W-File: lmlakemichigan.html

W-File: lmlakemichigan.html

Type: Lake Monster
Location: Lake Michigan

Source: The W-Files book by Jay Rath, page 30.

The earliest sightings by white settlers were made in August 1867. The crews of two boats, the George W. Wood and the Sky Lark, said that they saw a serpentine creature off Evanston Ill. A fisherman named Joseph Muhike later saw it a mile and a half off Chicago's Hyde Park.

By the turn of the century, the creature seemed to have moved north, to Milwaukee, where a "ferocious looking beast" was sighted by commercial fishermen. When the men came to shore and reported what they'd seen, they were made fun of, but boaters in the city's bay soon saw it themselves.

The creature first appeared to be "a large cask." "When they passed near it they saw that it was the head of a large serpentine animal which was floating at rest," wrote Charles Brown, who collected the stories for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in the 1930s. Whatever the creature was, it was next spotted from Milwaukee's Michigan Street bridge, easing down the Milwaukee River. The man who saw it described a grayish-green serpent, moving downstream. Later the same day it was reported near the river's mouth.