Jaws scared a generation of moviegoers away from the water.
But the real life nightmarish incidents that occurred in a little New Jersey town in 1916
are scarier than anything in the movies.
So prepare yourself as we explore the messed-up true story that helped inspire Jaws.
On July 1, 1916, an athletic youth named Charles Vansant stepped out onto the shores of Beach
Haven, New Jersey.
As he moved through the shallow ocean waves, he probably barely noticed the dark fin cutting
through the water.
The shark, though, noticed him.
The shark snapped its jaws around the young man's left leg.
Vansant screamed, but according to the BBC, people thought he was joking.
Blood poured into the water, and by the time a crowd of bystanders were able to pull the
mutilated Vansant away from the killer shark, his injuries were too severe for treatment.
At the time, when the doctor's autopsy revealed that Vansant died from a shark bite, nobody
believed it.
Five days later, tragedy struck the Jersey Shore once again.
A young man named Charles Bruder had only swum about 100 yards into the water when he
began crying for help.
Lifeguards were eventually able to pull Bruder into their boat, where they discovered that
both of his legs had been eaten off.
The lifeguards raced the dying Bruder back to land, but he died from his wounds.
At this point, the media took notice.
Patrols were launched.
The fact that two otherwise healthy young men had been killed in the ocean in the span
of a week wasn't normal.
The week after the first two attacks, a boy named Lester Stillwell took a swim with his
friends in New Jersey's Matawan Creek, which was pretty far from anywhere you'd expect
to see sharks.
But it was there that a shark clamped its teeth down on the boy's arm and pulled him
underwater.
When Stillwell's friends ran into town for help, a tailor named Watson "Stanley" Fisher
went to the creek to try and save the boy.
As Fisher tried to pull the boy's dead body out of the stream, the shark chomped down
on his leg, tearing out ten pounds of flesh.
Fisher escaped from the water, but died from his wounds.
By this time, the Matawan locals had seen
two of their people killed and one injured, and they were no longer debating what the
attacker was.
The man-eating shark was obviously real, and they wanted the creature dead.
The town of Matawan went to war against the shark.
A $100 bounty was placed on the animal's head.
Locals took the water, desperate to take down the animal.
Many wielded pitchforks, others brought spears, some fired their shotguns, and the truly furious
ones tossed live sticks of dynamite right into the creek.
A crew of vigilante shark hunters also went patrolling the coastline in loud motorboats,
killing any sharks they could find.
It's estimated that hundreds of innocent sharks were murdered in these hunts.
The panic eventually spread to Washington, D.C., and President Woodrow Wilson took notice.
Wilson, a former governor of New Jersey, became deeply concerned about the deaths, and called
for an emergency cabinet meeting.
The days of sharks being considered harmless had become ancient history.
"In spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and they rip you to pieces."
The 1916 New Jersey shark attacks garnered a lot of media attention and made generations
of beach-goers afraid of the water.
Not surprisingly, the hysteria that followed these incidents is often cited as the chief
inspiration for Peter Benchley's 1974 novel Jaws, which went on to inspire the blockbuster
Steven Spielberg film.
It's easy to see why.
The story of Jaws often directly parallels the real life events of 1916.
Strangely enough, Benchley has claimed that his book was not inspired by the New Jersey
attacks.
However, it's also hard to imagine that the 1916 events didn't at least subconsciously
inspire Benchley's work, even if they weren't a conscious influence.
The key element here is that the cultural fear of sharks in the U.S. stems from the
1916 attacks, so if these tragic events hadn't occurred, Jaws probably wouldn't have caught
on.
In 2016, on the 100th anniversary of the deadly shark attacks, the sleepy little town of Matawan,
New Jersey, held a nine-day commemorative event in memory of the victims.
The hero of the event was Stanley Fisher, who lost his life trying to save the preteen
Lester Stillwell from the jaws of death.
A special memorial service was held at the graves of both Fisher and Stillwell.
While shark encounters can become deadly, and you should definitely get out of the water
if you see one, it's also important not to villainize these poor creatures.
Sure, they're capable of tearing apart humans.
Yes, they look scary.
But honestly, the true story behind Jaws has made us way too afraid of sharks.
After all, they're not serial killers, monsters, or demons.
They're just hungry fish.
Sharks almost never make unprovoked attacks.
For example, in the years between 1916 and 2011, the dreaded Great White only attacked
106 Americans unprovoked, and only 13 of those attacks were fatal.
Even when sharks do attack humans, it's almost always a brief incident in which the shark
mistakenly bites a person.
Once they realize humans aren't their intended prey, they tend to let go.
Plus, a 2013 study showed that sharks have a lot more to fear from humans than the other
way around, given that people are estimated to kill between 63 and 273 million sharks
a year.
So hey, take it easy on the sharp-toothed ones.
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