The Peninsula Python, Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio, 1944

The village of Peninsula sits on the Cuyahoga River in Summit County, Ohio. The valley around it is now Cuyahoga Valley National Park. In the summer of 1944 it was farms, swamp and wooded hills.

June 8, 1944. Clarence Mitchell was in his cornfield near Everett Swamp, three and a half miles south of Peninsula. Something was sliding across it. His dogs had been skittish for days.

Mitchell said it was "thick as my thigh, right here, and every bit of fifteen feet long." Then he went higher. "More likely eighteen." It was "sort of brownish spot[ted]." Some accounts say he saw only its tracks. Two days later, Paul and John Szalay found a similar track while preparing a cornfield. It was the width of an automobile tire.

June 12. Mrs. Roy Vaughn saw the snake at her chicken coop. The wire fence was three and a half feet high. It "reared up and climbed right over." She called the fire department. One account says a woman watched it take shelter after swallowing a chicken whole. June 27. Mrs. Pauline Hopko was frightened when "the snake leaped down out of a dead willow." Her milk cows broke their halters and ran. That same day, Bobbie Pollard and other boys reported it too.

June 29. Mrs. Ralph Griffin saw "the snake rear up human-high in the middle of her back yard." Mrs. Katherine Boroutick was by the river throwing out trash. Then "it came crashing down out of her butternut tree," about ten feet away. The trails always led to the same place. Into the Cuyahoga River, and back out again.

On June 25, Chief of Police Huey led a posse of local men and boys. Two militia companies joined them. They found broken branches and trails leading to the river. Nothing more. The Akron Beacon Journal sent reporters and photographers along, and the next day ran a humorous piece on how sore unused muscles can get. The Cleveland and Columbus zoos offered rewards for a live capture. Wire services carried the story. Reports continued through August 1. According to Loren Coleman, more came in the fall, and none after the first frost.

The favourite answer is an escaped circus snake. The versions disagree. A traveling circus that visited the month before. A King Brothers Circus truck crash near Ira Cemetery on June 18, 1942. A crash around 1934. A train derailment. None has been proven. A tropical snake could not survive an Ohio winter, so the likeliest end is that it crawled into a hole and died.

Others saw a hoax. Many locals dismissed the story at the time. Cleveland Press reporter Robert Bordner, described as a notorious hoaxer, wrote "The Peninsula Python: An Absolutely True Story" for The Atlantic in November 1945. Some call Bordner's title perhaps overly defensive. Yet the newspapers were covering the hunt seventeen months earlier.

Coleman preserved the dated sightings in Mysterious America. Sandra Gurvis recorded a thirty-foot version tied to the Helltown legends. The Peninsula Library mural, dedicated in 1964, is popularly read as the snake, though that was not the artist's intent. Every July, Peninsula Python Day sends a 100-foot fabric python down the parade route. The village council made the python its official mascot. The snake itself was never found.