Lore 229: Dark Shapes

Drew and Sue in Eminem's Minis.

And baking the surprise birthday cake for Lou.

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And Drew and Sue using the rest of the tubes of Eminem's Minis as party poppers instead.

I think this is one of those moments where people say, it's the thought that counts.

Eminem's, it's more fun together.

This is the story of the one.

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One thing is certain: there's no shortage of unexpected discoveries out there.

Sometimes all we need to do to find them is to dive a bit deeper.

Back in 2021, archaeologists from the University of Texas at Arlington announced that they had found something startling beneath the waves of Lake Huron, which, if you know your geography, is one of the Great Lakes, situated above and between Lakes Michigan and Erie.

Now, what they found wasn't necessarily groundbreaking in and of itself.

They were just flakes of a type of stone known as obsidian, that volcanic rock that looks a lot like chunks of black glass.

Obsidian was highly valued by earlier cultures because they could create sharp, useful blades by flaking it into thin pieces.

And again, it's not odd to find them in a dig site.

What was odd though was that these obsidian flakes, dating back roughly 9,000 years, came from a source that wasn't very local to the people who'd been using them.

It turns out this obsidian was from the Oregon area of the west coast of North America, a distance of more than 2,000 miles.

Think about it, for as small and easy to overlook as these rocks might seem to most of us, they hint at a much larger and more significant story, one that would have been missed entirely if researchers hadn't decided to look underwater.

Not all stories begin and end on dry land.

Some tales, it seems, can only be found if we get a little wet, tread some water, and brave the waves.

As we've learned over the years, folklore is a creature that thrives in the shadows.

And it's not alone.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this

is lore.

When I think of Illinois, my mind doesn't necessarily go straight to images of urban places like Chicago and its sprawling suburbs.

I grew up farther south in the middle of corn country and I have a slightly different impression of the state.

I see roads that run for miles as straight as a ruler, landscapes without hills, and summers hot enough to brew tea on the back sidewalk.

But we can always learn something new, because way down south, toward the very tip of Illinois, is a small body of water with a big legend.

They call it Stump Pond.

It's located just to the west of the sleepy town of Decoyne, and it's situated in a rare patch of trees that make up the Pyramid State Recreation Area.

Now, this pond, shaped today a bit like a very long letter J, might not be the biggest around, but it started to gain a reputation back in 1879 when a local man climbed into his boat one night and rowed out to do a little fishing.

I imagined it was a pretty peaceful scene out there.

No buzz of airplanes in the sky or trucks rumbling by on the road, this being the 1870s and all.

There was nothing but the stars above and the glow of the moon painted across the calm pond.

But according to his story, that peace was soon shattered.

The man, known only by the single name Paquette, described how something moved through the water with such speed and force that it rocked his boat.

He looked around but couldn't see what might have caused it, and that bothered him.

Between the darkness and the impenetrable water around him, he was understandably scared, so he quickly rowed back to shore.

He never fished there at night again.

A year later, in July of 1880, two miners believed that they spotted the creature responsible.

They were standing on the shore of the pond one day when they saw something a few hundred feet out.

It was, according to their description, as thick as a telegraph pole and maybe 12 feet long.

To them, it almost looked like a giant snake, and when they noticed that it was heading in their direction, they did what any reasonable human being would do.

They ran.

In the early 1960s, a local man named Alan Dunmeyer claimed to have a frightening encounter with whatever it was that lived in Stump Pond, one that was reminiscent of that original 1879 experience.

Dunmeyer had been in his boat when something large rushed through the water.

This time though, whatever the creature was, it collided with the bottom of his boat, nearly flipping it upside down.

Of course, after a century and a half of sightings and questions, people are naturally curious about what the mysterious creature might be.

Those stories of enormous serpents have blended with others, claiming the monster is more like a large alligator.

But thanks to the dark waters of the pond and its remote location, no one has ever been able to get a good look at it.

They've tried though.

Back in 1968, the pond was partially drained.

I can't find an official reason documented for the process, but it seems that they not only lowered the water level, but they also used electric stunning equipment to clear out the fish.

And in the process, a 30-pound catfish was recovered.

Of course, a catfish, even a big specimen like that, doesn't even closely resemble the few descriptions that have been documented over the years, and it certainly doesn't account for whatever had the strength to almost knock a boat upside down.

Honestly, you would think that fishermen would know enough about the wildlife beneath the surface of the pond not to get spooked by it.

But I do think one other element deserves to be mentioned, and it's probably the best explanation of what's really been going on because it reflects the true power of folklore.

You see, just about 20 miles to the southwest is Murfreesboro, where stories of the big muddy monster have been whispered for a very long time.

And it's easy to believe that word about those sightings spread over the years, like dandelion seeds on the wind, implanting in the minds of those who heard about it.

Whatever the truth is, at the center of the legend, Stump Pond has earned its place on the list of mysterious water monsters through the sheer power of story.

But thousands of miles away, in the cold wilderness of the northwest, there is another body of water with a mysterious inhabitant.

And this monster has never been shy about being seen.

Seeing is believing.

At least that's what we were all taught growing up, right?

If you can see something with your own eyes, it must be real.

But of course there are always exceptions to that rule.

Wind, for example, is a real thing, but we can't see it.

And sometimes the stuff we do see challenges just how far we're willing to go.

At first, stories were all there were.

The Tlingit people of Alaska had legends about a fish god that lived in the massive body of water we now call Ilyamna Lake.

And it's easy to understand why this lake is huge.

It's the eighth largest in the United States, in fact.

All the better to hide mysteries.

The Tlingit refer to this water creature as Gonak Adet and claim that it has the head and tail of a wolf but the body of a killer whale.

The neighboring Alyut people have stories of their own referring to the beast as the Jig Ik Iknak and telling tales of how it attacks canoes on the water of the lake.

But it's a string of modern sightings that have really supercharged the folklore of this lake.

Back in 1942, for example, a pilot named Babe Allsworth was flying his ferry plane above Ilyamna Lake with a passenger named Bill Hammersley on board when both men spotted something unusual in the water down below.

From their altitude, the shapes almost looked like boats, which stuck out to them as odd.

So Allsworth flew lower so they could get a better look.

According to them, what they spotted turned out to be several dozen enormous fish-like creatures.

They had long gray bodies, snake-like heads, and tail fins that stood up straight, unlike whales that have horizontal tails.

And if Allsworth and Hammersley were correct, these creatures were longer than the pontoons on their plane.

As you might imagine, the experience haunted these men for years, never really leaving their minds.

Then, in 1947, five years after that happened, Hammersley published his account of the experience, hoping that maybe by talking about it publicly, others would come forward with similar stories, perhaps proving that he hadn't imagined the whole thing.

And it worked.

One man who reached out to him, a survey pilot named Barry Rost, described the creature that he had spotted at the lake back in 1945, and the details were identical.

In fact, he'd gotten as close as 100 feet above the water, and they were so unusual that he had never forgotten them.

In 1963, another man in a a plane, this time a biologist, claimed to spot a mysterious fish just below the surface that he estimated to be around 30 feet in length.

But few experiences come close to what happened four years after that when a man named Chuck was flying over the lake in a float plane.

From above, he spotted a large animal in the water and used his radio to tell his friends on the shore about it.

They climbed into a boat and headed out in search of it, but the creature vanished before they could spot it.

So Chuck landed near them and they boiled up a a new idea.

They would go fishing for it.

According to the report, the men took a bunch of tuna hooks that measured maybe eight or nine inches long and tied them to steel cables and then baited them with pieces of raw meat.

Then, like some industrial-level fishing trip, they hung all of these cables off the support struts of Chuck's plane and then waited.

For a while, nothing happened.

The lake was as peaceful and quiet as a painting.

And then, suddenly, the entire plane moved.

Something had caught at one of the hooks and rather than get stuck, it was actually tugging at the aircraft.

And soon enough, the plane started drifting away.

Chuck panicked and dove off the pontoon and into the lake and then swam to shore.

The plane kept moving, whatever the mysterious creature was down below just sort of dragging it along the surface like a plaything.

This went on for a few minutes, and then finally the plane came to a rest farther out on the lake and didn't move again.

Now, I should pause here and mention that there have been a lot of theories over the years as to what the creature of Ilyamna Lake really is.

Some have suggested that they are nothing more than beluga whales, but those have horizontal tails and pale skin, unlike the descriptions from witnesses of the monster.

Others blame the sightings on sturgeon, a large fish that is native to the area.

And sure, sturgeon can grow up to 20 feet long, live for over a century, and have vertical tails and dark gray skin.

But they surface rarely, which makes it hard to call them definitive.

All we know for sure is that the creature beneath the waves of the lake are powerful.

Because when Chuck and his friends finally rode out to his plane to inspect the lines and the hooks they'd used, they were absolutely stunned.

Three of the cables had been snapped right off the plane's support and were nowhere to be seen.

And at the end of the last remaining cable, an even more frightening clue: the massive tuna hook they had used had been straightened out completely.

The legend begins deep in the past.

The Kootenai people used to live on an island within Flathead Lake up in the northwestern corner of Montana, but decided long ago to move their settlement elsewhere.

Now, it was winter when they did this, so they were able to walk across the frozen water.

But in the process, two children came across an odd sight.

It was an enormous antler sticking out from the thick ice.

One of them wanted to be cautious, but the other grabbed a sharp rock and began to cut the antler free.

Soon though, the ice began to shake, and a moment later, the monstrous owner of the antler broke through the ice, revealing itself.

And in the process, much of the ice around the people broke up and half the community drowned.

The creature was never seen again, but the Kootenay people were cautious of the lake ever since.

And And it's this legend that has resonated with people who have visited the lake in the centuries since.

Why?

Because many people believe that creature, or one of its descendants, is still there.

Back in 1889, for example, a man named Captain James Kerr was piloting a steamboat across the lake when something odd was spotted in the distance.

At first, it seemed to be nothing more than a large log, but as the ship drew closer, more details became visible, and everyone agreed that it was an animal of some kind.

It was 30 to 40 feet long with an eel-like body and a fat round head.

Its skin was a bluish-black, and its eyes looked like flecks of steel.

Heck, one of the 100 passengers on board who saw it with their own eyes even grabbed his rifle and tried to shoot at it.

But whatever it was, it slipped away unharmed.

And knowing the details of that legend I just told you about a moment ago, maybe that's a good thing, right?

For the next century, more and more sightings were reported there at Flathead Lake.

In fact, there were more than 100 of them recorded by 2017.

But some of the most dramatic happened in 1993, a year that featured 13 sightings alone.

On May 24th of that year, two creatures that matched that 1889 account were spotted in Big Arm Bay.

One was described as larger than the other, and many have assumed that it was a mother and her child.

Two months later, in the middle of July, a pair of businessmen who were visiting the lake from Seattle spotted something mysterious in the water.

They said it resembled an enormous eel, maybe 12 feet long, moving just below the surface.

One of them even managed to get out a video camera and record a short clip, but whatever can be seen on the tape is inconclusive.

Two days later, there were two separate sightings that occurred about 15 miles and only 25 minutes apart, suggesting that the flathead lake monster is either very fast or that there's more than one of them.

And then two days later, another pair of sightings were reported as well.

Over the years, local fishermen have reported spotting something large on their fish finder devices.

One man, George Coates, claims to have witnessed the creature twice.

In his 1985 encounter, he described it as long and thick, maybe twice the diameter of a telephone pole and roughly 30 feet long.

The monster even raised its head out of the water to look at him before slipping back under the surface and swimming away.

But a few stories are as hard to explain as the one that took place in 2005.

That's when a local judge, Jim Manley, was out on his boat with his wife, Julia.

The couple had been enjoying the sun and the beautiful scenery when their battery unexpectedly died.

One of them used a cell phone to call for assistance, and while they waited, something came to find them.

The first sign was a noise, like an animal splashing in the water just behind them.

Both of them turned around to see what it was and spotted a creature that measured at least 25 feet in length.

Its humps, they said, were even sticking up out of the water.

And then, a heartbeat later, it was gone.

Whatever it is that lives below the waves of Flathead Lake is still a mystery today, but the countless stories that have piled up over the years certainly leave a long and curious tale.

Those who don't believe the legends think people have been spotting nothing more mysterious than giant eels, like the conger eel that's known to live off the east coast of the United States.

But how those eels made their way inland to Montana, no one knows.

Others think it's some kind of oarfish, an eel-like fish that can grow upwards of 36 feet long.

But those are deep water fish that prefer tropical climates.

Flathead Lake does not fit that description at all.

So we're simply left to wonder and whisper.

And until irrefutable proof is hauled up out of the lake's dark waters, it might be wise to keep an eye out for anything unexplainable there.

Because wherever there are shadows, there's a mystery waiting to be solved.

Dark shapes in the water.

Unusual objects above the waves.

The feeling of something firm and powerful slipping past your leg.

It's easy to believe there's something mysterious down in the depths of the lakes we've explored today.

Exactly what?

Well, that's not an answer I can provide.

But at least one thing is clear.

Our world isn't fully explored.

And for as confident as people want to be that we've documented everything, it's simply not true.

Yes, we have the tools, but it's a big planet and we could spend decades, if not centuries, exploring just one of these massive lakes in search of answers.

As uncomfortable as it is for a lot of people, we need to be okay with mysteries and the stories they breed.

Some, though, are certain that they've seen the truth.

On the very same day that Jim and Julia Manley had their unexplainable encounter on their boat back in 2005, a second sighting took place.

This one was along the shore, where a three-year-old boy named Andrew was walking down a dock.

According to the story, his mother was busy getting the boat ready for their day out on the water, and her son was having a blast, doing all the things that little boys might do around a gorgeous lake and beautiful natural scenery.

But as he tottered down the dock, he slipped and a moment later, he vanished into the water.

Andrew's mom sprang into action.

Her son didn't know how to swim and she knew she needed to reach him fast.

But as she bolted toward the spot on the dock where he had fallen off, he suddenly reappeared, almost levitating up from the surface of the lake.

After his feet were back on the dock, the little boy smiled and told his mother what had happened.

The flathead monster lifted me up with its tail, he said.

And then he added one last chilling detail.

And she has a baby.

I hope you've enjoyed our journey today.

The dark waters of the lakes that dot our landscape seem to be hiding something powerful.

Those hidden things might very well be actual living, breathing monsters, or at the very least, those waves conceal stories, ones that have the power to fill our hearts with fear.

But not all stories are what they appear to be, And to help you understand what I mean, I think we have one more lake to explore.

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It's clear that the lakes of our world hold more than water and wildlife.

Some, if the stories are to be believed, are home to something older and more dangerous.

And it's from that dark well that so many stories have been drawn.

The one interesting detail I bumped into for this episode was that a number of researchers have noticed a pattern to lake monster sightings.

A good majority of them, it seems, all fall within a region in the northern hemisphere known as the Boreal Forest Belt, places that have colder waters, less sunlight, and fewer people.

Maybe that's the perfect climate for mysterious creatures to call their home, or perhaps they are the best conditions for folklore.

But one more lake deserves a visit today, because it has a different take on the old stories.

According to the Silha First Nation people, Okanagan Lake, located in British Columbia, just north of the American state of Washington, has always been home to a water spirit.

In fact, they believe that the lake is the physical manifestation of that spirit, which which they call nhahaiku, or the sacred spirit of the lake.

Because of that, it had long been a tradition for the people there to leave offerings for the spirit.

Their lives depended on the lake, after all, and because the spirit protected the waters there, it made sense to have a mutually beneficial relationship.

So they regularly left gifts of tobacco, sage, and salmon at the water's edge to show their thanks.

When European fur traders arrived in the early 1800s, though, that's not what they believed.

They saw the First Nation people there leaving food and heard the stories of the lake as a living being, and they assumed that there was some sort of monster below the waves, one that needed to be bought off with regular sacrifices.

And that's the problem with entering a new culture and trying to frame their unique beliefs and practices through the lens of an outsider.

Misconceptions creep in, stories are misunderstood, and motivations are invented.

So naturally, new stories began to spread, and this time by those European newcomers.

They told stories of a monster that lived in the water and how it was bloodthirsty and dangerous.

Soon enough, colonists were walking along the shores of the lake with weapons in their hands, waiting for their moment of glory and a chance to kill the beast.

A beast, mind you, that they had themselves invented.

By the 1920s, those stories were pulling in tourists who wanted to see the beauty of the area and to see if the stories were true.

And so in an effort to rebrand the tales, the monster was given a new name, Ogo Pogo, or Ogi for short.

They even made trinkets and merchandise with drawings of the imaginary creature on them, you know, to make a quick buck or two.

In the 1980s, the local tourism association even started offering a $1 million reward for proof of the creature's existence.

And Greenpeace even stepped in and said that if the monster did exist, it was endangered and must be protected.

TV shows like In Search of and Unsolved Mysteries gave the lake monster legend even more attention.

And yes, people have reported spotting what they think is the creature in the waters there over the years.

All of them describe it as 40 feet long, as thick as a telephone pole, and covered in dark skin.

They say it's fast and powerful and behaves almost like a dragon under the waves.

But those stories might be based on nothing more than rogue cold waves that sink below the warmer waters, sending up a visual disturbance.

Or, farther down the spectrum between frightening and cute, some believe that the sightings have been nothing more than otters just out for a lazy swim in a neat and tidy row.

Yes, there's always the chance that many of the lake monsters that we've discussed today are, in fact, real creatures that have not yet been discovered by science.

But as far as what actually lives in the waters of Okanagan Lake, I think the answer is a lot more simple.

Those waves are haunted by nothing more than our assumptions.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Jenna Rose Nethercott and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

Information about all of that and more is available over at lorepodcast.com.

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And as always, thanks for listening.

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