Charles E. Brown

A Wisconsin folklorist, and the man who first gathered the state's lake monsters between two covers. In 1942 Charles E. Brown compiled Sea Serpents, a pamphlet for the Wisconsin Folklore Society. It took in the Rock Lake encounter of 1882 and Billy Dunn's Lake Mendota serpent of 1883. Brown popularised a name for the Mendota creature: Bozho, after the Ojibwe trickster Winnebozho. His pamphlet was also the first folklore collection to cover Lake Koshkonong. With Dorothy Moulding Brown, he recorded the Potawatomi tradition of a water demon there that demanded tobacco.

Stories3

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The Rock Lake Serpent, the "Rock Lake Terror" of Lake Mills, Wisconsin

August 1882 · Rock Lake, Lake Mills, Jefferson County, Wisconsin

United States

Cryptid · Creature · 24 sources

17Thinly documented

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Billy Dunn and the Lake Mendota sea serpent

June 22, 1883 · Lake Mendota, Madison, Wisconsin

United States

Cryptid · Creature · 16 sources

25Thinly documented

Author of the 1942 pamphlet Sea Serpents; popularised the name Bozho

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The Lake Koshkonong sea serpent: A. I. Sherman and Charles Bartlett's rowboat chase (1887)

November 1887 · Northeast bay, Lake Koshkonong, near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin

United States

Cryptid · Creature · 15 sources

18Thinly documented

Folklorist, author of the 1942 pamphlet Sea Serpents