Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle the Great Lake Monster Hoaxes. Monday we looked at the hoax that defined a town.

The Lake George Monster never saved a town. It didn’t herald a tourism boom or lure swarms of industrialists to the shores of Hague Bay. It doesn’t funky chicken around the sidelines of any public school basketball courts. And Lake George isn’t known as “Home of the Lake George Monster,” but rather as “Gateway to the Adirondacks.” Credit where credit is due, though, the Lake George Monster is probably the most extreme point (short of boat murder) to which a friendly fishing contest has ever escalated.
In 1904, Harry Watrous, a professional painter, made a bet with his friend, Colonel William Mann, the editor of an infamous gossip rag, over who could reel in a larger trout. And so it began. The men fished on the lake, often in sight of each other, each one determined to fish better, harder, faster than the other. In retrospect, that Mann decided to cheat shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

The paper the Colonel edited, “Town Topics,” once a respectable arts and leisure magazine, had, under Mann, become an inky mire of high society gossip and scandal-mongering. Mann’s ploy to avoid libel charges? Print standard, sometimes even complimentary, articles about known New York society members on the front of a page, then, on the flip side, directly lined up with the corresponding fluff pieces, run scandalous news about the same individuals, sans identification. Anyone who knew how to read the paper – and anyone who was anyone did – could easily match the public figures to the defaming rumors. “Town Topics,” of course, stayed in business by collecting bribes from guilty parties who wished to keep their faux pas private. Still, when Watrous finally identified the hulking monster of a trout that Mann casually held up from inside his own fishing craft, and later, in a ridiculous display of bravado, exhibited in his house, as a sculpted and painted hunk of wood, he swore revenge.

Like the Rhinelander Hodag, the Lake George Monster began life as a chunk of wood (specifically, a cedar log). Using bits of glass, metal and wood, Watrous affixed eyes, ears and a toothy snout to the 10-foot-long log, which he then painted in alternating yellow and black stripes. Also, white teeth, red mouth, red nostrils, and blue (yes, blue) ears. (Later, Watrous would repeatedly refer to his creation as a “Hippogriff”- the mythical offspring of a griffin and a mare, and noble companion to the Boy Who Lived – but I’m not seeing it.) He rowed out to an area of the lake frequented by his friend and nemesis, and rigged up the creature to a simple pulley system – a 100-foot-rope anchored to a rock on the shore.

Then he waited.

MUCH MORE… AFTER THE JUMP

Mann, who floated by sometime later, was accompanied by several guests, including one Mr. Davies and one Mrs. Bates. Watrous loosed his Hippogriff. I’ll let the monster’s creator describe the ensuing scene as he related it years later to the New York “Evening Sun”:
“Mr. Davies, who had a rather high pitched voice, uttered a scream that must have been heard as far away as Burlington, Vt. Mrs. Bates, a very intrepid lady, of Milesian extraction, stood on a seat in the boat and beat the water with her parasol, shouting indistinguishable sentences in her native tongue. Col. Mann shouted, ‘Good God, what is it?’ through his whiskers and kept repeating his query as long as the boat was in sight.”
Soon, rumors of the Lake George Monster began spreading throughout the town. Needless to say, Watrous was overjoyed. Ecstatic. So entirely freaking jazzed that he proceeded to systematically move his wood beast around the lake, setting it up near dock- and shore-side attractions, including the Lake View Restaurant and the Island Harbour House hotel, so that he could confound and terrify locals and tourists alike. It’s not known exactly how long Watrous kept up this game, but season after season, talk of a strange monster trolling the waters of Hague Bay persisted. While Eugene Shepard’s outsized promotion of his captive Rhinelander Hodag attracted scads of curious out-of-towners, Watrous’ unrestrained hippogriff had little effect on the Lake George Area (though some hotel owners supposedly feared that tales of a ferocious, unpredictable lake beast might actually hurt the tourist industry), and soon, the inventor of the world’s first functioning blue-eared DIY hippogriff packed away his hobby and moved on with his life.

30 years after the fearsome Lake George Monster delivered the winning punch in a rousing, street-rules fishing contest, Harry Watrous, who by this time was known locally as the master of the bygone beast, was asked to resurrect his monster one last time for a surprise cameo at a local Independence Day festival. During one of the day’s many aquatic events, Watrous pulled the rope and, to the shock and delight of the celebrating crowds, gave his creation life.

Despite the fact that Lake George never immortalized its monster in statue form nor baptized an amateur sports team “The Hague Bay Hippogriffs,” one can still see Watrous’ original monster at the Lake George Historical Association Museum. It’s a bit banged up, missing its marvelous blue ears and layered with the chipping evidence of repeated repaintings, but research done by Joe Nickell, an investigator for the “Skeptical Inquirer,” confirms that it is most likely the authentic object.

After basking in the triumph of the Hodag, it’s almost disheartening to read about the Lake George Monster, which, outside a small community of hoax groupies and cryptid enthusiasts has been nearly forgotten. But put it into perspective – the hostage Hodag was created to save a town, while the hippogriff was built to win a derailed fishing contest. And then there’s the joy the creature brought to its creator: “I spoofed the world once with the horrendous beast; and I spoofed it again this afternoon.” These were the words spoken by George Watrous after he loosed his creation upon a lake full of revelers on July 4th, 1934, and they speak a wonderful truth – inauthentic though it might be, any successful hoax is a marvelous falsehood joined on either end by evident creativity and unfeigned triumph.

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