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Your Most Unbelievable True Story (Read 815 times)
Rat Man
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Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Jul 29th, 2020 at 4:35pm
 
    Sorry, this tale is another repeat, but many of our current members weren't around the last time I told it.
     My late wife Marie was eight and a half months pregnant with daughter Kate.  We were fishing from the shore at beautiful Batsto Lake in the Jersey Pines.  Marie was kicked back in a shays lounge and I was monitoring some rods in sand stakes.  In a very startled voice I heard Marie say "Get it! Get it!"  I thought she was talking about a rod getting a hit so I said "Get it yourself."  I looked over at her just in time to see a huge rattlesnake, the likes of which I'd never seen before, slither into the brush.  While a very pregnant Marie was sunning herself the snake came up in her chair to join her.  She did everything wrong and it's a miracle she wasn't bitten.  I had been drinking some as I was prone to do while fishing back then, but that snake didn't make sense.  Even though I just got a glimpse of the last foot or so of it, the thing was huge.  Plus it was spotted sort of like a Leopard but with less spots.  And it was definitely a Rattler.  Well I know there are no rattlesnakes that big back in the Pines and I know there are no spotted ones so I blew it off. 
   A few weeks later Marie and I were back in the Pines again, this time at a place called Caranza Memorial.  This is ten or twelve miles from where we were fishing.  We were just kicking around and there was the same kind of snake again.  This time I got a better look at it. It was ridiculously large, spotted, and definitely a Rattler.  WHT?  Marie and I saw it one other time at a campground.
    A few years later, when Kate was about eight, her, my father, and I were shore fishing at Beaver Dam Pond on the Mullica River, again back in the Pines.  We were there for a while having some success.  We looked across the pond, maybe two hundred yards, and there was the same kind of snake Marie and I had seen, entering the water.  He was swimming straight toward us. 
     This was going to be no fleeting glance this time.  Unfortunately this was before the age when everyone had a cell phone camera but we all locked eyes on it.  We wanted to be sure we were all seeing what we were seeing.  It took five or ten minutes for the snake to make the swim.  Finally it slithered out of the water just a handful of yards from where we were standing.  How I wish I had a camera!!! We were all completely sober and there was no mistaking what we were looking at.  I owned very big snakes so I can judge their size well. The thing was huge, sixteen to eighteen feet, light skin, almost white, with dark spots.  And it was absolutely a Rattler. 
     Of the four of us who saw this species of snake just Kate and I are alive now.  If I saw it four times I'm sure others have too.  They probably didn't report it because they didn't want to seem crazy, or if they did report it they were ignored.  There is no spotted snake in New Jersey.  Our biggest Rattler is the Pine Rattler, a close somewhat smaller cousin to the Timber Rattler.  A big one would be maybe four feet long.  In fact no where on the face of the planet is there a rattlesnake anywhere near the size of what we saw. 
    If someone told me this story I'd certainly have my doubts.  But I have no reason to lie or make up tall tales.  This story is true.
   Do you have an unbelievable but true tall tale to tell?
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Kick
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #1 - Jul 30th, 2020 at 6:00am
 
Might have been someone's pet that got released and then managed to survive.
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Rat Man
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #2 - Jul 30th, 2020 at 12:29pm
 
Kick wrote on Jul 30th, 2020 at 6:00am:
Might have been someone's pet that got released and then managed to survive.

   I don't believe so.  We saw it in multiple locations up to a dozen miles apart. That would indicate a population of them, be it a small one.  Also, even if it was someone's pet, there is no such thing as a Rattlesnake that big.  The Eastern Diamondback Rattler is the biggest known Rattlesnake on earth and the biggest example of it ever discovered was 7.8 feet.  That's less than half the size of what we saw.  Plus I dug through countless pictures of Rattlesnakes trying to find one that was spotted like that.  There is none.  This is an undiscovered species.  Undiscovered by science anyway.  As I said, if I've seen it multiple times I'm sure others have too.  It's just such an unlikely story they were either reluctant to report their sighting or they were branded nut cases when they did.
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Rat Man
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #3 - Aug 5th, 2020 at 2:36pm
 
   It seems I have more living witnesses who have seen this species of snake.  I was texting with my younger sister Donna yesterday.  She's also a Pine fanatic and has spent as much time back there as I have.  I was describing the snake Marie, Dad, Kate, and I saw and Donna had her own story.  She was on a canoe trip with her ex-husband Cliff and some friends years ago.  They came across a Rattler exactly as I described, light skin with dark spots, and bigger than any known Rattler in the Pines.  This one was only six feet long though.  It must have been a baby.  Cliff captured it and used it to scare girls from other canoe groups as they passed by.  Cliff is crazy and a heavy drinker so this sounds exactly like something he would do.  After an hour or so Cliff tired of his game and released the snake.  Donna told me she poured through snake books trying to identify what they had found.  I told her "Been there. Good luck with that."  Anyway, Donna, Cliff, her entire group, and many poor girls from other groups have also seen the snake, be it a juvenile version.  Donna is the only one of that crew I can contact though.  I don't even know if Cliff is still alive. 
     I honestly feel that some day some egghead will find and properly categorize this species for science.  He'll get the credit for seeing it first, probably name it after himself, and become famous.  Oh, well.
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MitchInTheGlatrix
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #4 - Aug 6th, 2020 at 3:07pm
 
Seems worth hunting down...pic or vid confirmation would, quite literally be epic.
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Morphy
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #5 - Aug 7th, 2020 at 8:22am
 
I always liked this story and as someone who’s talked to you off and on for over ten years I have a hard time seeing a reason why you would lie about this so I’ve always just taken this at face value. It would be one thing if you saw it from a hundred yards away but if it slithered close to you, you either saw it or you didn’t.

The length is quite amazing but so is the coloration. I’ve never heard of a rattler with light skin and dark spots.

The other story you have about the large squirrel type creature is another favorite of mine. I’m convinced all the sightings we have of things like the thunder bird and Sasquatch have to be something. Too many normal people have seen them.

Both could be remnant populations of creatures we know existed but until we have a body we will never know for sure.
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Rat Man
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Re: Your Most Unbelievable True Story
Reply #6 - Aug 7th, 2020 at 4:22pm
 
    The large Flying Squirrel type creature that could be the basis for the Jersey Devil legend my sister Donna and I only saw once, on a moonlit night, hopping/gliding from treetop to treetop.  It scared the poop out of us. To this day we're convinced we saw something but God only knows what.  The snake, as mentioned above, was seen multiple times by multiple people in broad daylight at close range.  There is no possibility of error.  Though Dad and Marie are dead I still have two living witnesses.  I'm sure if someone interviewed everyone who visits the Pines often there would be many other stories of sightings.
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