THE PENSACOLA SEA SERPENT

One of our favorite subjects here at the Wormwood Files is cryptids...those mysterious animals not yet accepted by orthodox science. They are often labelled “monsters” by a public which fears the strange and unknown. But when you look at the vast majority of cryptid encounters, they are actually pretty tame. Rarely is violence involved and most “monsters”, both aquatic and land-bound, seem to be shy creatures who would rather do anything than interact with humanity.

But not all of them are shy and harmless.

Occasionally a report arises on an unknown creature which really lives up to the “monster” tag. The raging Bigfoot of the Ape Canyon incident are a good example. And there have been ships actually attacked by giant squids, octopi and other sea monsters. But perhaps the most infamous report of a man-eating sea beast was the 1962 incident known as the Pensacola Sea Serpent attack.

This was a horror movie come to life. Five young friends, already frightened and exhausted by battling dangerous seas, were stalked by what could only be described as a classic sea serpent. And four of them were killed. The bodies of three were never recovered, the fourth washed up drowned on the shore and the sole survivor, driven almost mad by the experience, never recovered from this oceanic nightmare.

The story is a classic in the literature of the unknown. To this day, it is widely discussed and debated by experts in many fields. Some believe Brian McCleary was not telling the whole truth about what happened or that he made an error in identification due to exhaustion and fear. But McCleary never changed one word of his story and spent the rest of his life in fear of the ocean until his death in 2017 after years of mental health struggles.

Let’s take a look at this most disturbing of cryptid incidents and see if we can make sense of it.

It was March of 1962 when Brian Edward McCleary and four close friends decided to embark on an adventure. The other members of the expedition were Larry Bill, Eric Ruyle, Brad Rice and Warren Felley. They were all athletic men in their late teens with a good knowledge of boating and scuba diving and they were well regarded in their community of Fort Walton. They wanted to explore a half submerged US Navy vessel known as the USS Massachusetts. The vessel lay about two miles off the shore of Pensacola and had been there for years since a disaster it caused severe damage.

The weather was fine when the boys set off in a seven foot long rubber raft. Their point of departure was Fort Pickens State Park. There was nothing to indicate anything of the horror the day would later bring. 

Even though the weather report was favorable, the sea is an unpredictable mistress. Sharp winds began to blow and the sea began to chop up. In a short amount of time, an actual storm started to blow and the decision was made to abandon the expedition to the Massachusetts. Two of the boys jumped into the water and started to push the raft in the direction of the shore, adding extra force as the two left in the raft pulled away with oars.

The two miles to the shore seemed more like 200 miles. The sea fought the raft every step of the way and a huge wave finally caused it to capsize. Now in a real panic, the boys spotted a sturdy metal buoy that was anchored to the sea bed and decided to swim to the structure.

After a terrifying and exhausting swim, they reached the buoy and clung to it for dear life as a raging ocean tossed it about. Their only hope was to stay on the buoy until calm returned. And eventually, that is just what happened. The wind and waves died down, but now the darkness of early evening smothered the ocean.Then a deep and eerie fog rolled in, bringing a flat calm and stillness.

McCleary recalls smelling an odor like rotten fish coming in with the fog. Suddenly a high pitched noise like a whistle could be heard and there was a huge splash nearby. The next few moments were chaotic. The boys either jumped off the buoy in an attempt to swim to land or got back on the raft, it’s not clear. The young men had already been through a dreadful experience but things were about to get unimaginably worse.

As the boys floundered in the water, McCleary looked back to see something that looked like a telephone pole coming through the water...at the end of the “pole”, he was horrified to see an oval shaped head with a toothy mouth. Unbelievably, a sea serpent out of ancient myth was chasing them!

McCleary next remembered Warren yelling “It’s got Brad, it’s got Brad!” and hearing a deep hiss. Then Warren’s own cries were cut off.  Brian, Larry and Eric, consumed by terror, continued to swim in the ocean as the sea monster pursued them. Larry was the next to disappear, leaving Brian and Eric to flounder in the murk. Eric was rapidly losing strength and McCleary recalls trying to grab him and pull him along.

Then the ultimate horror happened. McCleary turned to see the monster upon both of them...he remembers the bright green shade of its eyes and the dead fish stink of its breath. As he watched, the serpent’s head looped down and took Eric beneath the waves. After that, McCleary recalls preparing for his own death as unconsciousness claimed him.

The following morning, Brian’s unconscious form was found washed up on a nearby beach by some kids who were out playing. They thought at first he was a drowned man, but were then amazed to see he was alive...barely. The shocked and battered youth was taken to the nearby Pensacola Naval Hospital, where he awoke in a state of extreme agitation hours later.

When McCleary told the story of what happened, he was met with much skepticism and disbelief. He was grilled over and over about the events of the previous day, almost as if he was the suspect in a murder case. Many officials believed that McCleary had done something that led to the deaths of the other boys and concocted the sea serpent story to cover it up. But Brian never changed his story...not in 1962 and not in all the following years. He drew a famous sketch of the sea monster, which some snidely compared to the cartoon creature Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent.

The body of Brad Rice washed up on shore a few days later. He had drowned and there was no sign that he had been been bitten or attacked by a sea monster...or any other marine creature, for that matter.  But of the other three, there has never been any sign. It was as if the sea swallowed them up.

McCleary’s story of the sea monster attack appeared in the 1965 issue of “Fate” magazine. The incident had a disastrous effect on the young man’s life. He became depressed and withdrawn and never again visited the ocean. At one time, he thought he would make his living there, but the encounter with the serpent traumatized him so badly that he refused to have anything to do with any large body of water. He refused to talk anymore about the creature unless he was pressed hard. When he did talk about it, his story always remained the same.

McCleary eventually had problems with alcohol and drugs. He passed away in 2017 after a difficult life. He remained in the Pensacola area the entire time.  His story of encountering a killer sea monster remains perhaps the most terrifying cryptid report ever.

What happened that foggy, storm-wracked night off the Florida coast? Is there perhaps another explanation for the death of Brian’s friends? Maybe. Some have theorized that Brian might have did something wrong during the height of the bad weather that caused his friends to drown. His mind torn apart by stress and guilt, it’s possible his brain constructed an alternate story of what happened...such as a mysterious creature attacking the others. Such delusions caused by extreme trauma have been known to happen in other circumstances.

One thing’s for sure...Brian McCleary never profited in any way from the incident. Other than perhaps a nominal amount for the “Fate” story, he gained nothing. In fact, his life was pretty much ruined. It’s inconceivable that the story was a cold-blooded and deliberate lie.

Some thought that the boys may have encountered a North Atlantic Right Whale in the fog following the storm. This variety of whale is exceedingly rare, but it has been known to appear in the Pensacola area. When surfacing, the whale has a very deceptive and quite intimidating profile. In the fog, it might look like a sea monster. Encountering one in the water would certainly be scary. But the problem with this hypothesis is that, although big and maybe creepy looking, the North Atlantic Right Whale is a peaceful creature that only eats tiny krill. It’s not carnivorous or known to be aggressive in any way. Having one surface next to a swimming man could result in a drowning…but four drownings? It doesn’t seem very probable.

Speaking of drowning, you would think that the bodies of all four boys would eventually wash ashore, especially following a storm. But except for the one body, the others were never found. Other theories had the boys killed by a giant bubble of methane gas that came up from the ocean bottom during the storm. Such gas could also cause hallucinations...and also perhaps the rotten odor McCleary mentioned in his report. But really, there’s no more precedent for this happening than a sea serpent attack.

McCleary always stuck to his description of the monster as being like a prehistoric plesiosaur with a long neck. Many sea serpents were described this way. And plesiosaurs would certainly have been vicious predators that would be a deadly threat to anybody swimming in the ocean with them. Several other details of the encounter seem to be interesting...the high pitched whistle or whine that accompanied the monster attack, the foul odor that accompanied it. These little details add more layers to McCleary’s report.

The Pensacola Sea Serpent attack was never proven to have happened. But it has never been conclusively disproven, either. One thing is certain...five young lives came to a mysterious end that night in 1962. Four in the water and one on land.

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights.