Unidentified animals · Lake Hopatcong, Morris and Sussex Counties
“Hoppie”: the 1894 serpent reported near Lake Hopatcong’s River Styx inlet
Known only through modern retellings · Original 1894 clipping not located
Modern accounts trace Lake Hopatcong’s “Hoppie” to an 1894 New York newspaper report of a dog-headed serpent near the River Styx inlet; the original clipping could not be located.
What the modern accounts say
Two recent articles describe the same origin story, and they do not entirely agree. A 2020 Patch article says that an 1894 New York World described a Lake Hopatcong serpent with the head of a St. Bernard and the body of a snake, most often reported near the inlet to the River Styx. It gives no month and quotes no text from the article.
A New Jersey Digest feature gives a fuller version. In it, a fisherman on the lake in 1894 saw a creature about 40 feet long with the head of a dog and the body of a snake, black above and dirty white beneath, and fled to shore. It says another boater fired a .38-caliber rifle at the animal’s head the same day, with the bullet glancing off. That article places the accounts in the Lake Hopatcong Angler and the New York World in August 1894, and says the creature came to be called Hoppie. Neither piece quotes the 1894 reporting directly.
The original could not be found
The 1894 article itself was not located for this entry. The Library of Congress record the Patch piece points to is for The Evening World, a different New York paper from the World, and searches of the Chronicling America newspaper collection for an 1894 Hopatcong serpent story returned nothing. Everything above is therefore a modern retelling of a report, not the report itself. Details that appear in only one telling, such as the month, the rifle, or the breed of dog the head resembled, should be treated with that in mind.
A story that outlasted its source
The nickname stuck, and the lake’s monster gets revived whenever somebody sees something unusual in the water. In 2014 a reptile specialist, Gerald Andrejcak, searched the lake after a fresh round of sightings. By the New Jersey Digest account he came upon a green anaconda of about 16 feet, which he did not catch; the Patch article says reports at the time put the animal at somewhere between 7 and 20 feet. Whatever was in the lake in 2014 says nothing about what, if anything, was reported there in 1894.
Sources and research limits
- Russ Crespolini, “Truth Or Tale: Hopatcong’s ‘Lakeness’ Monster,” Hopatcong-Sparta Patch, October 7, 2020 — Read on September 11, 2026, for the 1894 attribution, the St. Bernard description, the River Styx location, and the 2014 search. It cites a Library of Congress record that is in fact for The Evening World.
- Mary Sparago, “A Breaching Folklore: The New Jersey Sea Serpent,” New Jersey Digest — Read for the August 1894 dating, the 40-foot estimate and coloring, the rifle detail, the Lake Hopatcong Angler attribution, the Hoppie nickname, and the 2014 anaconda. A popular feature that cites no page or date for the 1894 items.
- Searches of the Library of Congress Chronicling America collection for an 1894 Lake Hopatcong serpent report returned no matching article. A witness name that appears in search-engine summaries of other retellings was not found in any source opened here, so it is not repeated.