Ditch Plains, Montauk — the Montauk Monster, July 2008

OVERVIEW

The Montauk Monster was an animal carcass that washed up at Ditch Plains beach, Montauk, New York, in July 2008. Experts eventually agreed it was a raccoon degraded by water.

HISTORY

Jenna Hewitt, 26, and three friends said they found it on 12 July 2008. The local paper The Independent ran her photograph on 23 July under the headline 'The Hound of Bonacville', speculating about a turtle or the nearby Plum Island Animal Disease Center, and reporting that East Hampton's Natural Resources Director, Larry Penny, took it for a raccoon missing its upper jaw. The body was said to have been taken away and was never produced. Gawker spread the photograph on 29 July.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

EXPLAINED. William Wise of Stony Brook first called it a fake, or perhaps a diseased dog or coyote; the palaeozoologist Darren Naish showed from its teeth, skull and front paws that it was a raccoon, its strange look the work of decomposition and the sea. Jeff Corwin agreed. Indigenous groups call such carcasses omajinaakoos, 'the Ugly One', an omen of bad luck.

VISITING

A public surfing beach.