Lake Monsters

This myth is a less popular one, but it is no less fascinating than say, aliens or Atlantis.Most people have heard of the Loch Ness Monster, at least in passing; and while it is by far the most famous lake monster legend (so famous there is a permanent spotting post lakeside), it is by no means the only one. Large lakes all over the world are reportedly home to sea serpent like creatures.

Scotland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, East Asia, South America, and West Asia all have lakes that are supposedly home to mythical monsters. That's right I said the United States has their own lake monster, more than one actually. The more popular one being Champ, the lake Champlain monster, featured in an episode of X Files. But we will get to Champ later, for now we must ask ourselves, do we believe it? Do we believe there really are prehistoric creatures living in Earth's large lakes? Many skeptics will say that after 70+ years of searching for the monster of Loch Ness, it can be safely concluded that no such creature exists. After searching so long and so hard a body would have been produced, whether alive or dead. That being said many still believe because there are so many eyewitness accounts, surely they can't all be false or mistaken. All I know for sure is that I want to believe, I want to believe that there are still mysteries in our world.

Being the most famous case of a lake monster we will start with Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. There have been sightings of a strange creature in Loch Ness as far back as the 6th century. But as far as the media is concerned the monster was first seen in 1933. One John Mackay and his wife, owners of a hotel in Drumnadrochit (near Invernness, I assume) anonymously reported seeing the creature to a journalist, Alex Campbell, who published the story in the Inverness Courier on May 2. An excerpt from the article "... on Friday of last week, a well-known businessman, who lives near Inverness, and his wife... when motoring along the northern side of the loch were startled to see a tremendous upheaval on the loch... the creature disported itself for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron... Both on-lookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing, for they realized this was no ordinary denizen of the deep. No indeed: for a few years before a party of Inverness anglers had 'encountered an unknown creature, whose bulk, movements and the amount of water it displaced suggested that it was either a very large seal, a porpoise, or, indeed, the monster itself!" May 2 2003 marked the 70th anniversary since that first publication, and in 70 years are we any closer to proving or indeed disproving that Nessie exists?

TBC....