Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Chris starts our new podcast episode (Mermaid 101) with this question (see title) and I answer ‘yes’. Mermaids (which have featured for over a decade on this site) are social supernatural beings who happen to live in the water rather than on land. They are essentially marine fairies. But there is an important difference in […]

Some crappy days in London now, sigh. Here in any case, while I’m away, is an American mermaid case that washed up in an Irish newspaper in 1873. The original sources was supposedly the Provincetown Advertiser. We are at Brewster in Massachusetts. A supposed mermaid was seen upon the beach at Brewster last Thursday by […]

Ok this is a bit of a cheeky addition to the list. It is not your typical mermaid, but then it is not your typical monster either. We are in 1742 in London. To be seen, at the Mitre Tavern, Charing-Cross. The largest Thames-Monster, or miraculous man-eater, that was ever in the World, taken on […]

This record is dated ‘Exeter, November, 1737’, presumably it appeared in some local newspaper. It is rather rare to find a two legged mermaid, though they are not unprecedented. Some Fishermen near the city, drawing their Net ashore, a creature of two legs, having human shape, leapt out and ran away very swiftly. Not being […]

This is an 1851 report from Lough Swilly, a long sea inlet on the coast of Donegal. This was a very poor area in the nineteenth century. A correspondent has solemnly assured us that the crew of a boat in Lough Swilly, on the 4th inst. [October], saw, within twenty yards of them, a real […]

This was, I believe, one of the fake letters that P.T.Barnum sent out when he took possession of the Fejee Mermaid in 1842: though I’ve found no other online version. The scallywag here claimed to be a doctor from Montgomery, Alabama, resident in the Indies. I have this day seen, handled, and very closely examined […]

This is a weird entry that I haven’t been able to find my way into. The year is 1891 and this is clearly a mechanism of some kind: but how did they do it? drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Or was it a light show, like Pepper’s Ghost. The latest addition to the side shows […]

This report came out in 1809 in the wake of the famous Caithness mermaid letters. Last week, whilst a sloop belonging to Beverley, was at anchor in Hawk Roads, near Grimsby, a boy on board saw the appearance of a woman at some distance, whom he supposed by some accident had unfortunately fallen overboard a […]

This horror story dates to 1841. It comes to us by a long route. This text is taken from a British newspaper, which excerpted from an American newspaper, which translated from the Revue Britannique, which took its information from the Italian press. Is it true? Drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Can it be traced back […]

This little report was printed in the Daily Telegraph in November 1886. The article in question gives a series of classic mermaid sightings, but starts with one that the journalist had personally heard of and that had purely local interest. The problem is: where are we? A boatman lately told me that about two years […]

This mermaid account is perhaps most interesting for the insight it gives into the mermaid trade in the east. We are in Delhi (Anon 1870). I was quite astonished to hear from some of my friends that a real mermaid exposed in the chouk of this city, could be seen on paying a single piece. […]

This is a mermaid account from mid late 1910 and from County Clare in Ireland. The last reported appearance of a mermaid is so recent as the end of April, 1910. Several people, including Martin Griffin, my informant, saw what they are firmly convinced was a mer-woman in a cove a little to the north […]

Here is a short mermaid report from the middle of the eighteenth century. It appeared in a British newspaper 11 Sep 1749, but the mermaid catch was said to have actually taken place in Denmark 3 Sep of that year. We hear from Nykoping in Jutland, that the Fisherman there had catched a Mermaid, which […]

This one actually appeared in a note to a previous mermaid post from 2011. Beach has since hunted down a slightly earlier account in English (Anon 1812). Note that we are in deepest Brittany, in a land where mermaids were still an important part of folklore in the early 1900s. On the 31st July, an […]

Apologies for the absence of Mermaid Monday over Christmas. Here we are back with an account from Captain Stedman: seen previously in this blog tangling with a fairy. Stedman has been talking about tapirs. He, then, gives some interesting opinions from his peers about mermaids (II, 182-3). A Mr. Selefelder, of the Society service, at […]