204 – Joe vs the Sea Monsters

🎙️ Blake Smith and Karen Stollznow welcome back Joe Nickell — senior research fellow at the Center for Skeptical Inquiry and, by his own modest reckoning, perhaps the only full-time paid paranormal mystery investigator in the world — to tackle three historical sea monster cases he believes he has solved. Joe brings his signature “paranatural naturalist” approach: rather than debunking for sport, he asks what real creature most plausibly accounts for what witnesses actually described, then applies Occam’s razor to select the preferred hypothesis — the explanation with the fewest assumptions.

This episode also marks something of a personal milestone: Joe notes it’s his 50th year investigating mysteries of this kind. He traces that calling back to childhood, a stint in Canada as a Vietnam War draft fugitive, a stint as a magician at the Houdini Hall of Fame (where he met James Randi), and eventually a doctorate in literary investigation. If that résumé sounds implausible, well — preferred hypothesis: it’s all true.

🌊 Case 1: The Arkansas White River Monster

The White River Monster of Newport, Arkansas, has accumulated sightings stretching from at least 1912 through the 1970s — a run of reports long enough to suggest something genuinely unusual was visiting that waterway. Witnesses described an enormous gray, blob-like creature. Joe’s interest was piqued by a Mysteries at the Museum episode in which cryptozoologist Roy Mackal floated the idea that it was an out-of-range elephant seal.

Joe found Mackal’s hypothesis geographically strained: the northern elephant seal is a Pacific animal that would need transit through the Panama Canal, while the southern elephant seal rarely ventures above the equator. His own preferred hypothesis is the West Indian manatee — already present at the mouth of the Mississippi, proven to travel extraordinary distances upriver (a documented 2006 individual made it roughly 720 miles up the Mississippi, nearly to Memphis), large, gray, and capable of hauling out on shore in a way that could leave the “three-toed tracks” witnesses occasionally reported. The manatee also surfaces with an audible blow and churns the water visibly — behaviors noted in White River accounts.

🦄 Case 2: The Gloucester Sea Serpent

In the summer of 1817 (with a possible repeat in 1819), crowds gathered at Gloucester Bay and Nahant Bay, Massachusetts, to observe what they were convinced was a massive sea serpent. The sightings were numerous enough that the Linnaean Society of New England formally collected witness statements — a rare early attempt at systematic investigation. The case was later examined by cryptozoology founder Bernard Heuvelmans (who, Joe notes, he’ll simply call Heuvelmans in the interest of not tearing out his throat).

Two details in those old sworn statements unlocked Joe’s solution. First, witnesses consistently described an up-and-down undulation — characteristic of mammals, not the lateral movement of a true serpent. Second, and decisively, multiple witnesses independently described a rigid, protruding “stinger,” “spear,” or tusk projecting from the creature’s head — measured variously at about 12 inches, two feet, and four feet. The only ocean animal fitting that description is the narwhal — the so-called “unicorn of the sea” — whose tusk grows longer with age, neatly explaining the range of lengths reported across different individuals in the pod.

One complication: narwhals are Arctic animals, and Massachusetts is well south of their normal range. The solution arrived courtesy of Joe’s colleague Tom Flynn, who pointed him to the Year Without a Summer (1816) — caused by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year, which cooled the northeastern United States dramatically. Joe’s hypothesis: the anomalously cold waters of 1816–1817 drew a pod of narwhals southward into New England waters, where startled observers — almost certainly unfamiliar with any creature called a narwhal — interpreted what they saw as a multi-humped serpent, the humps being successive members of the pod surfacing in sequence.

Four witnesses even noted at one point that they first thought it might be a school of pilot whales — before talking themselves back into the serpent model. Joe’s time-machine regret is palpable.

🦑 Case 3: The Kraken and the Schooner Peril

The third case is structurally different: not a misidentified real animal, but a probable literary hoax. The story — that a giant squid attacked and sank the schooner Peril in 1874, with the surviving crew rescued by the nearby Strathoven — eventually appeared in The Times of London, lending it an air of credibility that impressed even Arthur C. Clarke. But Joe’s research traced the story back through The Times to an obscure publication called The Homeward Mail, where the original item was described only as having been “communicated to the Indian papers” — passive voice, no named source.

Cross-referencing accounts revealed cascading inconsistencies: the ship’s name shifted from Peril to Perl, the captain’s name changed, and the location migrated from somewhere south of Newfoundland to the Bay of Bengal. Most damning of all is simple physics: a giant squid likely weighs under a ton, while the vessel described was a 150-ton schooner. No amount of tentacles overcomes that mass differential. Joe also notes the narrative’s dialogue — including a crewman’s colorful dialect quote, “It ain’t the sea sarpent, for he’s too round for that air creature” — reads like a fiction writer’s idea of salty vernacular rather than anything a reporter transcribing an actual captain’s account would produce. Joe’s preferred hypothesis: deliberate newspaper hoax, almost certainly inspired by Jules Verne‘s giant-squid attack sequence in 📚 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 💵.

🔬 On Method: The Preferred Hypothesis

A thread running through all three cases is Joe’s concept of the preferred hypothesis — a standard he developed during his doctoral work on literary investigation. It sits between the rigorous “beyond a reasonable doubt” of criminal law and the coin-flip balance of a civil suit: the explanation that accounts for the evidence with the fewest additional assumptions. It doesn’t claim finality. Joe cheerfully notes he once rushed into print identifying Mothman as a barn owl, discovered his own error, and corrected it — a model of intellectual honesty he commends to everyone, Nobel Committee included.

📚 Further Reading

– 📚 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 💵 by Jules Verne (referenced as a likely narrative source for the Kraken hoax)
– 📚 World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War 💵 by Max Brooks (Blake’s Audible pick this episode)

🔗 Related Links

– Skeptical Inquirer — Joe’s articles on all three cases are available in the online archive
– White River Monster (Wikipedia)
– Gloucester Sea Serpent (Wikipedia)
– Narwhal (Wikipedia)
– Kraken (Wikipedia)
– Giant Squid (Wikipedia)
– Year Without a Summer — 1816 (Wikipedia)
– West Indian Manatee (Wikipedia)
– Roy Mackal (Wikipedia)
– Bernard Heuvelmans (Wikipedia)

Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.

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We’re joined by veteran monster investigator Joe Nickell (of CSI) to discuss three historic sea monster cases he thinks he’s solved. Classic monsters and science in this one.

Case Files discussed in this episode:
Gloucester Sea Serpent 

Arkansas White River Monster 

Kraken: Monster of the Deep 

Also mentioned: Karen has some new short stories on Amazon!