FIELD FILE · SINKHOLE-SAMLAKE & SEA MONSTERLOCAL LEGEND
Sinkhole Sam
Also known as Inman Sinkhole Monster, Monster of the Big Sinkhole, Kansas Cryptid
A huge worm- or snakelike creature said to swim in the Big Sinkhole near Inman, Kansas, since 1952 – the state’s only homegrown lake monster.
Sinkhole Sam is Kansas’s own lake monster, though its “lake” is a modest pond. The Big Sinkhole lies on farmland a few miles southeast of Inman, a small Mennonite-settled town in McPherson County northwest of Wichita, in an area where the ground has slumped into water-filled sinks. In the early 1950s, during a stretch of drought, people began reporting a large serpentine animal swimming there.
The legend took off in the summer of 1952. Two young local men, George Regehr and Albert “Bert” Neufeld, said they had seen a creature roughly 15 feet long and about as thick as a tire, with a fluted tail, a fin along its back and a decidedly “non-snakelike” grin. Neufeld, carrying a .22 rifle, fired two shots at it; the animal simply sank from view. Accounts disagree on whether the shots came in 1952 or 1953.
Kansas newspapers had fun with it. Later in 1952 the humorist Ernest Alva Dewey wrote a spoof for the Salina Journal in which an invented expert, “Dr. Erasmus P. Quattlebaum,” identified the animal as a “foopengerkle” – a supposedly extinct creature of underground Kansas caverns. In October 1953 a Newspaper Enterprise Association feature by Mary Kay Flynn carried the story to papers across the country, and cars lined up at the sinkhole as sightseers hoped for a glimpse.
Sightings faded, and later visitors have found the sinkhole shallow – only a few feet deep in dry years – with no sign of large fish, let alone a monster. Yet the story never quite died. The Penner family, who have farmed the land around the sinkhole since 1874, treat it as part of their history, and Sam is now cheerfully remembered as “the Kansas cryptid,” a reminder that even the flattest state has room for a sea serpent.
- Status
- Local legend
- First reported
- 1952
- Best-known location
- Big Sinkhole near Inman, McPherson County, Kansas
- Also called
- Inman Sinkhole Monster, Monster of the Big Sinkhole, Kansas Cryptid
- Reported in
- Kansas
What witnesses describe
A worm- or snakelike animal about 15 feet long (some retellings say up to 30), as thick around as a car tire, with a fluted or fluked tail, a long fin down its back and a wide, “non-snakelike” grin.
Where and when it’s seen
The Big Sinkhole, a small natural pond on private farmland southeast of Inman, Kansas, once linked to the wider Inman Lake area. Reports clustered in the drought summers of the early 1950s.
Notable sightings
- Summer 1952Regehr and Neufeld see the serpent Big Sinkhole, near Inman, Kansas
George Regehr and Bert Neufeld reported a large serpentine creature in the sinkhole; Regehr watched it from a bridge over the water. Neufeld’s two shots from a .22 rifle had no visible effect.
- Late 1952The “foopengerkle” spoof Salina, Kansas
Columnist Ernest Alva Dewey published a tongue-in-cheek Salina Journal piece featuring a fictional scientist who declared Sam a foopengerkle from the caverns beneath Kansas. The joke helped fix the legend in local memory.
- October 1953Sam goes national United States (syndicated)
A Newspaper Enterprise Association story by Mary Kay Flynn, quoting the young witnesses, was picked up by newspapers nationwide around October 12, 1953. Crowds of curious drivers visited the sinkhole in the following months.
What could explain it?
- A large native snake: Kansas herpetologist Travis Taggart has pointed to the gopher snake (bullsnake), which can approach 7.5 feet and is common around Inman. Swimming snakes are notoriously hard to measure by eye.
- Other misidentifications suggested over the years include a big catfish, a drifting log or a released constrictor, though an exotic pet in 1950s rural Kansas would have been unusual.
- Drought conditions shrank the pond, concentrating whatever wildlife lived there and drawing more attention to anything moving in the water.
- Newspaper humor: the story spread partly as a joke, with columnists inventing experts and creatures, which blurs where genuine reports end and tall tale begins.
Legend, culture and tourism
Sinkhole Sam is a beloved piece of central Kansas folklore. Mil Penner described the crowds of cars at the sinkhole in his family memoir Section 27: A Century on a Family Farm, and his daughter Marci Penner, who leads the Kansas Sampler Foundation from Inman, keeps the story alive. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has compared Sam’s shape to Mongolia’s death worm, and the legend regularly features in student papers, podcasts and Kansas Halloween features.
Places to visit
The sinkhole sits on private farmland, so view it only from public roads and respect the landowners.
The Inman-based rural-culture nonprofit run by the Penner family, whose farm surrounds the sinkhole, promotes small-town Kansas destinations.
Where it’s reported
Sinkhole Sam in the news
No recent headlines about the Sinkhole Sam. Our news desk checks every day — see all cryptid news.
Sources
First published · Updated
