Are you afraid of water? I’m not really, I can swim and all that fun stuff. However, there is something strange going on in our lakes and rivers and I think it’s enough to make anyone scared of the water. Sea farers have reported strange goings on in the oceans since man built his first boat. It seems like there have always been sightings and tales of sea serpents and other underwater behemoths like the kraken. Are these really just legends? If that’s the case, then are all lake and river monsters legends as well? I’ve always found underwater life to be very interesting and mysterious. In the ocean, especially; no one really knows what’s going on down there. We finally know that a rare giant squid lurks in the depths. They don’t exactly wrap their tentacles around boats and drag them underwater, but they’re still pretty big. The ocean is too much of an enigma for me to try and conquer today, so I will just stick with lakes and rivers.
It is astounding how many lakes and rivers contain their own monster. I mean, a few strange sightings in one or two lakes is definitely something, but there are tons of these things everywhere! How can there really be that many monsters hanging out in Earth’s smaller bodies of water? Is it just a strange optical illusion? Do lakes and rivers go through some kind of phenomena that makes people think, nay, believe, beyond a reasonable doubt that they’ve seen something strange? The lakes and rivers where these creatures appear are hardly identical in their conditions. They are different sizes, temperatures, elevations, and any other differences you can think of that exist among bodies of water. From a strictly scientific standpoint, it would be hard to deny that people are getting startled, disturbed, and scared in these aquatic environments. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a living, breathing, undiscovered species of animal. Maybe, sticks, logs, fish, or birds doing strange things are the definite answer. Maybe it’s underwater geysers. I know nothing about geysers, especially underwater ones, but I can certainly still have a guess. Maybe there are underwater geysers springing up everywhere, pushing hot water to the surface of lakes and it all somehow looks like a breaching serpent’s humps, or perhaps a plesiosaurs’ head and neck. A real scientist or anyone else with any brains is probably going to tell me that my ramblings are complete nonsense and an appearance of that many geysers would probably signify the end of the world, because eventually, the geysers will spew lava and cover the earth with hot, molten rock and kill us all. Wait a minute, I don’t think a scientist would say that either. What was I talking about? Right, lake and river monsters.
Could it really be true that we lack the capability to explore the depths of a mere lake? I think we can do it, but a boat, or even a small fleet of boats can’t cover an entire lake at the same time. It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Look at the Loch Ness, for example. I know that poor Nessie has been debunked so many times that he himself doubts his existence; but get this, for every picture proven fake or explainable, a new piece of unexplainable evidence floats in. Recent expeditions have indicated that there are large entities under the water that can’t be positively identified. I’m talking really recent expeditions, like in the last year or two. Some people have received sonar hits that even a trained marine or whatever can’t officially claim to be a stick. The Loch Ness buzzwords these days are non-submarine vehicles. Meaning that whatever is being caught out there, seems to be alive. From seeing Nessie as a tourist on the shore, or as a legitimate scientist with the latest technology, something is being sighted again and again. Are we all suffering from mass hysteria? Mass hysteria is a very real thing, but could it last for hundreds of years? Is the human mind that fragile?
You’re probably totally sick of hearing about that jerk Nessie. What makes him so great? Well, I think you’re right, let’s turn our attention from that spotlight hog Nessie and take a world tour of various bodies of water and we can learn about what people are seeing in less flashy locations.
The Okanagan Lake is the home to Ogopogo. This lake is located in British Columbia, Canada. He’s your basic sea serpent, about 40-50 feet long with many sightings that date back to the 1800s. It apparently ate some horses in 1860, but the first documented sighting didn’t occur until 1872. The mass sighting, which seems to be a requirement of many lake monsters, occurred in 1926. This mass sighting included 30 cars full of people whose reports all described the same thing. It, of course, has been filmed and photographed, but not very clearly. Apart from the mundane explanations, cryptozoologists have categorized Ogopogo as a primitive whale called basilosaurus. Canadians must like pogo as a surname for their monsters because some of their other lake creatures are Manipogo, from Lake Manitoba, Winnipogo, from Lake Winnipegosis, also in Manitoba, and Igopogo in Lake Simcoe in Ontario. Manipogo has been seen since 1908 and has a very serpent-y look to it. It also has been theorized to be a primitive whale called the zeuglodon. Though Manipogo can hardly be set apart from other lake monsters; one thing that makes it interesting is that in 1948, it came out of the water and made a sound that was deemed “dinosaur-like”. Now, how people know what aquatic dinosaurs sound like is a mystery to me, but, there you go. Winnipogo is pretty much the same as Manipogo, so I won’t go into detail here. Igopogo has a dog head, so it really isn’t your regular dinosaur lake monster. It apparently likes to sun bathe, indicating that it breathes air. So if you’re in Canada and you want to see a monster, it’s best to do what the Canadians do and go pogo. We aren’t finished with Canada yet, because some other monsters modeled their name after Nessie, like Cressie and Mussie. Cressie comes from Crescent Lake and once had a much cooler name, Woodum Haoot, which means pond devil. It looks like Cressie is a very big eel, it’s gone after some scuba divers and it happily swims around the lake. Mussie lives in Muskrat Lake, near Ottawa, Canada. He is thought to be a weird seal or walrus-like creature. He’s been captured by sonar and all that great stuff, but Lake Muskrat apparently has hallucinogenic qualities. I don’t know about that, unless a whole lot of seaweed makes people hallucinate, but I guess that’s a discussion for another time.
Making our way south, we simply must stop at Lake Champlain, a lake nestled between the U.S. and Canada. I’ve mentioned Champ before, so there’s no need to go into detail about him again. He just needs to be mentioned for the sake of this article. Besides Champ, most U.S. lake and river monsters are pretty boring and rarely seen. Bessie, of Lake Erie, is snake-like and gray. There’s a $100,000 reward on its head, so that’s pretty neat. Tahoe Tessie, of, you guessed it, Lake Tahoe is pretty entertaining. The size range of this thing is 10 feet to 80 feet. Its coloration is anywhere from jet black to turquoise. Tessie has been the star of Native tales since the mid 19th century. It lives in an underwater tunnel beneath Cave Rock. There have been sightings by cops, pictures taken, the usual stuff. There’s really nothing unique about Tessie. In the U.S. there are reports of giant turtles and salamanders, but nothing terribly exciting.
In Africa, that’s where the fun starts, because that’s where the dinosaurs live. Though the names are often hard for us westerners to pronounce, we can all agree that Africa, especially the Congo, is the most likely place for a hiding dinosaur to reside. Most of these things aren’t exactly lake or river monsters because they are known to tread upon the land. They are included in this writing, however, because they hang out mostly in the water. Like the Emela-ntouka, Mokele mbembe, and the Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu. These are all described as saurpods who swim in the swamps and have an affinity for killing elephants and rhinoceros. That Congo is a tough and unexplored place, who knows what could be out there. In the Zambezi River located in Zimbabwe lives the river god Nyaminyami. It’s dragon-like and snake-like, but this guy is revered as a god! People have claimed to see it, but there are no official records of the creature. Its presence can be felt and the BaTonga people of that region know for a fact that it’s there. Nyaminyami made himself known when in the 1950s, outsiders tried to dam up the river. The people knew their river god would protect them, he would show the foreigners not to mess with his river. His vengeance occurred in 1957, the Zambezi River flooded like mad and the dam was destroyed, along with many of the outside workers. In fact, some of the white worker’s bodies went missing. The BaTonga elders told the white man that a sacrifice must be made to Nyaminyami in order for the carnage to stop. A white calf was sacrificed and they floated it down the river. The next day, the calf was gone, and in its place were the bodies of the missing workers. The flooding was predicted to never come again for the next 1000 years, but, to everyone’s surprise except the BaTongas, the flooding came again the next year. Those pesky outsiders finally harnessed the power of the river in 1960. The BaTonga still wait for Nyaminyami to return and once again be the dominant power of the Zambezi River.
Although Nessie gets top billing in Scotland, there are a few more monsters lurking in other lakes, that, or Nessie gets around. In Lake Morar, Morag makes his home. He’s serpent-like and 20-30 feet long, brown, with a head that’s a foot wide. Its humps and head have been photographed, but nothing conclusive has ever been found. A fun one lives in Iceland, the Lagarflóóts Worm located in Lagarflóót Lake is supposed to be 300 feet long. It’s seen on dry land and in the water. It should be noted that this particular lake has gas, so, that may be an explanation. The Swedish Lake Storsjön is the home to Storsjöodjuret, a very old monster, first reported in 1635. The lake is located near the city Östersund and in 1986 the city created a law that protected Storsjöodjuret and any offspring it may have produced. The law was revoked in 2005, which leaves us to wonder, what did the monster do to get off the protected list?
Russia, as cold as it is, still contains a few lake and river monsters. The Brosno Dragon has been around since the 13th century in Lake Brosno. This thing could be anything, from a giant, mutated beaver to a living dinosaur. This thing has the power to scare armies by eating its soldiers and horses. In World War II it apparently swallowed an entire German airplane. Whatever it is, it has a giant mouth. The Lake Van monster in Lake Van of Turkey didn’t appear on the scene until 1995; but since then there have been over 1000 sightings of a fifteen meter beast with spikes on its back. Seems pretty intense, but since this monster is so new, it’s very likely a hoax to generate tourist revenue. There might be as many as 20 monsters dwelling in Heaven Lake in China. In 1903, 3 people were attacked by an aquatic creature that looked like a buffalo. This creature was shot, but retreated to the water. In 1962, two monsters were seen chasing each other in the water. That sounds pretty cute, actually. Recently, the monster being spotted has a human-like head, a long neck, and smooth, gray skin, that sounds a lot less cute. Reporters have seen as many as six Nessie-like monsters swimming around in that lake.
Finally, in Argentina lives Nahuelito, the monster of Nahuel Huapi Lake. It’s described as a plesiosaur with a hump and a serpentine body. It’s been photographed and has received attention from the Buenos Aires Zoo.
So, as you can see, the waters of Earth are brimming with strange creatures. None of them have been proven without a doubt to be real. What’s going on under the water? Something weird, that’s for sure.
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