Lake Monsters

Seljord Serpent Filmed: Blobdracontology?

Selma, the so-called “Sea Serpent” that lives in Lake Seljord (Seljordsvatnet) obviously would have to be a Lake Monster, akin to the Loch Ness Monster. The location is near the inland town of Seljord, a municipality in the county of Telemark, Norway. The town’s coat-of-arms was created in 1989, and shows the “sea serpent Selma.” According to most who have seen the supposed watery cryptid, Selma resembles a giant eel. The first eyewitness accounts date back to the 18th century. This is video of the “Seljord Serpent” or Selma, which was taken at Lake Seljord, Norway, by Adam Davies and [...]

Meanwhile, $50,000 For Pepie

Bushnell may be putting out there a million dollars for a Bigfoot trail camera photograph, but there are lesser goals available. In Minnesota, the Lake City Tourism Bureau has offered a $50,000 reward for hooking, netting or capturing on a camera a large, serpentlike creature living in the Mississippi River’s Lake Pepin below Maiden Rock. Lake Pepin is a naturally occurring lake, and the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi River. It is a widening of the river on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is 21 miles long, with a surface area of about 40 square miles [...]

Titanic Mission Mirrors Cryptozoo Spying

I’ve written before about the mixing of Yeti expeditions and spy missions by Nazis, Tom Slick, Edmund Hillary, and as hidden in other links. If by land, such covert cover missions also happen in the water, as well. The Times of London revealed over the weekend that Bob Ballard has come forth to tell that he was really on a secret mission to find two American nuclear submarines when he told the media he was searching for the Titanic. “Dr. Ballard, an oceanographer, has admitted that he located and inspected the wrecks for the US Navy in top secret missions [...]

Free Cryptozoology at JSE

Don’t worry. You now can join years of scientific explorers at the edge, for free. In a gesture of Superman scale, Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail passes along the news that all issues of the Journal of Scientific Exploration have been released as free PDF downloads here. Greg Taylor writes: If you head to the JSE website now, you’ll find that they have actually made *all* volumes from 1987 to 2006 available as free PDF downloads. That’s 20 volumes/70 issues of JSE (!!!) – absolutely the most important journal for ideas on the edge of science and knowledge. Thought [...]

The Monsters of Templeton

Cryptofiction comes in all forms. Today’s selection is a unique book reviewed in the Los Angeles Times. What monsters are hidden there? Like many an excellent chronicler of village life, Lauren Groff gives us early in “The Monsters of Templeton” (Voice/Hyperion: 364 pp., $24.95) an ensemble view of the citizens of Templeton, a place very closely modeled on Cooperstown, N.Y., birthplace of baseball — and Groff. You know what an ensemble view is: an event prompting villagers to come out in force, an opportunity for the narrator’s camera to move from face to face. In Cheever’s “The Wapshot Scandal,” for [...]

Lake Monster or Giant Snake?

Milwaukee [Wisconsin] Sentinel September 4, 1886 THE SEA MONSTER IN MICHIGAN. Charlotte, Mich., Sept. 2. – Charlotte is somewhat stirred up over the report that a genuine sea monster exists in the water of Narrow lake, ten miles south of this city. The monster, it is claimed by the habitués of that vicinity, raises itself out of the water on moonlight nights to a height of ten feet and then disappears. Its body is said to be about the size of a stovepipe and its head to resemble that of a serpent. A party is being organized for an investigation. [...]

Monster Attack: 1892

The Daily Picayune of New Orleans, Louisiana, for December 4, 1892, published the following story, perhaps mistitled, “An Amphibious Monster.” A most extraordinary story comes from Boise City, Idaho, which is said to be well authenticated. It says that while three travelers were at the upper end of Lake Chelan recently one of them went into the water to bathe. He was seized by the foot by a marine [sic] monster and was being pulled into deep water, when his screams attracted the attention of his companions, who came to his rescue. They pulled him ashore, the monster hanging to [...]