Within Idaho Monsters
Is Sharlie Still Hiding in Payette Lake?
Sharlie turns Payette Lake's deep water, old sightings and tourist charm into Idaho's best-known monster story.
On this page
- The early Payette Lake sightings
- How Slimy Slim became Sharlie
- Fish, logs, wakes and sceptical explanations
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Introduction
Sharlie is Idaho’s best-known lake-monster legend: a long, dark, serpent-like creature said to live in Payette Lake beside McCall. The story matters less because it proves a hidden animal and more because it shows how a real place can turn puzzling water reports into durable folklore. Payette Lake is cold, deep, glacial and scenic; McCall is a tourism town; and the monster’s image has shifted from the harsher “Slimy Slim” of wartime newspaper and magazine coverage into a friendly local mascot. The evidence is thin in the scientific sense: there is no confirmed photograph, specimen, film or official biological proof. Yet the sighting tradition has enough named dates, repeated descriptions and local archival presence to make Sharlie the centrepiece of Idaho’s monster-map.[visitmccall.org]visitmccall.orgMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake MonsterMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake Monster
Why Payette Lake Became Sharlie’s Stage
Payette Lake gives the legend its power before any creature appears. It sits by McCall in west-central Idaho, covers thousands of acres, and is widely described by tourism sources as a clean glacial lake with a maximum depth of 392 feet. Visit Idaho says the basin was carved more than 10,000 years ago by a large glacier, while a U.S. Geological Survey report describes Payette Lake as a natural lake formed by glacial activity in the upper Payette River drainage, with a surface area of 20.5 square kilometres, a mean depth of 36.8 metres and a maximum depth of 92.7 metres.[Visit Idaho]visitidaho.orgVisit Idaho Enjoy the Natural Beauty of Payette Lake in Mc Call IdahoVisit Idaho Enjoy the Natural Beauty of Payette Lake in Mc Call Idaho
Those details do not make a monster more likely, but they do make the story easier to understand. Deep mountain lakes create distance, glare, cold water, sudden weather, floating timber, boat wakes and long sightlines. A person on shore may see a shape, a hump, a wake or a dark moving object without getting the close view needed to identify it. The USGS report also notes that ice normally covers Payette Lake from late December to late April, which adds another seasonal layer to the lake’s strangeness: for part of the year, this is not a warm recreational pond but a high-country body of water shaped by snow, ice and mountain runoff.[USGS Publications]pubs.usgs.govOpen source on usgs.gov.
Sharlie is therefore not just “a monster in Idaho”. The legend is tied to one very specific setting: Payette Lake’s deep water, the Narrows near Ponderosa State Park, McCall’s lakefront identity, and the way holidaymakers and local residents look across a large, reflective surface where ordinary objects can become briefly uncanny. That physical setting is why Sharlie has lasted longer than a one-off tall tale.
The Early Payette Lake Sightings
The modern Sharlie tradition is usually traced to a 1920 account in which workers saw what they first took to be a floating log. In the local retelling, the object began moving, undulating and making its own wake before leaving the area. This is an important origin point because it already contains the pattern that repeats through later reports: an ordinary lake object becomes strange only after it seems to move with purpose.[Valley Lookout]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
The legend became much more visible in 1944. Visit McCall summarises a report from near the Narrows in which witnesses described something at least 35 feet long, with a dinosaur-like head, pronounced jaw, camel-like humps and shell-like skin. The same local account says the dramatic report brought national attention and drew people who hoped to photograph or capture the creature.[McCall Idaho, Let's Go!]visitmccall.orgMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake MonsterMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake Monster
Time magazine’s August 1944 piece, titled “IDAHO: Slimy Slim”, shows that the Payette Lake creature had moved beyond purely local gossip by the middle of the Second World War. Time described an “enormous sea serpent” in Payette Lake and framed the setting as deep blue mountain water edged by forested ridges and summer cottages. The magazine’s tone was playful, but its coverage helped fix “Slimy Slim” as a nationally visible Idaho oddity.[Time]time.comOpen source on time.com.
Two years later, another much-cited account added weight to the legend. Visit McCall says that in 1946 a group of twenty people reported seeing the creature, and that Dr G. A. Taylor of Nampa described it as around 40 feet long, repeatedly diving and leaving a wake like a small motor boat. The details are useful not because they verify an unknown animal, but because they show the legend’s core evidence style: group sightings, estimates of great length, a wake, and a creature seen at the surface rather than recovered, photographed clearly or tracked biologically.[McCall Idaho, Let's Go!]visitmccall.orgMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake MonsterMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake Monster
How Slimy Slim Became Sharlie
The name change is one of the most revealing parts of the story. “Slimy Slim” sounds like a threatening pulp creature; “Sharlie” sounds like a local character. By 1954, according to Visit McCall and BoiseDev’s later local reporting, McCall residents decided the lake monster needed a better name, and A. Boone McCallum, editor of The Star-News, ran a naming contest. The winning entry, “Sharlie”, came from LeIsle Hennefer Tury of Springfield, Virginia, and played on a radio catchphrase associated with Jack Pearl: “Vas you der, Sharlie?”[McCall Idaho, Let's Go!]visitmccall.orgMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake MonsterMc Call Idaho, Let's Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake Monster
That contest changed the creature’s public role. Before the rename, the story was a strange lake report with a slightly unpleasant nickname. After the rename, Sharlie became easier to market, joke about, draw, sculpt and tell to children. BoiseDev’s Valley Lookout version notes that Sharlie appears in McCall’s Winter Carnival culture, business names, food references and local storytelling, making the monster less an object of fear than an emblem of place.[Valley Lookout]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
The University of Idaho Library’s McCall Public Library Collection also shows how fully Sharlie entered local memory. Its “Sharlie Folder” is a 66-page subject file covering material from 1944 to 2015, with subjects including the Payette Lake serpent, monster legends and ice sculptures, and with publisher/source references including the Idaho Statesman, The Star-News and Time Magazine. That archival footprint matters: Sharlie is not merely an internet-era cryptid copied from list to list, but a local legend preserved through newspapers, subject files and civic memory.[University of Idaho Library]lib.uidaho.eduUniversity of Idaho Library Sharlie Folder | Mc Call Public Library CollectionUniversity of Idaho Library Sharlie Folder | Mc Call Public Library Collection
What the Evidence Really Shows
The strongest evidence for Sharlie is not physical evidence. It is testimony, repetition and cultural persistence. The recurring claims describe a long, dark animal or object, often with humps, a head, a wake and diving movement. Some accounts involve groups rather than lone witnesses, which makes them more interesting than a single campfire story. But even group reports can be shaped by distance, expectation, water movement and the contagious nature of a surprising sight.
The weakest point is just as clear: no official proof has been produced. BoiseDev states plainly that dozens of sightings have been reported over the past century, but no official evidence proves Sharlie exists. Idaho Fish and Game’s Halloween feature on Idaho monsters is even blunter about the evidentiary gap, saying that no photos, video or film of Sharlie exist while noting that reports continued through the 1960s and 1970s.[boisedev.com]boisedev.comSharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendSharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
That does not mean every witness was lying. A better reading is that Sharlie sits in the familiar middle ground of lake-monster folklore: people probably did see things on Payette Lake, but the leap from “unidentified shape” to “large unknown animal” remains unsupported. The story is strongest as a record of claims and local imagination; it is weakest as zoology.
Fish, Logs, Wakes and Sceptical Explanations
The most ordinary explanation is also the most important: Payette Lake contains real large fish. Idaho Fish and Game describes Payette Lake as a serious lake-trout fishery and reported a 42-inch catch-and-release state record lake trout from the lake in 2025. The same agency says biologists captured and released a 54-pound lake trout during surveys in June 2023, just short of Idaho’s state weight record. A huge lake trout is not a 35- or 40-foot serpent, but large fish near the surface can create startling impressions, especially in cold, clear water where viewers are not expecting size.[Idaho Fish and Game]idfg.idaho.govOpen source on idaho.gov.
Another long-running idea is sturgeon. BoiseDev’s local account notes the theory that a sturgeon could have migrated up the Snake River into the Payette River system before later Snake River dams blocked such movement. That explanation remains speculative for Sharlie, but it has a reason people repeat it: sturgeon are ancient-looking, large-bodied fish, and a brief surface view of one would fit some “prehistoric” monster imagery better than a trout would.[Valley Lookout]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
Logs are also hard to dismiss. The 1920 origin story begins with witnesses thinking they saw a log, and Payette Lake sits in a forested mountain drainage where timber, branches and floating debris are plausible. A partly submerged log can look segmented; a bobbing log in waves can appear to undulate; a log pushed by wind or current can seem to travel with intent. None of that proves a specific Sharlie sighting was a log, but it explains why “it looked like a log until it moved” is a classic lake-monster pattern.[Valley Lookout]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
Unusual water movement may explain another part of the legend. Valley Lookout notes that people have reported large waves in the lake with no obvious boat or cause, and links that idea to seiches. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines a seiche as a standing wave in an enclosed or partly enclosed body of water, with the largest vertical movement at the ends of the basin; the National Weather Service glossary says seiches in large lakes are usually created by strong winds and/or a large barometric pressure gradient. In plain terms, lake water can slosh back and forth in a way that looks mysterious if the weather trigger has already passed or is not obvious to the observer.[valleylookout.com]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
The sceptical case, then, is not one neat debunking. It is a bundle of plausible mechanisms: big fish, possible old sturgeon stories, logs, boat wakes, wind effects, seiches, glare, expectation and the difficulty of judging size across open water. Sharlie survives partly because no single explanation can be attached with certainty to every report.
Why Sharlie Became Idaho’s Friendly Monster
Sharlie endures because McCall found a way to make the legend charming rather than frightening. The creature is not usually presented as a danger to swimmers or boats. Instead, Sharlie functions as a playful mystery: something to look for from the shore, talk about during a lake trip, or fold into Winter Carnival imagery. Valley Lookout describes Sharlie as an icon of McCall, visible in events, local business culture, menu items and children’s imagination.[Valley Lookout]valleylookout.comValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendValley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
That friendly afterlife separates Sharlie from darker monster legends. The creature’s name, the contest behind it, and the use of “she” in local tourism language all soften the story. Sharlie becomes less a beast to be hunted and more a mascot that lets McCall turn its lake into a story-world. In tourism terms, the legend gives visitors a reason to look at Payette Lake with extra attention. In folklore terms, it gives residents a shared joke, a shared mystery and a distinctive symbol that belongs to their shoreline.
The result is a legend that can survive scepticism. A confirmed unknown animal would change biology; a disproven hoax might kill a harsher claim. Sharlie needs neither. The story works because it lives between evidence and affection: strange enough to be remembered, unproven enough to remain open, and local enough that McCall can keep remaking it.
Is Sharlie Still Hiding in Payette Lake?
As an animal claim, Sharlie remains unconfirmed. The available public record points to sightings, local newspaper attention, national magazine coverage, later retellings and a long cultural afterlife, but not to a specimen, clear modern footage, DNA evidence or official wildlife recognition. That makes the cautious answer straightforward: there is no strong evidence that an undiscovered 35- or 40-foot creature lives in Payette Lake.[boisedev.com]boisedev.comSharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legendSharlie, Mc Call, Idaho's Payette Lake monster: a legend
As a legend, though, Sharlie is very much still there. The creature is hiding in the way people describe the Narrows, in the 1944 “Slimy Slim” publicity, in the 1954 naming contest, in the archived Sharlie folder, in Winter Carnival imagery, and in the glance every visitor gives to a strange wake crossing otherwise calm water. Payette Lake does not need to contain a monster for McCall’s monster story to feel rooted in place. It only needs deep water, imperfect sightings, a good name and a community willing to keep asking what just moved beneath the surface.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: time.com
Link:https://time.com/archive/6865860/idaho-slimy-slim/
2.
Source: pubs.usgs.gov
Link:https://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1997/4145/report.pdf
3.
Source: boisedev.com
Title: Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho’s Payette Lake monster: a legend
Link:https://boisedev.com/news/2021/08/08/sharlie-mccall-idaho/
4.
Source: idfg.idaho.gov
Title: halloween boo protecting idaho monsters
Link:https://idfg.idaho.gov/blog/2017/10/halloween-boo-protecting-idaho-monsters
5.
Source: idfg.idaho.gov
Link:https://idfg.idaho.gov/article/payette-lake-produces-new-state-record-lake-trout
6.
Source: forecast.weather.gov
Title: National Weather Service NOAA’s National Weather Service
Link:https://forecast.weather.gov/glossary.php?letter=s
7.
Source: idfg.idaho.gov
Link:https://idfg.idaho.gov/ifwis/fishingplanner/water/1160983449367
8.
Source: idfg.idaho.gov
Title: whats going payette lake fishery
Link:https://idfg.idaho.gov/article/whats-going-payette-lake-fishery
9.
Source: waterdata.usgs.gov
Title: monitoring location
Link:https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/13238500/
10.
Source: waterdata.usgs.gov
Link:https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?legacy=1&site_no=13238500
11.
Source: waterdata.usgs.gov
Link:https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-445737116041300/statistics/
12.
Source: waterdata.usgs.gov
Title: monitoring location
Link:https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/445704116031700/
13.
Source: visitmccall.org
Title: Mc Call Idaho, Let’s Go!Sharlie the Payette Lake Monster
Link:https://visitmccall.org/sharlie-payette-lake-monster/
14.
Source: lib.uidaho.edu
Title: University of Idaho Library Sharlie Folder | Mc Call Public Library Collection
Link:https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/mccall/items/mccall1026.html
15.
Source: visitidaho.org
Title: Visit Idaho Enjoy the Natural Beauty of Payette Lake in Mc Call Idaho
Link:https://visitidaho.org/things-to-do/natural-attractions/payette-lake/
16.
Source: valleylookout.com
Title: Valley Lookout Sharlie, Mc Call, Idaho’s Payette Lake monster: a legend
Link:https://valleylookout.com/2021/08/08/sharlie-mccall-monster/
17.
Source: oceanservice.noaa.gov
Link:https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seiche.html
18.
Source: visitmccall.org
Title: Fishing Guide
Link:https://visitmccall.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Fishing-Guide.pdf
19.
Source: Wikipedia
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharlie
20.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Payette Lake
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payette_Lake
21.
Source: Wikipedia
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche
22.
Source: bclss.org
Link:https://www.bclss.org/news/seiche
23.
Source: cryptidz.fandom.com
Link:https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Sharlie
24.
Source: itsmth.fandom.com
Link:https://itsmth.fandom.com/wiki/Sharlie
25.
Source: rickjust.com
Title: Idaho Monsters
Link:https://www.rickjust.com/blog/idaho-monsters
26.
Source: sportfishingreport.com
Title: Payette Lake
Link:https://www.sportfishingreport.com/lakes/3778/payette-lake.php
27.
Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPcl8o7jua1/
28.
Source: ndl.ethernet.edu.et
Link:https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/46979/1/George%20M.%20Eberhart.pdf
29.
Source: astonishinglegends.com
Link:https://astonishinglegends.com/astonishing-legends/2025/10/9/sharlie
30.
Source: archive.org
Link:https://archive.org/stream/CreepyStories/MysteriousCreatures-AGuideToCryptozoology_djvu.txt
Additional References
31.
Source: youtube.com
Title: High school students bring Sharlie to life at the Mc Call Winter Carnival
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d84wXM5xBHk
Source snippet
'Where in the World Is Sharlie?' theme inspires a plush scavenger hunt across McCall...
32.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Where is Sharlie? The story of Payette Lake’s iconic monster
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKD0J9Kw4NQ
Source snippet
High school students bring Sharlie to life at the McCall Winter Carnival...
33.
Source: bigpayettelake.org
Link:https://bigpayettelake.org/about-us/
34.
Source: hangar1publishing.com
Link:https://hangar1publishing.com/blogs/cryptids/sharlie-the-payette-lake-monster?srsltid=AfmBOooJV923hzxwo1QmTwh-RLPZI66q7SwP3o_8mIkQTHMOpsOVcfAj
35.
Source: hangar1publishing.com
Link:https://hangar1publishing.com/blogs/cryptids/sharlie-cryptid?srsltid=AfmBOorAnY9HZFs6lEeW1o9tz-49wM469SV9bfpHW1h05q3X2EfV7aky
36.
Source: blackhawkontheriver.com
Link:https://www.blackhawkontheriver.com/fishing
37.
Source: mallardbay.com
Link:https://mallardbay.com/listing/O2tX94tbQRBb
38.
Source: snoflo.org
Link:https://snoflo.org/reservoir/idaho/payette-lake-at-mccall-id
39.
Source: gpsnauticalcharts.com
Link:https://www.gpsnauticalcharts.com/main/nautical-chart/us_aa_id_payette_lake_id-payette-lake-nautical-chart.html
40.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/groups/397526214154529/posts/1646639855909819/
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