Lake Monster Mysteries Read online

  Lake Monster

  Mysteries

  Lake Monster

  Mysteries

  Investigating the World’s

  Most Elusive Creatures

  BENJAMIN RADFORD

  JOE NICKELL

  Foreword by Loren Coleman

  THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

  Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant

  from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

  Copyright © 2006 by The University Press of Kentucky

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

  serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky,

  Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

  Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University,

  Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

  University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

  663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

  www.kentuckypress.com

  10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

  Some of the material was previously published and is reprinted here courtesy of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Parts of chapter 1 were published in the March 1996 Skeptical Briefs newsletter; chapter 2 in the July–August 2003 Skeptical Inquirer; chapter 3 in the June 2004 Skeptical Briefs newsletter; chapter 4 in the March–April 1999 Skeptical Inquirer; chapter 6 in the December 2004 Skeptical Briefs newsletter; chapter 7 in the January–February 2006 Skeptical Inquirer; parts of chapter 8 in the January–February 2000 Skeptical Inquirer; and appendix 1 in the September 2003 Skeptical Briefs newsletter. All other material is new and original.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Radford, Benjamin, 1970-

  Lake monster mysteries : investigating the world’s most elusive

  creatures / Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-2394-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-8131-2394-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Monsters. 2. Lake animals. I. Nickell, Joe. II. Title.

  QL89.R33 2006

  001.944--dc222005031052

  This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  To Sir Richard Burton, Johan Reinhard,

  Ernest Shackleton, Francisco de Orellana,

  Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay,

  and the nameless and countless other explorers

  whose bravery and thirst for knowledge inspired me.

  —B. R.

  IN MEMORIAM

  My parents, J. Wendell and Ella T. Nickell,

  who nurtured my inquisitiveness,

  and three paranormal investigators

  who led the way in conducting hands-on investigations:

  magicians Harry Houdini and Milbourne Christopher,

  and my late dear friend, psychologist Robert A. Baker.

  —J. N.

  The interests of truth have nothing to

  apprehend from the keenness of investigation,

  and the utmost severity of human judgment.

  —Dr. Stubbins Ffirth, pioneering medical investigator, 1804

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Benjamin Radford

  1 Loch Ness

  Joe Nickell

  2 Lake Champlain

  Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford

  3 Lake Memphremagog

  Joe Nickell

  4 Silver Lake

  Joe Nickell

  5 Lake Crescent

  Benjamin Radford

  6 Lake George

  Joe Nickell

  7 Lake Okanagan

  Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford

  8 Other Notable Lake Monsters

  Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford

  Conclusion

  Joe Nickell

  APPENDIXES

  Benjamin Radford

  1 Mysteries and Misinformation: How

  Cryptozoologists Created a Monster

  2 Eyewitness (Un)reliability

  3 Animating the Champ Photograph

  4 Ogopogo Film and Video Analysis

  Index

  Foreword

  There are always two sides to a story. The book you are about to read is the best version to date of a skeptical look at the entities known as lake monsters. The formal examination of lake monsters has been a subfield of cryptozoological research for more than two centuries. During the fifty years that I have been studying these freshwater cryptids, I have learned much about them.

  According to surveys and research that I and other cryptozoologists have conducted, more than a thousand lakes around the world harbor large, unknown animals unrecognized by conventional zoology. Such claims have a long history and a rich representation in the world’s mythology and folklore. The term “lake monsters” is a relatively recent appellation; traditionally, such creatures have gone by a variety of names, including great serpents, dragons, water horses, worms, and others. They share the landscape with other legendary entities, such as Sasquatch, sea serpents, and black panthers.

  Some of the long-ago sightings are remembered in fantastic fashion, which is often what happens when people have real encounters with new animals in new lands. In “Water-Monsters of American Aborigines” (Journal of American Folklore, 1889), Albert S. Gatschet surveyed stories of peculiar aquatic monsters, including the great horned reptile of the Ohio River region and the horned snake. The Creeks, when they lived in Tennessee, spoke of a large, horned snakelike animal that frequented water holes. The creature could be brought to the shore by the magical singing of Creek elders, and when it showed its horn, the Indians would cut it off. The horn was then taken as a fetish and carried into war, to ensure success in battle.

  An account from the Oneida branch of the Tuscaroras, collected by David Cusick and published in 1828, tells of the “Mosqueto,” which rose from Lake Onondaga (near Syracuse, New York) and slew a number of people. The natives also said that 2, 200 years before the time of Columbus (approximately 700 BC), a great horned serpent appeared on Lake Ontario and killed onlookers with its overpowering stench.

  The strikingly similar horned beast of Alkali Lake (now known as Walgren Lake) near Hay Springs, Nebraska, was the subject of tales by the local Indians. These native Nebraskans told the first white settlers in the area to be on the lookout for the monsters. The legend seems to have had some truth, for more modern sightings followed. The Omaha World-Herald of July 24, 1923, carried the testimony of J. A. Johnson, who stated, “I saw the monster myself while with two friends last fall. I could name 40 other people who have also seen the brute.” Johnson claimed that the stubby, alligatorlike head had a projection like a horn on it between the eyes and nostrils. The gray-brown creature devoured livestock, uttered a dreadful roar, and smelled horrible. News of Alkali Lake’s horned wonder spread around the world.

  Michel Meurger and Claude Gagnon underscore the importance of these legends in their book Lake Monster Traditions (1988): “From Alaska to New Mexico the belief in a horned serpent-shaped water beast of enormous dimensions is widespread.” They go on to place such creatures in a folkloric framework.

  Pro
bably the issue of lake monsters would be of concern only to antiquarians were it not for a large body of modern reports from seemingly credible eyewitnesses, most prominently at Loch Ness in Scotland, Lake Champlain in Vermont-New York-Quebec, and Lake Okanagan, British Columbia. In addition, there are unexplained, instrumented observations of large, moving bodies under the water’s surface, as well as a small number of intriguing photographs that don’t seem—at least from my cryptozoologist’s point of view and examination—to be fraudulent or to depict mundane objects. In other words, the evidence isn’t conclusive and probably won’t be until incontrovertible physical evidence (a body—or at least a part of one) is available. Nonetheless, it is suggestive enough to keep the issue very much alive.

  The scientific investigation of lake monsters initially occurred in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it had much to do with the controversy surrounding sea serpents. During those early days, some journalists and theorists assumed that lake monsters were sea serpents that had either temporarily or permanently entered freshwater bodies from the ocean. It was further reasoned that a sea serpent would be more easily captured in an accessible place like a lake or river than in the vast ocean. This, of course, has not proved to be true, but it was hardly an unreasonable conclusion at the time.

  Typical of nineteenth-century references to lake monsters is an article from the Inverness Courier: (Inverness is a small city north of Loch Ness), reprinted in the London Times in March 1856:

  The village of Leurbost, parish of Lochs, Lewis [an Outer Hebrides island off Scotland’s northwest coast], is at the present the scene of an unusual occurrence. This is no less than the appearance in one of the inland fresh water lakes of an animal which from its great size and dimensions has not a little puzzled our island naturalists. Some suppose him to be a description of the hitherto mythical water-kelpie [a dangerous shape-shifting monster that appeared as a horse to lure unsuspecting travelers onto its back, after which it would plunge into the water to drown them]; while others refer it to the minute descriptions of the “sea serpent,” which are revived from time to time in newspaper columns. It has been repeatedly seen within the last fortnight by crowds of people, many of whom have come from the remotest places of the parish to witness the uncommon spectacle.

  The animal is described by some as being in appearance and size like a “huge peat stack,” while others affirm that a “six-oared boat” could pass between the huge fins [humps?], which are occasionally visible.

  All, however, agree, in describing its form as that of the eel; and we have heard one, whose evidence we can reply upon, state in length he supposed it to be about 40 feet.

  Though the Courier correspondent suggested that the witnesses had seen an oversized conger eel, later theorists took their cue from Dutch zoologist Antoon Cornelis Oudemans (18 58–1943), author of the influential book The Great Sea Serpent (1892). Oudemans believed that huge long-necked seals were responsible for serpent sightings. That was also the conclusion of investigator Peter Olsson, who studied reports from Storsjo, a deep mountain lake in central Sweden. Then, after the increase in firsthand eyewitness accounts from Loch Ness in the early 1930s (after trees were cleared from around the lake for a new road), Oudemans extended his theory of a large, long-necked pinniped to that lake. Though the long-necked seal theory has long been out of fashion, it did anticipate subsequent speculations that the animals being sighted were mammals rather than reptiles (still a popular belief in the United Kingdom).

  By the 1970s, many cryptozoologists had signed on to University of Chicago biologist Roy P. Mackal’s notion that the creatures were most likely zeuglodons—primitive, snakelike whales (cetaceans) that had disappeared from the fossil record some twenty million years ago but might still exist in certain lakes in the world’s northern regions. To a considerable extent, zeuglodons have eclipsed plesiosaurs as cryptozoologists’ favorite candidate for the allegedly extinct animals behind lake monster sightings.

  There is much to be said for the zeuglodon hypothesis. Many of the reports describe animals that at least look like zeuglodons. Moreover, the undulating motion noted in sightings widely separated in time and space is characteristic of mammals but not of reptiles. Like whales, lake monsters are said to have lateral rather than vertical tails. Also in common with whales, lake monster tails are forked. After a careful analysis of Canadian reports, including those of the celebrated Ogopogo of British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan, Mackal declared that the characteristics “fit one and only one known creature”: the zeuglodon, or at least a freshwater evolutionary variant of one.

  Intriguingly, in the arena of new marine mammal discoveries, nearly thirty new species of cetaceans have been classified in recent decades. Yet hoaxes, mirages, objects as commonplace as logs and waves, and the occurrence of known animals in unexpected places complicate the picture.

  No North American lake monster can claim any evidence for its existence stronger than striking eyewitness testimony and the rare photograph, including the remarkable one taken by Sandra Mansi, which some of us have more confidence in than do the authors of this book. This doesn’t mean that more compelling evidence isn’t out there waiting to be uncovered. All it means is that the proper resources, funding, and expertise have not been brought to bear on the question. Real science is expensive, and because of the ridicule associated with the subject of lake monsters, those few scientists who have investigated the phenomenon have done so largely on their own, without institutional support.

  In the end, science has little to say about lake monsters because science has paid, at best, scattered and brief attention to them. That’s why I find this book a rare treat. These animals, if they exist, need not forever remain enigmatic and elusive. The answers—and the proof—may be as close as the first concerted, sustained scientific effort to get to the bottom of the mystery.

  Loren Coleman

  Loren Coleman, the world’s leading living cryptozoologist, is the author or coauthor of more than two dozen books, including The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003); Mysterious America: The Revised Edition (New York: Paraview, 2001); and Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Lake Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999). Coleman personally favors the nineteenth-century theory that lake monsters are more likely a new species of pinnipeds rather than landlocked prehistoric reptiles or evolved cetaceans.

  Acknowledgments

  In addition to those mentioned in the text, we are grateful to the following people and organizations:

  Our colleagues at the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, notably Timothy Binga for research assistance, Barry Karr and Pat Beauchamp for help with financial matters, and Ranjit Sandhu and Paul Loynes for manuscript preparation.

  For the Silver Lake chapter, Tom Pickett, Department of Physics, University of Southern Indiana; Tammy Miller, Perry Chamber of Commerce; Barbara Henry, Perry Public Library; the staff of the Special Collections Department, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library; and the Inter-Library Loan Department, New York State Library.

  For the Lake George chapter, the staff of the Silver Bay Association, Silver Bay, New York, as well as Bertha Dunsmore, clerk, and Ethel Andrus, historian, Hague Community Center, Hague-on-Lake George, New York.

  For the Lake Okanagan chapter, Tom Flynn, for professional assistance in planning our experiment; the staff of the Okanagan Regional Library and the Kelowna Museum; the entire National Geographic Television crew; and the land surveyors of the firm Runnalls Denby. A tip of the hat is also due the late J. Richard Greenwell, cofounder of the International Society of Cryptozoology.

  INTRODUCTION

  People have always had a fascination with strange, mysterious creatures roaming the earth, lurking beneath the water, and flying in the sky. Centaurs, unicorns, Pegasus, and other fantastic creatures have been claime
d or rumored to exist since ancient times. Greek myths told of harpies—half-woman, half-bird creatures—that attacked Jason and his adventuring Argonauts. Since man took to the sea, sailors and fishermen have reported dangerous behemoths that could swallow ships whole or drag men to their watery doom, as well as the more alluring mermaids.

  Our thirst for the exotic and fantastic remains unquenched, and humanity has created an amazing array of unseen (or rarely seen) creatures, forces, and entities to populate the world. English fairies, Chinese dragons, Irish leprechauns, and Swedish trolls, to name a few, are important elements of folklore. Some mysterious or paranormal creatures even come from religious texts, such as the angels of the Bible and the djinn (genies) of the Koran.

  The distinction between the real and the imagined is in some ways a modern one. Before the Enlightenment, rumor, mysticism, and superstition were often seen as perfectly valid ways of knowing about the world. Scholars and authorities often wrote about unknown or mythical creatures as if they were confirmed fact. In 1544, for example, Sebastian Munster wrote the popular Cosmographia Universalis, which contains vivid descriptions of dragons and basilisks (winged serpents whose gaze—like that of the snake-haired Medusa—could turn men to stone). Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, in Historia Animalium, describes unicorns and winged dragons, as does Pliny the Elder in his Natural History.

  Figure I.1 A 1585 map of Islandia (Iceland) by Ortelius. Early maps often depicted fantastic creatures such as these, forewarning intrepid travelers of the dangers they might face.

  Maps created as late as the 1700s often included illustrations of sea monsters and mythical creatures (as shown in figure I.1 and on this book’s dust jacket). The cartographers and illustrators didn’t consider these to be exaggerated decorations but rather legitimate, valid depictions (based on stories and legends) of what intrepid travelers to remote areas could expect to encounter. One copperplate map, published around 1650 in Amsterdam, shows several fantastic creatures and huge sea serpents alongside such known land mammals as elephants, lions, and crocodiles.