The legend of the Sulphur Serpent
- by Lou Bernard
- August 21, 2023
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It’s no secret that the Pennsylvania Wilds is full of cryptids. In addition to Bigfoot sightings, there are the local ones: the Giwoggle of Clinton County, the Susquehanna Seal, the Potter Nondescript, and the Clarion What-Is-It. It’s always fun to hear about these mysterious monsters in the woods.
There’s a legend of another one, this one in the I-80 Frontier landscape of the PA Wilds. Near Sugar Valley, in southern Clinton County, there’s an old legend of a sort of reptile monster that shows up when a comet is passing: The Sulphur Serpent.
The Sulphur Serpent is said to inhabit the forest north of Loganton, around Sulphur Spring. Sulphur Spring is just beside South Mill Street as you are entering town. It’s a small spring with a pavilion, and water that has a very distinct sulphur scent and taste. According to legend, the Native Americans believed it could cure a hangover, but I’ll never know as I can’t get it down.
Photo: Sulphur Spring, courtesy of Ross Library
The legend of the serpent comes from Henry Wharton Shoemaker’s book “More Pennsylvania Mountain Stories.” It involves an ancient Native American tribe in the area, with the chief and his daughter, who was promised in marriage to one of the men of the tribe.
But one day, out getting water from the spring, she met a man from another tribe. The two of them began talking, and found that they had a lot in common. (Shoemaker, typically, spends pages and pages detailing their discussion, but I’m not going there in a relatively short article.) The two of them made plans to view a comet that was expected to pass by Earth – probably Halley’s Comet, but the story doesn’t actually specify.
They met up that night, and then again for the next ten nights, watching the comet fly through the sky. And as they met, they fell in love.
But this is not a heartwarming romantic comedy with a happy ending. One night, her father caught them meeting up there.
Furious at having been defied, the chief hit the young man on the head, knocking him down. Just then, the comet appeared overhead, and the young man’s body began to change. Shoemaker writes, “His form blended into a compact mass, which then began to elongate, and assume a greenish tint, and take on masses of scales. The hair fell out of his head, and a smooth gleaming scalp sprouting horns, and a rounded jowl with fangs and hateful greenish-yellow eyes materialized. The monster, when the transformation was complete, rose to its full length, spitting venom in every direction.”
Photo: The Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers looking for the Sulphur Serpent, photo courtesy of Tami Brannan
The serpent escaped into the woods, and from that point on, the spring tasted heavily of sulphur. The story notes that when a comet was passing over in 1910, some young boys saw the serpent. 1910 appears to have been a big year for comets, with comet appearances causing panic and rumors that they would destroy the planet, kill a king, and gas people to death. So a cryptid sighting is not exactly out of the ordinary for that year.
In the summer of 2022, the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers went out looking for the serpent. We didn’t spot it, but there wasn’t a comet at the time, so who knows? You’d think that Dark Skies is the landscape you want to visit for a comet, but maybe you should consider the I-80 Frontier instead. The Sulphur Serpent might be there, just waiting for the next appearance.
