Lake Monster Mysteries (2 page)

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.

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.

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 claimed 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.

Animals that now seem commonplace, or at least not extraordinary, were considered exotic or even fictitious just a century or so ago. Giraffes, for example, were displayed in carnivals and circuses during
the 1800s. They were called
cameleopards,
reflecting the fanciful combination of the long neck and general head shape of a camel with the spots of a leopard (
figure I.2
).

Figure I.2
A “camelopard” is advertised in the 1800s.

As science has shed light on more of the natural world, the line between the real and the fantastic has grown sharper. With the Enlightenment
came a quest to discern fact from fiction, to poke and prod and tease out what is real from what is not. In modern times, that search has developed into the scientific discipline of zoology, as well as the less scientific field of cryptozoology. Those who search for unknown, hidden, or “out-of-place” creatures, such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, dub themselves
cryptozoologists.

In trying to link ancient legends to modern truth claims, the history of the mythical kraken is instructive. Early texts and legends tell of a monstrous, tentacled creature far larger and more fearsome than any known animal. Though some of the stories are no doubt exaggerated, it is generally agreed that a modern version of the kraken does indeed exist and is, by nearly any definition, a monster: it is the giant squid (
figure I.3
). There's no doubt that giant squid exist; yet they are poorly studied and rarely seen. The largest one, discovered in New Zealand, was estimated at sixty-five feet in length.

On September 30, 2004, Japanese zoologists Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori became the first to see and film a giant squid at depth. The creature, about twenty-six feet long, was found 2,953 feet deep. The researchers, who were investigating whale-feeding areas in the North Pacific near the Ogasawara Islands, used bait to attract the squid and a remote camera to film it. They watched as the squid attacked the food with its elongate feeding tentacles; after a four-hour struggle, the squid left behind one six-foot tentacle.

Over the centuries, huge, mysterious masses of marine flesh have occasionally washed ashore on beaches around the world. Dubbed “Mobsters” (or “globsters”), these large carcasses are often so badly decomposed that there isn't enough material (or enough of a variety of materials) to make a definitive identification. To many people, this phenomenon may seem like strong evidence for sea monsters. Recently, a team of biologists led by Sidney Pierce examined the mystery anew. As the authors point out, “Wild claims, especially in the nonscientific literature, are regularly made that the blobs are the remains of sea monsters. For example, the Tasmanian West Coast Monster is still referred to as a monster, although an Australian scientific team.… identified it as a whale. Other relics such as the [1896] St. Augustine (Florida) Sea Monster and the Bermuda
Blob are still described by some as the remains of a gigantic octopus, even though A. E. Verrill—who named the St. Augustine specimen sight unseen—recanted his identification in favor of whale remains.… and in spite of microscopic and biochemical analyses showing that they were nothing more than the collagenous matrix of whale blubber” (Pierce et al. 2004, 126). In 2004, Pierce and his colleagues examined all available blobster materials using electron microscopes and applied biochemical, molecular, and DNA analysis. The conclusion: the specimens were unmistakably from various species of great whales. Scientific analysis, it seems, has finally explained one of the world's great mysteries of the sea. The many mentions of globsters in books on the “unexplained” will have to be revised in the cold light of hard evidence.

Figure I.3
A true monster of the deep, the elusive giant squid can weigh more than a ton and exceed seventy-five feet in length. This specimen, the best preserved in the world, is on display at a museum in St. John's, Newfoundland. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

Nevertheless, the ocean is one of the last truly unexplored areas of the world, and it is a natural place to imagine being inhabited by monsters. Yet in modern times, very few sea monsters have been sighted. Today, most reports of mysterious aquatic creatures involve so-called lake monsters. Though most people have heard of a few famous lake monsters, such as those in Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, the number of lakes said to contain mysterious creatures goes far beyond two or three—or even two or three hundred.