Ep251 - Sea Monsters Of The Great Lakes

There are monsters in the Great Lakes. Big ones. Ugly ones. Some with teeth like piano keys and humps like bad debts—lurching through the muck beneath your boat while you sip lemonade and pretend civilization is in control. From the icy, copper-veined depths of Lake Superior to the oddly hostile waters of Erie, the Great Lakes are lousy with local legends and long-bodied beasts that should not exist, but very well may. In this episode, the Hosts plunge headfirst into a boiling stew of cryptid lore, eyewitness accounts, Native legends, and 19th-century newspaper ramblings that blur the line between genuine horror and mad ravings. You’ll meet a rotating cast of lake-dwelling weirdos that range from seductive water nymphs to glowing tentacled horrors. It’s an all-American nightmare brewed fresh from the heartland. Citizens of the Milky Way, prepare yourselves for Sea Monsters of the Great Lakes! 

Music and Editing by Gage Hurley

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It was a damp Tuesday, the kind of damp that
gets into your bones and then applies for residency. I'd
been at my desk for thirteen hours, two of them legally.
The coffee was burnt, the wallpaper was peeling, and my
ass was chapped. GLC Monster hotline here speaking to Officer

(00:25):
Rex Fender. If it swims, slithers, or speaks in Latin,
I'm your man.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I just thought it was huge coils, pumps, teeth like
piano keys.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Sir, are you describing a lake monster or Gary Busey?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's heading forward by jet ski ah.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Pucy doesn't even have a boating license.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'd like to report a fish that disrespected me. Go on,
it made eye contact, then it winked with intention.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Man, it sounds like you've been emotionally compromised by a walleye.
Take a hot shower and don't look directly into water
for seventy two hours. They come in waves, the calls,
the loonies, the serpent chasers, the guy who insists his
cousin Mary to Selke in Wisconsin, and every single one

(01:19):
wants closure or compensation, sometimes both. We're getting the facts
over here. Let's see a sketch of a sea otter
with breasts labeled possible siren. Well that's better than last
week's sasquatch in a scuba suit.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I just watched something slither out of the lake and
into my Honda Civic.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Is it driving?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's a just in the mirrors.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Sounds like Beaucy found a ride home. Sometimes I think
the lake's just screwing with us, like it knows we're watching,
And every now and then it sends something up. Not
a monster, just a wet practical joke.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
We caught something on Lake Ontario.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Looks like a cqucomer with a comb over keeps whispering
stock tips so immediately.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I've seen things a bass the size of a speedboat,
a heron a recited poetry. One time I got bit
by a leech that claimed it was self defense. Need
a little bit of coffee to clear my mind. Wrong cup.

(02:45):
That was a seamen sample GLC Monster hotline. If it's glowing,
oozing or singing show tunes, press one. You work the
cryptid hotline long enough, you learn what's important. Quick reflexes,
laminated copy of maritime law and a safe word that

(03:06):
the Coastguard will recognize. In this business, I've seen everything
from sea monsters to sea gulls to see men, and
I pray you never know what it's like to be
on the clock and covered in seamen. The lake never sleeps,
the monsters never stop, and I rex Fender will still

(03:30):
be out there taking every call, filing every report, and
knowing deep down, if it's got scales, it's got a
Vendetta Monster hotline. No, we don't validate parking. Citizens of

(04:11):
the Milky Way. My name is Dylan Hackworth and Hurley
and you have waded waist tie into the murky Lake waters,
the fresh waters of creep Street podcasts. That's right, folks. Oho, Oh,
I hope you brought your snorkeling gear because tonight we

(04:32):
are diving into those They're not even just lakes. Like
how many lakes get called a great lake? You know
what I mean?

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, how many lakes even have a.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Tide exactly right? How many lakes actually have their own
weather system? And that's exactly what we're diving into today.
Gage and I in Michigan. Here we are in the
Great Lake State. We're surrounded on all.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Sides, all sides put the south.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
That's right. We can always escape into Ohio if we
need to. Of course, worst case, in some cases, I'd
rather be eaten by the sea monster. Folks. Today's episode
is Sea Monsters of the Great Lakes. Mmm mmm mmmm mmm.

(05:28):
That's right. That's right. Let me go ahead and baptize
you in the cool waters of my sources. Here. I've
got a book called Spooky Great Lakes, as well as
an article Bizarre Mystery Monsters of the Great Lakes by
Prince Swansor at Mysterious Universe. Oh that's right, baby, buckle up,

(05:51):
Buckle up and put that snorkeler on.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Put on your life jackets.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
That's right, You're gonna be hanging on to dear life
during this episode. Folk. You know, lake monsters are a
bit like glitter at a craft store. Once you've noticed
one piece, suddenly you're covered in that shit. They're mysterious,
they're elusive, and weirdly quite common. These strange aquatic anomalies

(06:18):
seem to pop up in just about every sizeable puddle
of water humanities ever plopped a pontoon into. From the
misty Scottish locks to the backwoods by us. If there's
murky water and the local legend. Chances are there's a
scaly menace lurking just out of sight in the dark
of the night. So of course it makes perfect sense

(06:41):
that the Great Lakes, those colossal fresh water freaks, those
inland seas of North America would be no exception. And
maybe these lakes, oh Mama, they are massive as well
as ancient and deep, and if the stories are to
be believed, they're also teeming with things that have no

(07:05):
business existing, at least in our realm. Now, let's head
de east from where we are now, at least to
Lake Huron. Nestled on the eastern flank of Michigan, is
where you'll find Old Hero, once known as Loch de Hurons.
It is the second largest of the Great Lakes, a massive,

(07:27):
ancient body of water, and if you ask the local
of Jibwe, they'll tell you that it's full of not
just h two oh, but full of darn water spirits
as well, water nymphs, whispering current, strange creatures creeping just
beneath the ripple of the surface. To the casual tourists

(07:48):
that might sound like charming folklore, But those who spent
enough time near the shorelines of Lake huron well, they
might have other opinions on the matter. Take, for example,
the strange tale of a man known only as Sheridan.
It was sometime during the nineteen sixties, and this Sheridan
fellow was out for a day of boating with his family,

(08:10):
the kind of quaint family outing that starts with sandwiches
and a cooler and ends with sunburns and bleached hair.
Their course took them through Saginaw Bay to the mysterious
Charity Island, the largest island in Lake Here, a lush place,
it's remote and just eerie enough to tickle the red

(08:31):
flag flare gun. Once they landed, everyone split off to
explore the island. Sheridan decided to walk up the shoreline,
probably hoping for a little solitude and a good view.
But what he got instead was something weird. Sheridan, poor bastard.

(08:51):
It barely rounded the bend in the shoreline when something
peculiar tugged at his attention. It was the sound of laughter,
soft musical in tone, drifting in on the lake breeze.
Not the cackling of gulls or the creak of pines,

(09:13):
but something that sounded unmistakably human and giddy of all
things woo. He turned toward the water, his eyes squinting
against the sunlight, and that's when he saw them. Three women, young,
beautiful and good golly, if this trio of lasses wasn't

(09:35):
stark naked frolicking in the shallows like a cinemax fever dream.
They danced and splashed each other, their laughter rising like
the mist and a carefree cadence. These were nips from
some forgotten woodland myth. There'd been no sign of other
people on the island, no boats, no towels, no footprints

(10:00):
in the sand, no life of beach signs. Nevertheless, there
they were now. Sheridan, being the red blooded fella in
the nineteen sixties that he was, he crouched in the
brush and watched these mysterious ladies like a creep in
Bermuda shorts or a peeping Tommy Bahama. But just when

(10:22):
he thought this lakeside peep show couldn't get any more surreal,
the women all dove beneath the surface and they never
came back up, not a ripple or a splash. All
was silent. So sharried and waited five minutes, ten minutes,

(10:44):
twenty minutes, and these ladies, they didn't resurface or swim away.
It was as if the lake had just opened its
arms and swallowed them whole. And suddenly Sheridan wasn't so
sure that he'd stumbled upon some group of beats having
a bath, but rather something ancient and not what it

(11:05):
appeared to be. Perhaps it was something that had been
watching him the entire time. Sheridan never told his family
what he'd seen, especially probably because he was there with
his wife. Maybe he was afraid they'd mock him, or
maybe he just wanted to keep it to himself. Either way,

(11:27):
when they returned to Charity Island sometime later, he found
himself drifting toward that same shoreline where he had seen
the mysterious bathing ladies once before. And sure enough, oh mama,
there they were the same, three buxome ladies, naked as hell,
laughing and dancing in the surf like they'd stepped out

(11:49):
of a dream and had an age. Today. Once again,
they never seemed to notice him, and, just like the
time before, after they'd had some fun, they slip beneath
the water and vanished like ghosts. That's when the obsession started.
Year after year, Sheridan returned to the island, often alone,

(12:12):
all the ways, hoping for another glimpse. Sometimes they would
appear exactly as he remembered them, with the same faces,
the same laughter. They never looked older, and never left
the water. It was as if they were caught in
a time loop of some kind, trapped in some eternal
twilight just beneath the waves, And the more he saw them,

(12:36):
the less sure he became of anything else. Then one day,
as he sat watching the lake, a voice cackled behind him,
like a dry twig snapping underfoot. Watching the ladies are startled,
Sheridan turned to find an old man standing nearby, weathered,

(12:58):
white bearded and eyes like slate, and a voice that
sounded like it had been smoking an entire pack of
SIGs at a time for years. This mysterious fellow hadn't
made a sound while approaching, and this rattled Sheridan, not
because someone had caught him oogling the naked ladies, but
because this odd conviction he was the only one who

(13:22):
could see them like they were his haunting. The old
man just cackled their nymphs, he said, pointing a gnarled
finger towards the surf spirits of the lake been here
long before you, and they'll be here long after. Sheridan

(13:42):
asked what they wanted, and the old man smile faded,
and he said, they don't want. They lure. They feed
off of longing young men like you go swimming out
to them, thinking they'll finally catch them, and the neville
come back. And then the mysterious old man, just like

(14:06):
those ladies, was gone, no footprints, no boat, just gone
into thin air. And just like that, the nymphs stopped appearing.
To Sheridan, he never saw them again. No matter how
many times he returned, no matter how long he waited,
the water stayed still and silent. Whatever they were, spirits,

(14:29):
visions or something stranger, they slipped back beneath the lake,
leaving Sheridan with only memories and unanswered questions. Eh, yes, yes, yes,
sounds like your typical, Like a water nymph of sometimes
something that would clearly want to lure. I would assume

(14:51):
is the intent is to lure unsuspecting victims into the water.
This is kind of a tale that's old as time.
The sound of the sirens singing so beautiful that it
causes ships to run aground you know, it's it's kind
of a tale as old as time. Obviously there's been
many spins put on the idea of the water nymph,
but yeah, apparently like Huron's got its own bouty of

(15:15):
bucks and beauties out there luring men to their death.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
The sirens thing definitely popped into my mind as well,
as you know, a lot of nautical legends over the years,
when they talk about mermaids, the mermaids sound like sirens.
They're kind of the same way. It sounds like they
all kind of speak to the same entity.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Right exactly, And they all, at least when it comes
to men, seem to call to that primal nature, whether
it's just being naked or it's just like a beautiful song,
like something that calms lures want, especially men into their
hypnotizes them, right exactly exactly. I remember what we do

(15:58):
in the Shadows, that funny TV show that's based on
the movie. Excellent show, but they have an episode where
they run across sirens out in the water and it's
super super funny, super funny.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, I remember vaguely them depicted in the Lighthouse. They
come across as very terrifying.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yes, yes, that's a great point. That's a good depiction
of that. I forgot about. Yes, Robert Eggers The Lighthouse
is great movie and yet a great depiction of that myth.
And side note in case people haven't heard, Robert Eggerts,
director of The Witch No Sperratu, The Lighthouse, the Northman.

(16:37):
He's gonna be doing a Christmas Carol. I cannot wait
to see what he does with that. That'll be great. Well, folks,
let's pay a visit to the big guy. We're gonna
head on north to Lake Superior, the largest of the
Great Lakes and the most pretentious and the most pretentious. Right,
come on here, on's an opening act. He's like, Lake

(17:00):
Superior is the type that would demand purple m and
ms in their writer before a show.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
You know, yeah, superiors, the type will explain to you
when it's who and when it's whom.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Absolutely absolutely well, folks. Not only is it the largest
of the Great Lakes, it is an inland sea so
massive it could swallow entire cities, a body of water
so vast it creates its own weather. The Lake of Storms,
as it is commonly known, is more than thirty one
thousand square miles of cold fresh water, stretching across international

(17:36):
borders like a liquid Leviathan. In fact, Lake Superior holds
ten percent of all the surface fresh water on Earth,
and it behaves less like a lake and more like
an ancient sleeping god. And Superior doesn't like to be awakened.
Let's just say that, you see. To the Ajibwe and

(17:59):
other native people of the region, Lake Superior was always
a sacred place, a place of power and mystery and yes, monsters.
The lake itself has moods and rules you don't mess with,
and you don't underestimate it. And yet oh folks do.

(18:20):
Sometimes folks do. Because the thing about Lake Superior is
it doesn't just host the legendary Mishipiciu, the water panther
of Ojibwe legend, with its copper horns and wicked temperament. No, no, no,
It's also home to stories that go far beyond folklore.

(18:40):
We're talking real and modern reports, newspaper clippings, eyewitness accounts,
whole ships, disappearing, people seeing things that don't belong in
any lake or even on this earth. Things without names,
and some with names we dare not speak, their tails

(19:01):
of shimmering forms, rising from the waves, only to vanish
like a mist. Ships that reported collisions with nothing They
could see, unexplained lights below the waterline, and in at
least one case, something described as quote, a living pipeline
with teeth, the stuff of love, crafty and nightmares. So

(19:26):
while tourists might snap photos of beautiful sunsets and lighthouses,
the locals and the lake herself remember the darkness that
it is capable of. They know that this place is ancient, haunted,
and in some ways alive. So let's rewind all the
way back to May of seventeen eighty two. The American

(19:52):
Revolution is still smoldering, powdered wigs are still in fashion,
and fur trading is the hot gig. A merg named
Venant Saint Germain. And no, it's not related to the
immortal French Saint Germain, the one we've been requested many
times to do, and we will do it soon. The
Count of Saint Germain is a great tale, but no,

(20:13):
this is a different Saint Germain. This guy was making
a routine trip across Lake Superior with three companions and
an old Jibwey woman as their guide and interpreter. Their
destination that night was Pie Island, and yes, just like
it sounds, pie Pie in the sky baby, a humble,

(20:34):
pine cloaked blip of land between Isle Royale and the
Canadian shoreline, just to stop over, a place to catch
some fish, stoke a fire and sleep under the stars.
Well things got weird fast for Saint Germain as the
others returned to camp to get the fire going. Germaine

(20:56):
and the Ojibwe woman lingered by the water, taking in
that ah, that dusky, superior sunset, the kind that turns
the lake to glass in the sky into a beautiful
bruised gold. It was quiet, still and beautiful. And then
they saw it. Something was out there on the lake,

(21:20):
and boy, it was moving fast. At first it looked
like driftwood, a big one, maybe, rolling slow through the waves.
But then it breached the surface and kept breaching the surface,
rising higher and higher out of the water, higher, wider, longer,
far too long for any fish, too smooth for a whale,

(21:44):
too real to be any mirage. The thing undulated like
it was swimming without actually displacing water, So it's it's
like it rose up into the air but kept moving
in a way that you would think of like a
serpent moving through water, but now it was kind of
like almost halfway in the air, and as it rose

(22:07):
they could make out the gleam of scales and the
fading light. The Ajibwe woman gripped Jermaine's arm, whispering something
under her breath, words that didn't need translating, words that
meant we are not alone. As the creature slid silently

(22:27):
back beneath the water, the two of them stood frozen,
their lungs tight with air, and the air around them
suddenly too cold to even breathe. Neither of them spoke
until they were back at the fire, and even then
it was only the woman who said, quote, some things
are older than the lake and hungry well. Saint Germain

(22:52):
would later recount the story with precision. He was a merchant,
after all, a man who kept records in ledgers. He
had no time for fairy tales. But that night Pye
Island made a believer out of him. Sworn to oath
under the official judges of the Court of King's Bench
for the District of Montreal, the following testimony was given

(23:15):
by Jermaine that a little before sunset, the evening being
clear and Serene Dupon. It was returning from setting his nets,
and reached his encampment a short time after the sun
went down. That is, on embarking, the dupontent happened to
turn towards the lake when he observed about an acre

(23:36):
three quarters of an acre distant from the bank where
he stood, an animal in the water, which appeared to
him to have the upper part of its body above
the waist, formed exactly like that of a human being.
It had the half of its body out of the water,
and the novelty of so extraordinary a spectacle excited his

(23:57):
attention and led him to examine it care that the
body of the animals seemed to him about the size
of that of a child of seven or eight years
of age, with one of its arms extended and elevated
in the air. The hand appeared to be composed of
fingers exactly similar to those of a man, and the

(24:20):
right arm was kept in an elevated position, while the
left seemed to rest upon the hip. But the dupondent
did not see the latter, it being kept under the water.
The dupondent distinctly saw the features of the countenance which
bore an exact resemblance of those of a human face.
The eyes were extremely brilliant, the nose small but handsomely shaped,

(24:45):
the mouth proportionate to the rest of the face, the
complexion of a brownish shoe, the hair grayish black in color,
the ears well formed and corresponding to the other parts
of the figure. Its body was covered in a wooly
substance that look to be an inch long. The animal
looked the deponent in the face with an aspect indicating uneasiness,

(25:07):
but at the same time with a mixture of curiosity.
And the deponent, along with three other men who were
with him at the time, and an old native woman
to whom he had given a passage in his canoe,
attentively examined the animal for the space of three or
four minutes, an animal similar to that which Dupon described

(25:29):
as being seen by another voyager on another occasion, when
passing from Pate to Tenary. The deponent thinks the frequent
appearances of this extraordinary animal in the spot has given
rise to the superstitious belief among the natives that the
God of the Waters had fixed upon this for his residence.

(25:50):
Now it's a little difficult to read because it's obviously
it's written in late eighteenth century vernacular. Almost every line
starts with that A that a Dodd dog with a
dot doll. But anyway, so this sounds like not just
merman like, but almost like mir apish, Like it's got
like fur, almost like a mersapien sort of.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Oh yeah, that's a good off the cuff term for it.
I mean they described the wooly substance that's about an
inch long. Yeah, it doesn't sound like your typical depiction
of a myr person.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Right, And keep in mind, as it's upper half left
the water, it's still continued to undulate as if it
was like you know, I almost imagine like when your
character glitches in a game and it glitches in the
wall and it's still like running but it's stuck or something.
It's almost like that, like it glitched and it was
still like swimming, doing the swimming motion, but half in

(26:46):
the air.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Right, What does that mean about how it's able to
move exactly? That's really strange, very strange.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now. Germaine, our fur trading friend of seventeen eighty two,
he wasn't the kind of man to rattle easy. He
knew the wilderness well, and he knew its inhabitants and
their habits. He knew which animals to shoot and which
ones to just pretend you didn't see. But when he
laid his eyes on that thing out on Lake Superior,

(27:17):
oh Mama, all bets were off. It wasn't just big,
and it wasn't just strange. It was something that should
be impossible. A serpentine mass undulating silently across the mere
still waters, shimmering in the dusk like wet obsidian, And
as it lingered, staring back at them with some kind

(27:41):
of cool, lake born intelligence, something primal stirred in Jermaine's gut.
He did what any rugged man of his time might do.
He grabbed his damn rifle. And that might have been
his last bad decision, had it not been for the
old Jibwe woman by his side to knock some sin
send to him. Before he could raise the barrel and

(28:03):
take aim, she clutched his arm with fingers like iron
and hissed a warning. This was no fish, she told him,
no mere beast of land or sea. This was the
may Mae Guashie, a sacred water spirit said to dwell
in the cracks and caves of Lake Superior's bedrock. They

(28:24):
were the keepers of the storms, watchers of travelers, tricksters,
and sometimes even protectors. But they were always powerful. She
told him. They could summon lightning, command the waves, even
bring death with a thought if offended. While Saint Germain,

(28:44):
ever the Enlightenment error rationalists, scoffed ugh mumbo jumbo. He
likely thought right before yanking himself free and turning back
to take aim. But as he did, the lake was empty,
and whatever had vanished had done so without so much
as disturbing the water. It was smooth, not a ripple

(29:08):
in sight. That night, the group settled in the camp,
the sky cracked open. A tempest swept across the lake
with a fury fit for Homer's epic tails, howling winds,
sheets of rain, bolts of lightning that split the night
like a gunshot. It was the kind of storm that

(29:29):
didn't just roll in, but seemed to almost be summoned.
Even after surviving the deluge, Saint Germain remained skeptical lightning
a coincidence, monsters please, but he did admit something real
had been out there, something that did not belong. He

(29:51):
started calling it a merman as if that somehow made
it any more normal. In the years that followed, oh,
Jermaine became obsessed with the creature. He searched for it
with every chance he got. However, Jermaine always came up empty,
never shaking the memory of what he saw, And as

(30:12):
it turns out, he wasn't alone. Other fur traders, grizzled
men with no time for bullshit, claimed to have seen
something similar. A long body, human like face, gleaming skin,
and eyes that didn't blink. Whatever it was, it haunted
him till the day he died. Some said it was

(30:34):
a spirit that he saw that day with the old
Jibwe woman. Some say it was a monster. Some just
thought it was lake madness, too much time spent on
the water. But up on Lake Superior, when the fog
rolls low and the wind dies down just right, you
can feel something watching. Yeah, so not the bucks and

(31:01):
beauties of Lake Huron. Instead a hairy kind of hard
to explain, like, yeah, I almost like a mersapien is
what I would call it, Like a half hairy humanoid
with fish like It would be interesting if they got
to see the full second half of it, if it
had fins like a typical mermaid or if it was
something else.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, that's the interesting part. It's hard to know what
to make of it without seeing the entire thing.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Right, absolutely, absolutely, ooh, just had to take a quick
pause there, creep Street just to give your core palpitating
hard arrest. If you're enjoying this episode, go ahead and
follow us on Facebook, Instagram at creep Street Podcast, Twitter
at creep Street Pod, TikTok at creep Street Podcast. That's right,

(31:50):
and if once a week is not enough for you,
just head on over to patreon dot com for all
sorts of goodies. We got three different tiers there, something
Forever tier, so get your fixings. We even got a
free tier where you can listen to the weekly sketches
before they go live on the episode. Now, without further ado,
back to today's story. Well, we got another tale about

(32:18):
one hundred years later in eighteen eighty six, and this
is the true tale of the divers of Copper Island
up there in Lake Superior. There was a group of
prospectors that arrived at one of the lakes Many Islands
in search of copper. Northern Michigan is an area famous
for it long before Europeans had ever touched the shoreline.

(32:42):
Native peoples had been mining copper from the cliffs, sometimes
with such skill and sophistication that it even stumps modern
geologists onto how they could do so so expertly. So anyway,
these prospectors, both greedy and hopeful, came loaded with their pickaxes, pans,
and one absolute showstopper, a heavy duty canvas diving suit

(33:05):
complete with brass fittings and a breathing line. They were
ready to go full Jules Vern to get that precious copper.
Their first day was pretty standard scouting, terrain, testing equipment,
delegating who would go down first into the depths, and
maybe a nip or two from an old whiskey bottle

(33:25):
for courage. By sundown, they had set up camp right
at the edge of the water, eager to start their
aquatic treasure hunt at dawn. But then the night got weird.
It began, as it usually does on the lakes, with
the wind. One moment, the night was still as a crypt,

(33:46):
the next the wind was howling like a drunk banshee.
Then came the sounds of splashing, slithering movements in the shadows,
and most unsettling of all, a rhythm tapping sound echoing
out across the water. Tap tap tap. Not like metal

(34:10):
on metal, minds you, more like tapping on bone. One
of the men swore he saw movement just beyond the
tree line, something tall, lanky, and almost glossy. Another claimed
he saw a pair of red eyes peering at them
from the lake. Well hardened prospectors that they were, they

(34:32):
laughed it off the best they could. Of course, they
passed the flask around a few more times for courage,
stoked the fire, and tried to sleep. But by morning
things just weren't feeling right. The diving suits was mysteriously torn,
and not just torn like it got snagged on something,

(34:53):
but shredded, like it had been worked over by a
school of angry shears. The grass fittings were dented and twisted,
as if something had crushed them with an inhuman strength,
and the line, the one meant to supply oxygen, was
snapped clean in two. There was no way that they'd

(35:16):
let that go unexplained. Perhaps it was a bear, one
of them guessed, and a big one at that, But
another whispered quote didn't sound like no bear. Needless to say,
they never dove for copper that day. They were packed
up by noon and left the island behind Copper be damned.

(35:37):
But before they did, one man walked to the shoreline alone,
where the water met the rocks, and there, half buried
in the silts, was a smooth chunk of native copper,
gleaming like fire under glass. Right next to it the
imprint of something big, something that wasn't human or machine.

(36:00):
And as he turned to leave, the wind kicked up
once more, and he thought he heard a voice, one
whispered in a tongue he didn't recognize well. As the
team of copper hungry prospectors huddled close around their fire
in a new location, one of them peeled off to

(36:21):
gather some more firewood. Of course, that's when he saw it.
Out past the shallows, maybe one hundred feet from the shore,
a light began to bloom beneath the surface. Not a
reflection of a bonfire or even the moonlight. This was
something else, a vibrant, pulsating green light that spread like

(36:44):
an ink stain across the water, thirty feet wide and growing.
He froze and terrified. Awe then bolted back to the camp,
shouting for the others. They rushed to the shoreline, half
expecting to find a sunken lantern, or maybe one of
the others playing a joke. But no, there it was

(37:05):
for all of them to see, glowing like some submerged
alien heart, throbbing with light and rhythm and intention. Now
these were frontier men, of course. They were tough, practical,
the kinds of guys who'd punch a rattlesnake just to
unwind after a long day. But even they knew when

(37:26):
something was above their pay grade. Still, old instincts die hard,
and one of them, a man named Rennie, grabbed his rifle,
raised it to his shoulder, and fired a single round
straight into the center of the glow. The moment the
shot hit the water, the light vanished gone. It didn't

(37:49):
fade out, just like a candle snuffed into the void.
The men stood there in silence, listening for any pin
of movement and he waves, bubbles, re ev and screams
from a disturbed lake god. But nothing came, no retaliation
or reply, just the soft lapping of water and the

(38:11):
sudden realization that something beneath them might be watching them. Well,
that night, no one slept. They posted watch and pears,
rifles loaded, eyes fixed on the lake, but the glow
never returned, not that night, anyway. The next morning, our
brave but arguably short sighted prospectors shook off the night's

(38:34):
weirdness with a couple of mouthfuls of black coffee and
the kind of blind gumption only men with pickaxes and
no life insurance could muster. After all, this was Copper country, baby,
and back in eighteen eighty six, copper was the ticket.
The promise of fat paydays and mineral rights spoke louder
than any warnings about a jibwey lake, spirits or phantom

(38:57):
lights from the deep. Oh. They set out hauling their
barge to a promising sight offshore. Having performed the job
many times, they prepped their diving gear for submersion, a
massive canvas suit that looked more like a portable death
trap than a tool of industry. It was all held

(39:18):
together with iron rings and a thick brass helmet that
could double as a mailbox. The diver, poor bastard, climbed
into this thing like a man climbing into his own tomb,
and was slowly lowered into the water. Thirty feet down.
He went swaying like a heavy marionette as the lake

(39:39):
swallowed him whole. A hose fed him air from the
surface as darkness enveloped him. Once at the bottom, it
didn't take long. The diver radioed with hand signals and
then tugs on the line. He found something, a vein
of copper, threading through through the rocks and disappearing into

(40:02):
the lake bed like a trail of buried treasure. He
followed the copper vein step by step into the murky depths.
The water grew darker, colder, and quieter, the kind of
quiet that makes your ears ring. And yet he kept

(40:22):
on the copper vein, teasing him further into the gloom.
And that's when it happened. Something moved, not fast, not
even menacing, but something shifted in the silt, far off
in the peripheral vision of his brass helmet, and suddenly

(40:43):
the air hose gave a jerk above. The men on
the barge stopped joking. Something had tugged the line, and baby,
it wasn't copper. Now, friends, you've got to hand it
to the guy who signs up to put on a
nineteenth century diving suit just to lumber into a pitch
black underwater cave and what amounts to be a weighted

(41:05):
burlap sack with a mailbox on his head. This is
someone made of sterner stuff than most, but even the
stoutest nerves have a snapping point, and that point it
usually arrives right about when the lights blink out and
the world goes black. And that's what happened to our diver.

(41:26):
Just as he was ready to call it a day,
his suit's light fizzled out, no flicker or warning, just gone,
like it had been snuffed out. Now, imagine that feeling
deep underwater. You just saw something move and your lights
go out. So now, even though you can breathe, you're

(41:49):
in this suit that's heavy as hell. You don't know
what's out there. All you can hear is the sound
of your own breathing inside of your suit. Imagine, and
that just black does Imagine that terror. Now this is
the part where the audience starts shifting in their seats,
because thirty feet under lake superior is one thing, but

(42:11):
being thirty feet under in a cavern with your only
light gone and no visibility in your only tether to
the living world a rubber hose that feels like it
was sold at a tractor supply. That's the part where
things stop being adventurous and fun and start becoming horrified.
But the diver he played it cool. He tried not

(42:32):
to panic, at least not yet. He did what most
would do. He slowly started following the air tube hand overhand,
trusting that this glorified garden hose would lead him back
to daylight and dry socks. He shuffled along, slowly, carefully,
one metal boot at a time, just holding on to

(42:55):
that hose. And then he bumped into something. And it
wasn't rock or coral, wasn't the jagged bottom of an
ancient shipwreck. No, this was soft and warm and wet
in a way that wasn't just water. He later called

(43:15):
it quote, a living fleshy thing. Now, there are very
few situations in which a living fleshy thing is a
comforting phrase, especially when it's lurking unseen in the sunless
depths of Lake Superior. This thing didn't move in response though,
to his bumping into it, but it did feel alive,

(43:39):
like it was a giant, sleeping leviathan. Whatever it was,
the diver didn't wait around to ask its name. He
kicked off the cavern wall and scrambled backwards through the dark,
tugging furiously on the hose. The crew topside hearts, fearful
for their comrade, yanked him up like his and their

(44:00):
lives depended on it, because maybe this day it very
well did. Yes, it's one thing to find yourself in
a cavern thirty feet beneath Lake Superior with the lights out.
It's quite another to realize that the cavern wall you
were feeling your way along as a guide in the
dark wasn't a cavern wall at all. This thing, the

(44:21):
poor diver thought, was an underwater cave wall. In the dark,
it moved, and not with a slow creak of stone
under pressure, but with a sudden, unnatural fluidity of something
very much alive and very very big, and apparently not
thrilled to be poked in the dark by a brass

(44:43):
helmeted copper miner. At first, the diver did what anyone
would do. He told himself, it's just a wall. It's
just a wall, a warm, veiny, possibly breathing wall, but
a wall. Nonetheless, surely he had not brushed up against
some thing so vastly large. But while denial is a

(45:04):
powerful survival tool. That illusion shattered when the whole thing
lit up, bathing the surrounding gloom in an unholy green
glow that had no business coming from anything made of flesh,
and the glow pulsated well. Panic hit hard. The diver

(45:25):
screamed into his suit's telephone system, likely a two cent
ten speaker duct taped into the helmet by the lowest
bidder topside. The crew would later say that the screams
of the diver sounded like a blender full of profanity
and static. As the man scrambled backwards, the hose, his

(45:45):
very lifeline, his one way ticket to oxygen and the
world above, snagged on something holding it tight, and that's
when the eye appeared, not two eyes, but one massive
eye watching him. The diver was seized by a pure

(46:11):
animalistic terror, like a gnat. Realizing he's in the spider's web,
the diver pulled out his knife and jammed it forward,
plunging the blade into whatever past as an iris and
this giant eye. The thing shuddered violently, soundlessly, and quaked,
causing a ripple through the water and up the hose.

(46:34):
What followed was chaos when the blade hit flesh, the
lake exploded with light. That dim pulsing glow the diver
had seen before now blazed into something blinding green fire underwater,
and from that radioactive halo emerged a thing so terrible,

(46:54):
so impossibly big. It didn't have one eye. It had many, plural, massive,
unblinking eyes. More than a dozen tentacles snaking in all directions.
The creature had wedged itself fully into the mouth of
the cavern, now blocking the diver's exit. No more following

(47:18):
the copper trail, no more heading back to the barge.
Just meat and panic and one very small knife against
an abysmal calamity with rave lighting. And so began the dance.
The diver slashed wildly, desperately, spinning in that cumbersome canvas
diving suit, slicing at whatever rubbery limbs slithered too close.

(47:41):
For every tentacle he hit, it seemed two more whipped
toward him like angry eels. The fear was disorienting. The
thing's whole body shimmered with nodules of green light flashing
in strange patterns. Every pulse sent a new wave of
nausea and confusion washing over the man like he was
trapped inside a haunted lava lamp. The beast slashed out,

(48:05):
tentacles wrapping around the diver's limbs, tugging at his oxygen hose,
wrenching at his helmet like it was trying to open
a cold beer. At some point in the melee, something
went wrong with the diver's oxygen supply. Maybe the tentacles
crimped it, or maybe the whole hose was yanked loose.
Either way, water began trickling into the man's helmet, and

(48:30):
nothing says time to wrap it up, quite like lake
water dripping into your sea diving helmet. With cold water
creeping in and consciousness slipping out, the diver knew he
had one shot left. He slashed wildly with the last
bit of strength he had, and in a final surge,
powered by adrenaline in pure uncut terror, he managed to

(48:54):
sever one of the beast's tentacles. The result was immediate.
The monster reeled back with a screeching pulse of green light,
tentacles writhing, and just like that, it vanished, slipping away
back into the black like a bad memory, its glow
fading into the depths and leaving nothing but a swirling

(49:17):
silk cloud and a severed tentacle thrashing in the water
like a snake having an existential crisis. The only thing
keeping the diver alive was sheer luck and a rusted
diver's knife, and his body instinctively doing all it could
to resist. Above, the crew saw the bubbles, and then

(49:37):
came the streams, and then nothing, and then suddenly the
hose went taut. With one last pull, the diver broke
the surface, screaming, his limbs slashing about. The crew dragged
him into the boat like a hooked shark. The suit
he wore was torn to shreds, the metal helmet was

(49:59):
dented like an alue luminum can, and the knife was
gone still somewhere down there, maybe lodged in the eye
of a creature best left alone. His crew hauled him up,
finding his hose stretched so tight that it had nearly
flipped the entire vessel like a cranky turtle. Apparently, the

(50:19):
fight below had been so fierce it rocked the boat
so violently. One man even claimed that the barge had
lurched several feet sideways, as if the lake itself had
tried to take it down. The diver thankfully survived, but barely,
and he never dove again. In fact, he never spoke

(50:39):
more than a few words for the rest of his life.
The crew never went back either. Forget that copper. Whatever
was down there wasn't worth it. The tail first surfaced
in the Manitowoc Pilot, tucked beneath ads for liver tonics
and hat brushes, but the legend grew legs over the years,

(51:02):
spreading to other local papers and eventually entering the strange
scrapbook of Great Lakes Legends. Some say the piece of
severed tentacle was preserved, Others say the story was pure hokum,
but that part doesn't matter, because once a monster swims
into the public consciousness, it stays there. Ooh man, I

(51:33):
mean that is wow. That is by far, I think,
the most terrifying tale. I mean, God, what a nightmare.
That would be, absolute nightmare.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
This thing must have been absolutely massive too, because even
when he was able to see again at first he
only thought.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
It had the one eye right exactly.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I mean, it must have been enormous, truly.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Love Craftian in a way, like almost like a Cthulhu
like thing.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
And I mean clearly it like really traumatized the guy too,
the fact that he barely spoke the rest of his life, right,
I mean, this must have been a really harrowing experience.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Absolutely, he probably saw it everywhere he looked for the
rest of his life, you know. I mean, I'm sure
something like that just sticks with you. And yeah, well, folks,
it doesn't stop there, because, as we know, Lake Superior
isn't just big. It's intimidating when you consider that it
alone holds ten percent of the world's surface freshwater. The

(52:32):
Ajibwe called Lake Superior Gichigami, or Great Sea. And when
a body of water gets a name like that, honey,
it's about more than just size. It's because the place
feels alive. And for centuries, the native tribes of the
region spoke of a beast that called the place home.
They called it Mishipishu, sometimes also pronounced is Mishibishu. They

(52:59):
described the Mishipichiu as an underwater panther, part serpent, part lion,
part cosmic nightmare. Pictographs show it with a long, slithering
body covered with spikes and barbs, in a face that's
pretty much indescribable, probably not pretty to look at now.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Getting a lot of swipe rights in Lake tender.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
That's right, that's right, mishipichi, you better try plenty of fish. Yeah, Mischipichiu.
We'll call it mishi for short. Mishi didn't just exist.
It ruled the waters of Lake Superior. It was known
to snatch deer off of the shore, even drag the
occasional unlucky person down into the depths. The kind of

(53:44):
creature that made you think twice before skinny dipping with
a summer fling. In certain areas of the lake, particularly
the parts the tribes had warned about. Certain places you
just don't go, no matter the circumstance. And if you
absolutely had to cross one of these forbidden zones, you
didn't just hop in a canoe and wing it. You

(54:06):
made offerings to the spirits, tobacco prayers and the like.
Even missionaries reported seeing local tribes make sacrifices before venturing out.
But Misha, Pishiu or Mishi wasn't just a creature of
ancient legend. No, not by a long shot. Ever since
the earliest settlers arrived and right on into the modern age,

(54:30):
there have been eerie sightings of something large, dark and
serpentine churning just beneath the waves. Reports describe a creature
sizing up to seventy five feet long, with a whole
whale like tail and a horse like head and a thick,
muscular neck that rises up like a periscope of nightmares.

(54:54):
Dark green, sometimes black, always massive, and always watching. It
reminds me a lot of the Kelpies, which we've talked about.
Multiple people across the centuries all tried describing this thing
as something that sounds like a prehistoric basilisk. It's a
tenet of Lake Superior and one that doesn't like visitors.

(55:19):
Some of the earliest outsider accounts of the Lake Superior
monster come not from loggers, miners, or sailors, but from
men of the cloth. We're talking missionaries here. Back in
the sixteen hundreds, when men wore ruffled collars and thought
that thunder was a sign of God being pissed off,
tales began to circulate about a creature living beneath the

(55:41):
glacial waters of Giecheegami. One such man was Father Paul Lejenieux,
a Jesuit missionary who in the seventeenth century was said
to have witnessed something that would put a little extra
spice into your average Sunday sermon. According to the account,
Legenieux saw local tribes capture what he described as a

(56:05):
lizard like fish around ten feet long with the head
of a turtle. The people of the tribe were clearly
unsettled and didn't hesitate. They promptly tossed that ugly bastard
back into the lake because, in their tradition, harming one
of these beasts was a surefire way to summon a

(56:25):
violent storm. Flash forward a couple centuries and Lake Superior's
cryptidactivity starts picking up a little bit of steam, and
rather literally too. Steamers, as in steam powered ships, would
start spotting the beast. In eighteen ninety four, not one
but two separate steamer crews making their way between Whitefish

(56:49):
Point and Copper Harbor, Michigan, reported seeing what can only
be described as an aquatic leviathan with an arched back
jutting seven feet out of the water. The following year,
in July of eighteen ninety five, another crew near Whitefish
Point spotted what they described as something hideous cutting through

(57:12):
the waves. It had a fifteen foot neck and a
jaw that would make a crocodile blush, making it even weirder.
It seemed to keep pace with the ship, almost like
it was escorting or even stalking the vessel. And then
came eighteen ninety seven, the year the creature got handsy

(57:32):
near Duluth, Minnesota, when a man was enjoying a lovely
little yacht outing you know, starched collars, cigars, the works,
when the guy fell overboard, not great for the Ralph
Laura knit sweater, but things quickly escalated when he claimed
that something down in the water below him, something massive,

(57:54):
wrapped around him like a python and tried to pull
him under. Three other people on board claim they saw
it happen, which means either they were all in on
an elaborate prank or this guy got his first and
nearly last close up with whatever beast rules those frigid
depths and whatever it was. Lake Superior's Monster isn't just

(58:17):
a myth. It's got many, many sightings, and it goes
by many names, and if the old stories are to
be believed, it's got a bit of a temper. Now,
if you thought the eighteen hundreds were the golden age
of Great Lakes weirdness, don't worry, because things kept up
plenty spooky well into the twentieth century. Let's hop ahead

(58:37):
to the nineteen thirties, where we find ourselves off the
shore of Pictured Rocks in Munising, Michigan, a place known
for its natural beauty, breathtaking cliffs, and apparently lake serpents
with an Olympic swim time. Witnesses in the area describe
a massive hump backed creature serpentine and nature, moving at

(58:59):
a high speed, kicking up the wake. According to reports,
this wasn't just some lazy drift through the shallows. No,
this thing was hauling ass as if it was trying
to outswim the Great Depression. Now fast forward a few
more decades to the nineteen sixties, and things weren't any
less weird. A family near Sugar Island, situated in the

(59:20):
Saint Mary's River, claimed they saw an immense humped creature
glide past the north coast with no noise, no theatrics,
just a colossal aquatic anomaly cruising along like it owned
the place. Oh but the krim de la crim encounter
came in nineteen seventy seven, when a hiker named Randy

(59:41):
Braun claimed he had a close encounter of the reptilian
kind right off the shoreline of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness
State Park. Now, the Porcupines aren't known for being especially
forgiving terrain. You're out there dodging blackflies and hungry bears,
so when he stumbled across something large, hump backed and

(01:00:03):
very much alive in the water, well, it left an impression.
Details of Bronze Memorial Day encounter scant, for what's clear
is that it shook him. Here is what he described seeing.
When I looked straight out into the open water, I
saw two very distinct dark bumps which seemed to be

(01:00:25):
separated by just a few feet. First one bump would
go under water, then the next bump would do the same,
but only after the first one surfaced. I had a
twenty time spotting scope with me and couldn't quite make
out what they were. They then began to move east
and to my left, one bump going under and then

(01:00:48):
the other, but one bump always stayed on top of
the water while the other submerged. It became frightfully apparent
to me that this object was close to one thousand
feet out, and as it gained speed, I realized there
was a third, smaller bump, and that object was undulating.
It moved very rapidly, very rapidly, to the east, and

(01:01:12):
quartered towards nearly up to the shore. The now obviously
a living thing, stopped maybe several hundred feet from me
and began moving and weaving around the large boulders that
were in the water and directly towards me. It was big,
and it resembled an anaconda with a girth of a volkswagon.

(01:01:34):
Don't laugh. It wasn't funny. There was no that's literally
in the quote that's funny. There was nowhere to go
for me because of the slippery slope and the water barriers.
So I just jumped behind the boulder and grabbed my
thirty five millimeter yoshika. As it moved towards me, it
slowed down considerably but was making a noticeable wake. It

(01:01:56):
was strangely quiet when it snaked towards me and stopped
in the water again right in front of me. It
was big, and I steadied my camera on top of
the rock and fired one picture, but was afraid to
move after that. The thing sat there for about thirty
seconds with its huge horse shaped head and large dark

(01:02:18):
left eyes staring at me. On the nose was a
visible catfish type whisker, maybe two feet in length and wiggling.
So think about that. He was saying that it looked
like it had a horse head, like a kelpie. There's
the kelpie thing again. There's a story from ancient Celtic folklore.

(01:02:40):
We've covered many times this idea of a Originally it
was it would lure children. Children would see what they
thought was just a wild horse, like a pony, and
they would climb on and ride it, and then the
thing would rush out to sea and drown the child
or a person too. But it was typically aimed at
children a lot, because, like we've kind of discovered here

(01:03:01):
on Creep Street, some of the scariest legends were created
by mothers just to get their kids to behave But yeah,
I mean, these great lakes, there's a reason they call
them great. And let me tell you, folks, even though
we're ending it here, we only covered here on and
Superior over on our Patreon this month. Are you gonna
get Michigan, Ontario and Eerie?

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Yes, yes, Gauge, what did you think? Are you gonna
think twice before dipping your toes into those Great Lakes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Oh did my toes, but probably closer to the shoreline
for sure. We talk often about how few things have
been discovered in the ocean, right, but when you consider
like the size of the Great Lakes, it wouldn't surprise
me at all if there are tons of things down
there that we've never discovered or at least documented, right,

(01:03:55):
And I looked it up. I was curious what the
largest known animal is in the Great Lakes, And apparently
it's just the lake sturgeon fish, which has been recorded
reaching as large as seven feet long and three hundred pounds.
But especially considering the size of the Great Lakes and
things as big as they are in the ocean, I

(01:04:17):
would not be surprised whatsoever if there are some even
larger undocumented things in the Great Lakes, probably what these
people have reported.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
See absolutely I agree. Well, I'll tell you what gage
just like the lake that resides north of Michigan Lake Superior.
I got a list, Superior. Oh yeah, who the names
of our top tier Patreon subscribers of course, the Dream
James Watkins, the Finish Face, Via Lungpus, the Madman, Marcus Hall,
the Tenacius Teresa Hackworth, the heartbreak Kid, Chris Hackworth, Theoso Swap,

(01:04:49):
Sean Richardson, the Notorious Nicholas Barker, the terrifying Taylor lash Met,
the Count of Cool, Cameron corlis At, the arch Duke
of Attitude, Adam Archer, the Sinister Sam Kayker, the Nightmare
of New Zealand, Noeline Viavilli, the oath Some Johnny Love,
the carnivorous Kevin Bogie, the Killer Stud, Karl Stab the
fire Starter, Heather Carter, the conquer Christopher Damian Demeris, the
awfully Awesome Annie, the murderous Maggie Leech, the ser of Sexy,

(01:05:10):
Sam Hackworth, the Evil Elizabeth Riley, Laura and hell Fire,
Hernandez Lopez, the maniacal Laura Maynard, the vicious Karen van
Vier and the Archie Nemessis Aaron Bird, the sadistic Sergio Castillo,
the rap Scallion, Ryan Crumb, the Beast, Benjamin Hwang, the
Devilish Chris Duceet, the Psycho Sam, the Electric Emily Jong,
the ghoulish Girt Hankum, the renegade Corey Ramos, the crazed Carlos,
the Antagonist, Andrew Park, the monstrous Mikaela Sure, the Witchy Wonder, J. P. Weimer,

(01:05:34):
the Freaki Ben Forsyth, the Barbaric Andrew Berry, the Mysterious Marcella,
the Hillatious Kale Hoffman and Pug Borb the Poulter Guys.
Oh God, just came up for air. Wow, man, that
woo almost drowned down there. We went deep today, we did,
We sure did woo. Folks, of course, follow us on

(01:05:58):
all the socials and what not, and if you want
to be just like that great group of sailors, head
on over to patreon dot com slash creep Street Podcast
for all sorts of goodies. We love you and we
thank you so much for all your support citizens of
the Melkie Way. My name is Dylan Hackworth.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
And I'm gaged Charley.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Good night and goodbye.