On July 9 of that same year, Fred Parsons left Robert’s Arm with his wife at around noon. As he drove along the lake, he saw something in the water perhaps a hundred yards out. “What I saw was like a long, snakelike creature on the water,” he told me. “It was about fifteen or twenty feet long and a dark brownish color. … It was a long, sleek body without any significantly large head, basically right on the water. It was basically right level with the water, just lying there, you know” (figure 5.3). He glimpsed it only briefly, and by the time he realized that he might have seen Cressie, he had passed it by. Parsons (2003) believes that it’s “quite possible” that Cressie is a giant eel. “What I saw indicated it was an eel-like creature. No question about that.…but still we have a lake monster” (figure 5.4).
Figure 5.3 Fred Parsons’s sketch of his lake monster sighting: “it was about fifteen or twenty feet long and had a dark brownish color.” (Illustration by Fred Parsons for Benjamin Radford)
Figure 5.4 Fred Parsons points to where he sighted Cressie, off Highway 380 near the town of Robert’s Arm. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)
In the years since his sighting, Parsons has become the areas resident collector of lake monster reports, following up on sightings and interviewing witnesses. In recent years, other sightings (all essentially describing the same long, snakelike shape) have occasionally been reported. On August 1, 2003, Cressie was sighted in the lower part of the lake by French teacher Jill Warren and several other town residents.
Some reports are difficult to decipher and even harder to take literally. Consider, for example, one local man’s description of his sighting: On July 15, 2000, Lawrence Morgan and his wife, driving along the lake, saw something that they first thought was a speedboat. It vanished, and when it reappeared, “it was traveling so very fast and the spray was really flying, as though it was after something.” Because it was quite a distance away (“closer to the other side of the lake”), the couple had difficulty making out what it was. “The sun was shining on it and the large fin looked like silver, it shone so bright” (Morgan 2000).
What are we to make of this sighting? The report has been mentioned in several published accounts, and the eyewitnesses’ character and credibility have been widely attested to (Morgan is a World War II veteran). However, with very few exceptions, eyewitness credibility is not the issue. “There’s several locals who have spotted it and the fact of the matter is they’ve got nothing to lie about, they’re honest people,” Parsons (2003) told me. But even entirely credible teachers, priests, and war veterans can be mistaken. There are at least two major elements in this sighting that suggest that whatever these people saw, it wasn’t Cressie. First, and most obvious, a living lake creature is unlikely to reach the fantastic speeds necessary to be compared to a speedboat. Many animals can swim at great speeds underwater, but to reach that speed on the surface—and, according to the eyewitnesses, kick up spray—is unheard of. Second, the eyewitnesses specifically mention a fin, but virtually no other sightings include this feature. It’s also curious that a feature as small as a fin would be discernible from such a great distance.
At this remove, there’s no way to know exactly what the object was. Could it have been a speedboat or a personal watercraft? The witnesses said that it was a warm and pleasant day, and at first they thought it was just someone out enjoying the lake. The fact that the large fin shone like silver suggests that the object was metallic, as might be found on a small watercraft. Given the distances involved, and the possible vision problems that might plague a World War II veteran, such a mistake seems at least possible.
This doesn’t mean that this sighting is worthless or irrelevant to Cressie. Quite the contrary, it is very instructive, for it shows us that some sightings that are almost certainly not Cressie are reported as evidence for the monster. Lake monster reports take a wide variety of forms; anything strange, odd, or mysterious seen in the lake is likely to be interpreted as the creature. People tend to see what they wish or hope to see, and once locals and tourists become aware of the “monster,” they are likely to see monsters even when there are none.
One piece of local lore involves a large hole that was found in the lake’s ice one winter in the early 1980s. Although some speculated that it was made by Cressie, divers searched part of the lake and found nothing unusual. As for Cressie’s involvement, Mayor Robert Haggett dismissed it as a good-natured joke: “Somebody spread the rumor around that a monster had surfaced.”
CRESSIE CANDIDATES
One thing that virtually all the witnesses agree on is that Cressie is dark and eel-like in appearance. George Eberhart, in his excellent encyclopedia Mysterious Creatures, suggests that Cressie might be an oversized American eel (Anguilla rostrata). Indeed, “the lake and surrounding ponds are famous for their population of abnormally large” eels (www.gabourgeois.com). One source claims that “a giant conger eel was seen by four loggers boring its way through a sandbank” in the summer of 1960 but provides no further details (Mr. X 1986).
Such eels typically grow to less than five feet, but Robert’s Arm writer Russell Bragg (1995) notes that “RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] divers… may have accidentally discovered related ‘monsters’ while investigating an unfortunate drowning accident in another similar-sized lake in the area, South Pond. They returned to the surface with descriptions of giant eels as thick as a man’s thigh. Many believe Cressie to be such a creature.”
Though writer John Kirk (1998) describes the eel hypothesis as “tenuous at best,” it is by far the most likely explanation, and the most popular one among longtime residents and eyewitnesses. Robert’s Arm senior citizen Hughie Ryan says, “I think [the monster is] all nonsense. But there are some big fish in the lake, and I think there may be a giant eel in there.” Says seventy-year-old lifelong resident Ray Hewlett, “Some of the old fellers used to see it, they say. A giant eel they used to say, years ago” (Power n.d.). As Parsons (2004) told me, “It was only recently that a couple of trappers/fishermen were granted permission to set out eel traps in the lake. They successfully secured a high number of them.” There is thus little doubt that the lake has many eels, so it isn’t such a stretch to think that Cressie, the “eel-like” lake monster, actually is an eel. Otters are also very common in and around the lake, and as Joe Nickell has pointed out in earlier chapters, otters can be (and have been) mistaken for lake monsters.
Locals offer several other explanations, including floating or drifting trees and logs. There is no question that the lake contains countless sunken logs. After all, it was used for decades to transport well more than half a million cords of pulpwood that was harvested from the area and shipped to large paper mills in Europe. I spoke with several people who thought that logs were a likely explanation.
Some sightings may be triggered by bubbles of gas from the decomposing pulpwood littering the lake bottom, which bring the logs to the surface. After years of tree traffic, the resulting tree rind (several feet thick) has settled along the bottom of the lake. The rind sometimes traps air, and the gas and air mixture then explodes. According to Ray Hewlett, “I heard fellows say that years ago the big waves would come up. The air and rind down in the bottom used to burst” (Power n.d.). (For an explanation of a similar process at Lake Champlain, see chapter 2.)
TOURISM
The tourism potential of their local monster has not been lost on the officials and citizens of Robert’s Arm and the Beothuk Trail Tourism Committee. In fact, the town has done much to publicize itself as a lake monster tourist destination. The entire province has suffered economically from the dying timber industry and the depletion of cod fisheries, and tourism is being promoted like never before. The main effort began in the early 1990s, when local resident Russell Bragg created a sign welcoming visitors to “The ‘Loch Ness’ of Newfoundland!” In addition to the sign, a stylized, full-size (?) model of Cressie greets tourists with fearsome teeth and a distinctly dragonlike countenance (figure 5.5). A quarter mile or s
o down the road, you’ll find the Lake Crescent Inn, run by Evelyn and Bruce Warr. As their brochure says, “Bring your camera! You just might see Cressie, our lake monster.” If you don’t see the beastie from the hotel, a twenty-minute walk along the lake will bring you to Cressie’s Castle, a scenic area created especially for lake monster watching. It’s outfitted with wooden benches, a boardwalk, and an information plaque on Cressie. Of course, there are also the requisite Cressie art contests, Cressie parade floats, and so on.
Figure 5.5 A life-size statue of Cressie the lake monster welcomes visitors to Robert’s Arm and the Beothuk Trail. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)
CONCLUSION
As with other reported lake monsters, its a mistake to look for only one explanation for all the Cressie sightings. In truth, there are many things in the lake—living and otherwise—that might double as large lake creatures. The sightings are probably a mixture of misidentifications, floating logs, large fish, otters, and perhaps even giant eels. Its also possible that Cressie is a prehistoric survivor or a fantastic creature unknown to science, but there’s no evidence for such a claim. If a group of unknown creatures has existed in the lake for centuries (accounting for the Indian legends), it’s difficult to explain why there have been so few sightings. Crescent is a relatively small lake along a highway next to a small town, yet sightings date back only sixty years, averaging one every five years.
Whether fish, log, tree rind, giant eel, or unknown monster, Cressie’s true identity is mostly irrelevant to the residents of Robert’s Arm. Whether it lurks in the waters of Lake Crescent or not, the creature certainly exists in the hearts and minds of this small Newfoundland community. Like many lake monsters, Cressie is used as the local bogeyman: “mothers threaten misbehaving children with, ‘Be good, or the monster in the lake will get you!’” (Bragg 1995). A poem, written by the fourth-grade class at Crescent Elementary, celebrates their town and the local monster: “Come home to Robert’s Arm / It’s the place to be / There’s places to go / And old friends to see / Go for a boat ride / Or swim in Crescent Lake / But watch for old Cressie / Who’s lying in wait.”
REFERENCES
Bragg, Russell A. 1991. Beothuk Times: Newsletter of the Beothuk Trail Tourism Committee, vol. 2, no. 2 (summer).
_____. 1992. Beothuk Times: Newsletter of the Beothuk Trail Tourism Committee, vol. 3, no. 1 (summer).
_____. 1995. Have you seen Cressie? In Remembrances of Robert’s Arm: Come home year 1995. By Wanda Jackman, Bonnie Warr, and Russell A. Bragg. Corner Brook, Newfoundland: Western Star Publishers.
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.
6
LAKE GEORGE
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.
THE ORIGINAL HOAX
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.
RESURFACINGS
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).
RESEARCHING WATROUS’S MONSTER
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).
Lake Monster Mysteries Page 10
