Saturday May 20, 1899  Middletown Signal, Middletown, Ohio

A MONSTER SEEN ON BROWNS RUN
A Snake that is Frightening the People
It Carries Off Cattle and is Very Busy Just at Present Stirring up the Neighborhood.

Editor Signal:

A flying snake much like the one recently discovered in Jersey has built it’s nest in one of the tall trees on Brown’s Run and when it’s not sitting on it’s eggs to hatch out a lot more flying snakes, is roving around intimidating the natives of this region.

The snake is not known in natural history and exists only on the Run, where it recently made its appearance and where we are making desperate efforts to locate it before it eats some of the long whiskered gentry of the locality.

Simon Houping, who saw the flyer, is perhaps the most prominent citizen on the Run. Of course I need not have said so, as it is known that the people who see sea serpents, panthers, flying snakes, wild men of horned yazoozas are invariably prominent people in order that the stories may not be doubted, and the place reflected upon by some Hamilton newspapers or some Jersey people, who will claim this snake is all their own.

Simon was taking a short cut through the woods, determined to take his annual bath in the creek, and as he was cogitating on the turnip and buck wheat crop he was suddenly frightened by a flying snake darting from a branch of a sycamore, looking vindictive and flapping its wings with hoarse cries until it vanished in the distance. It had the look of a bat in its face, but was a venomous flying snake with a puff adder skull with no hair, eyes that flashed and a tail that swept to and fro as it glided through the air. Simon says he never did set eyes on a monster like that, though he has seen all sorts of things that has made their appearance in this place in the last 70 years.

A hunting party has been organized. They found its footprints, not in the air where a flying snakes prints should be, but on the ground in a swamp. They are weblike, something like that of old man Stubb’s goose, though Stubbs says the goose has not been down there since the rain. This was positive proof that the animal existed and a vigilance committee was formed to run it down.

Yesterday morning at daybreak Sam Gibbard saw the flying snake crossing the creek just above the old distillery. It exchanged looks of deadly hate with him, and uttering a shrill cry, it unwound a pair of batlike wings and flew toward the hills, where it is feared it is hatching out more snakelets.

Sam Kroot missed a hundred pound hog and Dave Tracy saw the snake with something big in its jaws that squealed like a pig and it is thought it was Kroot’s personal property.  

May 31, 1899  Middletown Signal, Middletown, Ohio

MONSTER SNAKE SLAIN IN SORG’S WOODS
It Had Been a Terror to the Farmers for Years.
George Strodtbeck Cripples the Reptile
With a Shotgun and it was Later Killed.

For several years the farmers living in the vicinity of Sorg’s woods have been terrorized by the occasional appearance of a monster snake that feasted on poultry with a pig, lamb or other small animals for a change. The farmers along the territory traversed by the gigantic reptile made futile attempts to kill or capture the annoying serpent.

Monday while George Strodtbeck and a party of friends were picnicking in the woods, Lewis Stickardth came running toward a crowd of girls shouting: “See the big snake.”

Every person sprang to their feet and started in the direction indicated, when sure enough there lay the terrible snake quietly making a meal off a basket of eggs that one of party had placed under some bushes. George Strodtbeck opened fire on the reptile, crippling and preventing it from escaping to the rocky and wood-shaded ravine it sought to reach.

The boys then attacked it with poles despite it vicious resistance and succeeded in killing the dangerous snake. It was a black snake and measured six feet, two inches.

When the news of its death became known to the people of the neighborhood the woods was visited by full half a hundred persons, all anxious to see the dead reptile that for years has been a source of terror to the community for miles around, and so successfully eluded all efforts to capture it.

The snake was without a doubt the largest that has been killed around here in many years. Since the local boys have rid the farmers living in the vicinity of Sorg’s woods of the snake there is nothing too good for them.