Time: August 1975 ~ Location: Benjamin Franklin Bridge ~ Delaware river ~ Philadelphia

This story was contributed by Peter and Jackie Evangeledis of Roxborough

It was the last week of the summer in the sweltering city, the annual exodus to the shore or the mountains had emptied the city, it certainly had been a long hot summer with little or no rain, a drought emergency had been in effect for over 8 weeks.

The Delaware river is usually fresh water for 30 miles downstream from Philadelphia but because of the drought, the salt line had crept , all the way up from the Delaware bay, the Coast Guard had reported shark sightings near the city, the big news of the previous week had been a sighting of a whale approaching the Ben Franklin bridge.

Things had quieted down with the teeming masses missing from the cityscape, my job had kept me from getting away for the weekend , but I had a free evening so I decided to take advantage of it and maybe do a little bit of sight seeing in town, and get a bite to eat.

It was approaching 8:30 pm , me and my girlfriend decided to get some ice cream and go sit by the river, I find it really relaxing just to sit by the water, we were admiring the bridge and how majestic and graceful it looked, when we heard a very violent splash in the water, my first thoughts were that the whale had returned.

The sun had not yet set and there was a little bit of a glare off the water, at first I thought it was a bunch of black inner tubes or tires floating down the river, about 30 yards out, but then it occurred to me that this was going up stream, that would be impossible in the Delaware's strong current.

All of a sudden there was another violent splash, and then the water was calm, I asked my girlfriend for her Polaroid camera that she carried in her bag, all of a sudden! this sleek head of an animal that should not have existed sprung its head out of the dark river no more than 30 feet from us, I was so nervous, I almost dropped the camera in the water, my girlfriend grabbed it from me and took a couple of shots. .

We had never ever seen something like that before, I hate to be redundant, but it was majestic and graceful, it was an astonishing and powerful thing to see.

We had heard of people reporting a sea serpent in the Chessapeak bay, they call it "Chessie", we figure the serpent crossed the canal that connects the Delaware with the Chessapeak, or that it came up from the sea.

We know what we saw and there is no changing our minds, regardless of what people think of us, the oceans are vast and mostly unexplored, God knows what lives in them.

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