Millie the Miller Beach monster

Millie is the common nickname for a cryptid also known as the Miller Beach Monster or Lake Michigan Monster, reputed to inhabit the southern shores of Lake Michigan from Evanston, Illinois to Michigan City, Indiana. Millie is said to share many physical traits in common with other supposed lake creatures included the so-called Loch Ness Monster or "Nessie" in Scotland, "Champ" who makes his home in Vermont's Lake Champlain and Ogopogo a creature said to inhabit Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia. Classified as cryptozoological animals, the existence of these animals is in debate having neither been scientifically proven nor conclusively disproven. Stories of these creatures are often based on local folklore, legends, or mythological creatures while others have been speculated to be the result of clever hoaxes or practical jokes.
Millie was named after the community of Miller Beach, Indiana where sightings of the supposed creatures were common in the late 19th century. Some Cryptozologists speculate that the inland freshwater lagoons of Miller Beach may once have been the native breeding grounds for a small pod of millies. Skeptics argue that Miller's lagoons lack adequate food sources to support a population of large aquatic animals, however Cryptozologists counter that these creatures may actually live most of the year in the deep, waters of Lake Michigan traveling to Miller Beach only for their short breeding season during the warm weather months.
Originally the mouth of the Grand Calumet River flowed into the lake at Miller Beach. Today the Grand Calumet terminates in a series of several large lagoons which lie only a few yards (less than 20 m) inland from the southernmost tip of the Lake Michigan. However it has long been suspected that the lagoons and the lake may still be connected through underwater caverns. The largest body of fresh water in the United States and the sixth largest lake in the world, Lake Michigan is approximately long and averages across, covering - equal to the combined areas of the states of Maryland, Massachusetts and Delaware. At its deepest point, Lake Michigan is . Cryptozologist theorize that the immense size of the lake has helped the elusive millies to remain undetected and speculate that millies prey on the large sport fish common to Lake Michigan including chinook, coho, and Atlantic salmon, as well as rainbow, brown, and lake trout.
MILLIE...Dinosaur, Beaver, Seiche or Hoax?
Many Cryptozologist hold that millies and other similar aquatic cryptids may be descended from the plesiosaur, a long-necked, carnivorous sea reptile which ruled the world's seas between 200 and 65 million years ago, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Skeptics however claim that sightings of millie in the lagoons are actually misidentified sightings of native lagoon creatures such as beaver, large carp or diving waterfowl while sightings of millie in Lake Michigan are often attributed to a natural phenomenon called a "seiche". A seiche is a characteristic trait of many long, narrow lakes with deep channels, and Loch Ness, Lake Champlain and Lake Michigan are all endowed with this peculiar feature. A seiche is a perpetual wave in an enclosed body of water, which lies in a geographic area that undergoes severe winters. Changes in spring and autumn temperatures affect the shallow areas of these long lakes more rapidly than they affect the deep channels, causing the deep water to slosh back and forth, between the lake's boundaries, like a plucked guitar string. At the surface, the seiche in Lake Michigan may be barely a ripple or it may grow to more than high. Below the surface, a seiche at times may grow to a height of . It is theorized that sightings of creatures such as Nessie, Champ, Millie and other "lake monsters" documented in these large cold lakes around the world might actually be mis-identification of these seiches. Other skeptics maintain that Millie is nothing more that a deliberate hoax. It has been suggested that the idea of Millie was created to reinvigorate the long dormant tourism industry in Miller Beach.
Millie History
Despite claims that Millie is nothing but a modern hoax, a creature fitting the description of Millie first appeared in the legends of the indigenous people of northwest Indiana. The Potawatomi tribes fished and hunted in northern Indiana and the Miller Beach area for hundreds of years. Their legends tell of creatures they called the Mnito (also spelled Mneto or Mji-Mnito), fearsome horned serpents that lurked in Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet river. According to the Potowatomi, Mnito would attack and sometimes eat those unlucky enough to encounter one. The Potawatomi also believed that the waters of , in what is now Rochester, Indiana, once harbored a Mnito. Potawatomi legends report that the "Serpent of the Manitou" devoured all the fish in the small lake after arriving from its native home in Lake Michigan.
The first Europeans to see Lake Michigan were French traders and explorers in the 1600's. One of the first explorers of Lake Michigan, Samuel de Champlain described seeing a Millie-like lake creature while exploring a Vermont lake now called Lake Champlain. Champlain wrote in his log that he saw "a 20-foot () serpent thick as a barrel, and a head like a horse" during his explorations in the 17th century.
Sightings of serpents in Lake Michigan increased in the late 1800s peaking in August of 1867. Between 1867 and 1890, various newspapers reported numerous encounters with sea serpents just offshore all along the Lake Michigan coastline in both Indiana and Illinois. Sightings in Chicago, just across the Indiana/Illinois border, ranged from Evanston down to Hyde Park. The creature was described in newspaper reports as bluish-black with a grayish white underbelly, long neck, horse-like head, and a body between in length. On several occasions, the creature was heard bellowing “like a bull.” In the summer of 1867, The Chicago Tribune reported that "Lake Michigan is inhabited by a vast monster, part fish part serpent." That same year a fisherman named Joseph Muhlke encountered a millie a mile and a half () from shore near Chicago’s far south side. He was able to provide a very detailed description and claimed that its head came within of his boat. On August 4th, 1867 crews aboard two ships, the George Wood and the Skylark spotted a creature off the shores of Evanston. According to the Chicago Tribune, two days later on August 6th, 1867 a millie was spotted one and a half miles () offshore from Michigan City, Indiana by Charles Sanger, a justice of the peace. Sanger described the creature as "about forty feet ()in length of a dark color and resembled a snake in both appearance and motion."
The earliest detailed modern report of the creature in Miller Beach was made in 1884 when a boat builder named Allen Dutcher and group of fishermen saw the creature near the marshy mouth of the Calumet River. One of the most notable millie sightings was from 1917 when a large crowd assembled at Carr's Beach in Miller (today's Lake Street Beach) saw "a black monster" more than " long with a head that resembled a horse." According to this account, "the creature reared its head and neck more than out of the water and made a loud bellow terrifying more than 100 people who were picnicking and swimming at the beach." Millie sightings tapered off in the early 20th century as the Miller Beach area, once sparsely populated wilderness, became developed. Cryptozoologists speculate that the local millie population was decimated at this time as commercial fishermen depleted the fish stock and increased heavy industry in the Calumet Region polluted their supposed breeding grounds in the Grand Calumet lagoons. However through the years occasional sightings of millies continued to occur and have been increasing since the 1970s. There have been 15 reported millie sightings between 1990 and 2010. Scientists believe that the local population of these rare creatures may finally be on the rebound now that the water quality in the lagoons is improving.
From existing reports, Millie may be endowed with all or some of the following features:
:: Length:
::: Between ten and fifty feet long.
:: Head shape:
::: Flat headed
::: Small horns or tubes like a giraffe
:: Body Shape:
::: One to four humps.
::: Four fins or flippers
::: A snake-like body.
:: Skin-type:
::: Scaly
:: Color:
::: Either drab or shiny
::: Black
::: Dark head with white body
::: Dark-brownish olive.
:: Eyes:
::: Large reflective eyes
::: Glowing eyes (at night)

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