Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World's Most Elusive Creatures

5. Lake Crescent

5 LAKE CRESCENT Lake Crescent is a picturesque body of water in northeastern Newfoundland near the small town of Robert's Arm (figure 5.1). Settlement of the area dates to the 1870s, although native peoples, including the Beothuk Indians, were early visitors. Robert's Arm (formerly Rabbit's Arm) has a population of about a thousand. The scenery is gorgeous, with walking trails snaking over lush green hills and around the placid lake. Deep and cold, Lake Crescent is allegedly home to Newfoundland 's own lake monster, affectionately known as "Cressie" (figure 5.2). Local Indian myths and lore are often cited by cryptozoologists as evidence for the existence ofmysterious creatures. As we have seen, this is the case with other lake monsters, including Champ and Memphre, and Cressie is no exception. Indian legends tell of two entities supposedly related to Cressie: the woodum haoot ("pond devil") and the haoot tuwedyee ("swimming demon"). Several sources make this claim (e.g., Kirk 1998; Eberhart 2002), and it is tempting to marshal old native stories and legends into modern evidence. However, one must be careful. Our own Western folklore tradition includes fantastic creatures from long ago, such as fairies and leprechauns, but these stories are not meant to be taken literally. References to the woodum haoot and haoot tuwedyee seem to have been simply copied from one source to another, and the connection to Cressie has never been verified. SIGHTINGS To date, the Lake Crescent monster has not been photographed. Virtually all the evidence for Cressie's existence comes from eyewitness sightings and reports. Of course, in order for Cressie to exist, there would LAKE MONSTER MYSTERIES LAKE CRESCENT Figure 5.1 Near the small town of Robert's Arm, Lake Crescent touts its own lake monster and has been called the "Loch Ness of Newfoundland." (Map by Benjamin Radford) have to be a breeding population of the animals, probably a dozen or more. Although there has been no organized, sustained effort to verifY the creature's existence, no hard evidence-bones, live specimens, or carcasses-has been found. As of this writing, there have been about a dozen Cressie sightings since the 1940s. Of these, only a handful are detailed enough to be significant. According to an information plaque on Cressie: In the local oral tradition, sightings of Cressie go back to the turn of the century when one of Robert's Arm's first residents, remembered today as "Grandmother Anthony," was startled from her berry picking by a giant serpent out on the lake. In another daylight sighting ofthe early 1950S, two local woodsmen on the shores ofthe lake noticed what they thought was a boom log [one of several large logs wired or cabled together by "eyes" in the end to create a boom-used to hold pulpwood together Figure 5.2 A terrifYing beast looks out over beautiful Lake Crescent. (Photo by Benjamin Radford) LAKE MONSTER MYSTERIES as it's floated down a lake or river] just off shore. Puzzled that it was drifting into the wind, the men motored hurriedly out in time to witness the upturned "log," now huge, black, and rounded , slip beneath the waters of the lake. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Andrew Burton, long since retired, recalls that they wasted no time in regaining the shore. (Cressie's Castle sign n.d.) It should be noted that other sources give somewhat different details of the sighting-for example, placing the year as 1946 instead of the early 1950S and involving three eyewitnesses, not two. Burton described the object as about twenty-five feet long and a foot in diameter. Though it was at first thought to be a log, Burton said that it didn't act like one: "A boom log would not have sunk suddenly out of sight or travelled against the wind" (Burton n.d.). (This observation is incorrect; see chapters 2 and 7.) The sign continues: On Thursday afternoon, September 5th, 1991, at approximately 4:30 P.M., Mr. Pierce Rideout, a resident of Robert's Arm, was driving his pickup truck at the approach to that town when he noticed a disturbance on the surface of Crescent Lake. He observed through the open window of his truck what seemed to be the bow wave of a small boat about 150 yards off shore, or three-quarters the way from the small beach near Warr's Service...