Mermaid in Greece

Christos Zagoras

Reason, Passion, Cluster

Diagnostic Essay

Date: 9/11/2012

Mermaid in Greece

                There was a man by the name of John Papadopoulos. He was a well-respected fisherman from a town in Greece. John was from Rhodes is a part of Greece. Fishing was a hobby of his that he loved so much. Everyone that knew him would always see him on his little boat fishing, looking for fish to eat and bring fish back to his friends and relatives.

                One day something very unusual happened to John when he was going fishing. It was getting close to dark and he was heading back home; John saw something shining out of the water. When looking closely, he saw what looked to be a human being but wasn’t.  This creature’s lower half was a shiny gill that John could not stop thinking about. John started to question whether he was really seeing a mermaid right beside him. In a blink of an eye when looking in the mermaid’s direction it was gone.

                He was in shock at how quickly the mermaid was gone from his sight. When John got back from fishing he told a few of his friends about what he saw out in the ocean. They thought John might be losing it a little after admitting he saw a mermaid. John swore that he wasn’t going crazy and that he did see what was a mermaid. The word spread around town and there were some who believed John and other who were skeptical of what he saw. For years fishermen were on the lookout for this one mermaid and could not find anything of which the fisherman told. There were hundreds of other fisherman who looked everywhere in Rhodes to find this mermaid. There was even a hundred thousand dollar reward and a plaque for anyone that caught this mermaid and brought it back to land. They even bought in scientists from around the world to go deep down into the sea to go find it. As the years went by, a lot of the citizens started to get sick and tired of looking and gave up. John grew older and said that the day he passes away is the next time the mermaid will appear again. As john got very old and eventually passed away everyone in the town was sad but at the same time very anxious about what John had said about the mermaid reappearing again.  Every fisherman in Rhodes got their best fishing equipment and went out from the early morning to hunt down the mermaid. There were no signs of a mermaid at all. It got to a point where most of the fisherman packed up and went home. Then right about the time where it was getting dark this one fisherman, Stavros, who was a believer in what John saw spotted something in the water that he never saw before. It looked to be exactly what John saw a mermaid! He did everything in his power to capture the mermaid but it ended up escaping and Stavros was devastated. When getting back to the town he ended up not saying anything because he did not want to be known as a liar the way John was. So Stavros kept the story to himself and the story is still known as an urban legend of the mermaid in Greece.