“South Bay Bessie” is the most “official” of various terms referring
to what is perhaps the most famous of Great Lakes monsters — of
which many have been reported over the decades.
Cryptozoologists have remarked on a “monster belt” or “monster
latitudes,” corresponding to roughly between 45 degrees and 60 degrees
north latitude, where such phenomena seems most well-documented. Most
of the Great Lakes fall within these “monster latitudes,” and parts of
them have developed monster traditions. Any crypto-fishing expedition
along the Great Lakes waterways (especially online) will quickly
disclose stories of such hometown monsters as “Champ” (Lake Champlain),
“Pressie” (Presque Isle), “Kingstie” (Kingston, Ontario), “Benzo” (Lake
Mendota, Wisconsin), or any number of one-off reports of serpentine
— or, on rarer occasions, squid-like — monstrosities in our
lakes.
Certainly many of these derived from bastardized Indian legends, not
to mention vintage newspaper hoaxes, a fond pastime of the frontier
press when there was a shortage of worthwhile news to print. Still,
many believers cleave to the rather romantic notion that a surviving
species of sea dinosaur, or a reptile-like early whale from the Eocene,
still gallivants around the Lake Erie Islands and Toledo clear out to
the Pennsylvania shoreline.
Also known as “Lem” or “Lemmy” — acronymically derived from
Lake Erie Monster — and, in some archaic references, called the
Great Snake of Lake Erie, the creature was recorded as being seen as
early as 1793, by the sloop Felicity; her captain chanced to
startle a giant serpent in the shallows of the Lake Erie Islands.
An article by 19th-century science writer Constantine Samuel
Rafinesque described a sighting (from two years earlier, July 3, 1817)
of a freshwater “huge serpent.” Rafinesque equated the lake denizen
matter-of-factly with the alleged sea serpents cruising the world’s
oceans. Erie’s serpent, witnessed by a schooner three miles from shore,
was between 35 and 40 feet long, a foot in diameter, and dark brown or
black. Rafinesque lamented that the report did not specify smooth skin
or scales, surmised the animal a hitherto-undiscovered giant eel, and
(as was a habit of his) suggested possible Latin scientific names.
His classification was a bit presumptuous, as the “species” has gone
through long periods of absence from the sight of man, punctuated by
some fairly spectacular returns and shameless publicity stunts and
newspaper hoaxes.
In 1887, two brothers named Dusseu reported “a fish with arms” about
20 to 30 feet long, writhing on a beach west of Port Clinton,
apparently in pain. An 1889 newspaper from Sandusky quoted a fisherman
as having seen the water monster at Kelleys Island. An 1892 report from
Toledo claimed the captain and crew of the schooner Madaline, inbound from Buffalo, were amazed at a 50-foot serpentine creature with
fins, about four feet in circumference, violently churning the water
before coming to rest and allowing the mariners a good look at it. “It
was a terrible looking object. It had vicious, sparkling eyes and a
large head.”
A Canadian report from 1896 describes a 35-foot-long serpent with
eyes the size of silver dollars basking near shore, observed by four
witnesses for all of 45 minutes on a peaceful May dusk. One of the
onlookers, a captain, threw rocks at the monster, which would lunge at
the projectiles as if they were prey, exhibiting a doglike profile to
its head. A Sandusky newspaper report from 1912 that a sea monster had
burst up through the spring ice and made for shore at least had the
chivalry to announce itself in the end as an April Fool’s joke.
In 1931 there came an Associated Press bulletin from Sandusky that
suggested Rafinesque’s Latin classifications might at last be applied;
fisherman had stunned and hauled ashore a 20-foot long serpent with
dark, alligator-like hide. Many fringe-science books and websites still
refer to this remarkable specimen — generally ignoring that the
men turned out to be hucksters, connected with the carnival trade, who
were trying to pass off a python snake as the “monster.”
The community newspaper Ottawa County Beacon tallied “modern”
sightings of the Great Snake, beginning with reports from 1960 and
1969. The latter witness, at South Bass Island, said an underwater
snake of indeterminate length and two feet in width, nosed up to within
six feet of him. The Great Snake re-emerged with spates of widely
publicized sightings in the 1980s and ’90s.
A frightened boater in 1985 called the Coast Guard to report the
monster churning the water aft of him. A woman witness had a similar
feeling of terror when what she thought was an upturned boat off Rye
Beach in Huron resolved itself to be a large animal with a prominent
grin on its face. Also in 1985, two Cleveland Coast Guardsman alleged a
snakelike monster off a municipal beach. In 1990, two Huron
firefighters — one a retired Coast Guardsman — spied the
monster as a humped, 35-foot-long shape, which they said was definitely
not a log or a sea wall. A couple running a charter-boat business saw
something very similar at Kelleys Island. A few years later at
Huntington Beach in Bay Village, a beachful of witnesses on a July
evening saw a ridged back, estimated between 25 and 50 feet long, rise
out of the water.
Among the onlookers at Huntington was 11-year-old Victor Rasgaitis
and his family. Rasgaitis, later a folk-rock musician and finalist in
the High-School Rock-Offs, said, “My cousins were in from South
Carolina — they wanted to see Lake Erie. And they were standing
there on the walking path … and we saw these bubbles, like something
rising, not even past the jetty.
“It came up a foot out of the water, just this crest. It looked like
water — but sort of solid.” After what seemed like a full minute
or two, it submerged and was gone. Victor said that no boats were
nearby that might have caused a freak wake, and in any case, a wake
doesn’t last that long.
“I was a little afraid to go in the water after that.”
Rasgaitis later paged through volumes of animal life and decided it
most resembled a gigantic sturgeon, a bony fish once highly plentiful
on the lakes but latterly fished to near-extinction. European and
Russian sturgeon, a source of the caviar trade, can indeed reach
several yards in length; such dimensions for an American species would
be remarkable in itself.
Most South Bay Bessie reports focus on the southwestern part of Lake
Erie, along the Ohio coast of the Lake Erie Islands — admittedly,
popular resort areas for pleasure boats, decadent parties and tourists,
where drinking and carousing synergize nicely with a fun and
exploitable monster legend. Even The Wall Street Journal reported on the community’s zeal in capitalizing on the monster
tradition. The name “South Bay Bessie,” in fact, was selected in 1989
from among 115 entries submitted in a contest held by the Ottawa
County Beacon. In November 1990, the Huron town council, with an
eye to the publicity, passed a resolution designating themselves an
official monster capture and control center. The Huron Lagoons marina
owner garnered international publicity by having Lloyds of London
underwrite a $102,700 reward for anyone able to catch South Bay Bessie
(or any unknown aquatic animal at least 1,000 lbs. and 30 feet long)
alive and well. The reward went safely unclaimed, though a “holding
pen” was prepared (actually just a foot-deep pool to hold dredgings
from a local marina).
Ohio State University oceanographer and zoologist Charles Herdendorf
was duly consulted on possible feeding habits of a lake monster.
Herdendorf was game enough to suggest his own Latin name for the beast,
Obscura eriensis huronii, or “rarely seen, indigenous to waters
of Huron.” He indulged in a mental exercise that biologists and
limnologists have played for time to time, calculating just how many
theoretical, carnivorous “monsters” a lake could hold given size, water
volume, quantity of fish to feed upon, etc. He concluded Lake Erie had
the capacity to support 175 creatures of 35 feet or so and 2,000 kg. in
weight.
Herdendorf’s personal opinion was that South Bay Bessie was actually
an illusion created by schools of the lake’s plentiful carp, herded
into serpentine strings by sandbars and shallows.
Other possible suspects for the monster’s identity include the
sturgeon (though one witness to a multi-humped apparition denied this
vehemently), once so plentiful in the area that 1880s Sandusky earned
the title of caviar capital of the USA; and wild exaggerations of the
common black water snake, which nest, breed and sun in massive
quantities around the Lake Erie Islands, to the chagrin of phobics. A
Jet-Ski rider who claimed to have sighted a long, gray creature called
it a “porpoise.” Automatic cameras took positions at parts of Lake
Erie, and monster-sized forms were allegedly recorded on fish-finder
sonar and even by satellite photos (though the latter may well have
been mud or marl traces left by boats in shallows).
In 1994, a Huron man erected a fanciful sculpture of South Bay
Bessie on the Huron River, loops of snakelike dragon visible to drivers
passing by on an interstate highway bridge (he subsequently added a
baby South Bay Bessie trailing the “parent,” but this was stolen). By
the 21st century, the Lake Erie Monster was quite famous indeed, even
if the actual sightings had trailed off — for the time being.
A popular area restaurant is named after Lemmy, there are monster
souvenirs, and a Cleveland professional hockey team has, of course,
been christened the Lake Erie Monsters, with all the attendant
exploitation of the image of a reptilian cranium protruding from the
surface of the world’s 12th biggest freshwater lake.
“Erie Baby, I Love Your Ways”
The curious saga of the “Erie Baby” is a footnote in the lore of
South Bay Bessie in the 1990s. Also known as “Baby Erie,” this creature
was initially displayed as a three-foot-long, dragon-like creature,
stuffed and mounted by Larry Peterson, a taxidermist and bait-shop
proprietor in Lakewood, who had found the decayed, unfamiliar-looking
fish with a hook through its mouth on the Erie shoreline
Wanting to make an impression at an upcoming trade show, Peterson
followed a time-honored tradition of taxidermists who manipulate animal
parts into strange and whimsical shapes. In the carnival freak-show
trade, such creations are called “gaffs.” A memorable episode of The
X Files popularized the name “Fiji Mermaid.” In nautical jargon,
doctored fish (especially skates or rays sliced and posed to present a
quasi-humanoid physiognomy) are called “Jenny Hanivers.”
Peterson twisted the deceased fish into a dinosaur-like pose,
suggesting a long neck, trimmed the dorsal fin into a series of
serrations and added pieces of skin to suggest little anterior and
posterior flippers. Word of the curiosity reached the proponents of
“Creationism,” who in the 1980s and 1990s were turning to lake monster
and sea-serpent accounts to bolster their religious claims that the
Book of Genesis was literal and that Darwin’s theory of evolution WAS
false, via a Scripture-friendly timeline that nails down the
co-existence of man and dinosaur. Carl Baugh, of the Texas-based
Creation Evidence Museum, journeyed to Lakewood by the end of the
decade and actually purchased “Erie Baby” to display.
The specimen was posted on Creationist websites as a possible
juvenile dinosaur, potentially of the plesiosaur family —
inferring the infant stage of the creature that would ultimately grow
into the legendary Lake Erie Monster.
But any remotely scientific scrutiny would reveal that this is a
composite chimera, not credible as an unknown animal. Glen J. Kuban, a
Great Lakes angler and blogger with an interest in such curious
matters, published an opinion that Erie Baby most closely resembled a
manipulated burbot, or ling-cod (species Lota lota), an elongated,
almost eel-like Great Lakes fish, capable of reaching a yard in length,
unfamiliar even to seasoned anglers due to its preference for deep
waters. This bottom-dweller is also known colloquially as the
“lawyerfish.
Reprinted with permission from Paranormal Great Lakes: An
Illustrated Encyclopedia, by Charles Cassady Jr., Schiffer Books
(schifferbooks.com)
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.