The following might be of interest to afficionados of cryptozoology.
In 1969 or 1970 I was reading the book “The Great Orm of Loch Ness” by F.W. Holiday. In it the author stated that sightings of lake/loch monsters had occurred all over the world, including the Adirondack Mountains in New York State, USA. That assertion rang a bell in my mind.
As a kid between 1952 and 1957 my family vacationed at Long Lake in the Adirondacks. Long Lake, which was very sparsely populated in those days, is about 23 miles long and up to 1.5 miles wide; dimensions incredibly similar to those of Loch Ness. However, distinctly different from Lock Ness, the deepest place that I ever found on the lake was about 45 feet. Of course this does not mean there were not some deeper spots, but I would doubt if the depth ever got even near 100 ft.
In 1957, the last year we were at the lake, my mother and I went for a fast boat ride up the lake in the early evening. At least at that lake, the winds of the day die down and the lake gets as smooth as glass with no waves save those from the wake of a very occasional boat (maybe one or two per hour). We were zooming up the middle of the lake about 35 mph when my mother yelled “What’s that?”. I immediately slowed the boat and and swerved and saw maybe 20 or 30 yards ahead at the 2 o’clock position 2 or 3 reddish brown humps sticking up out of the water. Each hump looked to be 12-18" long and maybe 12" high. I do not recall that the humps looked other than solid; i.e., they did not appear to me to coils of a snake like body. In the late afternoon sun those humps were quite apparent against the darker blue of surrounding water. As we passed them I circled the boat to get a better look, but it immediately submerged. Thinking it perhaps was an otter, or muskrat, or even a beaver, although at that location the nearest shore was over ½ mile away, we stopped and waited for it to resurface for air. After waiting 15 minutes or so with nothing breaking the surface in any direction, we continued on our way. Smooth as the surface of the water was, nothing could break the surface without our seeing it, or at least the ripples from such a surfacing.
Two other possibly cryptozoological incidents occurred at other times while I was at the lake. To put the lake’s environment in proper perspective we need to understand that the upper 15 miles or so of the lake had no road access, and the few summer houses up there had to be served by boat. The woods were truly the forest primeval. Hamilton County, where the lake was located, had the highest concentration of black bear in all of New York State.
The first incident occurred a few years earlier, perhaps 1953 or 1954. My parents had gotten me some fireworks for my birthday that we planned to shoot off one dark night from a safe place up the lake. There was a large rock that jutted out into the lake from point of land, and next to it was a nice little beach where we could land our boat. We had stopped at that beach numerous other times for a picnic lunch after a morning’s fishing. The nearest people were in a small hotel about 2 miles away that we could see the lights of.
My mother, who was in the front of the boat was the first to get out and step on shore. As she stepped out the lightened boat was pushed back off shore a bit. As my father and I were getting out the oars to push ourselves back toward the beach my mother was chatting; probably discussing about how to throw her the rope or something. She suddenly stopped talking and said/asked “What was that?”. As soon as she stopped talking we could hear something running towards us through the very heavy woods. While it is hard to be sure, my own impression at the time was that whatever was running towards us was on two legs and not four.
After several noisy running steps that followed our silence, the steps immediately stopped and was followed by complete silence from the woods. After a few moments or minutes of this silence we started talking again, with my mother who was clearly scared (as I also was), urgently asking us to get back to the beach and pick her up. But as soon as we started talking the running towards us resumed. Again we stopped talking and almost immediately the running ceased again. There may have been another cycle of talking and running, but I do not remember clearly. At any rate, we finally got her in the boat and we pulled 30 feet or so off the beach. We alternated between talking and silence, but once we were off the beach and really unreachable, we heard no more running in the heavy woods and brush. Shining lights into the woods revealed absolutely nothing.
Had the thing been a lost dog, it would have kept coming even when we stopped talking. While the running steps sounded as if they could be a person, I find it very very doubtful that a man would be in the Adirondack woods at 10PM without any light on a dark night, or would try running through the heavy undergrowth that permeated those woods. There would seemingly be no reason for a deer or a bear or a racoon to have come toward us at all, let alone running, and the entity was clearly running, right at us. My impression was that the last time we heard the running steps they were maybe 50 feet or back from the edge of the woods. And then the entity immediately stopped running when we stopped talking; talking that was covering up the noise it was making running toward us in the heavy brush. This last implies something sinister and intelligent to me since if it were simply attracted by our voices it would have continued to approach us even when we were back out on the boat talking between us. I have wondered about this incident many times since.
Since the deaths of both my parents I have regretted not discussing these incidents with them to get their impression of the events.
The third incident occurred some 20 years later, about 1978 or 1979 when I was once again vacationing at the lake, this time as a man in his 30s. The output end of the lake is a small generally shallow river which winds it way through heavy forest. Since the lake had, for many years, been part of a water trail that many had canoed over the years, there were campsites along the banks of the output river. When the water was high, which it was most the time, one could take a motor boat down the river to explore. My wife and I were cruising maybe 15-20 mph when we rounded a bend to the left in the river, which was maybe 50-75 yards wide at that point. I happened to glance up to the right and saw high up a very tall tree a huge all black bird with folded wings. My recollection is that it was close to 3 feet tall and it was certainly the largest bird I had ever seen at that time, or since. I do not know what kind of bird I thought it was – perhaps a vulture or maybe an eagle – but in retrospect I have no idea. I have since seen many vultures close up and I do not think it was a vulture. I think that if it had been an eagle with an eagle’s beak I would have noted that, but I did not so note it. I also now think it was much larger than any bald eagle I have seen since, as well. I also have no idea why I did not take a photo of it since I had my cameras with me, although I continued to watch it over my shoulder until we rounded another bend. On the way back I was ready with my camera, but by then the bird had departed.
At any rate, these are my 3 tales from the great north woods. |
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