Lake Monster Mysteries (16 page)

Burton, Andrew. N.d. Quoted in
Moments in time,
tourism brochure, 351.

Cressie's Castle sign. N.d. Tourist information sign located at Cressie's Castle on the shore of Lake Crescent. Adapted from Bragg's
Beothuk Times
articles (1991, 1992).

Eberhart, George. 2002. Cressie. In
Mysterious creatures: A guide to cryptozoology.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO.

Kirk, John. 1998.
In the domain of the lake monsters.
Toronto: Key Porter Books.

Morgan, Lawrence. 2000. Handwritten account of Cressie sighting. Author's collection, provided by Fred Parsons.

Mr. X. 1986. A mari usque ad mare.
Fortean Times
46 (spring): 49.

Parsons, Fred. 2003. Interview by Benjamin Radford, June 23.

_____. 2004. Correspondence with Benjamin Radford, February 18.

Power, Jennifer. N.d. What lurkes in Crescent Lake?
Norwester
newspaper.

Called “one of the grandest hoaxes of all times” (Lord 1999, 187), the Lake George monster has occasionally resurfaced (
figure 6.1
) since its debut at Hague Bay, New York, in 1904. In 2002 and 2003 I investigated the historic case and even examined what is purported to be the original fake monster. I also investigated the possibility of a real leviathan in Lake George. The findings are fascinating and revealing.

Located near the southern end of Lake Champlain, Lake George is a placid, thirty-two-mile-long lake in western New York's Adirondack region. There, at Hague Bay in 1904, artist Harry Watrous (1857–1940) repaid a prank that had been played on him.

Watrous, a well-known genre painter and onetime president of the National Academy of Design, had made a wager with Colonel William Mann, editor of
Town Topics,
a New York scandal sheet. The men were competing over who could catch the largest trout, and one day Mann held up what appeared to be a thirty- to forty-pound specimen as his boat passed Watrous's. However, the artist later determined that the fish was a painted wooden fake, and he hit on a scheme to out-trick the trickster (Bolton n.d.; Henry n.d.).

Thirty years later, Watrous (1934) recalled:

Figure 6.1
The apparently original fake monster used in a 1904 hoax is shown here emerging from Lake George in a later re-creation of the incident. (Photo by Walter Grishkot; copy courtesy of Lake George Historical Association Museum)

While the Colonel was in New York attending to business during the week ending June 27, 1904, I got a cedar log and fashioned one end of it into my idea of a sea monster or hippogriff. I made a big mouth, a couple of ears, like the ears of an ass, four big teeth, two in the upper and two in the lower jaw, and for eyes I inserted in the sockets of the monster two telegraph pole insulators of green glass.

I painted the head in yellow and black stripes, painted the inside of the mouth red and the teeth white, painted two red places for nostrils and painted the ears blue. The log of which I fashioned the head was about ten feet long. To the bottom of the log I attached a light rope which I put through a pulley attached to a stone which served as an anchor. The pulley line was about 100 feet long and was manipulated from the shore.

The artist continued:

Well, I went out and anchored the hippogriff close to the path which Col. Mann's boat would have to take from the landing to his island. I tested the monster several times, sunk it and waited for Col. Mann and his party to arrive on Saturday afternoon. The Colonel had as his guests Mr. Davies, Mrs. Bates and several other congenial spirits. Hidden behind a clump of bushes on shore I watched as the launch approached and just as it was about ten feet away from my trap I released the monster. It came up nobly, the head shaking as if to rid itself of water, and I will say that to several people in Col. Mann's boat it was a very menacing spectacle.

Mr. Davies, who had a rather high pitched voice, uttered a scream that must have been heard as far away as Burlington, Vt. Mrs. Bates, a very intrepid lady, of Milesian extraction, stood on a seat in the boat and beat the water with her parasol, shouting indistinguishable sentences in her native tongue. Col. Mann shouted, “Good God, what is it?” through his whiskers and kept repeating his query as long as the boat was in sight. As soon as I gave the audience a good look at the hippogriff I pulled it down to the bottom of the lake again.

Watrous concluded:

Although Col. Mann's home was on an island, the news of the sea serpent was all along the shore of the lake that night. Taking advantage of the darkness of night, I moved the monster from place to place along the lake shore and everybody who saw my monster had a new story to tell of its awe-inspiring appearance. Each day we provided new thrills for the populace, and that is how the rumor started that there was an honest-to-goodness sea serpent living in Lake George.

News of the incident spread across the state. One of the sites where Watrous reportedly located the hippogriff on subsequent nighttime excursions was near a local hotel, the Island Harbour House. According to a local tale (Henry n.d.):

A young couple honeymooning at the hotel had gone out for a moonlight canoe ride when the monster surfaced close to their canoe, causing it to capsize. The groom, unable to keep his wits about him, swam to shore, leaving his bride to fend for herself. She eventually made her way to shore, stormed into the hotel and packed her bags, announcing not only the end of the honeymoon but also for the marriage. It is reported that she was actually grateful to the serpent for showing her that the true monster was her (soon to be former) husband.

Three decades later, Watrous was asked to reenact his hoax for an Independence Day carnival. According to the
Daily News,
the elderly artist agreed and brought his hippogriff out of “hibernation.” Watrous set up his contraption and, during one of the celebrations water events, spooked a boatful of onlookers. The incident was said to be the highlight of the carnival. Watrous boasted, “I spoofed the world once with the horrendous beast; and I spoofed it again this afternoon” (Lord 1999,189).

Ben Radford and I were able to view what is purportedly Watrous's original hippogriff—dubbed “George”—in August 2002. We visited Lake George Village to see the wooden fake, displayed at the Lake George Historical Association Museum. Unfortunately, that monster was a fake once removed, a copy of the alleged original. The latter was housed—at least temporarily—in a display case at the Hague Community Center, and Ben and I were graciously allowed to photograph and even measure the artifact (
figure 6.2
). The following year I paid another
visit, conducted original research, and took additional photographs. I also visited the former Watrous mansion, now a bed-and-breakfast named Ruah. The proprietor, Peter Foster, kindly showed me the lakeside rock with an embedded eyebolt to which Watrous supposedly fastened his contraption's pulley line (
figure 6.3
).

Figure 6.2
“George” the monster poses with Joe Nickel1 in Hague-on-Lake George, New York. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

Figure 6.3
Eyebolt embedded in a rock on the old Harry Watrous property, reportedly used to secure the pulley line that operated his bogus monster. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

During my research, I discovered some discrepancies between the supposedly original hippogriff and Watrous's description of it. Whereas he stated, “The log of which I fashioned the head was about ten feet long” (Watrous 1934), the displayed creature is less than half that length, measuring just fifty-two inches. As further investigation revealed, however, the monster had been fashioned in two sections, fitted together with “a half lap join” and secured by a bolt, according to Phil Kellogg (2004), who made the replica; only the front end of the figure is exhibited.

Another discrepancy is the lack of ears. Watrous (1934) provided his monster with “a couple of ears, like the ears of an ass,” which he painted blue, but the existing creature has no ears. A slot cut in the top of the head, however, is a likely attachment site for such ears. I suspect that they were fashioned out of sheet metal, like the back fin.

The bottom edge of the fin bears flanges, made by snipping the metal and bending the sections at alternating right angles, then nailing them down. Old flange imprints and nail holes in the wood show that, at some time in its history, the fin was reworked or replaced. In much the same way that art experts differentiate an original painting from a copy by evidence of alterations made during creation, changes in the fin placement suggest that the artifact is the original, with a history of use and abuse. Other details, including the missing ears and evidence of repainting, flaking paint, damage, and repair, are all consistent with the object's purported age and function. I also attempted to date the glass insulators used for the monster's eyes. I had intern Robert Lewis contact a person knowledgeable about such things, and he said that the pair appeared to be telephone or toll insulators of about the period in question, although he was unable to personally examine them and take definitive caliper measurements (Katonak 2004).

There is one additional detail: the presence of a U.S. Customs label affixed to the monster's underbelly (
figure 6.4.
) Therein lies a tale: Walter Grishkot (2004) told me that he first came across the object in about 1962 in the garage of an elderly caretaker named Louis Spelman in Silver Bay. Reportedly, Spelman had discovered the relic decades earlier during the sale of some property in town (Henry n.d.). Grishkot
borrowed the monster from Spelman and had a black-and-white photo made of it emerging from water (see
figure 6.1
). Following some newspaper publicity, a woman in the Virgin Islands purchased the monster from Spelman for just twenty-five dollars (Bolton n.d.; It's monstrous 1962). In 1966, Grishkot and his wife Joann were on a Caribbean cruise and looked up the woman who had bought the monster. They brought it back so that it could be displayed locally. Walt recalls that it was too long to fit in their rental car, so he had to remove the bolt and divide the object into its two segments. The couple had some difficulty getting the artifact through customs, as the officials were unsure how to estimate the duty, there being no category for “monster” (Grishkot 2004; Henry n.d.; Bolton n.d.).

Whatever the true status of the “original” hippogriff—and I am cautiously prepared to accept it as authentic—Harry Watrous's prank takes its place among many other monster hoaxes. Some of the ones I discovered during my research, including two from the 1930s, specifically echo the 1904 hippogriff hoax. In 1934, for example, Canadian
bathers saw a monster in Lake Ontario near Kingston. They described “Kingstie” as “a strange creature with the head of a dragon and eyes of fire.” Finally, in 1979, three local men confessed that they had been responsible for the incident. “As a prank,” reports one writer, “they had fabricated a semblance of the creature using a barrel filled with empty bottles for buoyancy and fitting it with a dragon-like head, rope and anchor to keep it in one place, and twine attached to the rope that ran underwater to the shore of Cartwright Bay to permit them to bob its barrel body and head up and down” (Colombo 1999,117).