I talk about the strange and the unexplained of the US state of New York from sewer-gators under New York City, to UFO's and lake Monsters in Upstate New York.

1. Post author By Charlie October 5, 2020
Mysterious New York – Washed up Creatures, Finger
Lake Beasts and Sewer-gators
theweeklyrambler.com/mysterious-new-york-washed-up-creatures-finger-lake-beasts-and-sewer-gators/
Featured photo source.
New York is a US state found in the northeastern United States and it is bordered with
the US states of Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, it
also has a border with the nation of Canada and has coasts on Lake Erie, Lake Ontario
and the Atlantic Ocean and also with Lake Champlain where some also claim to see the
Champ lake monster which we talked about in the previous series post on Vermont.
New York state also has a maritime border with the US state of Rhode Island. The state
capital is Albany and the largest city is New York City which is also the most populous
US city.
When people think of New York it is most often their mind will go to New York City
only, but the state’s geography is much more than just a busy city full of people found in
the Atlantic Coastal Plain, like any other state it also has many other features such as in
the northeast of the state or Upstate New York where there are the Appalachian and
Adirondack Mountains and in the west of the state is the Great Lakes Region where
Lake Erie and Ontario are found and also the world-famous Niagara Falls, then in the
central part of the state are the Finger Lakes which are a common tourist attraction.
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2. New York state has a very strong economy with New York City being an important
major contributor to this economy due to its tourist attractions, major financial center,
entrepreneurship, Silicon Alley in the city which is the High Technology industry, there
is also Tech Valley in the state capital Albany. Media and entertainment are also a major
part of New York City and play a large role in the economy. As well as that the rest of
the state through state parks, monuments and other natural wonders also attract
tourism. The state is also a major exporter of goods.
–
So now, as always, let’s us go on to the strange and the unexplained of New York State.
First up is something called the Manhattan Monster or otherwise also called the East
River Monster. The encounter took place in July of 2012 when Denise Ginley and her
boyfriend were walking to a market. On the way their they went past the East River
where they saw something quite frightening washed up on the shore, appearing to be
some kind of dead animal.
But this animal didn’t look like any kind of ordinary animal, with it being hairless and
smooth with pig-like ears, a gaping mouth full of jaggered teeth and four short legs with
five claws on each, one would at first glance assume it to be a pig that has been horribly
disfigured by the water but also with its snout appearing to have been ripped off, but
what doesn’t make sense with this explanation is that the animal does not have any
hooves, but as already explained it has claws.
The couple, who were horrified by their discovery, went back to fetch a camera as
Ginley was a photographer and she took a few pictures of the carcass of the unidentified
creature, proving it exists but still leaving it up for debate as to what it could be. A
number of theories include it being a bloated and disfigured raccoon, dog or rodent
while others have gone for more fanciful explanations of it being some kind of
undiscovered cryptid or some kind of animal experiment that went wrong and was
dumped in the river.
Others have also compared it to the Montauk Monster, a similar unidentified animal
carcass the was found washed up on Long Island in the state in 2008 and was also
photographed as well, this washed up carcass did look similar-ish such as being almost
hairless and smooth, but there were some differences such as a more visible jaw, it is
also much more widely believed that this carcass was a raccoon that had been horribly
disfigured by the water and natural elements, although others continue to disagree,
choosing to believe it was some kind of undiscovered water cryptid or again some kind
of animal experiment gone wrong.
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3. Could there be a monster in Cayuga River? Photo in Public Domain.
Next, we head over to New York State’s Finger Lakes where a number of visitors and
tourists have claimed to see unexplained creatures in some of the lakes, with the first
being known as Old Greeny which is said to be found in Cayuga Lake. There are eleven
finger lakes found in central New York State and Cayuga Lake is the longest of them all
(slightly longer than Seneca Lake) and the 2 largest in surface area (slightly smaller
than Seneca Lake). The lake is 38 miles in length and 3.5 miles in width with an average
depth of 182ft and a max depth of 435ft.
The legend of Old Greeny goes back to the 1800s. The Ithaca Journal, named after a
settlement next to the lake, is from which where the name Old Greeny originated from
and articles on the creature within this journal are the first known recorded sightings of
the creature, it is said that employees of this journal would also refuse to do jobs near to
the lakes shore in fear of the creature.
An 1897 article from the journal included an alleged sighting made by an inhabitant of
the settlement who was driving near to the lake with a friend who both claimed to see
the creature. In 1929 a report from this journal claimed that a 2 lake monster had also
appeared in the lake and that it had managed to get there by travelling through
a subterrean tunnel from another nearby finger lake, the journal in-fact claimed that
both sea serpents had travelled to the lake from Seneca lake (where lake monsters have
also been reported) in this fashion, scientists have though dismissed the existence of
such a tunnel.
nd
nd
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4. One big sighting of the creature took place in 1979 when a man called Jack Marshall was
boating on the lake with some friends, at some point he saw what he first thought was a
fallen tree floating in the lake, Marshall said to cut the boat engines as they were on a
collision course with it, and as they were gliding to a stop the object then begun to
slowly submerge into the water, with the group realizing that it was not a fallen tree, but
some kind of creature, which was described at 30-35 feet in length.
One of the scariest alleged encounters took place in 1974 when a teenager called Steven
Griffin claimed to have been attacked by the creature while swimming in the lake, he
described it as an eel-like creature and that its jaws were powerful enough to break his
arm.
One explanation is that the sightings are merely sturgeons, which as I have said before is
a common explanation for many lake monsters.
Or maybe a monster in Seneca Lake? Photo by Scieri12 from Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source.
Next up we stick with the Finger Lakes and move over to Seneca Lake, which is slightly
shorter than Cayuga Lake but slightly larger in surface area, making it the largest of the
Finger Lakes, it has an average depth of 291ft and a max depth of 618ft, which is great
for US Naval testing of equipment, the lake is also known for its trout.
The Seneca Lake Monster, as it is simply called, has claimed to have been existing in
some form in the lake for centuries, with Native American’s believing that some kind of
creature existed within the lake, which they also believed the lake to be bottomless, they
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5. warned settlers of this and also of the monster. The Native American’s believed the
creature to have an unpredictable mood.
There is a story legend relating to the creature that involves a steam boat called the
Otetiani which at the time was being captained by a man called Herendeen, the story
was reported by the Rochester Herald in 1899. The story goes that the Otetiani was
steaming down the lake with many passengers when they suddenly came upon a large
object in the water.
The captain eyed it with his telescope and then slowed the steam boat down as to not hit
the object, which at first was believed to be a capsized boat, when they came around the
object the steam boat’s crew begun lowering boats to rescue survivors of what they
thought was an accident, but this then prompted the object to quickly move away, the
captain ordered the steam boat to go full speed and they came around the thing, which
then raised its head out the water and opened its mouth to display two rows of large
pointed teeth.
A geologist who happened to be on board the steam boat gave a description of the
creature, saying it was estimated four feet in length and had a triangular shape, with a
long mouth which had two rows of large triangular white teeth, describing them as
being as sharp as a sharks, but that their shape were more comparable with the teeth of
a sperm whale. The geologist went on saying that its body was covered in a horny
substance which he compared to that of a carapace of a terrapin, the horny substance
was brown with a green tinge, its belly though was cream white and its eyes were round
like a fish and it didn’t wink/blink. The geologist believed the creature to be some kind
of North American fish-eating marine lizard believed to be extinct.
The steam boat sped up and collided on purpose into the lake monster, the ram knocked
many of the passengers over but was forceful enough to apparently rip a hole into the
side of the serpent and kill it, to try and prove what happened the crew apparently tried
to tow the carcass back to shore but it slipped out and sunk into the lake, never to be
seen again… quite typically.
Some believe the lake monster still exists or that there are more than one lake monsters
in the lake, with some nearby residents claiming to see large unidentified creatures
surfacing on the lake from time to time.
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6. Is the town of Pine Bush in New York State an alien and UFO hotspot? Image byJavier
Rodriguez from Pixabay
Next up we are going to go on to something a bit different to usual in this series and it
centers around a town known as Pine Bush found in Orange County. The town is said to
be a hub for extreme UFO and extra-terrestrial activity with many residents claiming
sightings and encounters and alien abductions are said to have happened a number of
times. Not only though does the activity center around UFOs and aliens from outer
space though but also other strange and unexplained entities and occurrences, such as
strange sightings of humanoid figures with odd proportions and behavior and other
oddities that don’t make sense.
The height of the activity, in regards to UFOs and extra-terrestrials, is said to have been
the 1980s and 1990s before it hit a plateau and calmed down in the coming years,
although such UFO and alien activity is still described as higher than usual in the
average town or city in the United States or anywhere else even to this day. The town’s
culture has also embraced its odd history with things out of this world, for example a
café called the cup and saucer, with the saucer being an alien UFO.
It is certainly a place to go for those who are interested in getting a possible UFO or
even alien sighting or perhaps a sighting of something more unusual, such as a headless
cat which some residents have claimed to see roaming the streets. Pine Bush certainly
sounds like one of those places that would have been made up for a fantasy book or TV
show that’s set in the real-world and focuses around unusual activity.
It’s one of those things that deserve its own blogpost as there is so much to it.
Finally, I could not finish this off without giving mention to the well-known urban
legend of alligators living within the sewers of New York City. The urban legend has
existed for decades, since at least the 1930s and it has stemmed from belief that people
owning alligators illegally in the city flushed them away down their toilets to get rid of
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7. Are there alligators in the sewers of
New York City? Photo by Kimberly
Cadena from Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Source.
them, leading to the alligators going into the sewers and surviving off of rodents and
any other food source they could find down there.
The legends themselves are said by many to have been mainly started off by Teddy May,
a sewer commissioner for the city in the 1930s,
where he is said to have given interviews about
finding alligators in the sewers are checking in the
sewers himself due to worker complaints, it is said
that he ordered the use of poison to kill the
alligators down in the sewers and that they were
eradicated by 1937, although stories differ.
It is argued that although alligators could survive
for a short time in the sewers they could not
survive long enough to breed and would soon die
due to toxicity from human feaces down in the
sewers. Many have argued though that the
alligators may have mutated and adapted to the
toxic sewer environment.
And there you have it. Next up we will look at the strange and the unexplained of the US
state of Pennsylvania.
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