Lake Monster Mysteries (25 page)

Most films, of course, are more ambiguous, and some misidentifications are to be expected. The poor quality of the majority of Ogopogo images means that they yield little information, but Gaal offered a few as the “cream of the crop.” None had been thoroughly examined, and she was pleased to have our expertise and the National Geographic crew available. Here I highlight our analyses of two of the best Ogopogo films.

On August 11, 1980, a tourist group near the Bluebird Bay Resort Motel in downtown Kelowna saw a dark green creature about sixty feet long out on the lake. The object was said to be about a hundred yards away, moving at twenty-five miles per hour. The object passed back and forth in front of the group four times and was observed for about forty-five minutes. One Vancouver resident, Larry Thal, had a Super 8 movie camera with him and managed to capture about ten seconds of the activity.

Gaal owns the unedited 8mm film, but no projector was available; the best we had was a VHS transfer done many years earlier—not by a paid professional but by “a friend who had some sophisticated equipment.” This was, Gaal said, the first time this film had been examined by experts. As we watched, several dark humps moved around briefly out in the water. Gaal estimated that each protrusion “appeared to be two feet or more out of the water” and three to five feet long. Yet the footage shows nothing of scale nearby, so distance and size are impossible to verify. It did appear to be one or more live creatures—not a log or a wave—but they could have been a number of known animals.

As we watched, with Gaal narrating and the TV crew looking on, the segment looped twice, then an image of a dark, vertical object froze on the screen. Gaal described a head and neck in the freeze-frame. In her book
Ogopogo
(1986, 54) she wrote: “One frame clearly shows a prehistoric-like image, similar to the sketch drawn by the Wong family during their 1976 bridge sighting. The next frame really caught my attention. The mouth opens as the jaws do indeed separate. Nothing like this had ever been nor has since been captured on film.” But in all honesty, Joe and I saw little of what Gaal described. I didn't see a mouth or a prehistoric image. All I could see was a thin, dark, vertical form. It was nonetheless very unusual and presented a real mystery; this wasn't a log, a wave, a beaver or otter, or any other known animal's neck or appendage. Curiously, Arlene said that the eyewitnesses hadn't reported seeing the long neck come out of the water. A review of their signed, written description in Gaal's book (1986, 52) confirms this. Why would a detail as remarkable as a huge, dark neck and head with jaws separating not be noted by over a dozen eyewitnesses?

I also noted that the “neck” was significantly darker than the darkest black in the frame. This suggested to me (and to Ian Kerr, the National Geographic cinematographer I later consulted) that the dark spot may have been dirt or debris on the 8mm original or a glitch accidentally superimposed during the (nonprofessional) video transfer. I asked Gaal to replay the video because, though I had been watching closely, I had somehow missed the neck rising out of the water. The video just cut from a film of the two small objects to a still shot of one long “neck.” “It's only in this frame,” she explained. That clinched it: since the dark neck sticking up out of the water appeared in only one frame—it can't be seen rising out of the water or sinking back into it—the Ogopogo neck is almost certainly a film artifact. The eyewitnesses didn't report seeing the long, dark neck because they
didn't
see it.

Further expert analysis was provided by forensic video specialist Grant Fredricks, who works for the FBI. Using the best available originals and state-of-the-art image stabilization and clarification techniques, Fredricks (2005) found nothing monstrous in the videos. He concluded that the Thal film “has all the characteristics of waves moving. …
I don't see anything that would tell me this is anything out of the ordinary.”

The best evidence of Ogopogo, according to Gaal and other writers, is about a minute of footage shot in 1968 by a man named Arthur Folden. On a sunny August day, Folden and his wife were driving on Highway 97 south of Peachland when Folden noticed “something large and lifelike” out on the calm water. They immediately pulled over on a nearby bluff overlooking the lake, which, according to Gaal, “at this point runs fairly high above the lake and about three hundred yards from the shore.” Folden, an 8mm movie buff, pulled out his camera and captured the object in the water. Concerned that he was near the end of his film, he stopped and started the segment several times, turning the camera off when the object submerged and starting again when he saw it resurface.

Though we were unable to see the entire unedited film, we did our best with what was available. Joe and I examined a video clip containing about forty-five seconds of footage. The object was estimated at seventy feet long, according to Folden and his wife. Though the quality is mediocre at best (it's fuzzy and scratched), Folden was professional enough to hold the camera steady most of the time. Thankfully, the film begins with a wide-angle shot, allowing us to roughly estimate Folden's distance from the shore. The object Folden filmed was estimated at another two hundred yards out in the lake. If the camera was about three hundred yards from the lakeshore, then the object, whatever it was, was seen at five hundred yards. If this estimate—nearly a third of a mile—is correct, the object would have to be truly monstrous to be seen with the naked eye from the highway.

According to Loren Coleman in his
Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep,
“The short footage shows a large creature diving and reappearing, until it finally takes off, churning up waves and leaving a heavy wake, before making its last dive. Based on the size of pine trees onshore, about twenty-five feet tall,
the creature was estimated to be about sixty to seventy feet long.” The film begins by showing what appears to be a noticeable disturbance in the water. Since it isn't clear how far out in the lake the disturbance is, there's no way to tell how large an area it covers. Within a few seconds, the object begins moving to the right of the screen. A tree in the foreground provides a basis for comparison—not necessarily of the creature's size, but of its horizontal journey. The object picks up speed as it moves away from the tree, even creating a noticeable crest as it parts the water. The object then slows somewhat, and the film ends.

In an independent inquiry, Fredricks (2005) concluded that the creature Folden had filmed was far smaller than previously thought and suggested that the unidentified beast was almost certainly among the known lake fauna, probably a large fish. “We can see that there?s a light object in front of this darker object. This object is quite reflective and very, very consistent with the side of a silvery fish,? he noted.

It?s important to remember that although the footage itself lasts about forty-five seconds, Folden reported that the whole sighting lasted two to three minutes. Distance is crucial, because an object moving across a film frame can be either a massive object covering a great distance or a much smaller object covering a much smaller distance, depending on how far away it is. Without something of known scale near the object, it's difficult or impossible to distinguish between the two possibilities. We could, however, use elapsed time to roughly estimate distance.

Though we knew that many specifics would be impossible to establish nearly forty years after the fact (and with Mr. Folden unavailable to help), we were able to set some parameters and answer a few basic questions. For example, how large must an object be for Folden to see it and film it from his position along the highway? Are small or medium-sized animals such as fish or otters discernible from his position, or merely imperceptible dots?

Having previously conducted field experiments to reconcile lake monster sightings with information from photographs, I was asked to bring my knowledge and experience to bear on the Folden film. With input from Joe Nickell and John Kirk, I designed and arranged a set of
experiments to see what information we could glean from Folden's film, despite the nearly four-decade time lapse. Our experiment was filmed for the National Geographic documentary.

We located a site along Highway 97 that all of us agreed was either the original site or very near it. For the experiments, we took photographs of the Folden site and placed a survey boat out on the lake at set distance intervals. Runnalls Denby, a professional land surveying firm located in downtown Kelowna (less than a block from the city's famed Ogopogo statue) was contracted to help with these tasks. The resulting surveyor's map (
figure A. 6
, next page) shows the distance from the eyewitness's position to various plotted points out on the lake. We took photos and measurements at various distances from shore, including at the distance Folden estimated. As the experiment progressed, it was immediately clear to all of us that Folden had dramatically overestimated how far away the creature was. Because of this, we can also conclude that the creature's speed had been overestimated. It was nearer to the camera, and thus covered a relatively short distance (perhaps a hundred yards) during its two- or three-minute journey.

Skeptic and proponent alike agreed on several conclusions: (1) we had located the original site of the Folden film, or one very near it—a feat never before accomplished; (2) the object in the water was indeed a living creature of some sort; and, most important, (3) the creature's distance from the camera had been greatly overestimated, meaning that the creature was much smaller than previously thought. Perhaps luck and better technology will one day yield irrefutable proof of Ogopogo, but until then, it seems that the beast is as shy as ever.

Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 2003.
The field guide to lake monsters, sea serpents, and other mystery denizens of the deep.
New York: J. P. Tarcher.

Fredricks, Grant. 2005. Quoted in Lake Monsters: Is It Real? series. National Geographic Television, August 20.

Gaal, Arlene. 1986.
Ogopogo: The true story of the Okanagan Lake million dollar monster.
Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House.

 

Figure A.6 Surveryor's map used in the experiment involving the Folden film of Ogopogo. (Prepared by surveyors Runnalls Denby. Kelowna, B.C.)

Academy of Applied Science

Africa

African goliath frog

Alien Animals
(Bord and Bord)

Alkali Lake, Nebr.

Allison, Susan

All Wet Aquatics

American eel

America's Loch Ness Monster
(Discovery Channel documentary)

Anderson, Lyall

angels

Anguilla rostrata

antlers; as hoax monster tooth

April Fool's Day

Argentina

Associated Press

attacks/killing, by monsters; “Lukwata,” of Lake Victoria, Africa; N'ha-a-itk/Ogopogo; “Wenbo,” of Tibet

“Auli,” of Africa

Aylmer, Lake, Quebec

Bala, Lake, North Wales

“bandwagon effect,” of sightings

increased by publicity

“Bangles fallacy,” of mistaking art for reality

“banjo-playing water-being from

Hindustan” (Ogopogo song)

Barnum, P. T., and “Champ,”

Barr, Robert

Barrie, Ontario

Bartholomew, Paul

Bartholomew, Robert

basilisks

basilosaurus

Bates, Mrs. (witness of Lake George “monster”)

Bates, Mrs. (witness of “real” Lake George monster)

beavers; at Lake Okanagan; at Lake

Simcoe, Ontario; at Lake

Utopia, New Brunswick;

“Memphre” mistaken for,
Fig. 3.3
; at Silver Lake

Beaverton, Ontario, Canada

“Beaverton Bessie,”.
See also

“Igopogo,” of Lake Simcoe

Beebe, David

bellows, allegedly used for Silver Lake

serpent hoax,
Fig. 4.3

Beluaaquatica champlainiensis. See

“Champ” of Lake Champlain

beluga whales

Beothuk Indians

Beothuk Trail Tourism Committee

Bermuda Blob

Bible

Bigfoot

Bigfoot Exposed
(Daegling)

Binns, Ronald: and dolphins, as

mistaken sighting; and Loch

Ness Monster

biosonar

Bizarre Beliefs
(Hoggart and Hutchinson)

Blackman, W. Haden; and

“Champ,” and Ogopogo

“blobsters,”

Bluebird Bay Resort Motel, Kelowna, B.C.

boat wakes, mistaken for monsters

Boese, Alex

“bogeyman” method of social control

Boisvert, Jacques

Bolton, Richard E.

Bonavista, Newfoundland

Bondura, Darryl

Bord, Colin