Virginia has no shortage of cryptids in their state but I finally stumbled on one I’m not familiar with. Virginia is my home away from home, my family is there so I sneak there as often as I can. I love to visit places there these cryptids have roamed. Now It looks like I need to add New Kent on to that list.
Back in 1903 a women saw an amazing sight near her farm, a sheep headed… snake?
Here is an excerpt of an article about some crazy cryptids that came out yesterday from the Daily Press written by Alex Perry and Em Holter. This article is what intrigued me to look up more about this interesting creature…
New Kent’s Chickahominy Swamp Monster
From the Chesapeake’s own Loch Ness Monster, Chessie, to West Virginia’s Mothman, to North Carolina’s Frogman, mysterious cryptids have been spotted all across America.
While some point to prehistoric creatures who managed to survive, government experiments gone awry or simply group hysteria, folks are no stranger to their existence and continue to marvel in their mysteries.
New Kent County is no stranger to this phenomenon. Holding close to its own cryptid, old newspaper archives reveal stories from the early 1900s of a serpent-like monster that called the Chickahominy Swamp its home.
“In the early part of the 18th century, a lot of people were traveling back and forth from New Kent and Richmond,” New Kent Historical Society Secretary Scott McPhail said. “Because of where New Kent is situated, it’s more rural, there’s a lot of woods and swampland, it became a hub for sightings and it sort of got blamed for them.”
In a 1904 Richmond-Times Dispatch article, the edition outlines the strange encounter of one New Kent woman, known as Mrs. Woodson, with New Kent’s Chickahominy Swamp Monster.
While tending to her land near the swamp, Woodson said she heard a noise similar to that of a bleating lamb. Fearing that a lamb had ventured into the swamp and had gotten itself stuck, she went to retrieve it.
But what she witnessed was not a lamb. Instead, just a few yards from her, she saw a creature coming toward her.
Woodson described it as having a head, with ears, similar in shape and size to a sheep but the body of a large snake. She estimated it was 4-feet in length and covered in scales. As the sun reflected off of its scales, it reflected bright, iridescent colors that hurt her eyes, the article details.
Woodson ran back to her home and got other members of the family in order to kill the beast. According to the article, they tracked it to the water’s edge but it had retreated into the depths of the swamp.
“Hunger had undoubtedly forced it from its hiding place, as two rabbits and three birds had been caught by the strange beast, as portions of each were found by the huntsman,” the article details.
Ensuring the accuracy of the sighting, the article details all of the members of the family were in sound mind as they were able to maintain their farm and all of their animals through the harsh winter.
Here is the Original article from the Richmond Dispatcher in which my favorite new phrase was nervous prostration. I must find ways to fit thIs into my conversations going forward.
I’m going to rename this cryptid The Chickahomity Chimera. Because what else could such a creature be? I believe many odd things happen in nature, but a sheep and snake union is not one of them.
There is no monetary gain by making up an encounter such as this . And if there was now, there certainly wasn’t then, you only get to become the crazy lady of your town then. I lived in a haunted house for 20 years we weren’t advertising that one. So it’s safe to assume she saw something, something scared her. What that was who knows. But it came out, like most creatures for a food source and by the description they should be pretty happy it was a rabbit or two and not human delicacy it was hunting for…😁
Article of note:
Sasysquatchgirl 