- Jun 21
- 17 min read
Updated: Jul 2
When you stand and look over Lake Erie, it doesn’t feel like a lake, but an ocean. Bright blue water stretches far into the distance; boats dot the horizon, birds swarm fishermen, people swim, sunbathe, and build sand castles under the shadow of an old lighthouse, and waves lap noisily at the shore. But it’s not the ocean. You would quickly pick up on it if you happened to teleport here. The boats aren’t built for the sea. The birds aren’t quite right. The trees are very out of place. And, most apparent, it has a very un-ocean-like smell–a scent more akin to a muddy fishtank. Yet, growing up in an otherwise landlocked state, Lake Erie might as well have been the ocean. A seemingly endless expanse, Lake Erie is the eleventh largest lake in the world. Though it is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, it is the most populated by weirdness…
For over 200 years, stories of strange creatures have plagued Lake Erie, from boat captains and fishermen, to tourists and residents. People were seeing something in the water. Or, more accurately, some things. You see, out of the hundreds of sightings and encounters in the lake, many descriptions vary. Not just in the usual way, as in slightly different or obviously misjudged sizes, or even understandably different colorations, but in pretty drastic ways. Six to seven foot, dolphin-like animals. Nearly ten foot long, burrowing, biting monsters. Gigantic, blue or black, slithering snakes. Bug-eyed, whale-like reptiles. Long-necked reptiles. Sturgeon-headed reptiles. Silver-scaled and bullet-proof copper beasts. Like I said, people have claimed to see a lot of weird things lurking here. Today, we collectively call these cryptids “Bessie.”
When you think of Bessie, you think of Lake Loch Ness’ Nessie. It was, after all, named after her, and the two have a lot in common. Long serpentine necks, flippers, fishy, yet reptilian… very, very reminiscent of a plesiosaur. Lake and sea monsters in general are often compared to those old, prehistoric animals, no matter where they are. While it is highly unlikely that that is the case anywhere, it is even more preposterous for such a thing to happen in Lake Erie. While it’s hard to believe, the lake is pretty young. Over thousands of years, rivers crossed over and carved into the earth, glaciers rose, fell, grinded, and advanced onto the land, creating the basin we see today. Temporary Lake Eries came and went, leaving now waterless beaches behind, further south. The Lake Erie we know today is only 4,000 years old. While that is much older than me or you, it isn’t even close to as old as Plesiosaurs; they died at the end of the Cretaceous, along with three-fourths of the rest of all life on Earth 66 million years ago. They couldn’t survive in their marine habitats–it just isn’t possible that they quickly pushed into freshwater and survived this apocalypse-level catastrophe, the changing waterways, nor persisted through several ice ages, somehow eventually ending up in our Lake Erie. Whatever is in Lake Erie, it, sadly, isn’t a Plesiosaur. But, the idea of a living fossil is exciting, and has grabbed international attention, bringing flocks of cryptid tourists to the lake’s shore, hoping to catch sight of it. Bessie is somehow even more exciting than Nessie for the cryptozoologist. While Nessie is much more famous, and an older chapter in cryptozoological history, Lake Erie is ten times longer than Lake Loch Ness; there are much more places for a large creature to theoretically hide, which gives hunters much more time to be invested in looking for it, and many more excuses for why they can’t find what they’re looking for. The lake has also not been as thoroughly searched or funded as Lake Loch Ness, providing more opportunity for paid expeditions and content creation.
The popularity of Bessie has exploded and waned multiple times since its initial sighting in 1793. It peaked in the 90’s, when it also was somewhat officially given a name. A single sighting in September 1990 broke local news and sparked a wave of encounters, new and, allegedly, old. A toll-free phone line was set up to gather witness accounts and stories for a Port Clinton, Ohio newspaper, the Ottawa County Beacon. The same paper also set up a contest to name the monster, settling on South Bay Bessie, as the most recent sightings took place near Port Clinton and its Davis Besse nuclear power plant–plus, it rhymed with Nessie. The paper collected more than ten anecdotes from the Ohio area, most occurring between 1980 and 1991. Monster mania grew, and with it, ideas to capitalize on it. Most memorable, a $5,000 reward was posted by Thomas Solberg, owner of a local marina, for anyone who could catch Bessie alive. He then hung a sign up at the Huron Lagoon Marina that read, “Future Home of the Lake Erie Sea Serpent.” As I’m sure you know, while Bessie was sighted many, many more times since then, she has continued to elude capture, evading not only nets, lures, and weaponry, but photography, film, and all other devices.
Strange as Bessie and all of her sightings are, there is a reasonable explanation for all of them–and it is an endangered fish! Remember what I said about Plesiosaurs? Well… that’s sort of the sturgeon’s story. Sturgeons started appearing in the fossil record in the Late Cretaceous, which was around 145 million years ago, not too long, Earth-history-wise, after the Plesiosaurs, who came on the scene about 200 million years ago and were thriving during the Cretaceous. In fact, the two animals may have shared water from time to time. Since then, sturgeons haven’t changed too much. They are what Bessie and Plesiosaur enthusiasts are excited about–a living fossil. They look very prehistoric, too. They have tail fins similar to sharks, with the top being longer than the bottom, and an extensive, smooth, scaleless body lined with five rows of bony, plate armor called scutes.Their faces are prolonged and sharp, with thin, pointy, upward curving noses, small eyes, and whiskers, called barbels. They also can grow to incredible sizes. Lake sturgeons, the species found in Lake Erie, can weigh up to 240 lbs and grow up to seven and a quarter feet long. They also can live to be more than one hundred years old.
An incredible animal, the fishing industry decimated Lake Erie’s sturgeon population. At first, sturgeons were considered to be pest animals, as they often broke fishing gear. While many were killed to save money, soon, the tides changed, and the fish and their eggs were desired food items. In the late 1800s, 4 million lbs of fish were caught each year–a greatly unsustainable level. Hunted for their meat, their populations were sent further into decline because of pollution and the construction of flood controls, like dams. Waterways were blocked and breeding grounds destroyed, preventing new sturgeons from being born. Once so common that people used the fish to fertilize farms, feed pigs, and fuel steamboats, by the turn of the century, they were a rare sight. Slow to mature, slow to reproduce, and slow to grow, in 2026 they are still listed as endangered and are not found at the same incredible size as often as in the past, even with regulations and fishery closures in the early 20th century.
I think, without a doubt, that most of these Bessie sightings can be attributed to the sighting of a lake sturgeon–an animal under the radar to most people, so rare that it itself has become a sort of cryptid.
There are hundreds of cryptid sightings in Lake Erie. What we are seeing is probably an evolution of a story, tied to popular media and culture, much like the Loch Ness Monster’s changing descriptions, as well as several different kinds of misidentifications. I’ve debated reading them all in historical order, as a singular creature, beginning in the late 1700s and ending in the early 2000s, but the stories vary so much that it doesn’t paint very clear pictures of a figure. Lake Erie is separated into three basins (the western, central, and eastern), so I thought maybe going over them by region would be good, making three distinct figures to talk about. However, almost all sightings take place in the central basin. Since that didn’t work well either, I’ve settled on a third approach. I am a fan of lists, so for each witness account, each encounter, I have made notes that boil the information down into a few key details: size, coloration, location, body characteristics, and activity. Laying them all out, I was able to separate them into 8 different categories, or for our project, 8 theoretically unique Lake Erie cryptids that wander these waters. While most aquatic creatures have vast variability in coloration and size for maturity, and sometimes in relation to breeding, we aren’t going to take that into account when categorizing them, as it would be too complicated. We could argue and explain all of these to be related or not, or argue some and not others, but at the end of the day, we have very limited information and, for the most part, brief stories. Also, I think this way is most fun.
TIMELINE
1793: first Lake Erie Monster (LEM) sighted (Sandusky, OH)
July 1817: Similar LEM sighted
Post July 1817: Similar LEM sighted, but with a few new details
Late 1817: A new LEM variant is encountered (Toledo, OH)
Early 1892: LEM sighted (somewhere between Buffalo, NY & Toledo, OH)
July 1892: LEM follows boat aggressively
May 1896: A new LEM variant is encountered (Fort Erie, ON)
June 1896: LEM sighted (Woodlawn Beach, NY)
Ol' Copper
The first preserved, and perhaps documented, sighting of something especially unusual in Lake Erie happened all the way back in the 1700s. The region was quite different back then, but still a hub of activity. Once populated by several indigenous peoples, like the Erie, Attawandaron, and Iroquois, they were slain and pushed out of the area over the course of the century. Lake Erie was actually the last of the Great Lakes to have been explored by Europeans, seen for the first time by one Frenchman or another in either the early or mid-1600s. Forts and trading posts dotted the lake’s shores as French Canadian traders and trappers settled the area in increasing numbers. The British then moved in, hoping to dominate and control the fur trade. Then came New Englanders, New Yorkers, and those of the other Thirteen Colonies. Before and after the American Revolution, Lake Erie was (and continued to be) an important waterway, transporting goods and people between the interior of North America and its Atlantic coast.
Off the lake’s southern shore, near Sandusky, Ohio, in 1793, a sloop was out in the water. Sloops are a kind of sailboat. I couldn’t find many details about the boat or its occupants, but the sloop was named the Felicity and they were out on the water that day to hunt ducks. While they were out there, a shadow overtook the water below. Passing swiftly, a creature had swam under them. They couldn’t make out any details, aside from that it was very large and appeared to be a giant snake. When pressed, the captain estimated that the thing must have been larger than a rod–an old unit of measurement that translates to about 16 and a half feet (or 5 meters for my metric system users). I have no idea where this little bit of folklore comes from, if it is legitimate, and, if real, how those of the time responded. Nevertheless, there were no other documented sightings of anything strange or monstrous as tensions and conflict overwhelmed the lake. As the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812, and an actual battle within Lake Erie came and passed, the creature made a return.
Twenty four years after the initial sighting, one day in July 1817, another boat and crew saw something weird. This time, the witnesses were on a schooner, a sailboat with more than one mast (those tall, pole things). Gliding under them, its dark form slithered through the lake’s depths. They guessed it between 30 and 40 feet long (or 9 to 12 meters), more than double the estimate of the first sighting. More people were living and working near or on the lake than in the late 18th century, so perhaps this story sparked some curiosity and got more people in the water and looking, because by the end of the summer, two more sightings took place. The first was a serpentine monster, but the second, something much different.
With each story, we seem to have even less information on the boat and its crew. We don’t even know the type of craft this time. Regardless, one day, another boat was out on the water. Out in the distance, they spotted the creature: a huge, dark, snake-like beast. Parts of it bobbed above the water, wetly shimmering with copper colors. This one was even bigger than the last, an estimated 60 feet or 18 meters, once again, double the last sighting's measurement. This crew didn’t just watch or cower in fear, they reacted with violence. Shooting at the behemoth with muskets, the lead balls bounced off its scaly flesh, causing no damage and eliciting no reaction. The thing disappeared deep underwater. A strictly serpent-like Bessie was not seen again until the 1960s.
Twenty to sixty feet long, a size likely embellished in either panic or boast, with a calm demeanor, shadowy form, and hardy, bright, gold-brown scales impenetrable by musket balls are the brief characteristics of the giant, lake serpent I am going to name Ol’ Copper. The largest and oldest version of the Lake Erie Monster, it only gets stranger and more detailed from here.
Silverscale
On the western shore of Lake Erie, near the boundary of Ohio and Michigan in Toledo, two brothers were exploring the beach early one morning. On that day, sometime in 1817, there weren’t many people out and about; the two Frenchmen were alone, not even a boat in view. Further along the coast, they saw something in the distance that stopped them in their tracks. On the beach was a creature, large and brown. It thrashed around violently in the foam, swinging body and limb, writhing like a bundle of snakes. The huge monster was between 20 and 30 feet long (or 6 to 9 meters), though it was hard to say for sure, with all of its chaotic movement. It looked a lot like a sturgeon, its head and general body shape, but it had arms, or more arm-like fins. The thing looked like it was fighting death; terrified, the brothers ran away, fleeing back to town.
As the hours passed, they grew more curious than frightened. They saw no one else fleeing the beach or excitedly motioning towards the strange sight, screeching or yelling; they saw no body being carried over the sands and into town. The day was like any other. Did anyone else even see it? Was it still there or did it get away? They agreed to go look.
Walking back down the beach, where the monster lain, there was nothing but grooves and scuff marks on the ground. Getting closer to the spot, they noticed something shimmering: large sparkles of silver. Scattered around were a handful of shiny, metallic scales the size of a silver dollar. They gathered all the pieces they could find and stared out into the water. Did it die and get washed back out into the lake? Did it survive and escape to safety? Did it crawl away elsewhere? They weren’t sure.
- - -
This is another story of dubious origins, many believing these early Bessie sightings that predate the 1880s to be fake–or cases of misremembering. No other information or descriptions are available on the encounter, or the brothers (the Dusseaus) and their lake monster treasures. Perhaps the story is real, though, and the scales still remain, forgotten in a hiding place, or unknowingly passed down to their descendants. Naming this version of the Lake Erie Monster seems obvious: it must be named after the objects it left behind–Silverscale. This wasn’t the last time it was seen, though.
Seventy-five years later, Silverscale, or something similar to it, returned. In 1892, a boat was hired to sail from Buffalo, NY to Toledo, OH. In the middle of their journey, the captain saw a disturbance in the water about a half mile out. The lake was foaming and frothing and churning, as if something was sinking. The whole crew focused their attention on the oddity; as they got closer, a shadow appeared, growing bigger and bigger. From it rose something akin to a huge sea serpent with a pointed head; it writhed chaotically, as if fighting some unseen enemy. Lashing out, twisting, its body floated on the surface, slowly stretching and straightening out, calming. The thing was nearly 50 feet (or 15 m) long and about 15 inches or (0.4 meters) thick; it was a brown color, but shimmered and sparkled in the light. The beast sunk in the water, its head reaching up and peering at the crew with large, brown eyes. Two huge fins or arms paddled gently below its chest, difficult to clearly define in the murky lake. The story was picked up locally, spreading from newspaper to newspaper.
After the war of 1812, northwest Ohio quickly grew with waves of immigrants and industry. The Erie Canal opened in 1825, reshaping the waterway into a major hub of transportation and commerce, moving coal, timber, iron, and people around. It was during this time that Lake Erie began to grow as a tourist spot–a popular one, too. Middle class Americans paid steamboats to take them from Sandusky to the lake’s islands, like South Bass and Kelleys. People flocked to the region to picnic on the beach or its nearby peninsula. In turn, commodities were built to cater to these visitors. In fact, not long after this second monster encounter, Cedar Point was born. It was more of a resort at first, but quickly transformed into an amusement park, building its first rollercoaster before the turn of the century. More and more people were living on and coming to the shores of Lake Erie–and more and more people were hearing about something strange living in the lake. Several sightings to come would happen from this same Sandusky shore, and even a few from within Cedar Point. But, that’s a few decades away.
In July, 1892, after the Buffalo-Toldeo encounter, Silverscale made a third appearance. The Fenton was a travelling steamboat. One day, the captain, a man only known as Jenkins, saw something on the route that wasn’t there the last time. It was a deep shadow, like a wreck. As the boat drew closer, though, the shadow moved. It wasn’t a new shipwreck–it was a massive, living thing. Looking like a huge serpent, it swam away from the boat. It was brown, 30 feet (9 meters) or more long, and he described it as having a pointed, laterally compressed tail, which is a tail like an alligator’s, where the sides are flattened. This feature suggests a marine reptile rather than an aquatic mammal or fish, aside from its other serpentine qualities. While at first getting away from the boat, as the steamer passed, it turned and followed. The monster was incredibly fast, propelling itself through the water with a wavering, slithering motion. A foot long head and sinewy neck climbed from the lake, spanning several feet above the surface. Its eyes glowed in the light like two, red balls of raging fire. The thing followed the Fenton for more than 20 miles, keeping perfect pace and never ducking under the water, stiffly keeping an eye on Jenkins. When he felt as if the creature would lunge and attack them at any moment, it slowly sank and vanished.
Monster fever was spreading across the water–and businesses were taking note. A new version of the Lake Erie Monster, or “Lemmy”, was brewing in the background on the lake’s northeastern shores. The late 19th century was in the midst of a Bessie boom.
the Crystal Beach Creature
On Saturday, June 27, 1896, New York newspaper, the Buffalo Courier, set on their front page the title, “THAT SARPINT AGAIN,” in large, bold font. Beneath, was a smaller, yet more shocking statement, “PROVED BEYOND QUESTION. The Monster Seen and Described By Reputable People Whose Names Are Herewith Given–This Time It Was at Cloverbank.”
I wasn’t able to get a copy of the full article, only this snippet: “The serpent of the great lakes has been seen so many times now, by sane, sober and truthful people, that he who sees it hereafter need have no timidity about mentioning the fact. Since Captain Lina Beecher gave to a Courier reporter such a graphic description of the creature as seen by himself and others at Crystal Beach, some time before the excursion season opened, it was seen at Woodlawn Beach. This fact came out yesterday, the people who saw the snake fearing to say anything about it sooner, as they did not want to be laughed at. Possibly instead of being the serpent of the Great Lakes, it is merely the serpent of Lake Erie, and of this end of Lake Erie at that.”
This article is one of many covering Lake Erie cryptid sightings from the late 19th century. This one references a particularly popular story, one that has become one of the lake’s more well known and cited, early encounters. Covered in several places, while many papers included only the facts or witness statements, others, like the Buffalo Courier, sensationalized it. Here’s how the tale began:“The hour was sunset. The luminary was already half hidden behind the dark crown of wood on Point Albino [or, put in modern terms, the lighthouse was blocking the sun]. Here and there, a bird was chanting the vespers (a kind of evening prayer service). The nearer trees, clad in the palest most delicate of green, stood against a background of ancient pines and hemlocks whose foliage was black by contrast, The broad blue lake lay smooth and beautiful, the last of the winter’s ice disappearing far to the eastward in miniature bergs which glistened under the dying sunshine. The tokens of spring were everywhere to be perceived. What more fitting moment for the imperious Serpent of the Unsalted Seas to break of his hibernating dreams in the ooze of old Erie’s bed?”
The flowery, overly descriptive language of the Courier continued. This all happened on the shores of Crystal Beach, a place in northeast Lake Erie, in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada sometime around May 5, 1896. A group of four was out on the beach walking around and enjoying a nice day. They were, however, distracted by something odd. In the distance, the water churned violently; it splashed and bubbled and frothed as if some long forgotten cargo had unexpectedly opened up. No boats agitated the water, passing by. In fact, no watercraft had crossed by since their arrival. Though they hadn’t paid close attention, they were certain no one was in the water. Perplexed, they stood on the sandy shore's edge.
Up from the water rose a large creature. Though it was too far away to see well, its head had a short snout like a dog and its long body ended in a stumpy, pointed tail. It wavered on the surface of the lake, drifting back and forth, but never dipping below. Excitedly watching, guessing at what it could be, the onlookers stepped into the cool lake. Shading their view with cupped hands, they stared and burned the strange animal into their memories. It could have been anywhere up to 40 feet or 12.2 meters; it was hard to tell, being 400 feet or so away. No one’s view was cut short, no one stepped away, too enthralled by the unusual sight. After 45 minutes had passed and twilight arrived, the figure suddenly sank back into the water; it vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
According to the Buffalo Courier, these witnesses were not only honest, but very credible, one even a Civil War army officer. Lemmy encounters were old news by the end of the 1800s; old, but still exciting, entertaining, enthralling, even. The paper had published several stories about sea serpents, weird reptiles, and other styles of Lake Erie monster before the Crystal Beach encounter, and would continue so afterwards–as it sold them a lot of papers. They had reported on the creature so much that they began to form a sort of guide to its habits: the animal remained deep underwater during the day, only surfacing at dawn or in the evening to hunt and play. After particularly well-selling issues, new sightings and encounters would pop up; they usually included details from the paper verbatim. This was met with much skepticism. The Crystal Beach Creature and its story were held up as the cream of the crop, though. For one reason or another, it seemed more believable to people. If they made it up, why not something… more? The detail of it being dog-like was new. If it was fake, why wasn’t it described exactly as the other Lemmys were? There were no chases, aggression, feats of bravery. It seemed strange to lie about such a thing. For what or why? They seemed to have no reason at all, except the pursuit of discovery and local awareness.
Several weeks after the Fort Erie incident, in mid-June, there was an announcement: the grand opening of a new, single-line railway between Ridgeway and Crystal Beach. People were excited to go visit and relax by the beach–and perhaps catch sight of the creature. To skeptics’ delight, the railway was owned by none other than Captain Lina Beecher–the very credible Civil War veteran, the main witness and storyteller of the Crystal Beach Creature. Many tourists were ignorant to the connection, or ambivalent, excitedly using the transit station to pay the monster a visit. Many even claimed to have seen the creature themselves while on a trip. Within a week of the railway’s operation, six western New Yorkers had their own story published in the Buffalo Courier, the excerpt at the beginning of this chapter. They didn’t see something at Crystal Beach, though, but at Woodlawn Beach. Coincidentally, one of the six witnesses was the wife of another railway owner; his train took passengers to the Woodlawn Beach amusement park.
Were these sightings legitimate? Or were they concocted for financial gain? Were there real sightings somewhere in between, falling between the cracks of more exciting tales? I’ll let you be the judge.
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesiosaur#History_of_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Erie#History
https://eriecountyohiohistory.org/about/welcome-erie-county/ https://jet-express.com/blog/history-afloat-exploring-lake-eries-past/
https://monstersofohio.com/2021/11/07/meet-the-monsters-the-lake-erie-monster/ https://nmgl.org/lake-erie/
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