Bessie
(South Bay) Bessie is the name of a sea monster that is said to live in Lake Erie .
description
Bessie is said to be a snake-like creature of gray in color between 10 and 13 meters long . Allegedly, it should be able to move in water and on land.
Sightings
Bessie was first sighted in 1817. Afterwards, spurred on by a newspaper's April Fool's joke in 1912, a wave of deliberate false reports set in that continued into the 1990s . Apparently, local authorities were also involved, with the aim of attracting tourists to the area.
In 1931, two men claimed to have captured Bessie in Sandusky Bay . The alleged monster quickly turned out to be a tiger python . It turned out that the snake belonged to a traveling circus that one of the two men belonged to.
Possible explanations
There were many sturgeons in the Sandusky area ; In the 19th century it was considered one of the American strongholds for caviar . Since sturgeons can reach over three meters in length and can be mistaken for reptiles because of their primeval appearance , many believe that Bessie is just a large sturgeon. In 1998, a specimen two feet long and 250 pounds live weight was caught in Lake Erie .
swell
- Corinna Harder, Jens Schumacher, Bernhard Speh: Nessie, Yeti and Co. - on the trail of mysterious beings. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-491-42045-8