Hudson River Monster

The Hudson River monster, affectionately called “Kipsy” (a nickname usually traced to Poughkeepsie), is one of New York’s oldest lake-and-river serpent stories. Many websites claim it was seen by Henry Hudson’s crew or described in Native American legend, but no documentation supports either claim. The documented story begins in the summer of 1886.

On August 30, 1886, the New York Times reported that boatmen and swimmers at Rondout, the port district of Kingston, had seen a creature about 55 feet long and two feet thick, with a fin along its back and a look of an anaconda. Within days other papers had it in the river elsewhere. A guard at the wreck of the steamboat Daniel Drew said a 75-foot serpent had chased two boaters, a steamer captain saw a long dark body near Beeren Island south of Albany, and a night watchman in New York City described a head with red eyes. Reports spread into Long Island Sound, where witnesses claimed a 100-foot creature near Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Newspapers mostly treated it as a lark. Scientists argued about whether it might be a plesiosaur or other relic, jokers blamed it for an earthquake, and a Kansas newspaper ran a joke offer of a $20,000 reward attributed to P. T. Barnum. A Brooklyn paper blamed the first sighting on a drifting log with knots resembling fins, and a folklore encyclopedia says the 1886 ‘monster’ was later identified as a burned timber from the Daniel Drew. A Boston paper that November even claimed a man named Dr. William A. Dean had built a rubber serpent to draw hotel guests.

Sporadic reports continued into the 1890s. In 1899 bathers near Weehawken, New Jersey, fled from what they thought was a shark or sea serpent, and in 2006 witnesses reported a manatee of about 1,000 pounds swimming in the river. Today Kipsy is a regional mascot: Poughkeepsie artists have painted him on murals, and he has been cited in art and fiction.

A long, dark serpentine body from 30 to 100 feet in various 1886 reports, sometimes with a fin or lumps along its back, a gray, lead-colored or blue-green hide, and a snake-like head, sometimes described with red eyes.

The tidal Hudson from Albany and Kingston down to New York Harbor, in 1886 mostly in late summer; reports also came from Long Island Sound.

Kipsy is a quiet local mascot rather than a tourist industry. A 1989 mural in Poughkeepsie by Margaret and Richard Crenson shows him as a serpent, later Hudson Valley artists have painted and sculpted him, Salman Rushdie mentions the ‘Kipsy river-monster’ in Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, and Atlas Obscura included him in its 2016 list of U.S. lake monsters.