THE LAKE ERIE SEA SERPENT: TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF SIGHTINGS
At least twenty states are home to reported lake monsters. Pennsylvania is one of those rare states that boasts not one but two creatures: the cryptid supposedly inhabiting Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County (generally considered a hoax perpetrated by clever marketing minds) and South Bay Bessie, an elusive serpent first spotted in the early years of the nineteenth century.
Unlike Scotland’s Loch Ness, Lake Erie is far too young to shelter a prehistoric water giant leftover from the dinosaur days. Initially formed twelve thousand years ago, Lake Erie has only been a stabilized landmass for the last third of its existence. Stretching 240 miles in length, Lake Erie is much longer than Nessie’s home in Scotland but, at just sixty-two feet, has a far more shallow average depth. Yet while its size and age may be limited, there are no such constraints on the magnitude of the tales reported by Lake Erie’s boaters, tourists and residents.
According to C.S. Rafinesque in his Dissertation on Water Snakes, Sea Snakes, and Sea Serpents, the first mention of a monster in Lake Erie came in 1817. On July 3 of that year, the crew of a schooner reported seeing a creature thirty-five to forty feet long and a foot around. It was so dark mahogany in color that it almost appeared black. No details were offered by the witnesses with regard to the presence of scales, so it is unclear whether the creature was of the snake or fish variety.
In 1854, fishermen on the eastern side of the lake reported a serpentine form moving about the water with great agility. Like the earlier monster, this one was estimated at nearly forty feet in length. Seven years later, another party of fishermen in this same region of Lake Erie came so close to a sixteen-foot serpent that they were able to fully inspect it. They described the thing as greenish with an erect head and tail.
A sketch of a sea serpent that appeared in A Romance of the Sea Serpent: or, the Icthyosaurus by Eugene Batchelder in 1849. Courtesy of Stephanie Hoover.
In 1887, the Dusseau brothers, returning from a day of fishing, spotted a “phosphorescent mass” on the beach. They quickly made their way to the shore only to find the creature in its death throes. Although somewhat like a sturgeon in size, the brothers said the creature also possessed arms that it threw wildly from side to side. They ran for help and rope to capture the creature but, upon their return, found only marks on the beach indicating where it had lain. Apparently, while tossing itself about, the thing tumbled back into the water and was carried off by the waves. Before disappearing, however, the sea monster cast off scales the size of silver dollars.
Lake Erie’s sea serpents were particularly active in the 1890s. Two fishermen spotted a twenty-five-foot-long creature in May 1892. An estimated eighteen inches in diameter, the huge water snake propelled itself using flippers located about five feet behind its large, flat head. It was black with brown, mottled spots. In the fall of this same year, schooner captain Patrick Woods was making his way from Buffalo to Toledo when, about a half mile in front of him, he saw the otherwise calm water of the lake violently whipping into foam. As he neared the spot, he saw a huge sea serpent desperately fighting off an invisible underwater attacker. Woods said he could clearly see the sparkling eyes in its large head. He estimated the brown body to be fifty feet long and nearly four feet in diameter with a head rising four feet out of the water.
In October 1894, on the New York shore of Lake Erie, a creature was reported by a witness seemingly beyond reproach: the Reverend Alex Watt of the Silver Creek Baptist Church. Watt, his wife and a friend were enjoying the sunset from the beach when they heard, then saw, a churning commotion in the water about half a mile from where they stood. A serpent, roaring through the lake at great speed, turned the waves to foam. Watt calculated the portion of the beast rising and falling along the waterline to be at least eighteen feet in length. He described fins along its back but said only three or four were visible during each undulation. Its head, said Watt, was heavier and darker than its body.
The shore of Lake Erie at Presque Isle. Editor’s collection.
“I would not want to be in the water in a small boat if that creature decided to turn hostile,” Watt assured a newspaper reporter.
A hoax perpetrated in the early 1930s had residents around Lake Erie briefly fearing an invasion of pythons. As it turned out, Clifford Wilson, the man who “captured” the python and brought it ashore, was a carnival promoter hoping to cash in on the lake monster phenomenon. It was, in fact, his own eighteen-foot-long Indian python he claimed to have hit with an oar and then wrestled into his rowboat.
Just three years after Wilson’s trickery was uncovered, however, a man named Ben A. Schwartz and five of his friends were sitting on the lakeshore when they saw what they initially believed to be a dog swimming toward them. It was not until the creature changed direction that Schwartz realized he was looking at a gigantic snake at least twenty feet in length. The beast swam along the shoreline for about fifteen minutes before heading out into deeper water. Experts to whom the incident was reported suggested the animal might have been an escaped rock python, an African native known for eating prey as large as deer.
A humorous take on the Lake Erie monster (utilizing an old Creature from the Black Lagoon movie poster) at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center at Presque Isle. Editor’s collection.
Sightings continued in spurts. In the early 1990s, when stories of Loch Ness were achieving worldwide media coverage, Lake Erie’s sea monster also made frequent appearances. A September 1990 encounter received wide press coverage. On this occasion, a family named Bricker claimed to clearly see—from the remarkable distance of more than three football fields—a black creature about thirty-five feet in length. It held its snakelike head erect above the waterline as it traveled at a speed reportedly equaling that of the family’s boat.
Following the attention received by the Brickers’ story, several other witnesses swore they, too, saw the creature. One claimant was a Huron firefighter. Another was the owner of a lake shore cottage. A newspaper editor established a toll-free number dedicated to reports of sightings of the Lake Erie sea serpent, while an enterprising marina owner offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who captured South Bay Bessie alive. He even went so far as to post an optimistic sign on his gates that read: Future Home of the Lake Erie Sea Serpent.
As of yet, no one has captured Bessie. In fact, she has been fairly dormant in the last two decades. Still, no one is ruling out the possibility of a lake monster completely. As long as humans entertain even the slightest chance that mythical beasts of the watery deep may exist, visitors to Lake Erie will scan its surface with more than ordinary diligence.