Monsters and Myths

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VANCOUVER - A TV documentary crew has added to the mystery surrounding Ogopogo by finding an unknown biological specimen in the depths of Okanagan Lake.

“I told a radio station tongue-in-cheek I thought it was the baby Ogopogo,” monster-watcher Bill Steciuk of Kelowna said Monday after the History Channel completed a nine-day shoot.

“It was all curled up. The features were really hard to see. You could see a little head tucked in and a straight tail with no fins.

“It’s a huge mystery. We have no idea what it is,” said Steciuk, who helped organize the shooting locations.

The unidentified specimen has been shipped to the University of Guelph in Ontario for DNA tests, but Ogopogo buffs will have to wait until February to find out more, when the Monster Quest program weighs in on the legendary mega-serpent.

Ogopogo, first sighted in the 1870s, is reputed to be 12 metres long with multiple humps and a small head.

The History Channel, which had a bigger budget than previous expeditions, mounted a thermal infrared imaging camera on a helicopter for the first time. It picked up an unidentified shadow on the lake, while sonar spotted something over three metres long moving in the water.

“That’s pretty big for a fish,” said Steciuk.

But divers made the most interesting find in an underwater cave on the west side of Rattlesnake Island.

“I couldn’t recognize it,” said Steciuk. “Nor could anyone else. Maybe a new species has been found.”

Photographs of the specimen were shown to local expert Arlene Gaal, who has earned the title of Ogopogo-ologist after writing three books on the subject. She is not sure that the son of Ogopogo has been found.

“The Ogopogo is real, but I don’t know what this is,” she said.

“I had my doubts when the crew presented me with their findings. It looked to me like a decomposing ling cod.”

She said the crew’s best efforts were wasted on choppy waters.

“It was not the time for sightings,” she said. “The Ogopogo likes warm weather and sunshine.”

Producers departed with dramatic re-enactments of past sightings - but no catch of the century.

Steciuk said the program may have been defeated by the primitive snake’s reserve.

“The Ogopogo is a shy animal,” he said. “There is no question we have an aquatic animal on our lake. Okanagan residents are starting to come to grips with it.”

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More than 1,000 people claim to have seen the Loch Ness monster since it was first photographed 75 years ago.

References to a monster in Loch Ness date back to St Columba’s biography in 565 AD.

But the myth only took its modern form when reports of a strange object and then a series of mysterious photographs appeared in press during the 1930s.

Adrian Shine, from the Loch Ness and Morar Project, has led many scientific studies into the depths of Loch Ness but has not found any evidence of a monster.

Below are his pointers to understanding the iconic images of the Loch Ness monster.

THE FIRST

It was this picture, snapped by Hugh Grey on 12 November 1933, that is credited as being the first photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster. It appeared on the front cover of the Scottish Daily Record on 8 December that year, under the headline “Monster photograph of the mysterious Loch Ness object”.

It is the first picture and bears that distinction, but it is also the least easy to interpret.

It has been suggested that it is a double negative, perhaps of a Labrador dog with a stick in its mouth, but it could be anything.

THE NECK

The “surgeon’s photographs,” of the Loch Ness monster have come to define the image of Nessie, and for many years no conclusive proof could be found that they were fakes. The photographs were supposed to have been taken by gynaecologist Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson and were published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934.

This is the image in most people’s minds, but it is a fake.

Firstly, if you look at the water texture you can tell the waves are very small, not to scale with the size of the monster.

Secondly, it was owned up to by Christian Spurling, one of the hoaxers, in 1994. He was asked to make a model to go on top of a toy submarine by Marmaduke Wetherell, who with a small group of collaborators planned the hoax to get back at the Daily Mail, who had fired and publicly humiliated him for a previous hoax.

It is such a beautiful picture and may well have found its inspiration in the Brontosaurus in King Kong. It led to the expectation that the Loch Ness monster would have a long neck.

THE HUMPS

Lachlan Stuart’s photograph taken on 14 July 1951 was of a different kind of Loch Ness monster, with a long thin body arching out of the water.

The remnants of this hoax were witnessed by local author Richard Faire. He spoke to Lachlan Stuart the next day, who confessed that he had constructed the image from hay bails and tarpaulin. Researchers later recreated the image and found the water where the monster was seen was in reality very shallow.

This didn’t stop people from speculating as to how the creature could contort its back in such a way.

THE CASTLE

Respectable bank manager Peter MacNab took this Nessie photograph on 29 July 1955.

This is a huge object. If it were an animal it would be more than 60ft (18m) long, which is colossal. If you think of the amount that would be under the water, it would be a creature of the most improbable proportions.

It could possibly be a portion of a boat wake and if you look behind it you may see a faint line in the water. There may have been some retouching, but the photographer never admitted to a hoax.

Given the improbability of an object of that size, you have to seek alternative hypotheses, but there is no definitive proof that the image is a fake.

THE END

With the advent of colour photography and a total lack of definitive proof, classic photographs like these stopped appearing after the 1950s.

A rigorous 10-year project to watch the surface of the loch in the 1960s turned up no evidence whatsoever of the mysterious monster.

Instead, the search went underwater, with sonar sounds and submarine exploration of the loch’s dark depths.

“In hindsight, you can see that the classic pictures are different to each other, hence unlikely to be real pictures of one animal,” says Adrian Shine.

“You may not believe that Loch Ness is Jurassic Park, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something in Loch Ness that is yet to be explained.”

news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7722000/7722702.stm

KELOWNA – High-tech gear failed to solve the age-old mystery of Ogopogo.

An expedition equipped with infrared thermal imaging equipment, sonar and hydrophones combed B.C.’s Okanagan Lake last week in search of the elusive creature, but came up empty.

The search was part of The History Channel’s Monster Quest, a television program that examines monster sightings around the world.

And while there was no sign of Ogopogo, crews did find something fishy in the lake’s underwater caves.

“There was a specimen of some kind down there,” says Bill Steciuk, a Kelowna man who helped organize the expedition.

“It was pretty small, probably only about six to eight inches long, with some kind of fluky tail on it.”

Nobody could tell what it was.

Divers brought it to the surface, and its DNA will be analyzed for the TV program by the Biodiversity Institute in Guelph, Ont.

Steciuk, who’s been following the mystery of Ogopogo for three decades, says The History Channel’s search was the most elaborate and expensive he’s ever seen.

“It was the most serious one I’ve ever been involved in,” says Steciuk.

The Monster Quest episode on the Ogopogo is expected to air early next year.

Steciuk’s own interest in Ogopogo dates back to 1978, when he says he spotted something in the water as he was driving over a bridge.

“I saw three humps in the water and what I thought was the head,” he says.

The incident was written up in the newspaper, he says — he was the only one quoted.

The story appealed for others to come forward, but none immediately did.

calsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2008/11/10/7360551-sun.html

KALAMAZOO – Between the tiny burgs of Paulding and Watersmeet, in the westernmost part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, lights seem to appear from nowhere along a quiet, old railroad bed.

Many in the area have said their car engines have turned on or off during dark nights when the light appeared. Others have said the lights move erratically and even chase them. Some say the lights are the spirit of a railroad worker who died along the tracks.
Theories of the paranormal abound.

Accounts of the “Paulding Lights,” some plausible and others not, are among the more interesting stories Lisa Godfrey has reported in her newest book, “Strange Michigan: More Wolverine Weirdness.”

Godfrey has long segments about the lights in the book, which she also covers in a previous work, “Weird Michigan: Your Travel Guide to Michigan’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets.”

“You just can never cover it all, because people keep coming up with new stories,” she said Sunday in Kalamazoo.

The best-selling author was presenting a slide show of a few of the weird locations, people, myths and legends she collected in “Strange Michigan.”

More than 40 people gathered Sunday in the Kalamazoo Public Library’s third-floor Van Deusen Room to hear Godfrey, a resident of southeastern Wisconsin who is considered an authority on various spooky Midwestern phenomena. Among them is Michigan’s Dog Man, an upright-walking canine creature reportedly seen stalking the woods of the Great Lakes State and elsewhere.

“I’ve always heard of the Abominable Snowman, so I thought, oh, my gosh, we have our own thing right here in Michigan. I’m gonna come to this and see what this is about,” said Marlene Dopheide, of Oshtemo Township.

She said curiosity attracted her to Sunday’s slide show after reading Godfrey’s take on the Dog Man in Thursday’s Kalamazoo Gazette.

Recent Western Michigan University graduate Courtney Gause said she also wanted to hear what Godfrey had to say.

The 23-year-old, who works at the Kalamazoo Animal Hospital as a veterinary assistant, said she and a friend who accompanied her have been fascinated with cryptozoology (the study of animals whose existence is disputed, such as the Loch Ness monster) since they were children.

The presentation highlighted oddities from around the state, from the Dinosaur Gardens, of Ossineke — where a sculptor has dotted 40 acres of land with life-sized replicas of dinosaurs, cavemen and cavewomen — to unmarked gravestones that vibrate when people lie across them. Sightings of the infamous Dog Man from various Michigan locales were also offered, including accounts from Hickory Corners and Battle Creek.

Dopheide, who said she had hoped Godfrey would bring pictures of some of the strangeness she’s documented, said she was intrigued by Godfrey’s segment on Michigan’s unconventional people.

“I think I’ve dated some of these guys,” she said jokingly.

Godfrey’s “Strange Michigan: More Wolverine Weirdness” was released in October by Trail Books.

mlive.com/kzgazette/news/index.ssf/2008/11/

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As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I enjoyed watching the classic documentaries about Bigfoot that were produced in those days.

I would never miss a late night TV showing of “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” even though it scared me at the time. I can’t forget going to the House Theater to catch the docudrama “Sasquatch” back in 1977.
For the past week, I have had the opportunity to once again enjoy one of the best Bigfoot movies of them all: “The Mysterious Monsters.” Hosted by Peter Graves, this 1976 movie takes a look at both the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot mysteries. It also contains some of the most vivid and scary recreations of Bigfoot sightings. You can check this movie out on YouTube, even though you have to watch it in 10 parts.

They certainly don’t make documentaries like those anymore. And that is a shame because today we seem to hear about more Bigfoot encounters than ever.

The Web site for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) contains a tale about something that happened this summer. The BFRO’s Web site is a place where folks can post their sightings anonymously.
In his report, a man talks about a camping and fly-fishing trip he took in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado in June of this year. The man states that he had been camping, hiking and fishing in this area for about six years. He was also very familiar with all the sounds the various animals make in Colorado’s forests and mountains. He had only one companion on this weekend camping trip, his Labrador retriever.

“The second evening, I had cooked dinner and taken the Lab out for a last evening walk around the meadows,” the man wrote in his report. “It had been a good day of fishing and we were both tired. We went to bed in the tent just at dark. It was a night of an almost full moon. We both fell asleep quickly.”

A bit later, the man was awakened by something outside his tent. At first, he thought it was a deer.
“After about 10 minutes from out of nowhere, I heard this unreal, LOUD, clear, resonant, scream/screech/howl/roar type sound from not too far away,” he wrote in his report. “It sounded maybe 300 to 400 yards away and like it might have been just across the canyon on the mountainside. It was like no sound I have ever heard in my life.”
He describes it as a “fairly high-pitched” sound and was not like the screams of wild cats.

“It seemed to be two parts screaming howl and one part roar, as it had that deep quality but was still high-pitched,” he wrote. “I sat there for a minute stunned, and then realized what it must be.”

The man wrote that he had previously read accounts on the BFRO’s Web site from folks who reportedly heard the screams of a Bigfoot. What he heard that night matched their descriptions.

“The sound seemed to be coming directly toward me, like it might have been screaming at or towards me or this meadow area where people sometimes camp,” he wrote in his report. “It felt territorial, aggressive, even a little threatening. Even though I had a (.357-caliber Magnum) loaded with hot hollow points and a strong flashlight, the prospect of encountering some big, hairy ‘man-thing’ outside my tent in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and alone, was a little more than I wanted to deal with.”

The man got his dog into the truck and he drove away from there as fast as he could, with his .357 in his lap. He drove that night looking for a place to stay.

“I have lived and backpacked extensively in Montana and in the Canadian Rockies and dealt with the reality of grizzly bears with no real problem,” he wrote. “But this noise and the creature that most likely made it really freaked me out.”
He spent the rest of the night in his truck. At daybreak, he went back to his campsite.

“I did not find any tracks in the greater area in which I was camping as it was mostly grass, although I did walk around and search for a bit,” he wrote. “Now I am paranoid and worry that I might not be doing any more backpacking in this beautiful and remote area for fear of running into one of these spooky creatures, especially at night.”
mcdowellnews.com/content/2008/nov/05/were-screams-night-really-bigfoot/entertainment

Think about this. There are so many technologies that are unexplained in the world that it is possible that two intelligent types of beings share the same planet earth, rarely coming into contact with each other.

For thousands of years many cultures have reported some type of SnowMan, Sasquatch, or as of this last century, Bigfoot.

Since no Bigfoot remains have been found (unless of course the Kennewick Man is a Bigfoot), it is hard not to suspect some type of strange ability to remain undetected in that the Bigfoots can hide their dead. Stories of mount Shasta and the caves supposedly leading to an inner world can often alleviate ones inner suspicions, but really, do you think it is possible that Sasquatch has been around as long as man, or better yet, living amongst us?

On numerous occasions, Bigfoot was seen right before, during, or after experiences involving a UFO and /or bright light or orb. I too have had many such experiences.

I have written about my experience where I saw a Bigfoot flying just east of the Walla Walla airport. Though this is not my only sighting of a Bigfoot in our area, (I saw him one other time and felt him twice before on top of hearing screams on a regular basis that I think are him), I am convinced he is not just a legend. I am sure that he/she roams these parts of the earth.

I have seen UFO’s on a few occasions, since, before and after my BF sightings which tends to twist my beliefs about the Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or what ever you want to call him. One of the biggest theories I have is that somehow the Bigfoots are right here under our noses, controlling us in a way that they are totally kept out of the loop as to who or what they really are. I often wonder if the giants mentioned in the bible and the stone faces carved on Easter Island have anything to do with Bigfoots. Could the stone faces depict these tall lanky creatures? Are the stones that are massively heavy, placed by giants?

Even today’s scientists can not for sure describe the technology to lift giant stones and precisely cut them to fit on cliffs in the jungle or in the pyramids of Egypt. It is very possible that such creatures could have been in existence back then as well as today.

For as long as time has been around, Bigfoots have been seen as well as UFO’s. It would only make sense that the Bigfoots possibly are aliens.

Many Bigfoot tracks simply start and end in the middle of no where. After seeing what appeared to be a Bigfoot on a floatation device and moving slowly across the sky, I wonder if they touch down at times and use large propelled thrusts of the legs to gain altitude again. This could explain the mystery prints

I do know for sure, that so many people have had correlating experiences with Bigfoots and UFO’s, that the odds are highly likely that the two phenomena’s are linked. The mainstream Bigfoot society does not want to listen to reports of such links. I know.

Again, it is the high likelihood that such beings live amounts us, possibly flying down from the mountaintops on cleverly designed craft. We may never really know. They could live in the ocean. They could be living on another planet and come here to visit colonies that they have been building. You just never really know.

groundreport.com/Opinion/Bigfoot-101-Aliens-vs-Bigfoot-One-In-The-Same

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the eBay final bid to snatch the Bigfoot hoax costume and ice freezer has been declared a hoax itself. This means that the two Georgia individuals who took $50,000 for the fake body are not off the hook, after all.

As you will remember, the winning eBay bid was over $250,000.

In an exclusive interview with Cryptomundo, Joshua Warren, the auction organizer, who saw a path to resolve the conflict between the Indiana owner of the fake who was tricked out of his fifty grand and the two Georgia gentlemen, has admitted defeat.

Warren informed me earlier today: “It seems clear that the winning bidder was fraudulent. It was someone who probably used an eBay sniping program to automatically outbid whatever bid was placed. They are now suffering the consequences with eBay.”

Warren had carefully worded the announcement that if the top bid failed, the next highest bid would win the auction. But he’s finding problems in collecting the money.

He says: “We have since contacted the other bidders and they are all now reticent. This auction coincided perfectly with the initial collapse of the economy, and legit bidders are now struggling with whether or not to follow through….I have doubts this transaction will be completed. It’s a shame, considering how much good could have been done with the money, and the fact we’ll probably see this ridiculous saga play out in the courts.”

This unfortunate Bigfoot body hoax melodrama does, indeed, continue.

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/bfhoax-bid-fake/

It was mere coincidence that the production crew from the History Channel’s “Monster Quest” series set up in Eagle [Colorado] on Halloween. But it was an appropriate day to investigate monsters.

And that was exactly the purpose of the visit: Production of a documentary piece investigating the possibility of a sasquatch or bigfoot presence in Colorado. Rumors of huge, “monkey-men” creatures have been reported since the late 1800s. The sasquatch or bigfoot became more famous in the early 1950s, following publication of an out-of-focus photo of a huge, ape-like creature.

Minneapolis-based producer Liz Pollock and her crew were drawn to Eagle by a couple of incidents reported in the spring of 2000. Within a three week period that year, two fishermen reported separate instances of finding huge, human-like footprints (18-20 inches long) alongside the Eagle River. One sighting was below Gypsum, and the second was just above Eagle. At the time, wildlife experts and law enforcement officers filed reports and studied the photos, but couldn’t explain what had made the tracks.

The popular Monster Quest show is a documentary television series that examines monster sightings around the world. Each episode is a mix of scientific examination evidence, eyewitness reports, and observations from informed skeptics. It’s a science known as “cryptozoology” — the study of animals that fall outside of contemporary zoological catalogs.

“Our main goal is to keep it as credible as possible,” says Pollock, “We try to get unbiased experts to look at people’s physical evidence.” The documentary, tentatively slated to run this spring, will mark the first time a Monster Quest bigfoot story has centered on Colorado.

Pollack’s research turned up 100 reported bigfoot “encounters” (including track sightings and vocalizations as well as physical sightings) reported in the state.

The completed program will include a mix of interviews, a scientific experiment (more on that later), and an “expedition.” Pollack said that the approximate 15 full days of filming will include a couple of days on horseback and two days of helicopter flights over the Pikes Peak area (where the most recent sasquatch sighting was reported) with a representative of the Colorado Bigfoot Organization.

Informed skeptics’ and the scientific method

The Eagle segment features a scientific experiment; and interviews with several locals who were involved in the track sightings.

Pollack tapped retired Division of Wildlife Officer Bill Heicher as the program’s “informed skeptic.” A wildlife biologist, Heicher makes it clear he’s not a bigfoot believer.

“If bigfoot were out there, somebody would have found signs, like scat, or fur samples that could be used for DNA tests,” he says. Still, after talking with one of the men who found the tracks eight years ago, and examining the photographs, Heicher says he can’t explain what left the track near the river.

“I don’t think it was human. I ruled out wildlife tracks. I don’t know what it was,” said Heicher.

Bill Kaufman, now a captain with the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, was one of the officers who looked into the incident at the time. Pollock’s crew filmed Kaufman discussing what he described as a credible witness, and the mysterious tracks. Kaufman is not a bigfoot believer, but he noted law enforcement officers at the time could not determine what animal made the large, human- like tracks. Although the hind feet of bears make somewhat human-like tracks, the size was way beyond any local bear track.

“I can’t explain it. The track was bigger than what I can explain. It’s that simple,” Kaufman says.

The Monster Quest crew, in an effort to get a feel for the size of a creature that would leave footprints the length and depth of those found in 2008, decided to organize an experiment. A hinged plywood “sasquatch machine” was constructed and equipped with the molds of sasquatch footprints. The contraption was set up near the Eagle River. Cameraman Jim Tittle captured the action as Heicher and volunteer Eric Eves loaded sandbags onto the machine, then checked the depth of the resulting footprint. The conclusion: Well over 800 pounds of weight was needed to leave a track in the hard-packed gravel bed. That’s considerably bigger than any local bear or moose.

Putting it all together

The film crew also spent some time at the Eagle County Historical Society Museum in Chambers Park. Historical archives include persistent reports of mysterious ape-like creatures encountered in the woods. A report in an 1881 Leadville newspaper told of local residents seeing a “man with long arms and a long shaggy fur covered body in the Lake Creek area.” (Lake Creek is a common stream name in Colorado, and the Eagle Valley does have a Lake Creek.)

A tale of Leadville-area miners encountering a strange, hairy, man-like creature with extraordinarily long arms is chronicled in Percy Eberhardt’s book “Treasure Tales of the Rockies.” The Monster Quest crew plans to film a reenactment of that story.

Historically, a story about a sasquatch-like creature in the Pearl Creek area of Camp Hale circulates ever couple of decades or so. The accounts, typically of the friend-of-a-friend-told-me variety, typically involve the sighting of a huge, shadowy form in the trees, big footprints, and the disappearance of some hapless person (a soldier form Camp Hale, a hunter, or somebody’s spouse).

Pollock said once the filming is done, the writing of the show takes about two weeks, then the editing of the film involves another month of work. The program is scheduled to air in Monster Quests’ third season, probably in February or March.

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/mq-bf-co/