Scared by a Lake Serpent
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 17th, 2010
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June 19, 1888
Dunkirk [New York] Observer-Journal
Scared by a Lake Serpent.
ALPENA, Mich., June 19. – The residents for a long distance along Thunder Bay are terrified over the appearance of a monster lake serpent. A farmer named Isaacson recently found a trail about a foot wide through a plowed field. It led down to the bay, where there were indications of its presence. Mr. Isaacson’s boy, Grant, was planting potatoes in a field near the house, and was frightened to see a huge snake moving toward him. The boy had with him a double-barreled shot-gun, and fired twice at the monster, when it went over the ground as lively as a horse, and glided into the bay. The boy’s father, attracted by the gun reports, followed the snake’s track to the water. The boy described the snake as about twenty-five feet long and over a foot thick. The body is black, with yellow spots and a yellow tail. The head was covered with long black hair.
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.
The fur or mane description comes up in a lot of lake/water critter sightings…and the usual suggestion is that it was just sea weed or some such muck on the critter, but I wonder. Most reptilian things don’t have manes and definitely not fur…I know some lizards have the flaps of skin.
And if it was really fur, then they were probably dealing with some sort of mammal…though there’s no snake/worm mammals to my knowledge in the zoological record:) Even pinnipeds don’t fit the snake motif…and if wet, the hair usually sticks to the body. Interesting archive…
I wonder how often encounters like these involving guns take place? Especially those that go unreported? It could explain why cryptids seem so shy and retiring, and so hard to capture on film, let alone physically,
I’d take this with a bag of salt unless some reports can be found from totally independent sources. It starts off with saying “the residences for a great distance along Thunder Bay” then goes on to mention only one. I wonder if this “Mr. Isaacson” really existed.