Sharlie: The Twilight Dragon
Idaho's version of the Loch Ness Monster
Many people are familiar with the Loch Ness Monster. Stories involving Scotland’s most famous resident are a fixture in popular culture. Still, the Scottish highlands do not have a monopoly on sightings of alleged sea serpents or prehistoric dinosaurs.
Payette Lake — located near McCall, Idaho — is home to Sharlie. Also known as Slimy Slim or the Twilight Dragon of Payette Lake, Sharlie is name of a sea serpent who allegedly lives in the freshwater mountain lake. This cryptid is one of multiple famous Idaho lake monsters. (The Bear Lake monster is another prominent example).
First reported sightings
Payette Lake is a natural lake in central Idaho originally formed by retreating glaciers after the end of the last ice age. The lake is surrounded by pine and fir trees and plunges to a depth of 392 feet at its deepest point near the northwest shore. It spans nearly eight square miles.
Native American tribes who spent summers in Long Valley steered clear of Payette Lake. The tribes feared the calm waters of the deep alpine lake, believing an evil spirit lurked below the surface.
The first documented sighting of Sharlie did not occur until 1920. A crew of railroad workers cutting logs to use for railroad ties spotted what appeared to be a huge log floating in the waters of the lake’s upper end. Then the “log” moved forward in a wave-like motion and created a wake before rapidly disappearing from the area.
Another sighting of Sharlie occurred in 1944. A group of people claimed to have seen the creature around the Narrows — a rocky passage between the north and south side of the lake near Ponderosa Park. What these witnesses described evokes images of a Loch Ness Monster-type creature. According to their accounts, Sharlie was at least 35 feet long and possessed a dinosaur-type reptilian head with a pronounced jaw, camel-like humps, and shell-like skin.
By August 1944, 30 people had seen the lake creature that year alone according to an article in a national magazine. A reported sighting in 1946 pegged Sharlie as being 40 feet long and leaving a wake akin to a small motor boat after diving into deeper waters.
Sharlie is Born
Before 1954, Sharlie was popularly known as Slimy Slim. Local residents decided their creature needed a better name. The editor of the McCall Star News held a national contest to choose a new name. Sharlie, the eventual winning selection, referenced a line from a popular radio show starring Jack Pearl.
Sharlie is celebrated in McCall each year. Everything from floats at the McCall Winter Carnival parade to ice sculptures celebrate this mysterious sea creature. Her name adorns several area businesses.
One theory accounting for the reported Sharlie sightings is that witnesses actually saw occurrences of a seiche (a standing oscillating wave that naturally occurs in lakes or bays) in the lake’s waters or misidentified sturgeons that routinely migrated into Payette Lake before dams were built on the Snake River in the 1970s.
Lake monsters like Sharlie can also be tied to a cultural fascination with dinosaurs and other extinct animals that lived millions of years ago. Many people embrace the idea that these ancient creatures somehow survived mass extinction events and are living in the modern world hidden among us.
Sharlie is also a modern descendent of ancient sea or lake-based folklore. Tales of sea serpents and sea monsters became a staple among virtually any ancient civilization that dwelt near a large body of water. These tales usually arose as an explanation for strange real animals like squids or unusual weather phenomenon. Stories of Sharlie and other lake monsters show those folkloric traditions live on in the 21st Century.
Slimy Slim is an awesome name for a sea monster :-)
I don’t like swimming in deep waters. It’s spooky all around.