The Silver Lake Serpent

Silver Lake lies near the village of Perry, in Wyoming County, New York. It is about 2.3 miles long, with an average depth of 17 feet. Later writers recalled a Seneca story of a large slug-like monster that once lived there and died after a thunderstorm. In the summer of 1855, the lake got a new one.

The night of July 13, 1855. Two boys and five men were fishing from a boat. Something was headed rapidly in their direction, leaving a visible wake behind it.

The Wyoming Times told what happened next. The creature "darted from the water about four feet from the stern of the boat, close by the rudder-paddle, the head and forward part of the monster rising above the surface of the water." All in the boat "had a fair view of the creature, and concur in representing it as a most horrid and repulsive looking monster."

The next night, about 9:00 pm, Franklin Morgan, Abner Glazier, Eli Bishop and George Kinsey were fishing near the inlet. They heard a splash behind them. They turned to see the head of the monster slowly sinking beneath the surface. On July 15, in daylight, Edwin Fanning said it raised its head and spat water before submerging. In late July, parties saw it in the rushes near the inlet, following their boats with its head held high.

Reports gave it a length of 60 to 100 feet, a fin on its back and coppery tones of brown and green. One account says an affidavit described glowing, red eyes. About 100 people eventually claimed sightings. Visitors poured in. A harpoon party was hired. On August 13 a newspaper claimed Daniel Smith had harpooned the beast, only for it to escape by snapping the line. That capture story is now described as a newspaper hoax.

December 19, 1857. The Walker House hotel burned. Firemen found the serpent.

In his 1915 History of the Town of Perry, New York, Frank D. Roberts set out the story. Hotel owner Artemus B. Walker and a few trusted friends had built a serpent about 60 feet long, waterproof canvas over coiled wire. A gas pipe ran in a trench from a shanty on the west shore. Hidden blacksmith's bellows inflated it. "The head rose gracefully to a height of about eight feet," one retelling says. Walker confessed. One account names Truman S. Gillett, editor of the Wyoming Times, as a co-conspirator.

Not everyone accepts the confession either. Joe Nickell titled his 1999 Skeptical Inquirer article "The Silver Lake Serpent: Inflated Monster or Inflated Tale?" The Museum of Hoaxes found Walker's contraption "as implausible" as a real serpent. Critics point to several hundred feet of hose, canvas that had to stay waterproof, control ropes that would have been seen, and sightings miles from the lake. The hoax account was first written down sixty years after the events. Others suggest floating logs and newspaper excitement.

In 1896 Charles M. Skinner wrote that "old settlers declare that he still comes to the surface now and then." Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford gave the lake a chapter in Lake Monster Mysteries. Perry still holds a Silver Lake Sea Serpent festival, and a sea monster appears on its town-limit signs. In 2024 the William G. Pomeroy Foundation added a Legends & Lore marker.