The Fortune Bay Sea Serpent 1997

Fortune Bay  is a natural bay located in the Gulf of  Newfoundland, Canada . The bay extends in a northeast direction for 105 kilometres ending at Terrenceville.

Over the years there have been lots of sea serpent sightings in the area dating from 1500s  to the present day.

As recently as May 4th1997, a sea serpent  sighting was reported by two men in a fishing boat in Fortune Bay off Newfoundland. They  saw what they thought were garbage bags floating on the ocean's surface and went to investigate. Here is the newspaper article of the time.

5/6/1997  The Evening Telegram

LITTLE BAY EAST-FORTUNE BAY (Correspondent) Charles Bungay has no doubt about what he saw rear up out of the water after him on Sunday. The creature was long with gray, scaly skin and dark eyes that looked right at him, the Fortune Bay fisherman said. It was frightening.I shook for about five or six hours afterwards, he said. I’ve never witnessed anything like it in my life.

Jon Lien, a Memorial University marine biologist, was reluctant Monday to speculate on exactly what Bungay and a companion might have seen but he ruled out a humpback whale, large basking shark or a giant squid.Lien, a whale researcher, said after receiving a full description he’s more inclined to think along the lines of a similar creature called Cadborosaurus reportedly sighted on numerous occasions off the coast of British Columbia.

There have been hundreds of sightings of this, whatever it is, on the west coast, but no one has ever found a carcass, said Lien.Maybe we have just discovered the east coast version of that so-called sea monster, I don’t know.

Bungay said it was about noon on Sunday when he and a companion spotted what they thought were floating garbage bags.They decided to haul them on board but when they got within 50 or 60 feet, something else reared its head.It eyeballed us right away. It turned its head and looked right at us, said Bungay.All we could see was a neck about six feet long, a head like a horse, but his dark eyes were on the front of its face like a human.The overall length he estimated at about 30 to 40 feet. He said it had ears or horns six or eight inches long. He knows what its mouth looked like but he couldn’t remember it being open, it all happened so fast.He just looked at us and slid under the water and disappeared.

Another Bay L’Argent fishermen says he had a similar experience four or five years ago.It was the year the ice floes came further south then we’ve ever witnessed and flowed up into Fortune Bay, said John Hardiman, 66.It was exactly the same as them fellows described it.But I never seen its head that was beneath the water. I did see its big long tail, more like those dinosaurs you see on TV. That’s what it looked like to me.

Such incidents may be more common than most people may think. One U.S. report of 600 sightings concluded over half weren’t obvious hoaxes or mistaken identity. Some say what the men saw was a giant squid .Giant squid rarely come to the surface and don’t look horselike.So what do think the men saw? It certainly shook up two seasoned fishermen.

Sea Serpent in Indiana?

Horseshoe Pond Sea Serpent

Six miles south of Vincennes Indiana, is Horseshoe Pond said to be the home of a serpent. Isaac Daines reported seeing it to The  Vincennes Commercial and the story appeared on April 22cnd 1892. The newspaper described Daines as "a highly respected farmer, whose veracity cannot be questioned." Daines said both  his wife and he had seen it plus some  hired men and neighbours, had  seen the creature on several occasions. Daines described it as 60 feet long, bigger and longer than a telephone pole and looking like a snake, but it had a head that resembled that of a large dog. It was  black on the back and sides.

It was seen in the water and did not venture on shore.Its movement was described as ‘gliding’ through the water. When they approached it ,it became  alarmed and swam away and moved rapidly when they tried to pursue it.

Daines said he had tried to kill the monster several times. The bullets seemed to have no effect. He planned to gather  a bunch  of men armed with Winchesters to kill or capture the sea-serpent.

The serpent seemed to disappear but then on June 17, 1892 The Vincennes Commercial reported that the sea-serpent had been seen again by "men of good repute for veracity," this time in Big Swan Pond, ten miles south of Vincennes.

The huge snake was still described as having the head of a dog, with a white throat, but its black back and sides were now described as spotted or mottled, red and yellow, like the side of a large water snake. No further sightings were ever reported of the serpent.

Could it simply have been a large water snake of a sort that the local people did not recognise? It is easy to confuse size when things are in the water because of the refracted light. Or did a mysterious serpent pass through the area on its way to somewhere else? Unless some evidence comes to light we will never know what happened to the large snake of Horseshoe Pond.

Strangeness at Lake Okanagan

Strange Find in Lake Okanagan

Lake Okanagan in Canada is said to be the home of a water monster called Ogopogo The lake is approximately 120 kilometres long; 3.5 kilometres wide and is 235 metres at its deepest point. Indigenous people have legends about a monster in the lake. To the syilx, it’s n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ which means “the sacred spirit of the lake. To members of the Westbank First Nation, n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ and Ogopogo are two separate things.One is a spirit and one is an animal.

There used to be all one connecting lake, Okanagan and Skaha, and there are stories  of caverns that connect the two where a creature could live.

Sightings are reported of a creature 20 to 50 feet long, with a horse shaped head and an undulating serpent like body.The first recorded sighting was by John Allison in 1872.

In 2000 marathon swimmer, Daryl Ellis, reported being accompanied for a short distance during his swim by two large creatures as he passed Rattlesnake Island. He described them as one being 6 - 9 metres (20 - 30 feet) long and the second being smaller. They followed him for quite awhile and then disappeared. When he swam near Okanagan Lake floating bridge in Kelowna, a creature with a large eye the size of a grapefruit came within 9 metres to get a close look at him.

A south Okanagan man is convinced he’s captured the most conclusive piece of evidence yet of the legendary and elusive lake monster in the Okanagan known as the Ogopogo in june 2011.Jim La Rocque was enjoying his mother-in-law’s lakefront property with his two children in Kaleden, B.C. on June 1 when he says he noticed an inexplicable wake on Skaha Lake.The longtime Okanagan resident said he couldn’t believe his eyes.La Rocque believes he witnessed a giant, serpentine creature swimming across the lake with at least seven fins paddling in sync.He estimates it was at least 36 metres (120 feet) long.“I’d describe it as like a dragon boat race, like with oars, so if you flipped the dragon boat upside down, you would see all those oars coming out of the water,” he said.

This recent article caught my eye:

Having been scuba diving more than 2,000 times in Okanagan Lake, professional diver Kevin Aschhoff was rather surprised to discover something he'd never seen before.Crawling along the edge of a boat wreck 30-feet below the surface of the water was an Okanagan crayfish four times the usual size for this species, measuring roughly a foot in length.Native Okanagan signal crayfish generally grow to about three inches in length, so Aschhoff's discovery during a night dive last September has surprised experts who did not know the crayfish could grow to such sizes."(The crayfish) is the size of a lobster and way, way larger than any known crayfish in the Okanagan," Institute for Underwater Research founder Raphael Nowak told iNFOnews.ca. "It's a very interesting phenomenon."

Source:https://infotel.ca/newsitem/in-video-never-seen-before-lobster-size-crayfish-discovered-in-okanagan-lake/it73023

Which poses an interesting question. Could Ogopogo be a known  creature that had grown to four times its normal size? If some form of gigantism occurs to creatures in the lake what could Ogopogo be? An eel,a fish, a snake ? Maybe if you have some ideas you can leave a comment.

Sørvágsvatn Lake Water Horse

The Water Horse of the Faroe Islands

Sørvágsvatn or Leitisvatn is a cliff  lake located 32 m above the level of the sea  in the Faroe Islands. It is found  on the island of Vágar. It has a surface area of 3.56 km² and a maximum depth of 59 m.It empties into the Atlantic Ocean through a 30 m high waterfall.

There are many myths and legends surround the lake .One concerns a creature called Nykur or Nix a shape shifting spirit that often takes the form of a horse. Nykur entices people close appearing tame and docile, then its drags them to the bottom of the lake before they can escape. However if you say its name it loses its power and returns to the bottom of the lake alone.

Several stories abound about the Nix. One day, two young brothers were playing by the lake when the Nykur approached the younger one. The young boy excited by seeing the beautiful horse shouted to his brother Niklas, to come see the horse. He said Nika or Nix ,his pet name for his brother and the Nykur thought he was calling its name and went back into the lake alone

Another story is about a a clergyman who was on his way from Miðvágur to Sørvágur. He saw a beautiful woman who was sitting on a rock, combing her hair. The clergyman suspected it was the Nix, and picked up  a pebble and threw it at the woman on the rock. The pebble grew in size and  turned into a big rock. The Clergyman  then starting praying at the Nix, and told it to go into the rock. The Nykur had to obey. It is said  that the rock can still be seen close to the village of Vatnsoyrar.Some say if you put your ear to it,you can hear the Nix inside trying to get out.

These stories of water spirits ,especially those who change into water horses and drag people to their deaths,are common around the world. Could there have once been  water creatures that lived in deep lakes and dragged people underwater? Perhaps they had horse like heads ,hence the water horse stories.There are often truths in old tales and legends and the common theme in water horse stories does make you think, could some sort of creature once have existed?