3 New Sightings Confirm Ogopogo Lake Monster in British Columbia
Canada’s legendary lake monster Ogopogo was allegedly spotted last month in British Columbia’s Okanagan Lake. Video footage appears to show a large creature breaching the water’s surface, while a still image purports to show the creature’s head.
Like most cryptozoological footage, the video captured by two local men, and later published by local and international news sources, is shaky and difficult to make out — that’s why we’re taking this claim with a grain of salt. But looking at the footage, there are certainly some interesting anomalies.
According to witnesses David and Keith Halbauer, a serpentine creature estimated to be about 40-feet long was spotted off the water’s edge near Bear Creek Provincial Park in Kelowna, BC. In an interview posted on Canadian broadcast website GlobalNews, the brothers claimed to have noticed the creature while camping by the shore.
Skeptics have written off the men’s sighting as simply a rogue wave, but the Halbauer brothers say they know what they saw.
“When you’re sitting on the beach on a sunny day, you don’t expect to see a dinosaur coming out of the water,” said David Halbauer.
Shortly after spotting the creature in the water, the brothers said they noticed a large wake wash ashore from the animal’s breach. Convinced they witnessed Ogopogo, the two shared their story with locals, including the area’s foremost expert on the cryptid, legend hunter Bill Steciuk.
Steciuk has created an entire website devoted to the documentation of Ogopogo sightings, firsthand testimony, and lore surrounding the creature’s history.
The legend of the Canadian lake creature has circulated for centuries, dating as far back as the 1700s. Known as N’ha-a-itk, meaning “snake of the water” or “water demon,” natives would offer the sacrifice of a small animal to the creature before crossing the lake.
According to experts, if the Ogopogo was the survivor of some prehistoric species, chances are it could be Basilosaurus cetoides, a type of whale existing some 35 million years ago during the Cenozoic era. Reports of Ogopogo appearing “loglike” match the shape and size of this early whale.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qAiuMomXv-s
Shortly after the Halbauer’s sighting, two more sightings were reported in Kelowna sparking excitement among the town’s believers, notably Steciuk, who said adamantly, “there’s a species in this lake, there’s absolutely no question!”
Steciuk says he first began investigating the lake creature in 1978, while he was driving across a bridge into Kelowna. He says he looked down toward the water, noticing three humps as well as the creature’s head protruding from the water. Steciuk said he had time to pull over, put on his hazards, and peer down at the creature floating in the water — from then on, he was a believer.
The Ogopogo falls into one of the more believable classes of cryptids, as there have been a number of lakes around the world purporting to have their own lake monsters. Aquatic cryptids with precedent based on species from prehistoric epochs seem viable compared to some of the more fantastic ones. Could the Ogopogo, Loch Ness Monster, and other lake creatures be the product of prehistoric ancestors that survived millions of years unbeknownst to us?
For more on the fascinating history of lake monsters around the world watch this episode of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World:
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Countless Bigfoot Sightings in Colorado Tracked at Sasquatch Outpost
If you perform a Google search for the term “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” on any given day it’s likely you’ll find at least a few articles published within the past week. Sasquatch has become so ingrained in our culture, arguably more than any other cryptid, to the point that if it somehow isn’t real, we’ve practically willed it into existence.
Beyond its cultural acceptance, there’s actually overwhelming evidence of the reality of such a creature that spans centuries of sightings and lore throughout myriad cultures. Jim Meyers, a professional Sasquatch seeker and owner of the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, CO, cites the fact that nearly every Native American tribe has its own epithet for Sasquatch.
The Navajo call it “Ye’ Iitsoh,” meaning “Big God”; the Cherokee call it “Ketleh-Kudleh,” meaning “Hairy Savage”; and the Lakota-Sioux call it “Chiye-Tanka” meaning “Big Elder Brotha.”
Often, Native Americans refer to Sasquatch as another tribe or another people, rather than a species of ape or animal, Meyers says. And this near-universal acceptance of such a creature by indigenous peoples who have inhabited remote areas of the US, centuries before its modern development, is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the existence of Sasquatch in his opinion.
Though Sasquatch has assimilated into our modern mythological zeitgeist, it can be found in a number of cultural traditions across the world—on nearly every continent, in fact.
Known as the Yeti, Yeren, Yowie, or the pejorative Abominable Snowman, tales of a large, hairy bipedal creature can be found in Australia, Asia, Europe, and both Americas. Interestingly though, Meyers says he’s not familiar with any instances of Sasquatch sightings in Africa, which is also where he lived much of his life.
Meyers grew up in Africa, as his parents were missionaries—a career path he would follow in his adulthood. Having moved to Kenya at age 11, he went to boarding school before attending college in the US. Feeling a desire to continue his parents’ work, Myers would spend another 20 years working as a missionary in Senegal, followed by a decade spent in France. Eventually, he returned to the states and settled in Bailey.
While he was always fascinated with Bigfoot, ever since he saw “The Legend of Boggy Creek” as a kid, Meyers said it wasn’t until a local businesswoman in Bailey recounted a very credible sighting she experienced in the area. Shortly thereafter, Animal Planet recorded an episode of Finding Bigfoot in Bailey, adding to Meyers’ interest, and the rest was history…
Searching for a new avenue of business to pursue, and hearing multitudes of stories and eyewitness sightings in the area, Meyers decided to open a Sasquatch museum in his small Colorado township in 2014. It’s now become a tourist hotspot with over 36,000 visits.
At the Sasquatch Outpost, Meyers has curated his ongoing research into the Sasquatch Encounter Museum where one finds recordings of the creature’s vocalizations, examples of the ways in which it bends, and snaps tree branches, and plaster casts of its footprints.
One of those casts happens to be from the most famous and credible Bigfoot sighting of all time: the Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967. While some skeptics claim the clip has been debunked and a deathbed confession of a hoax was made, Meyers is quick to correct that as a fallacy, pointing out that he’s talked with Patterson’s wife who said he maintained the veracity of the film up until his death.
And if that weren’t enough, Meyers has also kept a map of various levels of Sasquatch sightings and interactions people have reported experiencing throughout Colorado at the Outpost. On the map are various colored pins based on the type of encounter experienced: red denotes a visual sighting; yellow indicates tree breaks and bends; green indicates a vocalization or tree knocking; blue identifies a rock or item thrown at someone.
If you’ve had a Bigfoot encounter in Colorado, you may be able to contribute to this growing map of over 300 encounters. In the meantime, check out Meyers in the latest episode of Beyond Belief.
