The hoax was described in more detail in 1915, in a local history by Frank D. Roberts:
The serpent was to be constructed of a body about 60 feet long, covered with a waterproof canvas supported on the inside by coiled wire. A trench was to be dug and gas pipe laid from the basement of a shanty situated on the west side of the lake, to the lake shore. A large pair of bellows such as were used in a blacksmith shop, secreted in the basement of the shanty connected to that end of the pipe, and a small light rubber hose from the lake end to the serpent. The body was to be painted a deep green color, with bright yellow spots added to give it a more hideous appearance. Eyes and mouth were to be colored a bright red. The plan of manipulating the serpent was simple. It was to be taken out and sunk in the lake, and then when everything was ready, the bellows were to be operated and air forced into the serpent, which naturally would cause it to rise to the surface. Weights were to be attached to different portions of the body to insure its sinking as the air was allowed to escape. Three ropes were to be attached to the forward portion of the body, one extending to the shore where the ice house now stands; one across the lake, and the other to the marsh at the north end; the serpent to be propelled in any direction by the aid of these ropes. (Roberts 1915, 200–201)
Roberts adds, “Many nights were spent” in the construction of the creature, after which it was transported to the lake and sunk at a depth of some twenty feet. Then came Friday evening, July 13, 1855—and you know the rest of the tale.
Today, the signs at the Perry city limits sport a sea monster, and the town hosts an annual Silver Lake Serpent Festival. The one I attended in 1998 featured hot-air balloons, one of which was an inflated sea serpent that flew me over the scenic lake and countryside (see figures 4.1 and 4.2).
Figure 4.1 Balloon’s-eye view of Silver Lake in Wyoming County, New York, site of several 1855 lake monster sightings. (Photo by Joe Nickell)
Figure 4.2 Hot-air balloon at the 1998 Silver Lake Serpent Festival in Perry, New York. Joe Nickell is the one wearing the white shirt. (Photo from Joe Nickell’s collection)
EXAMINING THE HOAX
The hoax story is a colorful yarn, but is it true? It has certainly been reported as factual, even by writers who are more inclined to promote the existence of mysterious monsters. For example, John Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time and Space (1970, 260–61) claims that the Silver Lake case proves “that a sea serpent hoax is possible and was possible even in the year 1855.” Keel also claims that “witnesses generally gave a very accurate description of what they had seen” (260). He is echoed by Roy P. Mackal, whose Searching for Hidden Animals (1980, 209) specifically states that the Silver Lake creature was “described as … shiny, dark green with yellow spots, and having flaming red eyes and a mouth and huge fins.” Other sources follow suit, including the History of Northwestern New York, which states that watchers “beheld a long green body, covered with yellow spots… and a large mouth, the interior of which was bright red” (Douglass 1947, 562). In fact, not one of the original eyewitness reports mentions yellow spots or a red mouth.
Among the problems with the hoax story is that it exists in a suspicious number of variants. For example, whereas Roberts’s previously cited account of the hoax’s discovery refers to an actual wire and canvas monster being found by firemen in the hotel attic, other sources state that “in the debris left by the fire were found the remains of the Silver Lake Monster” (Mackal 1980, 209), specifically, “the frame of the serpent” (Silver Lake serpent revived n.d.) or maybe just “remnants of wire and green canvas” (Fielding 1998).
At least one source asserts, “The creators of this stupendous hoax soon afterward confessed” (Peace 1976), and monster hunter Mackal (1980, 209) names the “confessed” perpetrators as Walker and Wyoming Times editor Truman S. Gillett. However, one writer attributes the newspaper’s alleged involvement to “rumor” (Kimiecik 1988, 10), and a longtime local researcher, Clark Rice, insists that Walker was only suspected and that “no one ever admitted to helping him” (Fielding 1998).
Due to its many variations, the story is appropriately described as a “legend,” a “tale,” or even “the leading bit of folklore of Perry and Silver Lake” (Perry 1976, 145). States Rice: “It was a subject that was bantered around when you were growing up, and everyone had a different version” (Vogel 1995).
Invariably, books and articles on the subject cite Roberts’s previously quoted account. Writing in 1915, sixty years after the alleged hoax, Roberts gives no specific source or documentation, instead relying on a fuzzy, passive-voice grammatical construction to say, “to the late A. B. Walker is credited the plan of creating the Silver Lake sea serpent” (emphasis added), having supposedly been assisted by “a few of his intimate and trustworthy friends”—who remain unnamed. He adds, “It is said that the serpent was made in the old Chapin tannery” (emphasis added), further indication that Roberts is reporting rumor (Roberts 1915, 200, 202).
The elaborateness of the monster’s mechanism raises further suspicions. First is the alleged laying of a “gas pipe,” yet gas lines did not come to Perry until 1909, nor piped water until 1896 (Perry 1976, 119, 124). The availability of the “small light rubber hose” that reportedly extended from shore to serpent seems equally doubtful in a mid-nineteenth-century village. The Pioneer Museum at Perry has on display a large old bellows attributed to the hoax (figure 4.3), but the display card states that it is “believed to have been used to inflate the Silver Lake sea serpent” (emphasis added).
Materials aside, the complexity of the contraption described by Roberts provokes skepticism as well. Although such a monster does not contravene the laws of physics (Pickett 1998), the propulsion method raises some serious questions. The ropes that were reportedly attached to the serpent and extended to three different lakeside sites would have greatly complicated the operation, not to mention multiplying the danger of detection. Indeed, the Silver Lake contrivance seems to have been a rather remarkable engineering feat—especially for a hotelier and some village friends. One suspects that they would have had to sew a lot of canvas and make many experiments before achieving a workable monster, yet Roberts (1915, 202) claims that theirs worked on the first attempt. In fact, over the years, attempts to replicate the elaborate monster have failed (Fielding 1998; Peace 1976).
Figure 4.3 Joe Nickell with bellows (probably a blacksmith’s) allegedly used to inflate a fake rubber serpent as part of an elaborate hoax. (Photo by Joe Nickell)
The 1855 frenzy led to other tall tales that were largely played out in the newspapers, which treated the whole affair as great sport. For example, in September the Chicago Times reported that two visitors had seen the monstrous serpent harpooned and towed to shore. The newspaper jocosely reported that at nightfall the creature uprooted the tree to which it was tethered and returned to the lake. It was recaptured the next day, said the Times, whereupon it “awoke, threw its head 60 feet into the air; lurid eyes glared like balls of flame and its tongue, like flashes of forked lightning, 10–12 feet long, vibrated between its open jaws” (Douglass 1955, 119).
Insinuations of hoaxing probably elicited the following statement by Wyoming Times editor Gillett. On August 8, 1855, he wrote: “We assert, without fear of contradiction, that there is not a log floating on the water of Silver Lake—that nothing has been placed there to create the serpent story,” and that the paper published what had been related by truthful people (Silver Lake serpent 1855).
In sum, the historical evidence diminishes as we work backward to the alleged hoax, whereas, conversely, details of the story increase with distance from the supposed event. Therefore, it appears that the story—rather than the serpent—became inflated. If Walker or others did perpetrate a hoax, it is unlikely that it involved an elaborate contraption such as that described by Roberts.
SIGHTINGS
Despite the claim that Walker created the serpent, newspaper accounts from the time make it clear that there was an earlier Indian
tradition about a Silver Lake serpent and that such a monster had been “repeatedly seen during the past thirty years” (Silver Lake serpent 1855). Certainly, not all the 1855 sightings can be explained by the monster contraption Roberts described. According to his account, it was installed near the northern end of the lake, where both the inlet and the outlet are located. Yet on Thursday, August 16, farmer John Worden and others who were “on the west shore of the lake between two and three miles above the outlet” reportedly sighted “the monster” about a quarter mile distant (Silver Lake serpent 1855; emphasis added). Surely no one imagines that the fake monster could have been controlled from more than two miles away. Nor can the monster apparatus explain sightings of a distinct pair of creatures at the same time (Silver Lake serpent 1880, 19–20).
At this late date, we can only round up the usual lake monster suspects. As the perpetual saga at Scotland’s Loch Ness demonstrates, “monsters” can be created by floating trees and driftwood, leaping fish, swimming otters and deer, wind slicks, and many other culprits—often seen under such illusion-fostering conditions as mirage effects and diminished visibility (Binns 1984). For example, some of the Silver Lake sightings, including the one that launched the 1855 frenzy, occurred at night, when visibility would have been relatively poor and imaginations heightened.
Eyewitnesses typically insisted that the object was a living creature, sometimes with its head above the water. One possible candidate is the otter, which “when swimming seems a very large creature” (Scott 1815). As described in chapter 2, otters can simulate a monstrous serpent, especially if several are swimming together in a line. On one of my visits to Silver Lake, while walking along a nature trail I was startled by a creature swimming in a nearby stream; it quickly vanished, and I was puzzled as to its identity until I learned that otters had recently been reintroduced there.
I subsequently talked with New York State wildlife experts about the possibility of otters being mistaken for mid-nineteenth-century “lake serpents.” Bruce Penrod, senior wildlife biologist with the Department of Environmental Conservation, stated that it was “very probable” that otters had been in the Silver Lake area in 1855. And if the sightings were not hoaxes, he said, he would clearly prefer otters—or even muskrats, beavers, or swimming deer—over sea monsters as plausible explanations for such sightings (Penrod 1998).
I thought of otters especially when I studied the two 1855 accounts of a pair of “serpents” estimated at twenty to forty feet long. The witnesses in each case might have seen two or more otters that, together with their wakes, gave the impression of being much longer creatures. All the witnesses were observing from considerable distances—in one case, through a spyglass (Silver Lake serpent 1880, 19–20); these distances could easily be overestimated, thus exaggerating the apparent size of the creature. Because otters are “great travelers,” with nomadic tendencies (Kopp 1998), it is possible that a group of them came into Silver Lake in the summer of 1855 and later moved on, thus initiating and then ending that particular rash of sightings.
CONCLUSION
The least likely explanation for the Silver Lake reports is that some exotic creature inhabited its waters. Whatever people did see, the situation was hyped by the local newspaper and the antics of would-be monster hunters. People’s expectations were thus heightened, which led to misperceptions. Even the overly credulous paranormalist Rupert T. Gould admitted that people who are expecting to see something can be misled by anything having a slight resemblance to it. Gould called this tendency “expectant attention” (Binns 1984, 77–78) and it is the basis of many paranormal claims, apparently including sightings of the Silver Lake serpent—a case of the tale wagging the monster.
REFERENCES
Binns, Ronald. 1984. The Loch Ness mystery solved. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Douglass, Harry S. 1947. “Wyoming County.” In History of northwestern New York. By John Theodore Horton et al. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
_____. 1955. The legend of the serpent: 1855—1955. Historical Wyoming 8, no. 4 (July): 115–21.
Fielding, Todd. 1998. It came from Silver Lake. Daily News (Batavia, N.Y.), July 25.
History of Wyoming County, N. Y 1880. New York: F. W. Beers and Co.
Keel, John A. 1970. Strange creatures from time and space. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 254–59.
Kimiecik, Kathy. 1988. The strange case of the Silver Lake sea serpent. New York Folklore 9, no. 2 (summer): 10—11.
Kopp, Jon. 1998. Interview by Joe Nickell, September 18.
The legend of the Silver Lake sea serpent. [1984.] Silver Lake, N.Y.: Serpent Comics and Print Shop.
Mackal, Roy P. 1980. Searching for hidden animals. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 209–10.
Peace, Carolyn. 1976. The Silver Lake sea serpent. Buffalo Courier-Express, May 16.
Penrod, Bruce. 1998. Interview by Joe Nickell, September 14.
Perry, New York, as it was and is. 1976. Perry, N.Y.: Perry Bicentennial Committee.
Pickett, Thomas J. 1998. Personal communication, September 18.
Roberts, Frank D. 1915. History of the town of Perry, New York. [Perry NY.]: C. G. Clarke and Son, 184–203.
Scott, Sir Walter. 1815. Letter quoted in Binns 1984, 186–87.
The Silver Lake serpent. 1855. Wyoming Times, September 26 (citing earlier issues of July 18-September 19).
The Silver Lake serpent: A full account of the monster as seen in the year 1855. 1880. Castile, N.Y.: Gaines and Terry
Silver Lake serpent revived for Jaycee festival. N.d. Clipping ca. 1960s, vertical file, Perry Public Library.
Vogel, Charity. 1995. Perry recalls fishy tale of sea serpent. Buffalo News, July 22.
5
LAKE CRESCENT
Lake Crescent is a picturesque body of water in northeastern Newfoundland near the small town of Robert’s Arm (figure 5.1). Settlement of the area dates to the 1870s, although native peoples, including the Beothuk Indians, were early visitors. Robert’s Arm (formerly Rabbit’s Arm) has a population of about a thousand. The scenery is gorgeous, with walking trails snaking over lush green hills and around the placid lake. Deep and cold, Lake Crescent is allegedly home to Newfoundland’s own lake monster, affectionately known as “Cressie” (figure 5.2).
Local Indian myths and lore are often cited by cryptozoologists as evidence for the existence of mysterious creatures. As we have seen, this is the case with other lake monsters, including Champ and Memphre, and Cressie is no exception. Indian legends tell of two entities supposedly related to Cressie: the woodum haoot (“pond devil”) and the haoot tuwedyee (“swimming demon”). Several sources make this claim (e.g., Kirk 1998; Eberhart 2002), and it is tempting to marshal old native stories and legends into modern evidence. However, one must be careful. Our own Western folklore tradition includes fantastic creatures from long ago, such as fairies and leprechauns, but these stories are not meant to be taken literally. References to the woodum haoot and haoot tuwedyee seem to have been simply copied from one source to another, and the connection to Cressie has never been verified.
SIGHTINGS
To date, the Lake Crescent monster has not been photographed. Virtually all the evidence for Cressie’s existence comes from eyewitness sightings and reports. Of course, in order for Cressie to exist, there would have to be a breeding population of the animals, probably a dozen or more. Although there has been no organized, sustained effort to verify the creature’s existence, no hard evidence—bones, live specimens, or carcasses—has been found. As of this writing, there have been about a dozen Cressie sightings since the 1940s. Of these, only a handful are detailed enough to be significant.
Figure 5.1 Near the small town of Robert’s Arm, Lake Crescent touts its own lake monster and has been called the “Loch Ness of Newfoundland.” (Map by Benjamin Radford)
According to an information plaque on Cressie:
In the local oral tradition, sightings of Cressie go back to the turn of the
century when one of Robert’s Arm’s first residents, remembered today as “Grandmother Anthony,” was startled from her berry picking by a giant serpent out on the lake. In another daylight sighting of the early 1950s, two local woodsmen on the shores of the lake noticed what they thought was a boom log [one of several large logs wired or cabled together by “eyes” in the end to create a boom—used to hold pulpwood together as it’s floated down a lake or river] just off shore. Puzzled that it was drifting into the wind, the men motored hurriedly out in time to witness the upturned “log,” now huge, black, and rounded, slip beneath the waters of the lake. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Andrew Burton, long since retired, recalls that they wasted no time in regaining the shore. (Cressie’s Castle sign n.d.)
Figure 5.2 A terrifying beast looks out over beautiful Lake Crescent. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)
It should be noted that other sources give somewhat different details of the sighting—for example, placing the year as 1946 instead of the early 1950s and involving three eyewitnesses, not two. Burton described the object as about twenty-five feet long and a foot in diameter. Though it was at first thought to be a log, Burton said that it didn’t act like one: “A boom log would not have sunk suddenly out of sight or travelled against the wind” (Burton n.d.). (This observation is incorrect; see chapters 2 and 7.)
The sign continues:
On Thursday afternoon, September 5th, 1991, at approximately 4:30 P.M., Mr. Pierce Rideout, a resident of Robert’s Arm, was driving his pickup truck at the approach to that town when he noticed a disturbance on the surface of Crescent Lake. He observed through the open window of his truck what seemed to be the bow wave of a small boat about 150 yards off shore, or three-quarters the way from the small beach near Warr’s Service Station and the forested point of land across the lake. It appeared to Mr. Rideout that a slowly moving object had just dropped below the surface, but as he watched, it rose to sight again: a black, fifteen foot long shape pitching forward in a rolling motion much as a whale does but with no sign of a fin, “sail,” paddle, or fluke. Nor did it show a head or a neck. It then sank out of sight and did not reappear.
Lake Monster Mysteries Page 9