Gatorman! A Scientist Confronts the Monstrous

Cryptids are, by their very nature, extraordinarily elusive. People only rarely happen to see one - and even rarer are cases in which people see one of the mysterious creatures multiple times. Almost unheard of, however, are cases in which cryptids seem to follow someone around - stalking them like unearthly hunting hounds. This is exactly what happened to an anonymous Floridian zoology scholar between 2010 and 2013. He was relentlessly pursued by a monstrous reptilian creature from the depths of St. Johns River...

## Menace to the Manatees

The witness was 18 years old in 2012 when he sent his testimony to cryptozoological investigator Linda Godfrey. He was then working as a volunteer at a Florida paleontology museum, and was working towards gaining degrees in zoology and paleontology. Suffice to say, he was certainly a witness qualified to differentiate a known animal from something anomalous. He swore to Godfrey that his story was absolutely truthful, and she has stated that she finds that his expansive knowledge of the local area's flora and fauna makes his tale especially compelling. She is the first person that he told about the incident who wasn't involved.

He lives on a canal system that feeds directly into the St. Johns River Delta, wich is a large river system spanning most of the East side of Florida. Wildlife in the aforementioned river will sometimes come up into the canal for various reasons, and these lifeforms usually include fishing birds, dolphins, manatees and even sometimes bull sharks and alligators. The canals are bodies of brackish water - seeing as the fresh water meets the ocean there. The water within them is usually fairly shallow, but it is impossible to see the bottom (or any of the amazing fauna present within their diminutive depths) due to the thickness of the silt and mud in the water. It is sometimes to murky that people have nicknamed it the *Black Tea River*. Details of an object more than three inches away from the surface are invisible, and objects are entirely invisible if they are over a foot from the surface.

The witness was on Spring break when hints of the existence of the strange creature that would later come to plague him started making themselves known to him. It was mid-March of 2010, and he was out on his dock rinsing his family's small sailboat. A few thick clouds hung overhead, but in general it was a good day with plenty of sunshine. He had just finished washing the boat when he saw a manatee drifting through the water towards him. They are apparently attracted the sound of running hoses, seeing as they enjoy drinking the flowing water. He turned the setting down on the hose a little before slinging the hose over the side of the dock to allow the gentle aquatic mammal to drink. He noticed that it was moving slightly oddly, but his concerns were confirmed in a bizarre fashion when the creature rolled over and revealed several deep bite marks on its front flipper in a u-pattern. He had never seen a manatee with bite marks on it before - they are supposed to have no natural predators due to their large size and tough hide. Usually all scars on the bodies of the majestic animals come from boat propellors, but the way this mark had been set into the hide of the creature showed that it was definitely the bite of an animal which had done this. The thin lines left by a shark were not present, and while alligators fit the conical-shaped marks left in a narrow row by the teeth that had bitten the manatee, even large bull gators were not usually big enough to take on a manatee. As he further examined the manatee, it became ever clearer to him that there was something massive and unidentified living in the ecosystem. The creature's body was riddled with cuts and bites, and a piece of its tail flipper had seemingly been torn off. Whatever was large enough to attack a one-ton manatee would be able to devour a person with ease.

Later, he and some fellow dock workers took the boat out onto the river for a brief joyride - but the 'joy' part of this expression might've been lacking seeing as he was continually plagued with a feeling as if he was being watched. He would brush it off, however, seeing as they would sometimes encounter other boaters and the feeling could've perhaps been attributed to their presence. Eventually, they docked themselves on a small island where the witness said he would often see quite a few pelicans and egrets nesting. It was near nesting season, and yet he couldn't see a single bird on the island. There were birds on the other mangrove islands, but they were conspicuously absent on this one in particular. As he explored the island, he kept finding broken branches up to and beyond his height. There were no game birds on the island and so it wouldn't make sense for hunters to have been present, and tourists tended to avoid it due to the marshy terrain. A human explanation didn't make much sense for the absence of birds either, seeing as it seemed unlikely that entire colonies of birds would abandon a safe haven from raccoons and possums because of a few people in the forest.

There were no visible tracks underneath all the fallen leaves, but he was able to see slide marks '*too angular to be a boat*' on a piece of sand on the far side of the island. He started to get the feeling that he was being watched again - and it was getting dark out - so he decided to abandon the island.

It was early June of 2011 when our anonymous witness ran into the swamp monster again. He was out in the wilds of River Lakes Conservation Park with his Boy Scout troop, and the sun was beginning to set. It was 7pm and he decided that he was done roaming the wilderness, and so set about returning to camp. However, in order to get back home, he needed to cross a path of swampland. Despite the sky still being fairly bright and only minimally overcast, the thick tree cover made it seem quite a bit darker. River Lakes Conservation Park is a large cluster of swamps, lakes, forest and savannah that borders the waterways connecting to the St. Johns River on the mainland side. He approached the marshy terrain between him and his destination, and as soon as he did so the forest went silent. He had previously been seeing a lot of deer and songbirds, and had even heard the yowling of a bobcat, but it was as if they had all suddenly left the area. This was '*very unsettling*'.

He was circling around the marsh, crossing under a thicket of pine trees before he suddenly heard something making a small splashing sound in the water. At first he brushed it off as having been a fish, but then he started to get a very uneasy feeling. Conscious that he was potentially in danger, he was just about to pick up his pace when he once again heard something shift in the water as well as what he speculated could've been a small hissing noise. He turned just in time to see a dark figure stood under some cypress trees before it ducked down into the water. In the brief few moments he was able to lay eyes on it he was not able to make out many of its features, but judging by the fact that the water was approximately 4ft deep and was roughly at its waist-line, it seemed to be inhumanly tall. In general - '*the outline just didn't look right for a human*'. It was only about 60ft away from him, and panic set in when the creature dived underwater as if heading straight for him. The witness was terrified, and high-tailed it back to camp as quickly as he could.

Over the next two years, he would sometimes hear strange noises at night if he was staying anywhere near the swamps, river bottoms or secluded woodlands. It was as if the creature was perhaps following him. These sounds were usually pretty distant and sounded far away, but sometimes he could relatively clearly make out noises such as bellows and hisses. Granted, there were plenty of vocal species living around these areas such as bobcats, coyotes and owls - and so, likely for his own peace of mind, he attributed the unsettling noises to these creatures.

## First Contact

It was April of 2013, and the manatees were just coming out of their Winter retreats back into the river and its canals, and our anonymous witness decided to go out to the water's edge to see them - as well as getting some exercise at the same time. It was a nice day, relatively clear with only some distant clouds. He boarded his kayak and paddled out of the canals into the river mouth, continuing on until he spotted a small, uninhabited inlet on the side of the river. Manatees would usually float around such areas because of the ample food supply and still water - and the witness had been successfully manatee spotting around this specific islet numerous times. He rounded the river bend and faced the lagoon, in whcih he could clearly see the '*kick marks*' made by the manatees' broad tail flukes. Strangely enough, however, the animals seemed to be swiftly leaving the lagoon despite it only being noon. Manatees tended to stay in the lagoon and the surrounding canals until around seven o'clock before slowly leaving it in herds - but this was not the case today. However, he dismissed it, seeing as he only saw one manatee departing the lagoon - and there were sometimes sea cows that broke the pattern.

He was now getting tired of rowing, and so he made one last push into the lagoon before setting his oar down on his lap. The lagoon was beautiful, and it was surrounded by a calm expanse of forest. He pulled out his water for a drink, failing to register the strangeness of the fact that birds were entirely absent from the scene. Something under the water bumped into his kayak - but he wasn't particularly startled, seeing as he had been bumped into by a lot of different things before. He was stationary in the water and so he knew that if something had hit him then it would have had to be moving - but that could mean lots of things. It could've been a floating log, a large fish, a manatee using the boat bottom as a back scratcher or perhaps even a bull shark doing an exploratory bump to judge whether or not the kayak was an appropriate food item. He immediately guessed that it was a manatee, seeing as they were the usual inhabitants of the lagoon - prompting him to look over the edge in hope of catching sight of the serene sea cow. There was certainly something big moving down there - it was dark in colour and about the length of a manatee, but despite these features he was left uncertain as to its identity as it swiftly swum away. However, a disturbance on the surface of the calm water signified that the object was turning around - but he still wasn't suspicious, seeing as manatees would often come back around to boats for repeat scratches. His sense of tranquility would quickly vanish when he felt the bump on the bottom of the boat for a second time, however. It was '*all wrong*' - it sounded like something solid moving across an old washing board. A manatee would've made a single, gentle bumping sound. Bull sharks and dolphins don't make noises like this thing had just done either. A heavy weight of dread was starting to pool in his stomach, and as the shape moved out from underneath his kayak he decided that the best course of action would be to get out of the water as soon as possible.

The creature's outline was at least as long as his kayak - 14ft or more - and it was considerably broader than the boat for the first two-thirds of its body before tapering off into what was presumably a tail. The shore of the lagoon was sandy and only 10ft away from him, and so he thrust his oar into the water and rowed as quickly as he could to get up onto the sand. He beached his kayak and ran a short distance across the beach. Finally feeling safer, he then turned around and watched as the shape approached another part of the shore roughly 20ft away. As it passed into the shallower and clearer water, he could see more of its features against the white sand. It resembled an alligator with dark scales and a series of bony scutes running down its back, explaining the bumping noise on the bottom of his kayak. It was big enough for it to have had to be a particularly large male gator, and so the witness backed up further onto the beach. However, the longer he watched, the less like an alligator the thing seemed. It was the correct colour - black with a tint of blue - but its skull seemed to be much taller vertically than the broad skull of a regular gator. He said that the head shape reminded him of a less extreme version of that of a Rauisuchid (an extinct Triassic group of Archosaurs with very dinosaur-like skulls). Alligators have very short arms, and yet this creature's arms were long enough to pass the top of the body in profile. There was obvious muscular tissue showing through the creature's arm scales, and the fingers (of which there were most likely five) seemed much longer than usual - but of course it was hard to tell where the scales ended and the claws began and so any estimation of the length of the digits may not have been accurate. The monster lifted itself up off the ground, and the witness could see that its legs were at least twice as long as those of a regular alligator. The hind legs were '*curled up*' to a larger degree, implying that they were likely longer than the forelimbs. The hind legs were also thicker than those of a normal gator, and all four limbs were held in an erect posture directly beneath the body like a mammal or a dinosaur as opposed to in a sprawling position like a regular reptile.

The witness felt the blood rush out of his face when the monster suddenly swung its head around to look right at him - perhaps seeing him through its peripheral vision or smelling him. It pressed its forelimbs down, '*like it was doing a push-up*' before rising onto its hind-legs like a bear and staring directly at the witness. He was terrified - attempting to scream but finding that he couldn't make any noise. The creature was very heavily-built, and was at least 6.5-7ft tall. Its underbelly was a whitish-yellow colour, and its pectoral bones and muscles were visible through its chest. He also thought that he could see its ribs, but there were no genitals visible (but this is normal for reptiles, which have internal genitalia). Its arms hung down to the sides, reaching down to its hips - and the witness guessed that its palms were facing downwards. The tail, resembling a normal alligator tail, slumped down on the ground as one would expect. There were no lips on the creature, leaving the teeth clearly visible. Instead of comparing it to a human, the witness said that it looked more like a bear or perhaps an ape with shorter arms. Its posture seemed to be hunched over.

The beast raised its arms up at the elbows and let out a piercing hiss, not unlike that of a regular alligator but much deeper - opening its mouth and snarling before rattling its throat like gators are wont to do and making a bellow that was so deep that the witness claims he was able to feel it in his body. The witness was just about to turn and run when the creature also turned, wandering off into the forest, and taking about ten steps on its hind legs before dropping down onto all fours and vanishing into the foliage. He could hear it rustling around in the brush for about a minute further after that. Dumbfounded at what he had just seen, he stood there for a minute before making the wise decision to rope his kayak to a tree and follow the nearby highway home instead of getting back into the water where the creature could potentially get at him more easily. Later, he drove back to the lagoon in his truck - accompanied by his friend and armed with a machete - to retrieve his kayak.

## Tick Tock Croc

The witness was still in a state of absolute terror after his encounter with the horrifying unknown, but later that day he and the same friend from before made good on a promise that he had previously made her that they would sleep in his sailboat which had two wide mattress benches in the cabin. He was hiding just how scared he was being back on the water, and the fact that it was now dark and raining did nothing for his composure. Visibility was still good, though, because the clouds weren't that thick and the rain was fairly light. Come 10 o'clock, they sealed the cabin door and turned out the lights - and his friend fell asleep in about ten minutes. The zoologist stayed awake for another hour (which he knew because he had brought his watch) - both listening to the peaceful sounds of the storm and trying to put what had happened earlier that day out of his mind. Eventually, he fell asleep to the sound of rain gently splashing against the porthole window.

The Witching Hour had dawned when the central figure of our story stirred awake once more. It was roughly 3am, and he couldn't work out why he had woken up. The rain outside had lightened to naught more than a light drizzle, but there was still some sporadic thunder. Looking out of the porthole, he could see that there were no people out partying on the canal or anything - and so he at first concluded that perhaps there had been a flash of light from a neighbourhood house sensor, or maybe lightning had struck somewhere nearby. He looked out of the portholes and the plexiglass doorway, but failed to catch sight of anything explanatory for his sudden awakening. All he could see out there in the dark was a distant street-light obscured by a tree. Eventually, he lay back down and tried to go back to sleep - but this was when he heard the hissing sound. Chills ran up his spine.

Desperately hoping that he had imagined the noise, or just that it hadn't come from what he thought it had, he peered out of the porthole facing the entrance to the canal and saw a figure on the distant side of the canal, illuminated by the dim nighttime light. Rain was pinging off its scaly body, and he realised with a sickening sinking feeling that it was indeed the monster from before. He somehow knew that it had followed him back from the river, and was now coming straight for him - he can't explain how that thought '*warped*' into his mind. Panicking, he knew that the cabin had no weapons and that he wasn't even old enough to carry a firearm. His house was nearly 100ft away from the canal, and he could see that the monster was getting closer and closer. It was now only 50ft away - just at his neighbour's sailboat. His only thought was to find some way to escape from the impending monstrous attack, and so he turned and shook his friend awake. She sat up and blinked - taking a moment to come back to full consciousness before her eyes widened further than he had ever seen - she was looking behind him, and just then two loud thumps echoed out through the deck. I can imagine the spidery feeling that must've tickled the back of his neck as he dreaded looking behind him. When he plucked up the courage, he saw that the creature was right up against the boat, peering into the cabin through the porthole.

The earlier thumps must've been it putting its arms against the side of the boat, judging by the way that said arms were positioned as the creature pointed its head downwards so that its eyes (on the sides of its head instead of forward-facing) could look into the cabin. The couple were terrified to move out of fear of doing anything to possibly provoke it. *Don't move. Stay quiet.* All it would take for the creature to break into the boat would be climbing onto the lower portion of the boat, only about 2ft above the water level, and breaking the plexiglass. The creature's breathing was very loud, and only rang out roughly once a minute. Although the sense of threat never faded from the situation, he eventually came to realise that the creature seemed more curious than hungry. He says that the strangest thing about it was how its bronze-amber eyes seemed to glow. He tried to rationalise this by saying that it was likely eye-shine or '*some* *sort* *of* *bioluminescence*'. The eyeshine of normal alligators is bright red. The monster stayed there for approximately five more minutes before letting out a short grumble and backing away from the boat. At first, he was scared that it would circle back around and crawl onto the boat, but instead it just lowered itself back into the water and swum off into the stormy darkness.

The pair were so terrified and paranoid that they thought that perhaps the monster was lying in wait as a sort of trap, and so they waited in the cabin until about 9am that morning before making their move back to the house, running all the way. From then on, he has been afraid to go onto the dock at all despite having previously loved to go down to the river regularly. The water is dark enough that he would never be able to see it if it was coming for him. The last update to his story came in the last days of December 2013, when he once again encountered the gator-man after his two dogs had come running back from the dock in a state of great fear. He ventured out into the darkness with a torch, and raised his beam just in time to catch an enormous shape on his dock. It emitted a loud bellow like a mature alligator. The witness was horror-stricken - it seemed to have followed him home...

## Back into the Shadows

There have been no further updates, at least according to where the story leaves off in Linda Godfrey's book 'American Monsters'. This, of course, does not mean that no updates are yet to be published or are simply unknown to me, seeing as the aforementioned book (which is my source for this article) was published in September of 2014. I feel that it is likely that there have since been updates sent to Godfrey, but that she has published them in other books and I have thus missed them.