Kanawha River Octopus

A strange story was circulating around the Charleston, West Virginia area of two fishermen who landed a three-foot octopus in the Kanawha River in late-December 1933. Charleston residents Robert Trice and R.M. Saunders landed the creature while fishing on Christmas day. The Charleston Daily Mail ran a piece on December 26 titled “Three-Foot Octopus is Slain in Kanawha,” which recounted the tale. According to Trice, the octopus latched onto his boat with its tentacles. He and his fishing partner Saunders killed it several blows from an oar and by stabbing it with a knife. The one-of-a-kind catch was given to a local taxidermist for preservation. 

How did an octopus find itself in the Kanawha River? There have been cases in which an octopus has wandered into brackish water from the sea, but it is a stretch to believe a wayward octopus could adapt to freshwater and be found all the way in West Virginia! That said, there have been a few other strange reports.

On January 30, 1959, a gray octopus was seen surfacing and moving onto the bank of the Licking River near Covington, Kentucky.

On November 19, 1999, a dead octopus was found on the bank of the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio State Park, Jeffersonville, Indiana, on some fossil beds. It was identified as either a Caribbean armstripe octopus (Octopus burryi) or a Bumblebee two-stripe octopus (O. filosus), both Atlantic species, and was not in a state of decomposition. Both are available through aquariums.

—George M. Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, p.181

Tice and Saunders’ lunker of a fish story began to unravel when a local grocery store owner reported that a fifteen-gallon can of seafood in front of her store had been stolen. The can contained mackerel, eels, oysters, other seafood, and interestingly enough, a small octopus.

Charleston police arrested Alphonso Moore in what the Charleston Daily Mail called “the most unusual charge ever filed against a city prisoner—the larceny of a live octopus.” Police also charged Robert Trice with possession of stolen property. 

Sadly, the fish tale was nothing more than a hoax—a hoax that landed the perpetrator in hot water with the authorities. 

SUPPOSED CAPTURE OF BABY OCTOPUS SOLVED BY CHARLESTON POLICE 

Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 29. (IP)— The mystery of the supposed capture of a baby octopus by two boatmen in the Kanawha River on Christmas day was cleared up today as Charleston police made an arrest for theft of the devil-fish. Robert Trice and R. M. Saunders, the boatmen, told a graphic story of their battle with the octopus which supposedly flung its tentacles around their craft In the Kanawha River. Police, however, later learned that the octopus was in a shipment of deep-sea fish to a Charleston grocery and had been stolen.

—Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 30, 1933

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