, using 20x spotting telescope.



Aug. 18, 1952; Fairfield, California. 12:50 a.m. Witnesses: three policemen. One object changed color like a diamond, and changed directions during the 30 minute sighting.



Jan. 10, 1953; Sonoma, California. 3:45 p.m. or 4 p.m.Witnesses: retired Col. Robert McNab, and Mr. Hunter of the Federal Security Agency. One flat object, like a pinhead, made three 360* right turns in 9 seconds, made abrupt 90* turns to the right and left, stopped, accelerated to original speed and finally flew out of sight vertically after 60-75 seconds.



Feb. 20, 1953; Pittsburg-Stockton, California. #1 time unknown;#2, 10:30 p.m. Witnesses: USAF B-25 bomber pilots. #1 was a bright yellow light seen for 8 minutes. #2 was a bright light which flew on a collision course, dimmed and climbed away fast.



March 14, 1958; Healdsburg, California. 8:45 a.m. Witnesses: Mr. and Mrs. W.F. Cummings and one other. A 3' round, black object touched the ground and then took off. Watched for 2 minutes.



April 24, 1961; 200 miles SW of San Francisco, California (35' 50' N., 125' 40 W.). 3:34 a.m. Witnesses: aircraft commander Capt. H.J. Savoy and navigator lst Lt. M.W. Rand, on USAF RC-l2lD patrol plane. One reddish-white, round object or light, similar to satellite. Observed for 8 minutes.



April 30, 1966; Sacramento, California. 3:15 a.m. Witness: Anita Miller. One light moved around the sky for 2.5 hours. No further detail in files.

Source: "The Blue Book Unknowns", the unexplained UFO reports from the files of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book UFO investigations. Compiled by Don Berliner, for the Fund for UFO Research

Don Berliner, Source: "The Blue Book Unknowns", The unexplained UFO reports from the files of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book UFO investigations. Compiled by Don Berliner, for the Fund for UFO Research. Internet, 1994

Big Bird May Have Buzzed East Bay

Mysterious SF here with another one from the archives, courtesy the San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, January 14th, 1976.

Big Bird May Have Buzzed East Bay

By George Murphy

Did Big Bird stop over in the East Bay on his way to terrorize Texas?

He might well have, said a Walnut Creek businessman yesterday.

The odds are there's no such thing as a Big Bird, said a San Francisco ornithologist.

Whether there is such a thing as Big Bird or not, along the Rio Grande valley in south Texas there have been numerous reported sightings of a bird with a reported wingspan of 15 feet, and with feet (three-toed) nine inches wide and twelve inches long.

The footprints were discovered by employees of Harlingen, Tex., TV station, the station said.

When yesterday's Chronicle reported the Big Bird story, Lloyd King, who lives in the Northgate section of Walnut Creek, was heartened to come forward.

"It was in early October," he recalled. "I never saw anything like it in my life."

"There's a eucalyptus tree, about 100-150 feet high in a box canyon near my house, and I happened to look up, and there was this huge bird sitting on top of the tree.

"He made the tree look like a bush. He was at least five feet high, and he just sat there. I called my children and the neighbors, and we looked at it through binoculars.

"The bird sat there for about five minutes, then it just sort of glided away, like you'd imagine something prehistoric doing. The wingspan was about 15 feet. It was enormous. It was sort of a motley gray in color."

At the California Academy of Sciences, Laurence Binford said "the hardest thing for an amateur to do is to estimate the wingspan of a bird in flight, because there are no reference points in the sky. there's nothing larger or smaller than the bird with which to compare size."

While California and Texas are bird flyways, they are different flyways, Binford said.

He suggested that what might have been seen in Walnut Creek was a blue heron, which is bluish white and has a wingspread of about five feet.

King said he and his family checked reference books and saw "a picture of a sand crane, which looks like the bird we saw."

Binford said: "I've never heard of a sand crane."

King's description of Big Bird was dispassionate compared with that given police of Brownsville, Tex., by Alverico Guajardo, who said it was "a strange animal, four feet tall, with eyes like silver dollars, wings like a bird, and a face like a bat."

King said Big Bird at first "looked like a condor, or a stork." He said the Texas descriptions--some of them at least--"fit exactly the description of the bird we saw."

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 1976

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: this is the only known Bay Area sighting of what cryptozoologists refer to as "Thunderbirds". Most sightings take place in the Midwest. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: obviously the eyewitness, Mr. King, was referring to a "Sand Hill Crane". Sand Hill Cranes are quite well known. So it's kind of baffling that Binford, the ornithologist (who Google hints is still around and kicking) had never heard of a "Sand Crane". An early example of snark, perhaps?