It was August of 1984, and the hamlet of Loch Sheldrake—and much of Sullivan County, for that matter—was all abuzz about the ongoing search for the Loch Sheldrake Monster.

The frenzy had actually begun a couple of months earlier, when the Times Herald-Record newspaper ran an article in its June 17 edition under the headline, “Waves in Lake Rock Onlookers at the Loch.”

In the article, veteran reporter Terry Lynam interviewed a group of eight homeowners from the Loch Sheldrake Beach and Tennis Club, who had reported the day before witnessing something extraordinary on the lake.

“Loch Sheldrake Beach and Tennis Club homeowners consider themselves practical people, not easily swayed by folklore and stories of the supernatural,” Lynam wrote. “But they say they will never forget what they saw yesterday afternoon on Loch Sheldrake lake.”

The group of homeowners told Lynam they had seen “a large, dark object, moving just beneath the water surface at about 20 miles an hour, and creating a wake about 150 feet long and waves two or three feet high.”

Joel Efrein, who lived in Spring Glen, but owned a home on the south shore of the lake, was one of those Lynam interviewed.

“It was the strangest phenomenon I’ve ever seen,” Efrein told Lynam.

Within weeks, Efrein would become almost as well known as the monster itself. Shortly after the article appeared in the TH-Record, he founded the Loch Sheldrake Lacustrine Institute and became its Executive Director.

(Lacustrine is an adjective meaning “relating to lakes.”)

By that time, the newspaper had run follow-up stories and editorials about the sighting, and scuba divers had plunged deep into the dark waters of the lake trying to find evidence of, well, anything, that would account for what the homeowners saw. And, the “monster” had been given a name: Shelly.

On August 10, 1984, an editorial appeared in the TH-Record asking the question, “Is there a monster in Sullivan County’s Loch Sheldrake, or is Joel Efrein just having some fun with us?

“Efrein, and others, swear there’s something there. Efrein has even sent divers into the  cold, deep waters of the lake in search of the monster, which he had dubbed, Shelly. He’s offering rewards for sightings or other evidence.”

The editorial concluded that perhaps it wasn’t important if the monster was real or not, suggesting that “a little fantasy is a good thing, after all.”

Efrein himself wrote in an inexpensive booklet about the monster he pieced together from various photocopied newspaper articles from around the world, that he believed in Shelly.

“The Lacustrine Institute was founded to prove the existence of this marine animal,” he wrote. “We are convinced that marine animals, cousins to the giant plesiosaur (water going dinosaur) thought to be extinct seventy million years ago, have survived undisturbed in the underground aquifers that hold the groundwater in all parts of the world.

“It is our belief that these creatures have a world of their own underground, where man cannot find and hunt them. They have an unlimited food supply that seeps down from the lakes, rivers, streams, and springs leading to the huge, sea-like bodies of water that are the earth’s underground reservoirs. These are the only animals strong enough to buck the currents surging in and out of these bodies of water. They are amphibians, we believe, and breathe in the air pockets above the aquifer’s water surface.”

Efrein videotaped interviews with a number of other people who insisted they had seen Shelly. Some of them earned rewards from the Lacustrine Institute for their efforts.

Max Bomze, a retired builder, was one such reward recipient.

“We saw a large head, the size of a watermelon,” he said in the interview. “Behind it was a long, snake-like body. We could see the humps in the water. I called my friend, Martin Press, ‘come quick, come quick!’”

Press, a retired teacher, confirmed Bomze’s story.

“Yes, I saw the form moving in the water,” he said. “It was evident that it was a large body moving across the lake. At first, I thought it was a frogman, but it moved too quickly. It was something large and fast under the water. It would disappear and appear two seconds later 100 feet away.”

Andrew Neiderman, then the Fallsburg Town Historian— who has since become a best-selling author and Hollywood screenwriter—was more skeptical of the notion there was a monster in the lake.

Neiderman told Lynam that he had never heard of any previous stories of creatures in the lake.

“He said the lake’s claim to fame came in the 1930s, when the bodies of several reputed gangsters were dumped there” Lynam wrote. “According to local legend, some were strapped to slot machines and dropped in the lake.”

The Lacustrine Institute’s rewards ranged from $25 for a “Bonafide eyewitness sighting” to $250 for a “photograph of Shelly” to $1000 for film or videotape of the monster. While some of the smaller rewards were apparently given out, no one ever produced a photo or a videotape of the monster.

Before the story of Shelly ran its course, the TH-Record had one more editorial thought on the subject.

“Well, somebody has finally found a way to give the Sullivan County tourism industry a boost—creating its own Loch Ness monster. Shrewd residents near the murky Scotting lake have lined their pockets for years by feeding the legend of Loch Ness. Why not start one in Loch Sheldrake?

“The worst mistake Sullivan County authorities can make now is to get to the bottom of the story.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.