California · Series One
Tessie
The Secret of the Deep
In stock — ships within 1 business day
Shop Pay · Apple Pay · all major cards
The serpent of Lake Tahoe — a humped shadow in water a quarter-mile deep, whispered about since before the Gold Rush.
Best value
Get all three First Sightings
$129.00
- Hand-painted collectible figure
- Collectible trading card in every box
- Tracked shipping to the US & 27 more countries
- Secure Shopify checkout · 30-day returns
- Society members get free shipping and 10% off every order.
Tessie
California
- Size
- 10-80 ft long
- Habitat
- Lake Tahoe's deep waters
- Sighting
- Cave Rock • 1950s
- Trait
- Humped serpent back
A shy serpent of Lake Tahoe, glimpsed as a dark hump in water nearly a quarter-mile deep.
★ America’s ★
Legendary Creatures
Sightings
Tilt it for a closer look
Box exclusive · Never sold separately
Evidence enclosed
Tucked inside every Tessie box is card #002 of 50: a collector's card you won't find in any shop, pack or booster. The only way to get it is to bring the Tessie home.
This one wears the gold First Sightings seal — only the founding three ever will. Fifty legends, fifty cards. Collect the figures, complete the field guide.
- Size
- 10-80 ft long
- Habitat
- Lake Tahoe's deep waters
- Sighting
- Cave Rock • 1950s
- Trait
- Humped serpent back
Sculpted from the sightings
Tessie, up close
- Figure height
- 5 inches
- Finish
- Hand-painted
- Edition
- Series One — The First Sightings
- Classification
- Lake Serpent
- Family
- Lake Dweller
- Legend reports it at
- 10–80 ft long, by varying accounts
The legend of California
“Lake Tahoe is over sixteen hundred feet deep, and its cold blue water never gives up what it takes. Ask the divers what they've seen down there. Most of them won't answer.”
Lake Tahoe is a freak of geography: twenty-two miles long, more than 1,600 feet deep, and so cold below the thermocline that the lake is said never to give up its dead. It is exactly the kind of water that keeps secrets — and the secret the locals tell is named Tessie. Boaters describe a long, dark body breaking the surface in smooth humps, moving against the wind, leaving a wake where no boat has passed.
Tessie is the gentlest of America's monsters — no attacks, no menace, just glimpses. A serpentine back off Cave Rock at dawn. A shadow the length of a school bus sliding under a kayak in water so clear it shouldn't be able to hide anything. She has been Tahoe's open secret for a hundred and fifty years, and the lake is deep enough that she may keep it forever.
The Legend+
Long before the casinos and ski lifts, the Washoe people, who summered on Tahoe's shores for thousands of years, told of a great water creature dwelling in the lake — and held Cave Rock, the volcanic monolith on the eastern shore, as a place of power where the water below ran deepest. Early accounts from the region speak of a 'water baby' or serpent that was respected and avoided, not hunted.
When settlers arrived in the mid-1800s, they added their own sightings of a great serpent in the lake, and by the twentieth century the creature had a friendly name: Tessie. The legend grew with the resort towns around her — equal parts mystery and mascot, with a back catalog of sightings that refuses to dry up.
Documented Sightings+
In June 1984, two experienced kayakers, Patsy McKay and Diane Stavarakas, watched a humped creature they estimated at seventeen feet surface three times below Tahoe City. Two years earlier, off-duty police officers trolling the West Shore reported their fish-finder marking an enormous moving object far beneath the boat. Charter captains, casino workers, and tourists have logged dozens of similar reports — always the humps, always the impossible size, always gone in seconds.
Then there is Tahoe's favorite rumor: that Jacques Cousteau himself dove the lake in the 1970s and surfaced ashen, saying 'the world isn't ready for what's down there.' No record of any Cousteau dive at Tahoe exists — researchers have looked — but the story is told on every dock on the lake, because everyone who lives there believes the deep water is hiding something.
The Lore+
Scientists offer candidates: monster lake sturgeon, errant seiche waves, boat wakes refracting across the lake's glassy surface. None has ever been confirmed — no sturgeon has ever been caught in Tahoe — which leaves the field of explanation wide open and the locals happily unconvinced.
Tessie has become Tahoe's guardian spirit: children's books in the 1980s gave her a cave under Cave Rock, shops on both shores sell her likeness, and old-timers will tell you — straight-faced — that the lake never gives up its dead because Tessie carries them down to keep her company. The deepest parts of Lake Tahoe have still never been fully explored. She has plenty of room down there.
Good questions
What comes in the box?+
A 5-inch hand-painted collectible figure of Tessie from Series One — The First Sightings, plus its collectible Fablins trading card — with Tessie's size, habitat, first sighting and signature trait.
When will it ship?+
In-stock orders leave within one business day. US standard delivery takes 5–7 business days; express takes 2–3.
Do you ship internationally?+
Yes — to the US, Canada, the UK, most of the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and more. Prices show in your local currency and checkout calculates shipping for your country.
What if I need to return it?+
You have 30 days from delivery to start a return (return postage is on the buyer). Reach us through the contact page and we will walk you through it.
Keep collecting
