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

6. Lake George

6 LAKE GEORGE Called "one of the grandest hoaxes of all times" (Lord I999, I87), the Lake George monster has occasionally resurfaced (figure 6.I) since its debut at Hague Bay, New York, in I904. 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-Iong lake in western New York's Adirondack region. There, at Hague Bay in I904, artist Harry Watrous (I857-I940) repaid a prank that had been played on him. Watrous, a well-known genre painter and onetime president of the National Academy ofDesign, 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 (I934) recalled: IOI LAKE MONSTER MYSTERIES Figure 6.I 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 ofit into my idea ofa 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 ofgreen 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. I02 LAKE GEORGE 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 ofwater, 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 ofthe 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 ofits awe-inspiring appearance. Each day we provided new thrills for the populace, and that is how the rumor...