A Brief Guide to American Lake Monsters

The Loch Ness Monster of Scotland is famous worldwide. America too seems to house some lake monsters. Most of these lakes are in remote areas. The monsters that people claim to have seen resemble huge turtles, crocodiles or serpents.

Perhaps the most famous of American lake monsters is the Ogopogo of Okanogan Lake of British Columbia. This monster has been compared to the Loch Ness. However, what distinguish the Ogopogo from its more famous counterpart are its legs and feet, whale-like skin and shorter neck. The Native Americans called it Natiaka. There have been reports of groups of people sighting the monster in 1926 when they had come to the lake for a baptism ritual. However, the huge discrepancies in the reports of people who claim to have seen the monster leave many doubts about its existence.

Stories about the existence of the Wallowa Lake Monster circulated among the Nez Perce Indians even before the arrival of Europeans to America. Again, the size attributed to the dragon vary- some eyewitness say it was 75 ft long while others suggest a more modest 12 f., so cryptozoologists think they are actually two different species. In 1885, a prospector sighted a creature in the lake. It apparently had a very elongated neck. When it saw him, it dived into the water at once.

The Flathead Lake monster was reported in 1889 by a Capt James C. Kerr while he was in his steamer U.S Grant. The creature resembling a grey colored whale was a quick swimmer and swam towards Capt Kerr' boat as it to ram the vessel. However, an alert passenger shot at the beast. The shot missed the beast, but scared it away. There have been other sightings of the creature since then.

Brother Bainbridge reported the North Shore Monster of Utah Lake in the 1840s. It had a dolphin-like body. However, J.H McNeil and other employees working in a salt works company on the north shore of the lake one evening in 1877 saw a very different creature. This creature had crocodile body and horse head. It charged at the workers who took refuge in a nearby hillside. They remained in hiding until dawn. Many believe that the creature was nothing more than a buffalo.

The Devil's Lake monster, a beast that resembles an Octopus has been attributed as causing many deaths. The Nakota Indians' descriptions of the monster remind us of the extinct Plesiosaur. Locals call the Lake Tahoe beast Tessie. Though there have been many Indian legends of the creature supposedly 60ft long with snake like body and reptile like features, it was in mid 70s that it caught the public fancy. Jacques Cousteau was exploring the lake when he saw something terrifying but kept it a secret. He later declared, "The world wasn't ready for what was down there!" Oggie the dragon that a small boy nurtured and released in the Onondaga Lake, Syracuse in the mid 1970s is another dragon. The Champ of Lake Champlain that borders the states of Vermont and New York was photographed by Sandra Mansi. It seems authentic with a long neck.

The stories of strange beasts are numerous. They are not authenticated. They are either hoaxes that people perpetrated for commercial reasons or just plain imaginations of terrified minds. Most of them may be animals already known to exist. A few cases have caught the attention of crypto zoologists and have become subjects of their investigations.