A sea serpent haunts the waters off New England, and the story goes viral.

When a sea serpent was spotted in the waters off the coast of New England in 1817, New Englanders were enthralled. They pursued it; they shot at it; they wrote poems about it; they analyzed it; they joked about it; they used it in advertisements; and they reprinted every description they could find of strange creatures sighted in the waters in earlier years.

The Great Sea Serpent Hunt of 1817 & 1818 is a collection of over 100 pieces taken from contemporary newspapers, with commentary by a scholar of 19th-century American social history. It's a look at an early viral phenomenon. It's the story of the pursuit of a cryptozoological wonder with an unexpected ending.

Pat Pflieger earned a PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota and was a university professor for 30 years. Her research on 19th-century Americans and what they read appears online.