Often called Kipsy, the Hudson River Monster is a lake monster that lives in the Hudson River. Although its existence has never been scientifically confirmed, witnesses claimed to have spotted the monster at locations between Manhattan and Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie is the city for which Kipsy is named, and its local legends talk about an ancient creature that many sailors spotted on the Hudson River, describing the creature as a shark, manatee, sea serpent, or dinosaur. Some of these sailors sailed on ships like Henry Hudson’s Half Moon, Robert Fulton’s and Robert Livingston’s Clermont, and New York’s very own Clearwater. Newspapers, including the New York Times, have reported on Kipsy since the nineteenth century.
Kipsy is one of many lake monster legends. These creatures typically have memorable nicknames, live in fresh water, and resemble sea monsters from ancient lore. They lack scientific support and are part of local folklore, which encourages skeptics to attribute sightings to misidentified animals or objects. As history shows, witnesses’ descriptions of these monsters vary widely.
In 1886 dozens of people insisted they had seen a 100-foot-long sea serpent with a huge head in the Hudson River repeatedly rearing as high as ten feet in the air. In another instance, two men claimed to have spotted Kipsy near Kingston Point, while some schoolteachers believed they saw it off the coast of Long Island. Other witnesses said they spotted it in the Connecticut River. According to the New York Times, Captain Hitchcock of the steamer Lotta saw a dark creature as large as his steamer’s smokestack. The next morning Hitchcock happened to see it again, only a few miles from Albany. The head stuck five feet out of the water and looked slate-colored. Hitchcock could not detect any eyes. His companion John D. Parson claimed that the head was rounded on the top and looked like a post that was alive. An official from the U.S. Fish Commission explained that genuine serpents were common in the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago with the extinction of the dinosaurs, but that no such animal existed anymore. A contemporary scholar disagreed, pointing out that there could be a monster of reptilian shape yet unknown to science. As it turned out, the so-called monster was identified as a burned timber from the steamship Daniel Drew.
A newspaper in Troy, New York, reported in 1891 that an Italian storekeeper Michael Griffa shot a swimming animal. It was about two feet long. Although its back was covered with coarse hair, its underside had the color of human flesh, and its features resembled a female child with a well-developed chest and breastbone. In addition, it had four legs, two fins, a pig’s tail, and wings that measured twenty inches from tip to tip. Several doctors examined the creature without being able to identify it. Eight years later, the New York Times reported that Kipsy had been seen just off Weehawken, New Jersey. Witnesses have described it as a shark or a sea serpent between twelve and eighteen feet in length. It was first spotted by a number of boys and young men who were swimming behind the Barrett Manufacturing Company. As employees discovered the creature and made plans to hunt it, Kipsy swam away. The monster was last seen on its way to the ocean. Kipsy reappeared in the New York Times in 2006 when witnesses at Chelsea Piers, Westchester County, and Kingsland Point in Sleepy Hollow reported that they had seen a manatee with a weight of 1,000 pounds.
These reports have inspired artists to depict the creature. For example, a Poughkeepsie mural created by local artists Margaret and Richard Crenson on the Hudson Valley Office Furniture building in 1989 shows Kipsy as a mythical serpent living in the Hudson River. In her 2009 visual artwork series Bodice of the Goddess—The Secret Life of the Hudson River, American artist Carla Goldberg portrayed Kipsy as playing ball with one of the river goddess’s heads. So far, the only images of Kipsy that exist are paintings because no one has been successful in photographing the lake monster.
Daniela Ribitsch
See also Apotamkin; Big Water Snake of the Blackfoot; Champ; Chessie; Igopogo; Ogopogo; Sharlie/Slimy Slim; Whitey
Further Reading
Hall, Jamie. 2005. “The Cryptid Zoo: Lake Monsters.” The Cryptid Zoo website. http://www.newanimal.org/lake-monsters.htm. Accessed July 17, 2015.
Hallenbeck, Bruce G. 2013. Monsters of New York: Mysterious Creatures in the Empire State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
“Hudson River Monster.” Cryptid Wiki website. http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Hudson_River_Monster. Accessed July 17, 2015.
Kilgannon, Corey. 2006. “Was That a Manatee in the Hudson, or Just a ‘Fat Log’?” New York Times, August 8.
Rife, Philip L. 2000. America’s Loch Ness Monsters. San Jose, CA: Writers Club Press.