Authors: Joe Nickell
Certainly, not all of the 1855 sightings can be explained by the monster contraption Roberts described. According to his account, it was installed near the northern end of the lake, where both the inlet and outlet are located—indeed, one of the three operating ropes allegedly being anchored at “the marsh at the north end” (Roberts 1915, 200). Yet on Thursday, August 16, farmer John Worden and others who were “on the west shore of the lake
between two and three miles above the outlef
” (emphasis added) reportedly sighted “the monster” about a quarter mile distant (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1855). Surely no one imagines the fake monster being controlled from more than two miles away! Neither can the mon-ster apparatus explain sightings of a distinct pair of creatures at the same time (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1880, 19-20).
Seeking to assess the hoax tale and working backward from Roberts’s 1915 narrative, we come to the 1880
History of Wyoming County; N.Y
. It describes the serpent tale as “a very successful canard” that was circulated locally, and that “afterward, by the connivance of certain editors,” was “spread through the entire country.” It states that “An intrepid whaleman, armed with a harpoon … cruised daily in search of the monster. It afterward ‘leaked out’ that a certain fun loving Boniface [i.e., a hotel proprietor
7
] had hired him to do this, and it was whispered that an
attempt was made to manufacture an india-rubber serpent in order to meet an evident demand for a humbug” (
History
1880,240-41). This seems to be the basis of the legend: a
rumor
(i.e., what was “leaked out” and “whispered”) concerning an
effort
(“an attempt”) being made—apparently unsuccessful—“to manufacture an india-rubber serpent,” which does not quite tally with Roberts’s canvas-and-wire creature. The term “Boniface” does seem to indicate that the rumors focused on A.B. Walker—one of two ho-teliers in Perry in 1855 who profited from the crowds attracted to the lake. But the rumors may have originated as speculation merely because Walker benefited.
The earliest mention of the hoaxed serpent appears to be a report in the
Wyoming County Mirror
of December 12,1860, claiming that a Perry resident had gotten angry at Walker “and divulged the secret” of his fake sea monster (Douglass 1955, 120).
As we have seen, there has always been speculation about the role of Truman Gillett, editor of the
Wyoming Times
. Gillett certainly hyped the sea-serpent story. He had begun the newspaper just two months before, filling a vacuum left by the demise of the short-lived
Wyoming Advertiser
(Roberts 1915, 238). The leviathan tale was a bonanza for the
Times
. Described as the “village paper,” it “‘made hay while the sun shone,’ and issued extras, illustrated with cuts [woodcut pictures] of the Lake and the monster supposed to live within its depths, and the papers had a large sale” (
Silver Lake Serpent
1880, 3). That Gillett fanned the flames of excitement cannot be denied, but that he sparked the events by helping to create a fake monster is at most unproved.
As to the “intrepid whaleman” who was allegedly “hired” to search out the monster as part of the fun, he too has undergone modification. The 1880 pamphlet states, “An old whaleman, by the name of Daniel Smith, was imported for the scare” (
Silver Lake Serpent
1880, 3). Later sources state that “professional harpooners were brought in” (
Legend
1984, 10). In fact, the original newspaper accounts specifically make clear that Daniel Smith was one of “four young men from an adjoining town.” He was therefore a resident rather than an import. Described as a “sailor, who has been for four years upon the Pacific engaged in the capture of whales,” Smith had “but recently returned” to the area. He and his friends had been fishing on the lake and seem merely to have been caught up in the serpent hunt. Far from trying to foment excitement, he responded to an article describing his and his friends’ own sighting by stating “that he
had not intended to make it public, but to continue his investigations until such time as he might be able to capture the monster” (
Silver Lake Serpent
1880, 13, 15, 18).
Finally, local lore has it that A.B. Walker left town because his hoax was exposed. Says Keel (1970,260): “Those were rough-and-ready days, you must remember, and tar-and-feathering were common practices. Mr. Walker did not even linger long enough to collect his fire insurance. He departed immediately for Canada.” It is true that Walker moved away, but he may well have done so for business or other reasons—there is no proof that he fled. His absence may have simply invited gossip. The al-leged exposure by an angry resident did not come to light until 1860, three years after Walker s departure. In any event, he returned in 1868, after a lapse of eleven years, to resurrect the Walker House hotel. By this time, raconteurs state, he had supposedly been forgiven his deception and residents “decided that he was a hero instead of a villain” (Keel 1970, 260). But if that is true, then why did not the 1880 county history proudly tell the story—especially since Walker was still alive at the time and could have corroborated the story and supplied the authentic facts?
In fact, the earliest version of the hoax tale appeared in the December 12,1860,
Wyoming County Mirror
. “Everyone remembers,” stated the brief article, “that during the Silver Lake snake excitement, at Perry, the hotel there reaped a rich harvest of visitors. A correspondent of the
Buf-falo Commercial
says that when about two years and a half ago, the hotel was partially burned, a certain man discovered the serpent in the hotel.” This “was made of India rubber,” and supposedly “corresponded mi-nutely” with a
Buffalo Republic
description of the serpent. The man who discovered the rubber fake “has just got mad at the landlord and divulged the secret.” The newspaper story ended on a skeptical note: “We suppose this last game is just about as much of a ’sell’ as the original snake.”
In sum, the historical evidence diminishes as we work backward to the alleged hoax, whereas, conversely, details of the story increase the farther they are from the supposed event. Therefore it appears it was the story—rather than the serpent—that became inflated. If Walker and/or others did perpetrate a hoax, it is unlikely to have involved an elaborate contraption like Roberts described. There were hoaxes associated with the 1855 frenzy, but they were largely played out in the newspapers of the day, which treated the whole affair as great sport. For example, the Buf-falo
Republic
, while expressing skepticism, published a lithographic il
lustration of the “captured snake!” A contemporaneous report says it “brought scores of visitors from a distance” (Douglass 1955,119). In September, the
Chicago Times
reported that two visitors had seen the monstrous serpent harpooned and towed to shore. The newspaper jocosely reported that come nightfall the creature uprooted the tree to which it was tethered and returned to the lake. It was recaptured the next day, said the
Times
, whereupon it “awoke, threw its head 60 feet into the air; lurid eyes glared like balls of flame and its tongue, like flashes of forked lightning, 10-12 feet long, vibrated between its open jaws” (Douglass 1955, 119).
In the journalistic interplay of the day, accusations of hoaxing (or worse) were often made against rival newspapers, as happened with the Silver Lake brouhaha. At one point during the media uproar, the
Hornellsville Tribune
suggested that “if the origin of the Silver Lake Snake humbug is ever revealed, it will be discovered that some
one
or
two
in Perry village have been playing ‘nigger in the fence’ for the sole purpose and with the hopes of selfish benefit.”
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A clergyman, the Reverend J.S. Page, pastor of the Perry Presbyterian Church, wrote to the
Rochester Democrat
, lamenting: “The idea is abroad that it is merely a hoax to entice visitors to Silver Lake and Perry [and that] is entirely without foundation” (Douglass 1955, 119).
Such insinuations of hoaxing probably elicited an early statement by
Wyoming Times
editor Gillett. On August 8, 1855, he wrote: “We assert, without fear of contradiction, that there is not a log floating on the water of Silver Lake—that nothing has been placed there to create the serpent story” and that the paper had published what was related by truthful people (“Silver Lake Serpent” 1855).
Even if there was a hoax—either a fake serpent or a journalistic scheme—that does nothing to explain the earlier sightings. At this late date we can only round up the usual lake-monster suspects. As the per-petual saga at Scotland’s Loch Ness demonstrates, “monsters” may be created by floating trees and driftwood, leaping fish, swimming otters and deer, wind slicks, and many other culprits—often seen under such illusory conditions as mirage effects and diminished visibility (Binns 1984). For example, some of the Silver Lake sightings, including the one that launched the 1855 frenzy, occurred at night—when visibility would have been relatively poor and imaginations heightened. On the 27th, two farmers working in a nearby field “saw something that
appeared like a
log
, but three or four rods long” (emphasis added) (
Silver Lake Serpent
1880,11).
Eyewitnesses typically insisted the object was a living creature, sometimes with its head above the water. A possible candidate is the otter, which “when swimming seems a very large creature” (Scott 1815). While treading water, an otter can raise its head and neck well above the surface and otherwise simulate a monstrous serpent, especially if swimming with one or two others in a line (Binns 1984,186-91). The large North Ameri-can otter (
Lutra canadensis
) inhabits “virtually the whole of the New World” (Chamin 1985, 6). On one of my visits to Silver Lake, I was startled while walking along a nature trail to glimpse a creature swimming in a nearby stream; it quickly vanished and I was puzzled as to its identity until, later commenting to a resident about all the wildlife I had glimpsed (woodchuck, woodpecker, squirrels, etc.), I was asked if I had seen “one of the otters” that had recently been reintroduced there.
I subsequently talked with New York State wildlife experts about ot-ters possibly being mistaken for mid-nineteenth-century “lake serpents.” Bruce Penrod, Senior Wildlife Biologist with the Department of Environ-mental Conservation, stated it was “very probable” that otters were in the Silver Lake area in 1855. And if the sightings were not hoaxes, he said, he would clearly prefer otters—or even muskrats, beavers, or swimming deer—over sea monsters as plausible explanations for such sightings.
His view was echoed by Jon Kopp, Senior Wildlife Technician with the department. Kopp had an illuminating story to tell. In 1994, he was involved in banding ducks and was sequestered in a blind on Lake Alice in Clinton County. It was dark, when suddenly he saw a huge snakelike creature making a sinuous, undulating movement, heading in his direction! As it came quite close, he saw that the “serpent” was actually a group of six or seven otters swimming in single file, diving and resurfacing to create the serpentine effect. “After seeing this,” Kopp said, “I can understand how people can see a ‘sea serpent’” (Kopp 1998).
I thought of otters especially when I studied two previously mentioned accounts of 1855 that described a
pair
of “serpents” estimated at twenty to forty feet in length. Possibly the witnesses in each case saw two or more otters, which, together with their wakes, gave the appearance of much longer creatures. All of the witnesses were observing from consid-erable distances—in one case through a spy glass (“Silver Lake Serpent”
1880, 19-20)—distances that could easily be overestimated, thus exaggerating the apparent size of the creature. Because otters are “great travelers,” with nomadic tendencies (Kopp 1998), it is possible that a group of them came into Silver Lake in the summer of 1855 and later moved on, thus initiating and then ending that particular rash of sightings.
The least likely explanation for the Silver Lake reports is that some exotic creature inhabited its waters. Noting that as a result of the “extravagant stories” Silver Lake “became more thoroughly advertised than it could have been by any other process,” the
History of Wyoming County
(1880) concluded: “It is doubted, however, whether any snake larger than those which, under certain circumstances, infest people s boots, was ever seen.” Whatever people did see, the situation was hyped in turn by the local newspaper and the antics of would-be monster hunters. People’s expectations were thus heightened, and that in turn led to misperceptions. Psychological contagion (the spreading of beliefs and/or behavior to others as by suggestion) yielded the “monster mania” that soon ran its course. It is well known that people expecting to see something could be misled by anything having a slight resemblance to it. Gould (1976) called this tendency “expectant attention” and it is the basis of many paranormal claims—apparently including sightings of the Silver Lake Serpent, a case of the tale wagging the monster.
References
Binns, Ronald. 1984.
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved
. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus.
Chamin, Paul. 1985.
The Natural History of Otters
. New York: Facts on File.
Douglass, Harry S. 1947. “Wyoming County,” in John Theodore Horton et al.,
History of Northwestern New York
. New York: Lemis Historical Publishing.
———.1955. The legend of the serpent: 1855-1955.
Historical Wyoming
8.4(July): 115-21.
Fielding, Todd. 1998. It came from Silver Lake.
The Daily News
(Batavia, N.Y.), July 25.
Gould, Rupert T. 1976.
The Loch Ness Monster and Others
. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 112-13.
History of Wyoming County N.Y
. 1880. New York: F.W. Beers & Co.
Keel, John A. 1970.
Strange Creatures from Time and Space
. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 254-59.
Kimiecik, Kathy. 1988. The strange case of the Silver Lake sea serpent.
New York Folklore 9.2
(summer): 10-11.