Lake Erie Monster, 1887
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 3rd, 2007
A special to the N.Y. Times from Locust Point, on the shore of Lake Erie, near Toledo, Ohio, says,
“The French settlers along the lake shore, in Erie Township, Ottawa County, a few miles east of here, were surprised and amazed on May 12th over the appearance of an unknown fish of mammoth size. Two brothers named Dusseau, both fishermen, were returning from the fishing grounds, when they discovered a phosphorescent mass upon the beach. It was late in the evening, but they succeeded in making their boat fast to the shore, and, upon examination, discovered a lake monster writhing in agony.
The brothers say that it was like a large sturgeon in shape, but that it had long arms, which it threw wildly in the air. While they were watching it, the great fish apparently died, and the Dusseau boys, badly frightened, hurried away for aid.
When they returned with ropes the fish had disappeared. In its dying efforts it had succeeded in tumbling into the lake and had been carried away by the waves. The marks on the beach indicate that the serpent was between 20 and 30 feet in length.
Several scales as large as silver dollars which were cast off were picked up.”
Source: “A Monster in Lake Erie,” Winnipeg Daily Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, June 9, 1887.
Thanks for this new historical item from Jerome Clark.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I wonder what the long arms were all about. Since there is a lack of detail regarding this feature, I find myself wondering if they ended in hands, claws, flippers, what? It would be very strange for a species of fish, if that’s what this even was, to have any sort of “arms”. Since the witnesses clearly thought they saw arms, this suggests to me that they saw these well enough to describe them as such. There are no fully aquatic species that have long arms like that, or anything that I would think could be mistaken as these. Tentacles maybe? That would be odd in it’s own right considering the freshwater setting and body like a sturgeon. Maybe it wasn’t a fully aquatic creature? What is with those arms?
Ok, for fun let’s assume for now that this is not just a newspaper fantasy. What can we note-20 to 30 feet long, sturgeon shaped, wildly waving arms, phosphorescent, large scales. Thrashing about ‘in agony’. Apparently died then got washed out into the lake. The details just don’t seem to go together, in my mind. Phosphorescent? Arms? If it weren’t for the scales I might think it was a huge squid or octopus of some variety. I just can’t reconcile all the reported features as being part of the same thing. Perhaps the arms were lengths of rope or weed that were being tossed about as it writhed? Like I said this is assuming there’s anything at all to this. I have serious doubts.
Of course you are quite right Ceroill and my contemplation over the arms is just entertaining the thought that this sighting ever happened at all. From what I understand, astounding newspaper articles of the day aren’t exactly known for their attention to fact.
MM- I know. It’s an interesting exercise trying to think what these things might have been if the event actually happened. Let’s take the supposition in a different direction, while still entertaining the thought it was a real event. Let’s try the Jules Verne approach- It was a technological device misconstrued by frightened, excitable youngsters at night. Picture a Victorian High Tech version of one of our unmanned underwater exploration rovers. Torpedo/spindle shaped body, extendable ‘arms’ with probes of some kind, phosphorescent paint markings, and such.
If the sighting was authentic there’s another explanation: It had legs and it wasn’t a fish. This is the 19th Century – many people weren’t educated or literate. So there’s a good chance the witnesses wouldn’t know how to determine what the animal was. Anything unusual that came from the water = some kind of fish.
My first thought was of a gigantic catfish or similar such fish, and that the “arms’ were its feelers/barbels.
There have been other accounts of cryptid giant catfish in the great lakes, yes?
Ok…here’s my proposal: A large sturgeon (silver dollar sized scales?!) afflicted with phosphorescent dinoflagellates being consumed in the shallows along the shore by large eels, lampreys or hagfish, which would be actively positioning themselves to eat and avoid the hardships of the terrestrial beach. The carcass, once reduced to just a trace, is washed back into the waves or dragged into the dunes.
Let’s not forget that these post-glacial lakes, the Great Lakes chief among them, are the remnant of a widely dispersed ecosystem largely gone now in our modern interglacial period and that the glacial period was not a brief climatic punctuation over our general natural history, but rather is the norm for the last few million years. What we imagine we see as normal and natural these days are in fact conditions that are non-normative for these geologically controlled glacial ages.