Real-Life X-Files (16 page)

The group reached the shore safely but were “frightened most out of their senses.” Two of the men—all of whom were “persons of character”—signed an affidavit before a justice of the peace attesting to the incident. Several days later, one of the men was again on the lake—this time with his family—and all of them spied the monster, described as having a head as large as a calfs and a fin, apparently, upon its back (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1855).

Soon, others were reporting sightings of the monster, and excitement spread far and wide. As reported in an 1880 pamphlet,
The Silver Lake Serpent
, “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 [in the village of Perry] found they had ‘struck a bonanza’” (3). In response to a reward of a dollar per foot for the monster’s skin, the
Wyoming Times
wondered, “Where’s
Barnum? What will he give for the Serpent, dead or alive?” (6) Several expeditions were launched—ranging from a whaleman with a harpoon, to a vigilance society of men armed with guns, to a company having a capital stock of one thousand dollars 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, reports 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). Another source says, “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” (“True” 1974).

Mr. Walker was Artemus B. Walker (1813-1889), and the scheme attributed to him and “a few of his intimate and trustworthy friends” is described in a local history by Frank D. Roberts in 1915:

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, 200-01).

Roberts adds that “Many nights were spent” in the construction of the creature, after which it was transported to the lake one night 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, Perry’s city limits signs sport a sea monster, and the town annually hosts a lighthearted Silver Lake Serpent Festival—most recently featuring hot-air balloons. (One of these was an inflated sea serpent in which I flew over the scenic lake and countryside. See figure
13.1
.)

Figure 13.1. Ballon’s-eye view of silver Lake, Wyoming country, New
York, site of 1855 lake monster sightings.(Photo by Joe Nivkell)

The hoax story is a colorful yarn, but is it true? It has certainly been reported as factual, even by writers inclined to promote mysterious monsters—providing a touch of skepticism that seemed to enhance those writers’ credibility. For example John Keel’s
Strange Creatures from Time and Space
(1970, 260-61) claims the case proves “that a sea serpent hoax is possible and was possible even in the year 1855. It’s too bad there were
no psychologists and sociologists in 1855 who could have visited Silver Lake and made a thorough study of the ‘monster mania’ that developed there.” Keel (260) also claims that “witnesses generally gave a very accurate description of what they had seen.” He is echoed by Roy R 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). Alas, these writers are merely assuming people saw what Roberts’s description of the fake serpent indicates they
should
have seen. In fact, not one of the original eyewitness reports mentions the yellow spots or the red mouth. Keel concedes the omission of the spots but rationalizes that the eyewitnesses might have simply “missed” them, or, he says, “perhaps, the newspaper editors felt that ‘yellow polka-dots’ were a bit much and deliberately deleted that detail from the published accounts” (Keel 1970,260). But several of the reports were sworn affida-vits, apparently given in their entirety (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1855;
Silver Lake Serpent
1880). A 1955 account of the sightings repeated the yellow- spots canard and claimed “general agreement” from eyewitnesses that the denizen also sported “red eyes and a savage-looking mouth equipped with sharp fangs and a long pointed tongue” (Douglass 1955, 118).

Among the problems with the hoax story is that—while a wonderfully skeptical tale—it exists in a suspicious number of often-contradictory variants. For example, whereas Roberts’s previously cited account of the hoax’s discovery refers to a wire-and-canvas monster being found by firemen in the hotel attic, other sources give a very different explanation. Noting that the Walker House burned to the ground on December 19, 1857, they state that “in the debris left by the fire were found the remains of the Silver Lake Monster” (Mackal 1980,209), specifically the remains were “the frame of the serpent” (“Silver Lake Serpent Revived” n.d.) or maybe just “remnants of wire and green canvas” (Fielding 1998).

An account in the
New York Folklore
newsletter notes that “there is some discrepancy” as to when and how the hoax was discovered. While “some say” it was the fire that uncovered evidence of the monster, “others report the hoax was revealed in 1860 when one of the men involved in the hoax simply got mad at A.B. Walker, the instigator of the hoax,
and for one reason or another blurted out the truth in a moment of anger” (Kimiecik 1988).

At least one source asserts that “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, an analytical account 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 the many variations—what folklorists term
variants
—the story is appropriately described as a “legend,” “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 the books and articles that give a source for the tale cite Frank D. 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, alas, 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 literally monstrous 1855 mechanism raises further suspicion about the tale. Never mind the alleged laying of the “gas pipe,” when gas lines did not come to Perry until 1909 nor piped water until 1896 (Perry 1976,119,124), raising questions about the availability of the pipe. And never mind the “small light rubber hose” that reportedly extended from shore to serpent, when the availability of that seems equally doubtful in a mid-nineteenth-century village. One account, seemingly cognizant of this problem, asserts that “Materials were ordered in Boston” (Douglass 1955, 120). There is a large old bellows, attributed to the hoax, that reposes in the Pioneer Museum at Perry (see figure
13.2
), but its display card states only that it is “
believed
to have been used to inflate the Silver Lake sea serpent” (emphasis added). And a dredged-up millstone that some supposed had been ballast for the monster was discovered off the shore
opposite
the one from which the monster was reportedly operated. A knowledgeable source reports that some local boys once rolled the stone downhill and along a dock to its underwater site (Rice 1998). The questionable attribution of such artifacts to the hoaxed-serpent legend demonstrates the burgeoning nature of the tale.

Figure 13.2. Author with bellows (probably a blacksmith’s) allegedly used to
inflate a fake rubber serpent as part of an elaborate hoax.

Materials aside, the complexity of the alleged contraption as described by Roberts provokes skepticism. Although such a monster would not seem to preclude the laws of physics (Pickett 1998), the propulsion method Roberts describes raises serious questions. The three ropes that were reportedly attached to the serpent and extended to three lakeside sites would have greatly complicated the operation, not to mention multiplying the danger of detection. A far simpler and more credible method of creating a lake monster would have been that which artist Harry Willson Watrous (1857-1940) reportedly employed. In 1934, he confessed that the Lake George, New York, “hippogriff” that had frightened vacationers three decades before had been merely a log operated from shore by a rope and pulley (MacDougall 1958, 114).

In contrast, the Silver Lake contrivance would seem to have been a rather remarkable engineering feat—especially for a hotelier and some village friends. One suspects they would have sewed a lot of canvas and made many experiments before achieving a workable monster, yet Rob
erts (1915, 202) claims theirs worked on the first attempt. In fact, over the years attempts to replicate the elaborate monster have failed. “They have kept on trying to make one that submerged and came up,” stated Clark Rice (Fielding 1998). One news source, calling it an “unresolved issue” as to “how the canvas and wire serpent swam at all,” reports on an attempt by the Perry Jaycees to duplicate the creature: “They were unsuccessful. Their Serpent was too heavy and unwieldy to ‘swim.’ The club wished to hold a money-raising festival around Silver Lake and needed a Sea Serpent to attract crowds, so they tried making it with other materials and finally settled on a papier-mache and fiberglass construction. It could float but moved woodenly through the water” (Peace 1976).

Despite the claim that Walker originated the serpent, the 1855 news-paper accounts make clear that there was an earlier Indian tradition about a Silver Lake serpent and that, furthermore, such a monster had been “repeatedly seen during the past thirty years” (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1855).6 On July 19, 1855, just six days into the monster scare, the
Wyoming Times
published a letter about a similar experience of “some 21 or 22 years ago” (cited in
Silver Lake Serpent
1880,13).