The Frogman of Silver Lake: A Truly Mysterious Monster

I purchased a bunch of new paranormal and folklore books just the other week, including Monsters of Massachusetts: Mysterious Creatures of the Bay State by Loren Coleman, one of the superstars of the cryptozoology scene.

I guess I should have had that one on my shelf earlier because while Coleman discusses lots of the famous local monsters, like the Dover Demon and the Gloucester sea serpent, he also mentions one that's pretty obscure: the Frogman of Silver Lake. He's not just obscure, he's downright mysterious.

I'm a sucker for any monster that has "man" as part of its name, whether it's the Mothman, the Goatman, or the Lizardman. I think it's because I read too many comic books when I was a kid and now my mind is drawn to any creature whose name reminds me of a superhero.

Sadly, most of these "(insert name of animal here)man" monsters tend to live outside of New England, with the Vermont Pigman being the prominent exception. And it is true that a goatman has been seen in Maine, but only once. So I was pretty excited to read about a Frogman right here in Massachusetts.

Coleman doesn't include very much information about the Frogman. Here is what he writes:

For instance, the 'lakemonster' accounts from Silver Lake in Plymouth County tell of a 'Giant Frog' or little 'Frogman' being sighted.

But unfortunately he doesn't give any more information. He then goes on to discuss how two police officers encountered a four foot tall froggy humanoid on the outskirts of Loveland, Ohio in 1972. One of them even shot at the creature but missed. One of the police officers later said he probably just saw an iguana, not a monster, but a local farmer also reported seeing a weird little humanoid around the same time.

Coleman suggests that the officer probably changed his story because people made fun of him, and then writes:

Can anyone blame the folks who saw the Frogman of Silver Lake, Massachusetts, for wishing it never happened to them and thus never fully was detailed in the record?

So in other words, there might not be much written about our local Frogman because the witnesses were afraid how others might react. I suppose that's a legitimate concern. The Ohio farmer who saw the Frogman reported that the creature was riding a bicycle, a claim that I'm sure was met with some derision. He was probably teased down at the grange hall until his dying day. (If I knew the farmer I would have asked what type of bicycle the Frogman was riding but would not have teased.)

The Loveland frogman as seen in 1972.

That's all the information about the Frogman in Monsters of Massachusetts. However, Coleman did provide a little more in an October 25, 2013 Boston Globe article titled "Monsters of New England." Here he notes that:

In the 1940s and 1950s, there were reports of a “lake monster” — said to be a “Giant Frog” or little “Frogman” — in Plymouth County’s Silver Lake that were talked about around general stores and mentioned in passing in old newspaper articles.

So at least here we get the years when the Frogman was seen, and information about how the stories were reported. I did some searching online, but unfortunately The Boston Globe archives didn't have any further articles about the Frogman, and neither did Google books or Newspapers.com.

That's why the Frogman of Silver Lake is so mysterious: because there's so little information about him. Who saw the Frogman? Were the witnesses scared? Did they shoot at him? I have a lot of questions but no answers, at least for now. I've written to Loren Coleman to see if he has any more information, and if he writes back I will be sure to give an update. (Note: Loren Coleman did write back to me - thank you Loren! - but said he didn't have any more information about the Frogman.)

I don't know much about the Frogman, but here's what I know about Silver Lake (thanks to Wikipedia). It is a freshwater lake, covers over 600 acres, and provides drinking water to the city of Brockton. It sits within or touches the following towns: Pembroke, Kingston, Plympton, and Halifax.

You can hike around the lake, and fish in it, but swimming is not allowed. That's probably a good idea, just in case there really is a Frogman lurking somewhere its depths.

*****

Speaking of monsters, this past summer I filmed a segment about the Melonheads for the Travel Channel's show Mysteries at the Museum. That episode is going to air on Thursday, April 14 at 9:00 pm. Did the segment I filmed make the final cut, or was I edited out because I am scarier than a frog monster on a bicycle? We'll all just have to wait and see!

Melonheads Part II: Why So Many Big Heads?

This is the second of two posts about the Melonheads. Read part one here!

One of the many interesting things about Melonheads is that in New England the legend is only found in Connecticut. But it is also found in the Midwest, particularly in Michigan and Ohio. Much like their New England cousins, these Melonheads also lurk in the woods and delight in terrifying teenagers.

In Ohio, the legend is found in the rural areas outside of Cleveland, and the creatures' origin is ascribed to a mysterious man named Dr. Crowe. Dr. Crowe allegedly experimented on children that he either kidnapped or acquired from a local insane asylum. He imprisoned them in his secluded house, where he injected them with chemicals and possibly radioactive materials. These painful experiments caused them to mutate. Eventually the children rebelled and killed their tormentor. They escaped into the surrounding woods where they have remained to this day.

There are several versions of the Dr. Crowe legend. In some he has a kindly wife who treats the children well, and the mutant children only rebel against him when they see him abuse her. In another, he actually experiments on children with hydrocephalus. Hydropcephalus is a real medical disorder that causes fluid to build up in the skull, giving its sufferers enlarged heads. Let's be clear, though: hydrocephalus does NOT make anyone into an insane monster.

In Michigan, the Melonheads are said to have either escaped or been released from an insane asylum near the Felt Mansion in Ottawa County. They didn't wander far from their old home, and now lurk in the woods surrounding the mansion.

Melonhead illustration from Joseph Citro's Weird New England.

I don't know why the Melonhead legend is only found in these three parts of the country. Did it spread from New England to the Midwest, or did it happen in the opposite direction? It's a good topic for a folklore master's thesis, I suppose. I do know that the legends in all three areas have one thing in common: they use the language of science to explain where the Melonheads came from. Inbreeding, evolution, mutation, psychology, radiation - these are all terms from the physical and social sciences. They give the Melonheads an aura of plausibility.

Ghosts, witches, vampires, fairies, werewolves - these creatures are all supernatural in origin. We live in a scientific age, so we deserve scientific monsters. The Melonheads are one of them.

Extraterrestrial aliens are another monster of the scientific age, and it's interesting how similar they are in appearance to the Melonheads. Although the Melonheads are feral and bestial, both they and the gray aliens often share a similar physical morphology. They are short, thin, and have really big heads.

Gray aliens.

A monster was seen in Dover, Massachusetts who also had the same physical appearance. This was the infamous Dover Demon, who terrorized several teenagers in 1977. Like the Melonheads and the gray aliens, the Demon had a disproportionately large head and a very small body. Its eyes also glowed orange when lights shone on them. In Connecticut, some people have said the Melonheads' eyes glow orange as well.

The Dover Demon!

The Dover Demon was never quite categorized as either supernatural or scientific, but in earlier eras, little supernatural monsters with large heads were also said to lurk in the woods. The fairies, gnomes and dwarves of European legend often were described this way. In Connecticut, the Mohegan Tribe has the legend of the makiawisug, small magical people who live in the forests. They are often called pukwudgies these days by paranormal investigators, and illustrations show them with small bodies and large oversized heads.

Illustration by Lupi, used without permission.

Fairies, gnomes and pukwudgies are not monsters of science, but they share similar traits with the Melonheads. They dwell outside the fringes of our civilized world, terrorizing those who trespass on their territory. One key difference is that there are ways to placate the supernatural creatures who live in the woods, such as leaving them offerings of food and milk. There is no way to interact socially with the Melonheads. They simply emerge from their hiding places and terrify trespassers. Some accounts from Connecticut say the Melonheads abduct lost hikers and transform them into new Melonheads; fairies and aliens also enjoy abducting humans. 

So what does all this mean? There are some practical, "commonsense" explanations for the Melonheads. Michigan's Felt Mansion was a seminary for boys in the 1940s, and one man who studied there claims that the local townies called the seminarians "melon heads" because they were so educated. (Egghead is a more common derogatory term for the educated, but you get the point.) In the book Weird U.S., writer Ryan Orvis claims to have met an Ohio man who used to scare teenagers out parking in cars at night when he was a kid. A friend who helped him had hydrocephalus, and supposedly this led to the legend of the Melonheads. Similarly, perhaps random encounters with hydrocephalic individuals cruelly gave rise to the legend.

I suppose any of these origins are plausible, but they don't explain the particular form the legend took or why it persists. It's a long road from someone being called a "melon head" to stories about cannibalistic mutants that live in the woods. Maybe there is something primitive deep inside us that fears the darkness outside our little circle of light and knows that monsters are out there waiting for us. It might not be rational, but I think the feeling is persistent and powerful.

That still doesn't explain why so many of these monsters have a particular shape though, does it? All these creatures are childlike and sometimes almost embryonic in appearance. That doesn't really seem like a shape that people would inherently find frightening.

If you like supernatural or paranormal explanations, maybe you're inclined to believe there is some force (or some entity) out there that takes this shape repeatedly over the centuries, materializing as small big-headed monsters to scare the pants off us before disappearing into the darkness. Right now sitting here at my computer, I don't find that explanation too compelling, but if you bring me out into the woods at night I might just change my mind.