Lake Erie

In my RV travels across the nation, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the shores of Lake Erie. Lake Erie is the twelfth largest lake on Earth and the primary source of drinking water for over 11 million people. The lake spans almost 10,000 square miles and holds six quadrillion gallons of water.

For someone like me that has an interest in the weird and unexplained, some of the towns along Lake Erie are perfect for a visit. There are ancient burial mounds and tales of giants, lake monsters, haunted buildings, Bigfoot sightings and more.

Monroe Monster

In early autumn 2021, I stayed in a Michigan state park on the outskirts of the town of Monroe. Immediately, I began thinking of the “Monroe Monster.” The Monroe Monster made a name for itself in the summer of 1965 after locals began spotting the creature. The monster made headlines nationwide after it attacked a teenage girl named Christine Van Acker while she sat in a car with her mother.

According to a report in the Independent (Long Beach, CA),  a “black, 7-foot, 400-pound, grunting “thing” covered in hair” attacked the pair as they sat in their car. The creature reached through the car window and grabbed Christine Van Acker’s hair and punched her in the eye. Van Acker said: “he was all hairy and the hairs were like quills. They pricked whenever I touched them.”

A picture of Van Acker sporting a black eye from the attack accompanied the article.


Conneaut Giants

During a stay in Ashtabula County, Ohio in 2021, I was on the trail of the fabled Conneaut Giants. The bones of these ancient giants lay in mounds and massive graves along the tributaries of Lake Erie. Unfortunately, there is not a lot left of the mounds that held the remains of these mighty men of renown. I was disappointed in a visit to a park alongside Conneaut Creek. No mounds remained here, only a sign paying tribute to the legend of ancient giants in the area. It read:

Euro-American farmers had no qualms about disturbing Native American graves and burial mounds, and reported finding numerous bones “belonging to men of large stature” in Wright’s  graveyard. Over time, as published accounts of these finds were repeated, the details were embellished. By 1844, for instance, the prehistoric inhabitants of Conneaut were described as “nearly allied to a race of giants,” and in 1847 as “men of gigantic structure.”

…The belief that burial mounds, ceremonial earthworks, and even natural features such as the hill known as Conneaut Fort had been built by an ancient population of giants unrelated to modern native American was a common myth in the 19th century. In fact, such accounts of the “Conneaut Giants” and other “vanished civilizations” were based on poorly recorded data and a lack of understanding of how to calculate living human proportions from fractured, incomplete remains.

Locally, however, there are some residents and amateur archaeologists who claim to have seen large bones and skulls in the Conneaut area as described in the 19th century and believe in the legend of the “Conneaut Giants.” Learn more and draw your own conclusions.

Giants were fun to think about while visiting Lake Erie. But the thought of lake monsters swimming in Lake Erie truly captured my imagination.

South Bay Bessie

Lake Erie is home to a lake monster known as South Bay Bessie, or Bessie for short. Bessie is about 30–40 feet in length, dark in color, about one to two feet in diameter, and snake-like in appearance. The first known, or at least documented, Bessie sighting occurred in 1793 when the Captain and crew of the Felicity had a sighting.1 Going further back in time, the indigenous Seneca tribe believed a giant serpent inhabited Lake Erie.2

In 1817, Captain Shubael West and the crew of the schooner, Delia, saw a serpent about 35–40 long in lake Erie.3 Later in the same year, a different boat crew had a sighting of a 60-foot, copper-colored creature. The crew fired their muskets at the monster, but were unable to do any visible harm to the it.

A third sighting occurred in 1817 when the Dusseau brothers, two French settlers in the present-day Toledo area, saw a ‘dying Bessie’ thrashing about on the shore. What they saw was shaped like a sturgeon, but was 20-30 feet long and had arms. The creature startled the pair and they fled. The brothers returned to the beach later, but the creature was gone, perhaps carried out into the lake by waves after it had died. All that remained on the bank were marks from where the large animal had been squirming and some silvery scales about the size of a half dollar.4

Creature Chronicles

Editor Ron Schaffner’s Creature Chronicles #14, printed in October 1991, listed a number of Bessie sightings in Lake Erie. I have reprinted some of the sightings below:

1969 - Jim Schindler stated that a serpent came within 6 feet of him near South Bass Island. Although he did not see the length, the width was about 2 feet…

9/1981 - Theresa Kovach of Akron saw a snake-like reptile that "was so large that could easily capsize a boat…

Summer, 1985 - Tony Schill of Avon, Ohio was boating with friends north of Vermilion when they reported the serpent. It was dark brown and had a flat tail. Tony stated that "5 humps came out of the water…"

September 3, 1990 - Bob Soracco was jet skiing off Port Clinton when he thought he spotted a porpoise…He told reporters that he saw humps with grey spots. "It was very long as I moved closer and it was going down.

September 4, 1990 - Harold Bricker and his family were fishing north of Cedar Point Amusement Park when a serpent type creature swam by their boat…[the creature was] 35 feet long with a snake-like head…the Bricker's reported their sighting to the ODNR rangers at East Harbor State Park.

September 11, 1990 - Fire inspectors, Jim Johnson and Steve Dircks, of Huron saw the creature from a third story window facing Lake Erie. They described it as dark blue or black at about 30-45 feet long. He further stated that he saw three parts of the creature above water." It laid there motionless for three to six minutes and was flat on top."

I did not see anything out of the ordinary swimming in Lake Erie. But I have no doubt that most anything could be lurking in there.

Notes

1. "Bessie (Lake Monster)." World EBook Library. Accessed February 6, 2015.

2. "Does a Sea Monster Haunt Lake Erie's Shores?" Newsvine. October 10, 2006. Accessed February 1, 2015.

3. George M. Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology. Vol. 2. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 511.

4. Newsvine, "Does a Sea Monster Haunt Lake Erie's Shores?"

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