The Lead Tube & Giant Eels
By Joseph A. Citro
THE LEAD TUBE
Suppose Vermont history had started differently? What I mean is, let's consider the very first European to set foot in the state. Who was he – or possibly she?
It used to be that the answer was simple, but nowadays there are many theories and contenders – a Viking, a Celt, a Phoenician... maybe even an extraterrestrial.
However, in historical terms, "first” status is traditionally awarded to the earliest explorer to leave a written record of his or her visit. On that basis, the winner is French explorer Samuel de Champlain. In 1609, he made his way south into the lake that now bears his name. And he left diaries to prove it.
In other words, the French discovered Vermont.
But there's another document that suggests someone else got here first –
an Englishman.
In December, 1853, two Swanton workers were digging near the bank of the Missisquoi River. About a foot down, embedded in a piece of sod, they saw something that should not have been there: a gray metallic tube about five inches long. The tube was fashioned from a sheet of lead, apparently molded around a stick, and sealed at both ends.
From inside, they extracted a piece of heavy paper and, with some difficulty, deciphered it. It was a message written in what appeared to be archaic English. It said: "This is the Solme day I must now die this is the 90th day since we left the Ship all are Perished and on the Banks of this River I die to, farewelle may future posteretye know our end"
It was signed Johne Graye and dated November 29, 1564.
So who was Johne Graye and what was he doing here some forty-five years before Champlain?
Well, we don't know.
One historian suggested Mr. Graye had been a member of one of Sir Martin Frobisher's expeditions to discover the Northwest Passage. Perhaps the men belonged to a scouting party that got lost. Or maybe they'd been put ashore to fend for themselves when supplies ran low.
But that was just one guess of many.
Over the years, the mystery of Johne Graye's message has pretty much died out. Although for a time it seemed to have the potential to change the history of our region, most people have never heard of it. The document, when first unearthed, had every appearance of being genuine. It is not improbable that sailors should become separated from their ship, become lost, and die in the wilderness. And it is human nature, then as now, for such lost souls to leave a record of their fate.
It is also human nature to engage in a little Barnum-like trickery.
So whether “The Johne Graye Document” is hoax or history, we'll never know for sure because mystery piles upon mystery: The original – and its lead container – seem to have vanished. Sadly, we may never know the origin of Johne Graye, and the circumstances of his lonely death. Was he truly a stranded English sailor, or the product of some 19th century prankster?
Today, the document – or is it a facsimile? – is framed and preserved on the second floor of the Highgate Historical Society in Highgate, Vermont. There it remains as a reminder of one haunting episode from Vermont's undiscoverable past.
GIANT EELS
Two themes keep recurring when discussing certain Vermont lakes and I'm not sure whether they're fact or fantasy. The first is that the lake bottoms are riddled with underground channels. The second is that gigantic eels live in the deepest parts of these lakes.
I'm not talking about Champ and Memphre. I'm talking about eels. Big, wriggly, snakelike eels like none you've ever seen!
In the 19th century, Uriah Jewett believed the deepest part of Lake Memphremagog included a subterranean channel that connected to the Atlantic Ocean. It was through that tunnel – he believed – that sea creatures could come and go.
Even today, many people think an underground channel connects Lake Memphremagog with Lake Willoughby. If that were so, the two lakes would share the same fish populations, the same family of monsters, and the same giant eels.
But it is not channels and monsters we're concerned with today – it's eels. Giant eels. People keep reporting them. Divers keep having face-to-face confrontations with them. And I keep wondering just how big a Vermont eel can grow.
For example, was it an eel that Hank Dewey and his companions confronted in Lake Memphremagog during the mid-1960s? He says a "big snake" surfaced beside their boat and chased them.
Before that, back in 1935, the mayor of Newport, Frank D. Burns, disappeared and was presumed drowned. Divers looking for his body said they had seen giant "eels six to eight feet long and as thick as a man's thigh."
This Memphremagog story is very like a story my friend Bill Schubart tells about Lake Willoughby. As a boy, Bill spent his summers on the lake. He recalls an incident from the early 1950s. Apparently, the son of a wealthy family was home on leave from the Navy. While sailing alone near Mt. Pisgah, his boat capsized. The young sailor drowned, but his body never surfaced. So, the Navy dispatched a team of divers to recover the body.
At 300 feet, the divers discovered a black hole that descended even farther. There, the divers not only saw but photographed giant eels six to eight feet long and thick as a telephone pole.
Can this be true? And if it is, where are the photographs?
Bill recalled that the pictures were kept by the town clerk in Westmore.
Curious, I decided to get to the bottom of this. The idea of photographic evidence hidden away for forty years really appealed to me. So I began my investigation with a series of phone calls.
First, I spoke to the assistant town clerk in Westmore. She told me she knew nothing about any photographs of giant eels. She also told me the man who had been town clerk in the 1950s, was Mr. P.M. Daniels, who was still in the area.
So I phoned Mr. Daniels. He remembered the drowning; he even gave me the family's name. He also recalled hearing some talk about the photographs. But he was quite emphatic about a couple of things: first, he personally never saw any photograph of giant eels. And second, he never kept any such photographs filed away with the town clerk's documents.
At that point, I was satisfied that the photographs don't exist. But does that mean the giant eels don't exist, either?
I asked Mr. Daniels what he thought.
Well, I don't know about that, he told me.
Mr. Daniels said he himself had seen an eel a good four or five feet long! Somebody had pulled it up ice fishing. He allowed as maybe there could be bigger ones down there.
While the photographic evidence may be a colorful embellishment to an ancient story, maybe the eels themselves are really out there. Mr. Daniels would not dismiss the idea and neither will I.
Perhaps the most dramatic account of monstrous eels – or maybe snakes – in lake Willoughby appeared a little more than a hundred years ago in an issue of the St. Johnsbury Caledonian. The article said a twelve-year-old boy, Stephen Edmonds, had killed a giant "snake" in Willoughby Lake.
Reportedly, the boy rushed the monster and cut it in half with a sickle. When the two pieces were measured, they were found to equal a length of 23 feet. Definitely not a grass snake.
But was it an eel? Unfortunately, I’m not sure who I could phone to find out.
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author, folklorist, and longtime collector of New England’s strangest stories, from ghostly happenings to local legends and unexplained curiosities. Known to many as Vermont’s “Bard of the Bizarre,” he has spent decades preserving the tales that linger along back roads, old houses, covered bridges, and quiet hillsides. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.