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Believe it or not, Southern California's San Clemente was once a sea serpent haven. The June 1934 issue of Esquire Magazine For Men featured an intriguing article by a Ralph Bandini who spoke quite openly of his two encounters with the San Clemente Monster. In his article "I Saw A Sea Monster," Bandini commented, "San Clemente Island is a lonely, wind-swept bit of rock and sand lying some fifty miles south of Los Angeles Harbor. It is little frequented except by fishermen. Its waters are lonely too...The Thing itself appears to like this remote bit of ocean - that windy channel between San Clemente and Santa Catalina."
During the early 1900s there were rumors that a strange creature was roaming the Avalon waters, and that some thirty people had seen the monster, but spoke little of it. Baldini was tuna fishing in the southern Californian channels when he first spotted the leviathan. He was ten miles off Catalina when the beast emerged from the water about a mile away. It was no whale. No sea elephant. It was a monster. It was a glistening, dark beast that rose out of the water, and remained exposed for a minute or so before sinking majestically back into the depths.
Baldini chose not to speak of the sighting, despite the possibility of some publicity and small fortune. He respected others who'd seen the beast, and all witnesses he could track down sketched a monster that matched every other sketch he'd seen. Then, in the September of 1920 Ralph had a very close encounter with possibly the same form.
He was swordfish fishing with a Mr Smith Warren. They'd been positioned at Mosquito Harbor and were passing White Rock when something caught Baldini's eye. Just three-hundred yards away he saw what he described as, "A great barrel-shaped Thing, tapering toward the top and surmounted by a reptilian head strangely resembling those of the huge, prehistoric creatures whose reproductions stand in various museums. It lifted what must have been a good twenty-feet. Widely spaced in the head were two eyes - eyes such as were never conceived of even in the wildest nightmare."
These eyes were around a foot in diameter, like dinner plates, belonging to some great, hulking monster seemingly spewed from one of H.P. Lovecraft's fictional terror tales. But this was real.
The men headed for the creature and got to within one-hundred feet. It appeared as though it was covered in short, dark bristles, and it had a reddish hue. All that protruded from the water was a huge neck and head. Goodness knows what length and mass lurked beneath the waves it frothed around it. And then it was gone...slipping back into the murky domain.
Only a few witnesses to the San Clemente sea monster remain today. Many have surely never spoken of the great beast, and others died with their secrets. However, what we do know is that out there, somewhere, there still may be one, two, or more sea serpents eluding science, and stirring the waves of legend.
Sources: Strange Ark
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This beastie needs a name. How about Clemato?
So this beastie needs a name. How about Clemento?
Ack!!!