When i was around 5 or 6 years old,my mother and i were at nantasket beach here in mass,during a sunny summer afternoon and as we finished packing up our things down on the sand near the water, she started to walk away towards her car...

I was facing straight out into the ocean and the waves were washing in right at me and i was around 30 feet from the water and just as i was about to turn and walk in her direction,something suddenly caught my eye about 75 feet out in the ocean...

And i was amazed and frightened to suddenly see a strange half human,half gill man type of creature swimming against and through the ocean waves from right to left,parallel to the distant horizon...

Half its body was beneath the water and the other half was above and there was probably about 6 or 8 feet of water beneath it and the waves were around 2 or 3 feet tall above the waters surface...

Its arms were held out straight and motionless,they were not moving in a swimming motion and its legs were also held out straight,but they were slowly moving up and down,but only a few inches each way...

It was around 7 or 8 feet long,meaning tall,because it was obviously bi-pedal...

Its face was humanlike,but with weird animal/fish like qualities,which made it appear contorted and brutish...

It seemed angry and very determined as it propelled itself along through the waves at what i would estimate about 15 or 20 mph...

There was a row of fins sticking up and running from its neck all the way down its back and the fins near its neck were about 6 inches tall and they got smaller as they went along and the fins were around 1 inch tall at the bottom of its back...

I also remember that it had webbed hands and large stretches of skin attaching its upper arms near the bicep to its sides near its chest and it seemed to have webbed fins for toes...

This thing was not wearing any sort of clothing,swim suit or diving gear...

Its skin was mostly smooth and was colored light green and yellowish white and it was not human...

I finally lost sight of it amongst the waves when it was about a hundred and fifty feet to my left...

I told my mother about it in the car and she didnt believe me,she said i got to much sun...

There were no motorized sounds coming from this thin either and if i lived for a thousand years,i would never forget it...

If i only had one clear picture of it,it would be so amazing and strange to look at it now and be able to show it to other people...

My mother saw nothing,because i was so transfixed by what i was looking at,that i never bothered yelling for her to turn around and and see it...

I dont recall anyone else seeing it either,the beach by then,around 4 or 5 in the afternoon was becoming less crowded and no one was in the water near it...

That was one of my very first encounters with the unknown and a very early age for me to have unexpectedly found out without warning that things are not always as they appear to be in this reality...

I have a very good memory and i clearly remember exactly what i saw and the thing i watched was something thats not easy to forget and its forever etched within me...

I dont know where it came from,i dont know where it was going and i dont know what it was,but i knew then and i still know now that it was not human...

You were 5 or 6 yet you have a good grasp on the scale of the animal....

I used to think people were like 30 ft tall when I was 5 or 6.

My take on this is you probably just watched the little mermaid and your young imagination got the better of you.

...Or you got too much sun.

ETA: OK, that was a little cruel. But seriously, you gotta admit that's pretty... "out there."

instead of trying to discredit the OP or make fun of him, maybe a search of local legend or folklore of the area might be appropriate first. Not saying that it could not have mistaken identity, but, strange things happen, and we should at least respect people for coming forward with their story, and trying to make sense of something that they saw.

Could it have been an Mola?

They are very common in those waters and they have a tendency to freak people out if they are not aware of the species.

I would never make up a lie and then pass it off as something true and i never have in any of my threads.The quality of my memories should be apparent in my descriptions of that day,the time and place,where i was facing and what was going on around me and the age i was at shouldnt be superceding what i know i saw.What was it? where was it coming from? and where was it going?

Originally posted by METACOMET
Could it have been an Mola?

They are very common in those waters and they have a tendency to freak people out if they are not aware of the species.

Here is a photo of the Mola Mola...otherwise known as the Sunfish....doesn't fit the description from the OP...

Must say it is one of my favorite fish....



Des

I too saw mermaids when I was a teenager. They turned out to be normal marine life after I looked at them for a bit. The images of mermaids are still in my head, just my brain trying to make sense of shapes in the water. Like when you see figures in clouds. Once in near darkness I noticed a long stick poking over the rails on the stern of my boat. I moved to see how this stick had entangled itself on the rudder and looking down in the water at the sticks base was a huge eye looking at me. It was a swordfish, 15 feet long, and it wanted a look at me. I stared into that big eye for a long time in the silence as he slowly swam, his sword clicking on my tiller. For some reason I never feared he would stab or bite me and his eye was only 3 feet away. He was so huge, powerful and alien that my heart skips a beat just thinking about our meeting. There was something supernatural about it. That was real, the time I hallucinated Wonder Woman, that was not real.

I think the key here is the first paragraph...

"When I was 5-6 yrs old........."

I remember when I was that age... I believed there were monsters under my bed....