S1 Ep78: A Look at the 1916 Shark Attacks That Inspired Jaws

Haunt Jaunts

It started with a shark attack at Beach Haven, New Jersey on July 1, 1916, that killed Charles E. Van Sant. Five days later a shark would claim the life of another victim, Charles Bruder, at Spring Lake, just up the shore.
Nerves were rattled but the terror really set in when two more victims, Lester Stilwell and Stanley Fisher, were killed the following week in Matawan Creek by a shark...11 miles inland! Another boy, Joseph Dunn was also bitten that same day (but survived).
Was it one rogue shark? Or several? Was the killer shark (or sharks) among the hundreds that were hunted and killed that July?
Or was it the 7 1/2 foot adolescent great white shark that Michael Schleisser and his friend John Murphy unintentionally caught on July 14, 1916, that was the culprit? When they slit open its belly, human flesh and bones were found inside.
No one knows. But just as suddenly as the shark attacks started that summer, they stopped.
But there was also one more unsolved mystery that summer: the disappearance of George Campbell. He'd been swimming in the same creek where Stilwell and Fisher lost their lives just a day before.
Did he drown, or was he actually a sixth shark attack causality...and could it have been his flesh and bones found inside the shark?
We'll never know.
All we do know is that those awful shark attacks of 1916 griped the nation then, and would go on to inspire Jaws, one of the most iconic horror movies ever.
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Host & Guide: Courtney Mroch

Intro Music:

Pumpkin Demon by WinnieTheMoog

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6866-pumpkin-demon

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Outro Music:

From https://filmmusic.io

"Some Amount of Evil" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)

License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Episode Music:
Tale by Rafael Krux

Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5331-tale-

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license