"This thing popped out of the water. It was gray and brown and it had stuff all over like seaweed and grass," said Rusty 'Chewy' Davis, 13 of St. Simons Island.
The Altamaha-ha is a legendary creature said to live in the river near Darien. It is described as being about 35 feet long and 4 feet wide with a long tail. The Altamaha-ha is said to look similar to Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.
Rusty and friends Bennett Bacon, now 13 of Tybee Island, and Owen Lynch, now 14 of St. Simons, first encountered the legend on a May day in 1998.
At the time the boys were playing at the Eulonia community dock near Bennett's grandparents' house.
Bennett had just jumped in the water when the Altamaha-ha emerged.
"It came up 10 feet from him," Rusty said. "We were screaming at him to get out of the water."
Bennett thought his friends were playing a trick when they first started yelling.
After turning and seeing a large scaly tail so close by, Bennett scraped his stomach on the dock in his rush to get out of the water.
"Yeah, I was scared," he said.
Bennett grew up in Eulonia and then St. Simons before moving to Tybee and said he had heard of a mysterious animal said to live in the river. But none of the boys thought of the Altamaha-ha until Bennett's mother, Libby Bacon, said their descriptions sounded like what she heard the creature looks like.
Having seen a Web page on Altie, she e-mailed Ann Davis, who ran the site. It was Ms. Davis who told a Fox Family production crew about the boys. The boys somewhat hesitantly agreed to be filmed for the Saturday afternoon television show "Real Scary Stories."
"They are embarrassed. They are afraid of getting teased by their peers," Ms. Bacon said. "When you see something you can't explain and no one believes in it, in a way you don't want to tell anyone."
Although the boys' mothers are unsure of the myth, they believe their sons are telling the truth.
"I believe they saw something scary and it's fun to imagine it might be out there," said Rusty's mother, Vida McMinn.
"No corpse has ever been found, no bones have ever been found but it's something that has been sighted since Indian times," Ms. Bacon said.
Biologists from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said the Altamaha-ha is a myth feeding upon itself like the Loch Ness monster.
"Look how long that has been going on and there is still no proof of it," said Carl Hall, DNR Regional Fisheries supervisor.
Hall added that people who report seeing the creature probably believe they have seen it.
"You never say anything is impossible but the logical explanation is we have got a lot of large mammals in the area of the sightings: manatees, porpoises, and they're pretty big. Whales sometimes come in. Maybe there is a very big manatee in the river."
But Owen insists what he saw cannot be found in any science book.
"I know what alligators look like. I know what manatees look like. They don't have tails like that," he said.
Teens Recall Georgia Monster Sighting
Three teen-age boys showed a film crew Friday the spot on the Altamaha River where they believe they saw a creature that has entered local folklore as the Altamaha-ha, or Altie. [Original headline: Mythical creature sparking interest]
The Brunswick News / GA | By Jacqueline Berlin - October 31 2000
