In a look at Water Babies and, of course, the Bear Lake Monsters, D. Robert Carter has written a new article in the Provo, Utah Daily Herald, entitled “Mysterious Monsters Inhabited Utah Valley Waters,” published, according to google news alerts, a little after midnight, local time, Sunday, April 30, 2006.

The “Pawapicts, or Water Babies, whom native Americans believed inhabited the waters of Utah Lake, Provo River and other aqua pura” are said to come “in various shapes and sizes. Most Ute accounts agree that they had long black hair and cried like infants.” The stories overlap with Merbeing lore.

The Giant Beaver or perhaps the Great Bear Lake Monster, an illustration by Harry Trumbore.

The Bear Lake Monsters seem a special obsession of newspaper writers in Utah. Does any one have any theories why? We’ve mentioned this before, here, “Great Bear Lake Monster.”

For part one of Carter’s article, please click here.

For those interested in further history, resources and previous articles on the Bear Lake Monster, please see The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep, pages 192-199, where you will find a map of the lakes with sightings in Utah, details of their encounter histories, recent accounts, and bibliographical sources for further research.

But help me out here. Is there something I am missing in not understanding why reporters linked to the membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints routinely and quite regularly, seemingly every summer, write about the same details of the same 18th century sightings of these cryptids?