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The video of a possible Ogopogo sighting in Okanagan Lake has caught the eye of international media.

Two weeks ago, West Kelowna resident Richard Huls said he captured video of the mythical creature in the lake.

“It proves something is down there. Whether it’s Ogopogo or not, it is a different story but there is something at least down there,” Huls said.

“It was not a wave, just a darker colour. The size and the fact that they were not parallel with the waves made me think it had to be something else,” he said.

And many other people seemed to think the same thing.

Here is an excellent video sent in by CryptoReports reader Mike Eriksson with some facts and information about The Great Lake Monster of Sweden. The lake monster also known as “Storsjöodjuret” is said to live in Lake Storsjon in Jamtland located in the middle of Sweden. Storsjöodjuret is described by many to be an aquatic or serpentine reptile having fins across its back and a dog like head. Some accounts have the creature as having several humps and measuring approximately six meters long.

The video contains some very interesting facts and information about the creatures origins along with Storsjöodjuret sightings and reports up to the present day. Some great local sceneries are showcased in the video along with some historical features related to the monster. CryptoReports would like to thank Mr. Eriksson for sending along his video for all our readers to enjoy and we encourage everyone who has a Cryptid story , sighting , pictures , or videos that would like to share to send them in and we will be happy to post them here at the site. You can submit your information by clicking “Submit News or Reports” on the left hand sidebar.

“Latest Bownessie photo“

The Internet has been buzzing about a recent photograph allegedly depicting a monster surfacing in a British lake. As Eric Niller of Discovery News noted, “The latest entry in the lake monster sweepstakes is making a bid for glory [is the] ‘Bownessie‘ of Lake Windermere, England….Tom Pickles and Sara Harrington, work colleagues who were kayaking at the lake as part of a team-building exercise, snapped this photo of the possible sea creature with a mobile phone. It appears to show a multi-humped black object moving through the water from left to right.”

When the news broke, many people were surprised. Not just that a dark, multi-humped monster had supposedly been photographed on a lake, but that it wasn’t at Loch Ness.

Most people know about Nessie, the denizen in Ness, one of Scotland’s many lakes (or “lochs”). Reports of something odd in Loch Ness only date back to the 1930s, and a famous 1934 photo of a silhouetted, serpentine head and neck helped propel Nessie into international stardom (unfortunately the photo was later revealed to be a hoax).

The lake has been searched for nearly 80 years using everything including cameras, divers, sonar, submarines, and dolphins, yet no real evidence has been found.

“If you’re interested in lake monsters, you needn’t go all the way to Europe,” Daniel Loxton told Discovery News.

Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic magazine and co-author of an upcoming book on lake monsters, says that “every human culture has stories of water monsters, and besides, Europeans brought their own monsters with them to North America. European-style monsters manifested early in tributaries of the St. Lawrence river, and then along the coast of Maine. They were reported in lakes Eerie and Ontario. Today, monsters are said to haunt dozens of other lakes across Canada and the United States.”

Here’s a sample:

Crescent Lake is a picturesque body of water in northeastern Newfoundland near the small town of Robert’s Arm. Robert’s Arm is gorgeous, with walking trails snaking over lush green hills and around the placid lake. The lake, deep and cold, is allegedly home to a lake monster known as Cressie. As you enter the town, a life-size(?) model of Cressie greets visitors.

Quebec’s Lake Memphremagog, which extends down into north-central Vermont, is said to be home to a lake monster, Memphre, with reports supposedly dating as far back as 1816.

In British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan, there supposedly exists the Ogopogo monster. It is said to be dark, up to 70 feet long, and have a series of humps. It is the world’s second most famous creature after Nessie, and like many lake monsters, native Indians are said to have described the beast in their legends and myths.

America has its share of reputed aquatic beasts as well, including Lake Tahoe’s Tessie. But the best known lives in Lake Champlain, which forms the border between Vermont and New York. “Champ,” as the creature is called, has allegedly been seen by hundreds of witnesses and is anywhere between 10 and 187 feet long, has one or more humps, and is gray, black, dark green, or other colors.

The small town of Port Henry, New York, is the self-proclaimed “Home of Champ” and has a large wooden board that records monster sightings. The best evidence for Champ — in fact, for any lake monster — was a 1977 photo taken by Sandra Mansi showing what appeared to be a dark head and hump in the lake. Later investigation showed that the object was almost certainly a floating log that looked serpentine from a certain angle.

All these monsters have at least one thing in common: a lack of good scientific evidence.

The Lake Windermere Bownessie photo seems likely to be a hoax; in fact Loren Coleman, Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, has his suspicions: “The evidence brought forth is only as trustworthy as the people bringing it to us. What do we know about Tom Pickles and Sarah Harrington, who saw the creature during their company’s team building exercise? How is this all tied to a fundraising effort they were in the midst of conducting and desired to obtain publicity for? I’m not saying they are not to be taken seriously, but UK investigators should do some background checks.”

Coleman notes that previous lake monster photos have many explanations. “Some are unexplained. Some are fakes and hoaxes. Some are garbage bags. Some are otters. Some are humans. Some are other known animals.”

With the caveat that “unexplained” does not mean “unexplainable,” whatever the images of “monsters” in Windermere and other lakes truly are, they are probably accounted for on this list.

Source: news.discovery

Imagine a monster living on the borders of the upper north shore. An aquatic beast which lurks in the depths of the Hawkesbury River. A creature related to the Loch Ness monster.

For cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy, the fledgling legend of the Hawkesbury River Monster is real and he’s determined to prove it.

Since 1965, he and his wife Heather have been gathering information on a creature he believed still lives in our major waterway, or once did.

After years of “patience, field trips and stake-outs’’ along the shores of the river, Mr Gilroy, who is also known for his research on the Blue Mountains Panther, hopes to finally obtain photographic evidence.

“Sooner or later, I’m hoping to get the shot of shots,’’ Mr Gilroy told the Advocate.

The Gilroys say they have compiled hundreds of sightings reports.

“They tend to be seen around (Mooney Mooney and Long Island),’’ Mr Gilroy said.

“There are stories of houseboats being lifted up at one end when something underneath tried to surface over at Jerusalem Bay.

“A lot of the inlets here have stories.’’

The most recent sighting was by fishermen near Wisemen’s Ferry, in March.

“(One of them) momentarily saw a serpentine head and about 2m of long neck rise above the water before submerging,’’ Mr Gilroy said.

He also referred to a sighting by Rosemary Turner in 1975, who reported a monster swimming upstream from a lookout at Muogamarra Nature Reserve.

Robert Jones, a palaeontologist from the Australian Museum, said that as far as science is concerned, the existence of the Hawkesbury River Monster has never been proven.

“It’s impossible for them to live in the Hawkesbury River; they just don’t exist,’’ he said.

But according to Mr Gilroy, the monster is part of Aboriginal folklore, with stories of women and children being attacked by the “moolyewonk’’ or “mirreeular’’ both indigenous names. They also feature in ancient rock art on the banks of the river.

“There’s got to be something to it,’’ Mr Gilroy said.

Descriptions of the Hawkesbury River Monster liken it to the prehistoric plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur 70 million years extinct.

The Loch Ness monster is also said to be related to the same extinct creature.

Mr Jones said plesiosaurs did exist in Australia, but ther was no evidence of them inhabiting the Hawkesbury River.

However both Mr Gilroy and Mr Jones describe the aquatic dinosaur as grey and mottled in colour, with a large bulky body, two sets of paddle-like flippers, a long neck and serpent-like head and thick, eel-like tail.

Sighting reports describe it as about 24m long. Mr Jones said the plesiosaur grew up to 10m long.

Mr Gilroy said he and his field assistant Greg Foster may have sighted the creature last August, from a high bank near Wiseman’s Ferry.

They described seeing a dark, bulky shape with a long neck about a metre from the surface.

Its movements caused surface disturbance which appeared to suggest a marine creature with two sets of flippers and a tail, Mr Gilroy said.

“It was encouraging,’’ he said.

“I’m hopeful that I’m going to get some sort of evidence that satisfies me … and when I’ve got that, I will be pleased to put it on the desk of some scientist and say `well there you are!’’’

Source: hornsby-advocate

What lurks beneath the dark waters of Scotland’s Loch Ness? Newly released documents on display Tuesday in Scotland show that during the 1930s, police in Scotland were convinced some sort of creature inhabited the Highlands lake — so sure, in fact, that they worried about how to protect it from big-game hunters.

The files from the National Archive of Scotland show that local officials asked Britain’s Parliament to investigate the issue and confirm the monster’s existence — in the interests of science.

“That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt,” wrote William Fraser, a senior police officer, “but that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful.”

The Nessie Files, kept secret for 70 years, were revealed as part of an exhibition on government secrecy. The exhibit examines how governments once kept almost everything secret, and how attitudes evolved to move toward more open government in modern times.

Nessie, of course, was the epitome of mystery. The loch in which the monster is said to swim is the deepest inland expanse of water in Britain. At about 750 feet (230 meters) to the bottom, it’s even deeper than the North Sea.

The legend of what lies beneath the surface dates to 565 A.D., when an early Christian, St. Columba, is recorded as having driven away a water monster by the power of prayer, the National Archive said.

The documents also offer a glimpse of the collision of centuries-old lake lore with an emerging mass media — a modern effort to document a long-held superstition. The search grew feverish in the 1930s after a surgeon snapped a (now discredited) photo of a black dinosaur-like head rising from the depths.

Archivist Tristram Clarke said the letters reveal that some people sincerely believed there was a monster in the loch — though the cool response from the government suggests there plenty of detractors. If nothing else, Clarke said the Fraser letter proves that the police were under pressure to protect the monster — whatever it was.

Fraser’s letter to officials in London warned that he feared hunters Peter Kent and Marion Stirling were “determined to catch the monster dead or alive” and planned to use a “special harpoon gun.”

Kent was preparing a major operation including 20 experienced hunters and Fraser said he warned of the “desirability of having the creature left alone.”

The idea didn’t get very far in the end. The files show that it was deemed better not to kill the monster — or the myth — by stationing cameras or observers around the lake.

Though the sightings proved to be a hoaxes, they didn’t stop a Nessie-spotting tourism industry from springing up, together with three-humped cuddle toys, T-shirts and mugs.

“I think Nessie is such an iconic part of Scotland,” Clarke said. “The legend lives on. It’s almost part of Scotland’s identity.”

Though the number of sightings has tailed off recently, devoted believers continue to scour the loch. Gary Campbell of the Official Loch Ness monster club lives in hope of finding Nessie one day.

“Fourteen years ago I saw a hump break the water on the loch, I took a double take and then more of it appeared,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything since, but I keep looking. It probably cost me my social life.”

The faithful have long speculated about what the monster is. Some suggest a completely unknown species, or a sturgeon, or even a last surviving dinosaur.

“The reason why the Nessie myth persists is it such a good story,” said Lee Barron, a lecturer in media and culture at Northumbria University. “We get a sense of wonder out of the ‘what ifs’ of it all.

“There are lots of monster in the lake myths around the globe, including the U.S. and Europe, but because of the sightings, the fake photos and the romance of Loch Ness, Nessie is the greatest of them all.”

Source: news.yahoo

A California-based production company has heard about the legend of a sea creature in Raystown Lake, referred to locally as Raystown Ray, and is coming to the area next month to investigate.

A.J. D’Agostino, an associate producer with Base Productions of Burbank, said a team of 10 people will visit the area on?April 27 and 28 to spend time on the lake and gather information from people who think they may have seen the creature.

Matt Price, executive director of the Huntingdon County Convention and Visitors Bureau, who has been in communication with Base, said the company is producing a six-episode show and dedicating half of one of the episodes to Raystown Ray. He said it may air on the SyFy Channel. A release from Base said the show, on the paranormal, is to be broadcast in June.

“We are looking for people to be interviewed on the show,” D’Agostino said. “Eyewitness accounts are the best … people who have been near the lake or on the lake who would be willing to share their story. If they have photos or videos, that would be amazing.”

Base Productions decided to investigate after viewing information on the Web site raystownray.com. The Web site was created five years ago for reporting sightings, photos and gathering information.

“We saw the most recent photo of Raystown Ray and that looks pretty compelling,” D’Agostino said. “We have a team of investigators who look at video clips and photos of things that are either aliens, strange creatures or ghosts.”

The investigation will focus on the Seven Points area, where a recent sighting of the sea monster was reported, she said.

“This will be our first field investigation,” she said. “We hope to find evidence.”

One witness on the Web site wrote, “We saw it from about 50 yards from us when it raised up, it’s head moved from side to side. It made no sound. I’d say it was at least 20 feet long.”

Witnesses can post information on sightings by visiting the Web site and e-mailing their story or photo plus contact information.

D’Agostino said witnesses should think about when and where they saw a creature, what they saw, what they heard, and what they thought about it.

Price said the investigation will go beyond talking to eyewitnesses.

“We’ve put them in touch with a local scuba diver and also with Seven Points Marina. We’re assisting them with the dive and with the fishfinder equipment and I believe … they are also talking with a fishing guide,” Price said.

Base Productions plans on being in the area for two days of production and Price said eyewitness interviews will be conducted on the back deck of the visitors center, which overlooks the lake.

Base Productions also produces “Sport Science,” which airs on Fox Sports Net, and A&E’s justice series “Crime 360.”

Price said he’s never seen Raystown Ray, but “if he exists, it certainly hasn’t affected the ecosystem much, the fish are large, vegetation is plentiful, it hasn’t disturbed swimmers.”

He welcomes the national exposure.

“It’s an opportunity to get our area on national television,” he said.

Source: alttonamirror.com

People have reported seeing what they can best describe as a creature in Cameron Lake, just 30 kilometres west of Parksville, and John Kirk wants to find out what it is.

Kirk co-founded a B.C. group dedicated to hunting unidentified animals, or cryptid, and said he and his fellow members of the Scientific Cryptozoology Club have been fielding calls from people who say it’s time to take a closer look. The author of In the Domain of Lake Monsters plans an expedition to Cameron Lake to look for scientific evidence on Sept. 19.

This initial inspection will determine whether or not people are mistaking natural phenomenon for a cryptid, Kirk explained.

Once he and his team rule out things like submerged rocks or logs, they will return for a more in-depth analysis. So far, people have described the creature as long and serpent-like.

One woman captured a photograph of a similar silver shape, an indication that it could be a fish, which would be just as interesting for Kirk because there are no known species of fish in the lake that can get that big, he explained.

The 70-member club has experienced field researchers from all around the world but its small size and small budget often limit the expeditions they can go on. Oceanside Tourism, which represents both Parksville and Qualicum Beach, contacted the group and offered to sponsor the trip.

“We’ve gotten some feedback from people who are concerned that if we find something it will stop people from swimming but it doesn’t stop people in Okanagan,” Kirk said. “There are no reports of anyone getting attacked at one of these lakes. In fact, it’s a great tourist attraction. People make an absolute fortune on this type of thing.”

Lakes in the province are notorious for creature sightings, according to Kirk, who said there are 39 lakes with some sort of sighting reports. With very few of these sightings confirmed, Kirk does not expect to find anything in Cameron Lake his first time out.

Source: canada.com

WHEN asked if he has ever seen a monster in the deep dark waters of Loch Ness, local identity David Muir doesn’t flinch and doesn’t hesitate – he’s been asked before.

“Oh aye,” he says, tugging at his long, flowing white beard before conspiratorially looking over his shoulder, then leaning in close from his electric wheelchair to impart some advice.

“If you want to see the beastie, laddie, then the best way is after 10 Glenmorangies (whisky) and if you don’t see it after that, then you may at least get a visit from a herd of elephants.”

He pauses for a second before throwing his head back and erupting into infectious laughter that he tries to stifle unsuccessfully, hand-to-mouth, to produce a series of snorts and cackles.

For more than a century, Loch Ness in the misty Scottish Highlands has captured the imagination the world over but continues to either raise a laugh or a sombre, more serious tone, depending on who you speak to.

Recently, a grainy Google Earth satellite image purportedly captured the beastie swimming just below the surface, its “fins” splayed out behind, apparently propelling it along the 40km stretch of freshwater. It had been almost four years since a credible sighting.

“Oh that,” Steve Feltham sighs when visited in the hamlet of Dores on the banks of Loch Ness.

“That was the Ness Express (boat service).”

The 46-year-old speaks with authority and if anyone should know, it’s him.

Steve came to the banks looking for Nessie but the strangest thing he discovered was that, 17 years on, he was still there, living in a 1970 Dodge van.

The former graphic artist and home security alarm installer had planned a two-week hunt to satisfy a childhood obsession. He drove his Dodge to the loch and it and he never left.

Steve now makes small plasticine sculptures of the creature to fund his continued search for the truth.

In 18 years, he has had only one surface sighting, in about 1994. Armed with a pair of large ex-navy binoculars, he keeps looking.

On a shelf in his van, he has a collection of articles and images of so-called sightings. All are fakes – done by photographers or tourists to make money.

“If I was ever going to cry wolf I would have done it at year two or year three, not year 18,” Steve muses. “So there would be a little more weight of a sighting by myself because everyone knows this is what I do.”

His modelling is interrupted by two well-dressed Jehovah Witnesses selling salvation. Steve loves it and challenges them to prove their deity exists – he’s got evidence, he says, eye witnesses, sonar soundings.

They leave dejected, perhaps to probe further this rival religion.

Steve is an authority on Nessie hunting, with people now coming to him to show them their photos of all things suspicious.

He is a filter of nonsense, he says, and most of what he has seen falls well and truly in that category.

“But it’s not financial; for me it’s about the fact that this little tiny island that we live on has a world-class mystery on its doorstep which almost nobody is bothering to investigate. That, I find amazing, and that makes me want to be here doing it,” he said.

Richard Macdonald has been steering the Royal Scot ferry boat for 27 years and in that time, he says he has seen the monster seven times. He reels off the dates and precise times – June 28, 2007 at 6.01pm is the most recent.

But while the sightings are open to debate, he says the evidence that the world-class sonar equipment on his vessel finds is not, picking up moving objects up to 230m below.

Even if some are sonar glitches or reflections, he says there are just way too many for there not to be something there. His sonar records fish life, but also appear to show an entity more than 10m long, weighing six-and-a-half tonnes and moving at 40km/h.

One of the most credible sightings was by a no-nonsense policeman who, while on a fishing trip on June 15, 1965, watched a creature stir off his bow for 50 minutes.

Last word to Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club.

The pic on Google Earth is from 2006 and has been well researched before, with the clear conclusion that it is of a boat, Gary says.

Indeed, but for millions the hunt goes on.

Source: news.com

1. Monster of Lake Tianchi

The Changbai Mountain is the highest mountain in Northeast Asia, at 2,189 meters above sea level. Tianchi is honored as the deepest mountain lake and the largest crater lake in China. Legends about the monster hidden in this 373-meter deep lake go back more than a century. There have been more than 30 reported sightings by tourists from home and abroad over the past 20 years. The first reported sighting was in 1903. There are quite a few pictures and videos of this creature, but none are clear enough to give a good enough clue as to what it is. “Some enthusiasts are coming up with computer images of it based on interviews. I do hope this will be helpful to unveil this century-old mystery.” said Wu Guangxiao, who is investigating the Tianchi Lake monster.

2. Monster of Qinghai Lake

Qinghai Lake is located in the north of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. It is the largest landlocked lake in China. Its area is 4583 square kilometers. The elevation of Qinghai Lake is 3196 meters; depth is 32.8 meters. The lake water is azure. Several dozen people have already witnessed the lake monster, but the Qinghai Lake monster is still a mystery. In 1947, a lama saw a monster like a dragon swimming in the Qinghai Lake. In 1949, a peasant saw a monster with snakes head in Qinghai Lake. The monsters scales glistened under the sunshine.

3. Monster of Kanas Lake

Kanas Lake, located in China’ Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, runs 25 kilometers north to south, is about 2.5 kilometers wide, and 188 meters deep at its deepest point. As a national natural protection zone, it has abundant natural resources and various species as well as beautiful views. Legend has it that huge monsters dwell in the lake’s depths and they often drag drinking horses and camels into the water before swallowing them. It is said that the monster is actually a kind of rare fish named “Hucho taimen” in Chinese, also called “huge red fish”, with the longest one measuring up to over 10 meters. In 2007, elusive mystical creatures emerged again in Kanas Lake. According to the administration of the Kanas scenic spot, on July 5th at 8:20 pm, huge ripples were seen on the surface of the lake by a few tourists carrying portable video cameras.

4. Monster of Changtan, Shennongjia

Shennongjia is situated in western Hubei Province, covering an area of over 3,000 square kilometers. Known as The Oriental Botanic Garden and the natural gene bank of biological species, it shelters some of the world’ rare or endangered plants and animals, such as Chinese dove trees, South China tigers, white bears and white snakes. The lake monsters emerged in Changtan, a lake located in Shennongjia. More than 20 people have seen a giant water animal with similar characteristics: grey skin, oblate head, giant eyes and five toes on the forelimb.

5. Monster of Wenbu Lake

Wenbu Lake lying in Kunzha County, China’s Tibet Autonomous Region is at 4,535 meters above sea level with an area of 835 square kilometers. In the 1950s, a lake monster had been seen in Wenbu Lake, which had a small head, big eyes, long neck and grey and black skin. It is said that the body of the monster looks like an ox.

Source: englishpeople

Plesiosaur

Cryptozoology can be a lonely hobby. Cryptozoologists are often the butt of significant ridicule from both inside and outside the scientific community.

While not every cryptozoologist thinks critically or is scrupulous about methodology, most are quite serious about what they are doing. The periodic reappearance of species formerly thought to be extinct is the kind of event that keeps cryptozoologists going.

The truth is, whatever might be said about cryptozoologists and their quirks, ancient animals and plants really do vanish and the reappear with surprising frequency. Such animals and plants are discovered so often, in fact, that paleontologists have a term for them: They are called ‘Lazarus taxa’ (after the man raised from the dead in the Gospel of John), meaning they were thought to be extinct for some extended period, then suddenly reappeared, alive and well.

Many people believe that cryptids may actually be extinct species that have found a way to survive. Lake Monsters are especially likely to be attributed to an actual reappearing species, most often, specifically, the Plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur with a long neck and fins that lived during the Cretaceous period and disappeared from the fossil record about 65 million years ago.

Could a 65 million year old dinosaur have survived undetected in landlocked glacial lakes?

The Plesiosaur was a carnivore and a large one, so it does seem to be fairly unlikely. Such lakes usually do not have enough fish to support a huge predator. (Lake Okanagan, the home of the ‘Ogo Pogo’ lake monster is one notable exception).

Still, weirder things have happened.  Here are ten of them:

The Coleacanth. This large prehistoric fish was thought to have gone extinct 80 million years ago until a live specimen was found in 1938.

Monoplacophora Mollusks. These innocuous shellfish from the prehistoric Devonian period (circa 380 million years ago) were found happily alive (well, however happy a mollusk can get) in deep waters off Costa Rica in 1952.

The Pygmy Tarsier. This odd, gremlin-like animal was thought to have gone extinct 80 years ago until a Texas A & M researcher found three of them alive and well in Indonesia.

The Laotian Rock Rat. Thought to be extinct for 11 million years, this early mammal was discovered in 1996.

The Lazarussuchus. This very small crocodile was common the late Triassic period and was assumed to have gone extinct about 170 million years ago. So far two living varieties have been discovered, the first in 1982.

Gracilidris. This species of 20 million year old ants, thought to be extinct, was discovered by a team of scientists in Brazil in 2006.

The Dawn Redwood. A small cluster of this extinct prehistoric redwood tree was discovered in 1944 in China by Zhan Wang.

The Wollemi Pine. This tree was only know from fossils between 2 and 90 million years old until it was discovered alive in 1994.

The Chacoan Peccary.  This small piglike animal was only known from the fossil record until scientists discovered living specimens in 1975.

The Mountain Pygmy Possum. Australia’s only hibernating marsupial, this little animal was only known from fossils until its discovery in 1966. It is currently facing extinction once again due to global climate change.

Are all cryptids examples of reappearing animals? It is completely possible that no cryptids are examples of reappearing animals.

It’s just as possible, however, that at least some of them might well be living examples of animals thought to be long gone from planet Earth, animals that may well one day turn up as live specimens.

In the meantime, just knowing that such animals are regularly found is enough to keep cryptozoologists actively looking for more of them.

Source: examiner