Two sea serpents off Cayuga Lake's eastern shore (Old Greeny), 1929

Cayuga Lake lies in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Its waters have carried a monster story for generations. In January 1897 the Ithaca Journal reported that the year marked the 69th in a row with a confirmed encounter. That puts the start of the record at about 1828. The 1897 story also gave the creature the name that stuck. Old Greeny.

Through all those decades, the reports shared one feature. There was a single animal.

Then came 1929. People on the lake began reporting something new. Not one creature, but two. They were seen together along the lake's eastern shore. One retelling says they were seen cavorting. Others describe them swimming together, side by side, parallel to the shore.

The witnesses were described as cottagers, the people of the cottages along the water. They put each creature at roughly 12 to 15 feet long. Beyond that, the record falls quiet. No colour. No sound. No names.

The story reached print in June 1929. A bibliography compiled at Wells College lists it as "Cayuga Lake Has a Sea Serpent Story," published in the Fair Haven Register on 13 June 1929. The Register was a weekly paper in Fair Haven, Cayuga County. Several later retellings credit the Ithaca Journal instead. The two papers may have run the same item.

The writer had a theory. The pair were "members of the Seneca Lake sea serpent family that found their way into the local waters through a subterranean channel which is believed to exist between the two lakes." Seneca Lake had a serpent legend of its own, including an 1899 steamboat encounter.

No official body ever looked into the 1929 report. The tunnel idea drew the sharpest criticism. Writing in the Ithaca Times in 2018, Charley Githler noted that "Legends of tunnels connecting Cayuga and Seneca Lakes have long circulated." He called such a link impossible to anyone who understands that water seeks its own level. The two lakes are in fact joined at their northern ends, by the Cayuga-Seneca Canal.

Others have pointed to the lake sturgeon. The Finger Lakes Land Trust notes that sturgeon "can be over seven feet long and weigh more than 300 pounds." In 1929 they still lived in the lake. Even so, the Land Trust concluded: "Whatever Old Greeny is, it might not be a sturgeon, either." Large eels and floating logs have also been offered for the wider legend. Gordon Bonnet of Skeptophilia called the creature "aquatic, reptilian, and almost certainly nonexistent."

The 1929 pair left a lasting mark. In later lore, two creatures became a feature of the whole legend. More reports followed. In spring 1979 the diver Jack Marshall described a 30 to 35 foot animal he called "Cayuga Katie." Cryptopia, retelling the story in 2011, placed Old Greeny beside Champ of Lake Champlain and Lake Erie's "Chomper."

In 2016 Wells College Press published a letterpress book on the monster by Kyle Admire and others, with a facsimile of the old clippings. Only 100 copies were made. The original 1929 page has not surfaced online. Until it does, the two serpents of the eastern shore remain what the cottagers left behind. A sighting. A size. And a question.