Montauk Beast
In the summer of 2008, locals in the New York hamlet of Montauk were shaken by the discovery of a bloated and bloodless creature they couldn’t identify. It was dubbed the “Montauk Monster” — then it mysteriously vanished.
The Montauk Monster Washes Ashore
On July 12, 2008, Jenna Hewitt and her friends Rachel Goldberg and Courtney Fruin hit the beach at Ditch Plains. The hot summer Saturday made for ideal conditions to stroll, but as the group of East Hampton natives continued, they came across a heart-stopping sight.
It looked like a sunbaked dog carcass with strange bindings around its legs. But it didn’t seem like the right size to be a dog, and instead of a snout, the creature seemed to have a beak. Hewitt took a photo of the dead animal— which then spread like wildfire across the internet.
The East Hampton Independent was the first media outlet to cover the bizarre find. Their story, published on July 23 with a cheeky headline, “The Hound of Bonacville” — which is a play on the nearby area of “Bonackers” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles — made some local waves.
But things truly gained steam when Gawker published its “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk” blog post on July 29.
The 87-word post was full of snark and heavily suggested that the Montauk Monster was a marketing stunt, but the bizarre photo made an impact and the story hit the national stage, appearing in outlets like Fox News and The Huffington Post.
Conspiracy theorists around the globe perked up and Coleman, who had a finger on the pulse of weird animal discoveries, was among those who wanted to know more.
But by the time Coleman arrived in New York to inspect the creature, its carcass was nowhere to be found. It appeared that somebody had purposefully removed it — sending suspicious onlookers into a tailspin.
Coleman was unable to see the creature with her own eyes. According to one local, the creature had decomposed beyond recognition, “Now it’s just skull and bones,” before a “guy” who Hewitt refused to identify took the carcass into the woods near his house.
Hewitt has since declined any further interviews.
Meanwhile, the three young women who’d found the monster allegedly seemed to vanish from the media, as well. Coleman was left with few clues to work with.
Although the locals who claimed to have seen its decomposed carcass before it vanished, said it was no bigger than a cat, and any conclusions of its origin and identity would now have to be theoretical.
As such, some experts have come to view the whole situation as a farce. According to William Wise, director of Stony Brook University’s Living Marine Resource Institute, the creature was likely either a coyote or a dog that had “been in the sea for a while.”
He added that the creature was likely not a rodent, sheep, or raccoon. Others posited the creature was a turtle without a shell, but Wise disagreed. Turtles don’t have teeth, where the Montauk Monster certainly did.
On the other hand, rumors have spread that the beast was an escaped mutant from Plum Island’s nearby Animal Disease Center. Local cable reporter Nick Leighton said he spoke with the three women before they shielded themselves from the media and said their talk on July 31 included coy chatter about the Plum Island narrative, and that Goldberg showed him an alternate photo of the creature from an entirely new angle.
Nick Leighton visited the Plum Island facility two years after the Montauk Monster scandal. He reported that security was so tight that it seemed unlikely anything could escape.
Leighton added that he had to get government approval in order to bring a TV crew along with him and that the crew wasn’t allowed to take anything from the facility, including an opened bottle of water.
Then, Leighton hit on what could be the solution to this bizarre mystery.
