The schooner Madaline and the Lake Erie sea serpent

Lake Erie has its own monster. Locals call it Bessie. Reports of a great serpent in its waters go back to 1793. In May 1892 the Cleveland Plain Dealer carried a fresh one. Fishermen near Oak Harbor, Ohio, had seen a creature about 25 feet long.

1892. Most accounts say July. One says the fall. The schooner Madaline was crossing open Lake Erie, inbound from Buffalo on the run to Toledo.

About half a mile ahead, the crew saw a large area of water churned up and foaming. The rest of the lake was calm. As they drew nearer, they made out "a huge sea serpent." It seemed to be "wrestling about in the waters, as if fighting with an unseen foe."

Then it stopped. The creature came to rest at the surface, long enough for the sailors to get a good look. It was about 50 feet long and about 4 feet around. It had large fins. The crew's own words have come down to us: "It was a terrible looking object. It had vicious, sparkling eyes and a large head."

The account came out of Toledo and was carried by local newspapers. It names no crew. Charles Cassady Jr., who gives the vessel's name in his 2009 book Paranormal Great Lakes, leaves the captain unnamed. A 2013 retelling on Hauntingly PA calls him Captain Patrick Woods and sets the sighting in the fall, but cites no original source and does not name the ship.

No one has found the original 1892 item, and every known version is a later retelling. One lead remains. A piece headed "A Sea Serpent in Lake Erie," credited to the Cincinnati Enquirer, was reprinted in the Provo Daily Enquirer on 10 September 1892. Whether it tells of the Madaline is still unknown. No registry record of a schooner by that name has been found either.

Then there is Puget Sound. In July 1892 the Port Townsend Key City Graphic told of the steamer Monticello, running from Port Angeles to Port Townsend. Near Dungeness, Captain Oliver saw the water "lashed into foam." Then came a creature "about fifty feet in length," head out of the water, with fins, a dark brown body and "viciously sparkling eyes and a large head."

Same month. Same length. Same foam. Same eyes. The Lake Erie story may have been borrowed from the Pacific one, or the other way round. Or papers of the 1890s simply shared stock sea serpent wording. Hoaxes and filler serpents were common in that era, and Cleveland Scene notes Bessie's own history of "shameless publicity stunts and newspaper hoaxes." For Bessie in general, sceptics point to unusually large lake sturgeon and to exaggerated sightings of water snakes.

Bessie never left. Sightings followed at Crystal Beach, Ontario, in 1896, and again in 1969, the 1980s and 1993. The legend now lends its name to the Cleveland Monsters hockey team and a Great Lakes Brewing IPA. And the Madaline, real or borrowed, remains one of its strangest chapters. A crew. A churning lake. A pair of sparkling eyes that no archive has yet confirmed.