The Cayuga Lake monster aka Old greeny

Cayuga Lake is the longest lake at 38.2 miles and the widest at 1.75 miles of the New York’s glacial finger Lakes. It is about 350 feet above sea level and has a depth of 435 feet. There are stories dating back from the 1800’s of a monster in the lake.

The first widespread report was printed in the January 5, 1897, edition of the Ithaca Journal. According to the account, the year marked what was the 69th annual confirmed report of the creature. The paper named the beast, Old Greeny. The Ithaca Journal reported that their staff had been living in daily anticipation of Old Greeny’s appearance, and had refused assignments which would take them near the water’s edge because they were afraid of the beast.( good journalistic ploy there ) In the January 5 1897 report , an Ithacan who was driving along the lake’s eastern shore with a friend saw what he knew must be the large, long sea serpent, although a tramp, who had also seen the creature, later told a Journal reporter that he believed it to be a muskrat.

Isolated reports of the creature continued until1929, when people began reporting not one, but two creatures were to be seen cavorting simultaneously along the Lake's Eastern shoreline. The creatures were described by "cottagers" as being approximately 12 to 15-feet in length. Local journalists speculated that they might be: "...members of the Seneca Lake sea serpent family that found their way into the local waters through a subterranean channel which is believed to exist between the two lakes." (However it has since been investigated and no such channel has been found to exist)

Then in 1974, a teenager by the name of Steven Griffin claimed to have been attacked by Old Greeny while swimming in the waters of Cayuga Lake. He described the creature as having an over all eel like appearance but its jaws were so powerful and snapped down with such tremendous force that the impact broke the boys arm.

In 1979 while Jack Marshall, owner of J.T. Marshall Professional Diving Service, was boating with some friends on Cayuga Lake. Marshall saw what he believed at the time to be a large fallen tree directly in the path of his boat.. Marshall shouted for the driver of the boat to stop before he collided with the debris, and as the vessel drifted to a halt, they all watched in horror as what they described as a 30 to 35-foot "creature" submerged before their eyes.

So although a sturgeon has been cited as the culprit ,from the descriptions it sounds more like a giant eel. As more and more of these similar stories emerge from lakes around the world, it sets the intriguing question are large eels living in the lakes and have not yet been discovered by modern science?