The Payette Lake Monster: Six Witnesses See "Slimy Slim" at Lakeview Camp, McCall, Idaho

Payette Lake sits at McCall, in Valley County, Idaho. It covers over 5,000 acres. Long before the town, Native Americans who spent summers in Long Valley feared the lake as home to an evil spirit. Settlers had their own story. Around 1920, a railroad tie-cutting crew at the upper end of the lake watched what looked like a log. "The log began to move forward. Then the log began to undulate." It made its own wake and left quickly.

July 2, 1944. Six people at Lakeview Camp looked out across the water. Among them was Homer Martin, a Boise attorney who had drafted the 1938 ballot initiative that created the Idaho Fish & Game Commission. Some accounts place the 1944 sighting near the Narrows, the rocky passage between the north and south sides of the lake.

What they saw was "moving through the water in an undulating fashion." Its head was raised in the air "much like the periscope of a submarine," and it had "a tail fin that was similar to the rudder of an airplane." Others described a dinosaur-type head with a pronounced jaw, humps like a camel and shell-like skin. It was at least 35 feet long. Later that summer it was seen "writhing off shore," showing "a series of three humps."

The reports kept coming. Local residents. Soldiers on leave. Workers at the lumber mill. The Payette Lakes Star covered the story in August. On August 21, 1944, TIME wrote of "an enormous sea serpent glubbing about in Idaho's Payette Lake," and counted 30 people who had seen its periscope-shaped head since July 2. Stars and Stripes followed on August 25. The creature had a nickname. Slimy Slim.

It did not go away. In 1946, a group of 20 people including Dr. G.A. Taylor of Nampa saw something about 40 feet long that "seemed to keep diving into the water." In 1947, two Oregon fishermen steered toward a large wake with three humps. One of them, F.M. Christiansen, admitted: "I have been coming here for 20 years and have always figured the sea serpent talk was just a lot of hooey."

In 1954, A. Boone McCallum, editor of the Star News, ran a contest to name the creature. More than 200 entries arrived, among them Humpy, Watzit, Snorky and Neptune Ned. Governor Len Jordan was among the judges. Le Isle Hennefer Tury of Springfield, Virginia, won $40 with Sharlie, taken from comedian Jack Pearl's radio catchphrase, "Vas you der, Sharlie?"

No photograph, video or film of Sharlie exists. In 1980, a Pennsylvania biology student concluded that the lake was too small to support a breeding population. In 1985, Idaho Fish and Game fisheries biologist Don Anderson said tests on Payette Lake "showed no evidence of a large sea serpent." Then Anderson added: "Maybe he's just smarter than us … I want him to be there, and if he is, we'll protect him."

Others point to a sturgeon that might have reached the lake through the Snake and Payette rivers before the Snake River dams. Sturgeon can reach about 8 feet and live more than 55 years. Another idea is a seiche, a standing wave raised by rapid changes in air pressure, which can make wakes with no boat nearby.

Dozens of reports followed, the last documented one in 1996 or 1997. Today Sharlie rides in the McCall Winter Carnival parade, carried by McCall-Donnelly High School students. Writers compare it to Loch Ness, and Idaho Public Television told its story beside the Bear Lake Monster. It all began with six people at a lakeside camp, one summer day in 1944.