The Niagara Frontier: Land of Lake Serpents and Furry Hill Giants

The Niagara Frontier has always been a little strange. People talk about roads where cars and bikes seem to roll uphill in neutral, like Spook Hill near Middlesex and Canandaigua Lake, where what looks like a climb is really a gravity-defying illusion. In Pittsford, just outside Rochester, old-timers still whisper about hidden underground tunnels said to run beneath the village’s historic district—rumors strong enough that early town records and local lore mention them, even if no modern survey has ever confirmed their full extent. Add in stories like the stone showers that struck homes in Greece, New York in 1842, when rocks reportedly fell from a clear sky for nearly a week, or the mysterious Earth Wheels discovered in Byron, perfect circles of soil lifted and rotated as if by an unseen force, and you start to feel like the land itself is alive and shifting under your feet.

The Allegany hills even have their own female Bigfoot sightings, with locals telling old stories of towering, hair-covered “women” roaming the backwoods near Klipnocky and Almond — creatures that appeared just long enough to leave footprints and fear before slipping back into the trees.

But the best tales are the monsters.

For more than a century, people around Seneca Lake have reported a lake serpent—sometimes called the Seneca Lake Monster or Seneca Serpent—described as a long, finned, fish-like creature that rises briefly from the deep and slides away before anyone can get close. Local historians trace the legend back to Indigenous stories of a horned water serpent and to 19th-century newspaper reports of something thirty feet long seen in the water. 

Out on Lake Erie, sailors and shoreline residents told of a black-green serpent 30–50 feet long, the famous “Lake Erie Monster,” with more than a hundred claimed sightings over the years.  Even tiny Silver Lake had its own “sea serpent” craze in the 1800s, complete with watchtowers and search parties scanning the water for a monster that turned out—wonderfully—to be a hoax, but the legend stuck anyway. 

And the hills have their own giants. In the wooded highlands of Western New York — especially in Allegany County and the remote forests near Klipnocky State Forest — people have reported strange, Bigfoot-like creatures for more than a century. Local folklore even gives them names: the White Bigfoot of Belmont, described as a tall, pale, human-shaped figure seen moving through the woods; the Black Creek Whodat, a mysterious creature sighted near Black Creek; and the legendary Hairy Women of Klipnocky, reported as far back as the 1920s. Witnesses have told of large, shaggy figures crossing remote roads at night, standing at the edge of tree lines, or appearing briefly before slipping back into rugged country that most people only ever see from a distance. These aren’t just campfire stories — they’re part of the region’s recorded folklore, the strange and stubborn tales that help make the Niagara Frontier feel wild, old, and just a little untamed.

Beyond the southern hills of the region, the stories climb north toward the gorge, where people told of Yellow Top, a tall, shaggy creature with a shock of light-colored hair said to roam the rim of the Niagara River Gorge, popping up in scattered reports as early as the 19th century. Witnesses describe large, human-shaped figures slipping between tree lines, crossing back roads at night, or appearing for only a heartbeat before vanishing. These aren’t just campfire stories — they’re part of the region’s recorded folklore, the strange, persistent tales that make the Niagara Frontier feel wild, ancient, and just a little weird.

Put together, it paints an unforgettable image: a frontier of lake serpents and furry hill giants, strange roads and rumored tunnels, where every ridge and shoreline comes with a story.

At Go Niagara Tours, we don’t just show you the view—we tell you the legends that go with it.

Book your Niagara adventure today and explore the monsters, myths, and mysteries of Western New York.

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Even the region’s love of hockey carries the legend forward — the old Lake Erie Monsters team took its name from the serpent said to rise from the lake’s dark waters. They were rebranded and are currently active as the Cleveland Monsters in the American Hockey League (AHL).