Key West Seaweed Beast

 Key West Seaweed Beast

By Cole Herrold

When it comes to bizarre entity encounters, there are tons of accounts, many of which come from the hay days of the 1800s and from the golden era of the 1950s-1990s. These accounts, which are as varied as the infamous Flatwoods Monster to the flapping monstrosity the Jersey Devil to the grinning enigmatic extraterrestrial Indrid Cold, it seems that these accounts are trapped in an era where we were more open to the mysteries of our world and the surrounding space as very rarely it seems that we have the completely unique and downright bizarre creatures and figures nowadays. These unique entities seemed to of completely disappeared and in their place, the mundane overly accounted creatures such as the Grays, Reptilians, Flying Humanoids, and even Bigfoot as the various subspecies such as the white-haired mud-covered Murphysboro Mud Monster or the Watermelon headed hair covered Momo seem to of either been bred out of extinction or simply those traits had been bred away. While it does seem that these bizarre entities are gone either through extinction or some other reason, every once in a while, a case does pop up of something that rarely has been recorded or has never been reported. This case which appeared on the Phantoms and Monsters website, is one such case.    

A Florida man, while vacationing on Key West, would experience one such bizarre entity in a biome that is very much open to holding something elusive, namely the Atlantic Ocean. The man was out bobbing in the ocean with several of his friends one warm day. The group was on a beach near the Southernmost point of the Key. After a long day of frolicking in the froth and foam there, his friends began to work their way out of the water and wandered onto the shore. The man was extremely far out yet did not yet realize the vast distance he was from the shore but did start to notice that the sun was beginning to dip down below the sky. The water began to get darker in color as the lack of the sun made the bluish-green liquid into an olive green, and the ocean seemed to come even more alive as those animals that were nocturnal and more active at night began to come to life. Realizing that it was probably best to leave the water, he began to slowly swim back towards the shore. The water was almost up to his chin, and as he scanned the beach, he noticed that it was abandoned; only his friends remained, and they were preoccupied with drying off and packing up their gear for their car.

The shore was 20 yards away as he moved slowly, working his way. The ocean, which was warm during the day, slowly began to become cooler, making the return to shore more refreshing. As he looked around him in the ever-expanding abyss, he noticed that not too far off a dark form below the water. This patch, he was unsure of its origin, thinking perhaps it could be some school of fish or some cloudy patch caused by the reflection from the sky. The man was disturbed by this form and proceeded to move a little bit quicker towards the shore. He kept looking back each time, noting that the dark form seemed to be heading straight towards him. As the dark object approached, he seemed to be able to tell that this form was not a school of fish or some atmospheric reflection but a large patch of seaweed. It was around the time that the water was up to his chest when the ocean began to push him towards the shore. This oceanic propellent, however, proved to be more of an issue for a man, for not only did it aid him, but it also helped the seaweed in coming closer until it seemed to wrap around the man.

The amorphous form seemed to encircle his body almost how one might imagine an amoeba preying on other single-celled organisms. It was at that moment the man felt a slimy and cold yet firm grip around his calve. He proceeded in slight terror to call out to his remaining two friends on the shore proclaiming, "Something is grabbing my leg!" his friends believing this is some comical joke, began exclaiming in a gleeful and joking fashion that he had better start swimming faster all the while laughing. The man did not want to yell for fear of agitating the strange Creepshow 2 meets Creature from the Haunted Sea esque blob. His mind raced as did his heart; he was petrified to cry out for fear that this leafy creature might, in turn, drag him below the frothing surf, never to be seen again. The man waited, yet the form and its cold, clammy grip seemed to continue; the man decided that he needed to get to shore. So, he proceeded in moving slowly towards the safety of the sandy shore, all the while trailing the bizarre beast much like a parent whose child has clung to their leg. He stared straight at the shore, only occasionally looking down to see if he could make out any clearer definition of the figure, which as it moved below the surf obscured anything other than the hulking seaweed-like mass which he assumed was the body. He could not, however, make out the color or texture of the creature and could only make out an approximate size that went unreported.

He would continue to move towards the shore, watching as the water slowly receded from his body; the figure still latched on, however, only losing its grip whenever he seemed to tense up during this encounter. As he got to an area where the water only reached to his waist, he figured enough was enough, and the man, in a spawn of agitation and fear proceeded in jumping up and down in an attempt to shake whatever was attached to his leg off. The creature soon let go as it either became annoyed or simply tired of its escort of the man and proceeded to hover a short distance away while he trudged at a breakneck pace to the shore. As he reached the shore, he looked back, half expecting the strange creature to rise up out of the water again, almost in a Creepshow 2 style effect. To his surprise, however, the dark form slowly began to move out towards the deeper water, moving against the tide and ultimately disappear into the briny depths. Thinking maybe he imagined the sentience of the seaweed, he looked around him but looking at driftwood and other debris which came towards the shore, he knew that this creatures' movements were maneuvered by itself.

The man proceeded to return to his hotel and later his home, not once speaking about the aquatic anomaly he had witnessed. Yet, it would not be short-lived. Soon on a chance day, he was out with his twin brother, and almost in a therapeutic rant, he came forward with his story. His brother, who also was living in Florida, stared at him for a moment and went on to follow up on his brother's encounter. The Twin would describe a similar encounter while on a relatively remote beach in Miami. The brother was in an almost identical situation; he was out in the deep ocean water up to his chin in the evening, and he too noticed a dark form below the waves. The form, however, as it approached the brother, was something that made the bizarre beast experienced in Key West look like a reject from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. The dark form reached out to the twin brother, and as it grabbed him, he could make out the form all too clear. The figure was pale and bloated; it had extremely large hands and a form that looked like a dead human. Seaweed was wrapped around the entity almost like some cthulhuian tentacles, and the creature seemed to of arisen from nowhere.  The brother managed to escape his grabber and make his way to the shore, never to see the entity ever again.

While the Florida man felt comforted knowing that he was not alone in experiencing such an entity, he was still affected by it. After experiencing this entity, the man began having anomalous effects when near the ocean. He has the habit of staring out at the water, and while he stares out at the crashing waves, an overwhelming sense of peacefulness fills his body. This feeling is not alone, for it comes paired with the sound of whale song that seems to come from the water, yet some of the areas where he hears the noise are in areas where such sounds should not be possible. The feelings and the noise give him the almost siren-like lull of wanting to jump overboard or run into the briny deep. He has experienced this on three cruises since his encounter and has managed to, even though the sensation extremely tempting, and alluring proceeded in staying on the ship and shore.

This organism is certainly bizarre and is, to me, a mish-mash of several cryptids and bizarre entities that have been reported through the years. The first that comes to mind is the Moss Man; its form is an assemblage of plant-like structures not unlike the Moss Man. Both creatures are found in Florida, which is another connection and something that may imply that they are either one and the same or of a similar origin. Another element that points to this is that while most of the Moss Man sightings did occur in forested areas, there was one beach Moss Man sighting. Perhaps Moss Man and the Key West Seaweed Beast are one and the same they are amphibiously moving from the aquatic biomes to the forested sections for different resources, be they nitrogen, oxygen, or some other mineral necessity.

The behavior of the creature also is similar to a creature reported in Indiana known as the Green Clawed Beast. The Green Clawed Beast is often depicted as a scaly hairy lizard-fish man, yet interestingly enough, an actual depiction of what the creature looks like was not recorded or able to be due to the darkness of the water. There was a feeling of a hairy and scaly sensation on the witness's leg as well the feeling of several fingers wrapped around tipped with what can be assumed are claws. Now there is a possibility that maybe the Green Clawed Beast and the Key West Seaweed Beast may be related to the feeling of something prickly or scaly in the Green Clawed Beast case could be another way of describing some irritation or texture of vegetation. Yet this is just speculation.

The Key West Seaweed Beast, while bearing a resemblance to other cryptids in some ways, does not answer how this creature could exist and, more importantly, what the creature could be. Currently, in nature, outside of the carnivorous plants, there are very few plants that one would think of as sentient, let alone mobile as the Key West Seaweed Beast seems to be, yet we can not rule it out. It is a possibility that a species of aquatic plant branched over into the realm of animal slightly, creating a species that has the same intelligence and capabilities as an aquatic organism while at the same time still relying on photosynthesis and nutrients from the surrounding environment to continue thriving. The fact that this is an aquatic organism makes this even more likely for who knows what could have evolved in some remote lagoon or abyss.

Another possibility is that this creature might not actually be some kind of vegetation or cross in between but a kind of protist. The way the creature moves and the way the witness felt a hand around him could be a way of describing a pseudopod. Organisms like amoebas are very amorphous. They seem to be undefined blobs that have unique limbs for feeding and moving. It could be the seaweed beast might be one of these and that the untrained eye of the man mistook the gelatinous body of a gargantuan amoeba for a seaweed creature. Now the only problem with this is that amoebas are microscopic organisms, none reaching the size that the seaweed beast was. So if this was something of that caliber, it would be the discovery of the century and something that would change microbiology forever.

Another possibility is that this creature could be a giant invertebrate, possibly some sort of jellyfish or hydrozoan. These species are very blob-like in form, and much like protists, do have extensions that could be used to grip or grab a potential food source. Now many of these species are extremely venomous or have painful stinging cells that, if this is the identity of the seaweed beast, would be more painful than just the sensation of being grabbed. Making this highly unlikely to be the case.

Skeptically speaking, and perhaps the most unfun possibility is that the man simply was wrapped up in seaweed. There's currently nothing in the countless known members of flora and fauna that appears and behaves like the creature in question. So, while one can speculate as to what the creature could be, there's also a glaring possibility that does need to be brought up. People can be incredibly observant to the point that they can retell entire accounts from memory or quote a film from front to back. People also, however, are extremely oblivious to the world around them; countless times, people walk out in front of moving cars because they do not see them or zone out. Another thing people are great at is interpreting things that are not connected or not there; our brains are our best asset and worst enemy all in one, and it's something we need as researchers to keep in mind when researching phenomena. Sometimes people mistake or miss certain things that reveal exactly what they are seeing; with this case, it's possible that the witness might have missed a change in the wave-making the beast move out to sea as opposed to coming to shore or that a certain segment of the seaweed was wrapped around his ankle or even some debris connected to say seaweed was the culprit. While I personally do not feel this to be the case, it is something that is a possibility.

This aquatic anomaly is something that can be speculated on quite easily, mainly since it does not have a definitive form. What the witness was able to describe makes one able to point out some very plausible answers based on organisms we already know exist in nature as well as those creatures that have been reported but are not currently accepted by science. To my current knowledge, there is nothing else like this creature that has been reported. One element that I had not covered is the creatures’ anomalous effects to those who interacts with it, mainly the bizarre auditory whale song and sense of jumping into the ocean. Is this creature some sort of entity that can implement or suggest ideas into either prey or experiencers' heads? Is this entity something not of a cryptozoological realm but something of a supernatural world such as perhaps some sort of water spirit? It's difficult to say since while there are similar tales with the Greek Sirens, which were creatures with the head of a woman and the body of a bird whose songs lured sailors to drowning, but this is very different from the entity reported in Key West. I'm not at liberty to say if this creature is something from the same cloth, so to speak, but it is an interesting parallel and one that hopefully is not as malicious.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Vegetation (possibly a kind of sentient seaweed), Giant invertebrate (organism could be some sort of colony organism like a jellyfish, hydrozoan, etc.), Unicellular organism (could be a giant variation of Amoeba or other Protist).

Location: Near the Southern Most Point, Key West, Florida

Sighted: Exact date unknown- account recorded in 2021.

Works Cited:

Strickler, Lon “Underwater 'Seaweed Creature' Grabs Witness' Calf in Key West, Florida” Phantoms and Monsters. June 19, 2021. https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2021/06/underwater-seaweed-creature-grabs.html. Accessed August 6, 2021.