Lake Monster Mysteries (13 page)

Burton, Helen Brown. 1988. Not always fair [letter to editor].
Stanstead (Quebec) Journal,
July 6.

Citro, Joseph A. 1994.
Green Mountain ghosts, ghouls & unsolved mysteries.
New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Histoire.… d'une bonne bouffe! N.d. Placemat of La Legende Restaurant, Magog, Quebec (copy obtained June 5, 2003).

Lake Memphremagog: Beautiful waters. N.d. Newport, Vt., tourist leaflet circulated by local chamber of commerce.

“Lake monster” triggers cross-border fight. 2003. CBC News Online, May 18.
www.cbc.ca/ stories/2003/05/18/memphre0305i8
.

Malloy, Barbara. 2003a. Interview by Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford, June 5.

_____. 2003b.
Memphre encounters: Celebrating twenty years, 1983—2003.
Newport, Vt.: Privately printed.

_____. 2004. Discover Memphre.
www.memphreusa.com
.

New Encyclopaedia Britannica.
1978. Micropaedia, s.v. “Beaver,” 1:915.

Nickell, Joe. 1996. Nessie hoax redux.
Skeptical Briefs
6, no. 1 (March): 1–2.

_____. 2003. Legend of the Lake Champlain monster.
Skeptical Inquirer
27, no. 4 (July-August): 18–23.

Perron, Darren. 2003. Sea monster slows merger. Channel 3 News, September 24.
www.wcax.com/global/story
.

Smith, Robin. 2003a. Hands off my Memphre, says woman/campaigns to own sea monster.
Caledonian Record Online Edition,
May 17.
www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/local
.

_____. 2003b. Memphre issue holds up merger.
Caledonian Record Online Edition,
July 19.
www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/printer
.

_____. 2003c. Woman recounts sighting of Memphremagog monster.
Caledonian Record Online Edition,
May 10.
www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/printer
.

Travers, Eileen. 2003. Merger dilemma: Who gets custody of lake monster? Cana-da.com News, August 23.
www.canada.com/components/printstory
.

Wickstrom, Lois. N.d. The man who named Memphré. Nessie's Grotto,
www.simegen.com/writers/nessie/boisvert.htm
(accessed February 24, 2004).

On the night of July 13, 1855, in Wyoming County, New York, two boys and five men were fishing from a boat on Silver Lake near the village of Perry. After several minutes of watching a floating log, one man exclaimed, “Boys, that thing is moving!” Indeed, according to the
Wyoming Times,
after bobbing in and out of sight, suddenly, “the
SERPENT
, for now there was no mistaking its character, darted from the water about four feet from the stern of the boat, close by the rudder-paddle, the head and forward part of the monster rising above the surface of the water.… All in the boat had a fair view of the creature, and concur in representing it as a most horrid and repulsive looking monster” (Silver Lake serpent 1855).

Soon, others were reporting sightings, and excitement spread far and wide. As reported in an 1880 pamphlet, “People came on foot, by carriage, on horseback, and in fact, by any means of locomotion in their power, to see if even a glimpse of the monster could be obtained, and the hotels found they had ‘struck a bonanza.'” Several expeditions were launched—ranging from a whaler with a harpoon to a vigilance society of men armed with guns to a company with $1,000 worth of capital stock and bent on capturing the creature (
Silver Lake serpent
1880, 3–21).

This was all to no avail, and the excitement eventually died down. Then, according to a modern account: “Several years later [1857] a fire broke out in the Walker Hotel. Firemen rushed to the scene to put out the blaze. When they worked their way into the attic they came upon a strange sight. In the midst of the flames they saw a great green
serpent made of canvas and coiled wire” (
Legend
[1984], 11). States another source: “The truth was then revealed by Mr. Walker himself,” who “built that monster serpent with his friends to pick up the business at the Walker House Hotel” (quoted in
Legend
[1984], 1).

Mr. Walker was Artemus B. Walker (1813–1889), and the earliest version of the hoax attributed to him and his friends appeared in the December 12, 1860,
Wyoming County Mirror.
“Everyone remembers,” stated the brief article, “that during the Silver Lake snake excitement, at Perry, the hotel there reaped a rich harvest of visitors. A correspondent of the
Buffalo Commercial
says that when about two years and a half ago, the hotel was partially burned, a certain man discovered the serpent in the hotel,” constructed “of India rubber.” According to the reporter, the man who uncovered the rubber fake “has just got mad at the landlord and divulged the secret.” The newspaper story ended on a skeptical note: “We suppose this last game is just about as much of a ‘self' as the original snake.”

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)

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).