The Lake George Monster, fittingly nicknamed "Georgie", was a hoax invented by painter Harry Watrous after a fishing bet with newspaper editor Colonel William d'Alton Mann in 1904.
[1] According to Mysteries at the Monument, Harry Watrous and Colonel William Mann were avid fishermen, and the two decided to see who could catch the biggest trout in the lake.
When Mann showed Watrous a 40-pound whopper he had just caught, he knew he wasn't going to catch anything bigger and realized he had lost the bet.
It has bright red fangs, large eyes, a massive open mouth with a long tongue and strands of whiskers made from hemp rope.
Watrous pulled his friendly prank over and over, sparking the frenzy of sightings all those years ago before abandoning the gag for good.