Episode 90: Mind the Gap

This is the story of the one.

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In 1884, the Irish Archaeological Society published a book that had sat untouched for two centuries.

While historian Roderick O'Flaherty had written much about the land and people of Ireland over his lifetime, it was his survey of his own home territory, West Connacht, that was the most personal and intimate, and it contained a mystery.

According to Oflerty, in 1674 a man was walking past a large lake that sat on the border of his family land when he saw something.

It was the shape of an animal's head moving across the surface of the water toward him.

Nothing unusual in a region known for otters, but it was moving rather fast.

So the man stopped to take a better look.

That's when the head lifted out of the water, higher than any otter was capable of, and then charged the shore.

In a heartbeat, the creature had sunk its teeth into the man's arm and pulled him back into the water.

Somehow, in the middle of a cloud of panic and pain, the man remembered that he had a knife in his pocket, so he pulled it free and plunged it into the side of the creature.

Immediately, the powerful jaws released him and he was able to swim back to shore.

I think it's fair to say that we're all very familiar with the dangers of the vast oceans that cover our planet.

They are dark and deep and full of so much mystery.

In contrast, our freshwater lakes have become places of safety.

We've tamed them for our own uses.

Their waters clean our bodies, quench our thirsts, and even generate hydroelectricity for our homes.

Lakes are the opposite of dark and mysterious.

Or are they?

Because as much as we'd like to believe that freshwater lakes are absent of danger and the unknown, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Lakes are deep gaps in our land, but they also represent deep gaps in our understanding of the world around us.

Yes, humans have grown to trust them, even to let down their guard.

But is that wise?

If history has anything to say about it, it might just be a big mistake.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Mysterious creatures that live in the waters of our lakes and streams are an ancient idea.

The tales have been around long enough that they've had time to take on a well-developed and highly distinct flavor in each of the cultures they appear.

A great example of this can be found in Scotland.

John Francis Campbell was a writer and historian who lived and worked in the middle of the 19th century.

In the early 1860s, he published a four-volume collection called Popular Tales of the West Highlands.

If the Grimm brothers are known today for gathering German and European folklore all into one place, John Francis Campbell was their Celtic counterpart.

In one of his books, he describes a creature he referred to as the Ek Ushka, a name that roughly translates into water horse.

This animal is often described as a cunning and carnivorous shapeshifter, but owes its name to its most common form, a horse.

Regardless of its shape though, the stories about the creature are frightening, to say the least.

The most common stories tell of people who discover a mysterious horse as they are walking past a river or lake.

It's said that the creature would try to lure the traveler onto its back and, if successful, would then charge back quickly into the water, drowning their victim and then devouring their body.

In other tales, the creature appears in the form of a man who lures young women into the water.

The results, though, are almost always the same.

Not all of the stories are of bloodthirsty creatures and violent death.

In many tales, the water horse is able to communicate with the people that encounter it.

In some stories, those people are farmers and after some smooth talking and persuasion, they're able to convince the mysterious horses to come work on their farms.

Oftentimes though, that labor is centered around water in some form or another, like building bridges or powering a mill.

Think about it from the perspective of the medieval miller.

Most mills were built to harness the power of wind or water, which was then used to turn the grinding stone and get the job done.

In a sense, it was the spirit of the water that did the work, so tales of mysterious river creatures who take on a physical shape and then turn the stone for you would be both entertaining and metaphorical.

There's one other subset of the water horse mythology that also found a home on the farm.

There was a common belief that the creature would sometimes take on the shape of a bull, which would then join a farmer's herd and father extraordinary offspring.

These hybrid animals would go on to do amazing things, such as win competitions, survive outbreaks of illness, and occasionally even do battle with other water horses in order to defend their farms.

But the Scots don't have a corner on the market when it comes to freshwater creatures.

On the continent, there is no shortage of stories that sound eerily similar to the Ekushka.

In German folklore, there are tales of a water spirit known as the Nixie.

It's a name that has roots in the language known as Proto-Indo-European and is related to the idea of washing, something that would have taken place at the edge of a lake or river a few thousand years ago.

In Old Norse, we have the Nyker, and in Old English, it's the Nykor.

Both of them are shapeshifting water spirits that often take the form of a horse and both of them are feared and spoken of as monsters.

If that sounds familiar, that means you're paying attention.

Give yourself a gold star but stay away from the water's edge, okay?

Farther north in the Scandinavian region of Europe there are stories of the Baka Hasten or brook horse.

When they appear, their goal is the same as all the others, to lure travelers or farmers into the water, where they will drown and devour them.

But just like in Scotland, there are tales of these creatures who have been captured and put to work on projects like building bridges and walls.

There are more, of course.

Down in Australia, they tell tales of the bunyip, which is a large monstrous creature found in rivers, swamps, and watering holes.

In Central America, there are stories of the Wee-Win, described as a malevolent water spirit with, and I quote, jaws fenced round with horrid teeth.

It seems that we have a paradox here.

On one hand, rivers and lakes are often seen as boundaries between realms or territories.

They separate one thing from another, both physically and spiritually.

And a lot of the times throughout history that humans have sat down to draw maps, they use these physical boundaries to box people in.

But at the same time, the creatures said to inhabit those boundaries don't seem to be trapped within them.

You can travel the globe and cross dozens of borders, and the chances are good that you'll always find stories of water creatures waiting for you on the other side.

And that's the frightening part.

We like to believe we can box these monsters in, because it makes us feel safe.

But if history is any indication,

we are utterly powerless to contain them.

The Wabash River cuts across the northern portion of Indiana like a narrow belt.

It's not the Mississippi by any stretch of the imagination, but it's over 500 miles long and is the state river of Indiana.

But two centuries ago, the Wabash was a boundary line that marked the southern border of the territory that belonged to the Potawatomi tribe of Native Americans.

About 25 miles north of the river was a series of five small lakes, and in 1827, that region became the focus of a treaty between the Native American people and their new neighbors, the white settlers moving in from the east.

An agreement was struck that gave a large portion of the land to these new settlers.

but the Native Americans were paid for it.

They were given $2,000 in silver and and another $2,000 set aside for education.

They were also given 160 bushels of salt as well as their very own blacksmith, a man named John Lindsay.

But the biggest part of the settlement was that the American government was going to build them a grist mill right there where they could mill their own corn.

And that's when the trouble began.

It seems that the government selected a spot on the northern side of the largest of those lakes to build a dam that would power the mill.

And the Native Americans objected to the location.

Building a dam right there, they said, would disturb the home of something they were trying to avoid and protect themselves from.

A monster.

Ignoring the objections, the government surveyors got right to work, but almost immediately there were problems.

One man, Austin Morris, reported that several of the men working for him had seen something in the water, and it was getting more and more difficult to find men willing to work near the lake.

The work somehow moved forward, the dam was built, and the mill went up.

As a result, all of those smaller lakes flooded into each other and became one massive body of water.

Today, it still goes by the name given to it by the Native Americans before the white settlers arrived, Lake Manitou, from the Potawatomi word for bad spirit.

Early government officials translated that into Devil's Lake, but no matter which name you prefer, both get the message across.

The waters of that lake, they said, were dangerous.

In 1838, about a decade after the dam was built, a group of men were in a boat on the lake when the surface of the water began to change in an odd way, as if something large was swimming beneath it.

The men leaned over the side of their boat for a better look and sighted a creature they claimed was over 60 feet long.

As you might have guessed, the men rowed hard towards shore to get away.

A few days later, that government-provided blacksmith, John Lindsay claimed he was riding along the shore of the lake when something in the water caught his eye.

He turned to see a creature, perhaps 200 feet off the shore, lift its head a good four feet over the surface of the water.

Lindsay described the creature as dark with yellow markings, a large head, and a neck that reminded him of a serpent.

The reports were so frightening to the people who lived around the lake that some of them proposed a hunting trip to go and kill the beast.

There's no record of whether it ever happened or not.

Over 2,000 miles to the west, outside the modern city of Portland, Oregon, there are similar stories of mysterious creatures.

Centuries ago, it was the homeland of the Kalapuya group of Native Americans.

According to Charles Skinner, who spent much of the late 19th century gathering folklore from all over the country, The Kalapuya people spoke often about something that lived in the waters near Forest Grove.

They called it the Amaluk.

It was a monstrous animal that walked on on four legs and had long horns, but lived beneath the waters of the lake.

In the stories told about the creature, it was said to lure other animals toward the water's edge, only to rise up, drag them under, and then consume them.

Elk and deer were common victims, but also bears.

In one story, though, the Amaluk chose a different target.

Skinner wrote in 1896 about three children who were foraging at the water's edge when the creature emerged and attacked them.

Two of the children were impaled on the Amaluk's horns, but the third managed to escape and run home to get his father.

When the man arrived at the lake, he found the water covered in a thick fog.

Through the mist though, he claimed he could still see his boys, as if they were standing at the edge of the water.

Relieved, the man rushed toward them to bring them home, but stopped as he noticed the long horns piercing their bodies.

They were no longer alive, serving now as nothing more than bait to lure their father into the same deadly trap they had fallen into.

The story goes on to tell of how the father, not willing to give up, actually sets up camp on the shore and watches them, hoping they will be returned to him.

The Amaluk, however, wasn't kind.

A day later, it slowly sunk back into the waters of the lake, taking the man's children with it.

Whether or not the story is true, it's a reminder of the dual nature of water.

It could be a source of life, but also a place of danger.

Sometimes the water gives, and sometimes it takes.

And as one New England legend makes clear, sometimes it causes us to question our sanity.

When he first arrived in the New World in 1603, he was just 26 years old.

But what he lacked in experience, he more than made up for with legacy.

Samuel was a mariner, born into a family of other mariners.

The New World might be just that, new and unknown and dangerous, but he was brave and curious.

So he explored.

For years, he traveled through what is now the eastern portion of Canada and northern New England.

And as he did, he left his mark.

He established the settlement that would become Quebec City.

He was the first European to explore the Great Lakes.

He built relationships with the various First Nation tribes that he encountered.

If I had to sum it all up, I would say that he crossed a lot of boundaries.

In July of 1609, he led an expedition up the Richelieu River, which carried him south into what is now New England.

There, in that gap between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks, he discovered a long, narrow lake and named it after himself, Lake Champlain.

Of course, the Europeans weren't the first to stand on the shores of that lake.

For a very long time, the land there had been home to the Abenaki people, a group of tribes that spanned the territory from Quebec to Massachusetts.

So when Champlain rolled into town, he made some new friends in the process.

It was a relationship that would last decades.

Now, the oldest historical records within the Abenaki people are known as the Wapapai, sometimes called the Wampum records.

They're an elaborate system of record keeping and storytelling that uses colored beads, usually arranged on a long strip of cloth like a belt.

We have Wampum records from the early 1600s, when the French were coming in and learning about the area and the Abenaki people, and they hold some amazing details.

The most peculiar story is about the warnings that the Abenaki gave to the French about how they should behave around the lake.

No one should fire a musket or throw objects into the water because they make noise.

If anyone found themselves on the water in a boat, they were prohibited from shouting or cursing.

Why?

Because a monster lived in the waters there and the Abenaki really didn't want to disturb it.

They had a name for it too, the Mescog Quedemos or swamp creature.

It had always been there for as long as the Abenaki people had lived near the lake and had become such a part of their culture that they had even learned how to use its presence to their advantage in battle.

You have to remember Lake Champlain not only sits in the gap between two mountain ranges, but it also sat between two cultures, the Abenaki and the Mohawk.

It's the very definition of a border.

So when those two tribes went to war, it often took place on the lake itself.

According to the stories, when this happened, it was common for warriors on both sides of the battle to reach out and capsize their opponent's canoes.

When this happened, the creature in the water was said to rise up and devour them, pulling them back down into the depths of the lake.

The Abenaki even used this as a punishment for crime, tossing known criminals into the water to feed the monster within.

But as is so often the case, legends become a lot more frightening when there are sightings to go with them.

In 1664, a Jesuit missionary recorded that a sea monster was killed by French settlers in the Richelieu River, which connects to Lake Champlain on the north end.

That same Jesuit also recorded that farther north, where the Richelieu connects with the St.

Lawrence River, a similar creature was sighted in the water.

He described it as large, with small front legs and a horse-like head.

Which is odd because almost a century and a half before, another Frenchman had traveled that same area and called it the River of Horses.

It would be be another century and a half, however, before the press became involved.

In 1808, one sighting managed to land in a nearby newspaper under the headline, Lake Champlain, a monster has lately made its appearance on the waters of the lake.

In 1819, another sighting was reported, and this time the newspapers drew lines of comparison to the Gloucester sea serpent that had been sighted just a couple of years before.

Clearly, something unusual was in the waters of Lake Champlain, but exactly what that thing was still remained a mystery.

A handful of legends and a couple of random sightings over the centuries wasn't enough to prove the existence of anything, except maybe the overactive imagination of people who lived near large dark bodies of water.

But as more and more people moved into the area, all of that began to change.

Settlers, hunters, even tourists and vacationers, they all brought something with them that would change our perception of Lake Champlain forever.

More and more

Eyewitnesses

It was the 1870s that saw an increase in activity around Lake Champlain.

Communities there were growing and outsiders from New York and the New England area would often travel there to get away for a little while.

They thought they were coming to rest in the tranquil embrace of the mountains, but what they found instead was enough to send them home full of fear.

Essex is a town on the New York side of the lake, down toward the southern end.

In 1870, there were roughly 1,600 people there living full-time, but it was also a popular destination.

One of the attractions they had in town was a steamboat that would take people out onto the lake for a small fee, and it was from the deck of that steamship that witnesses saw something unusual in the dark waters.

According to the reports, passengers who were on deck noticed something in the water a good distance away.

At first, they thought it was a log, but then a head rose above the surface and turned toward them.

A few moments later, it was gone, but not before dozens of people on board had a chance to wonder at it.

A year later, another steamboat full of passengers left port in Essex and headed out for a pleasure cruise on the lake.

The descriptions were the same, including the way the creature behaved, the speed at which it moved, and the way it lifted its head to look toward them.

The people on the steamboat were in a mixed state of awe and panic.

But it was in 1873 that the sightings truly picked up speed.

No pun intended, I swear.

That was the year that a work crew was laying railroad track near the shoreline at the southern end of the lake.

One day, all of the men looked up to see a large serpent-like creature move past them through the water.

They described it as covered in scales, with a head like a horse, and very fast.

They also claimed that it sprayed water high into the air from its nostrils.

Sometime later, a man named David Barrett, a retired brigadier general and active justice of the peace, saw the same creature in the water near his property.

He and his son reportedly chased the thing, and at some point it crossed over land into a marshy area.

When it did, Barrett aimed his gun at it and fired, but if he injured or killed the creature, there was no evidence to prove it.

Barrett later noticed that he was missing two calves from his farmland, which was near the shore of the lake.

According to him, there were wet drag marks in the pasture that led all the way to the water, as if something had come up, grabbed his cattle, and dragged it back into the cold depths of the lake.

So he set up watch over his farm, with people taking turns throughout the night.

The overnight watches eventually evolved into daytime hunts, with dozens of people gathering together to seek out and kill the creature in the lake.

It was a monster, after all, and they had to destroy it.

One steamboat in the area was nearly capsized by the thing, and other farmers had lost livestock as well.

And there are reports that these men did indeed do battle with the lake monster, but no proof was ever brought forward.

One man who read these accounts accounts of glorious lake monster battles was none other than P.T.

Barnum.

Wanting these hunters to bring forward actual evidence of the creature's existence, he put up a large reward for its severed head, $50,000 in fact, a prize that would be worth over a million dollars today.

Sadly, even that wasn't enough incentive to pull physical proof out of those dark waters.

The hunts faded away over time, but the sightings never really did.

For decades, the the creature in Lake Champlain dug its roots deeper into the culture and superstition of the region, becoming almost a part of the landscape.

If you lived in the area around the lake, the mysterious serpent was an accepted part of your world, which is why one final tale has such a powerful pull.

Tony and Sandra were vacationers in the summer of 1977.

They had been driving north with their children and needed a place to stop and eat a meal.

Their map showed a nice lakeside park in the town of St.

Albans, just north of Burlington, Vermont, so they pulled off the road and made their way in that direction.

Once there, Sandra sat down and told the children to go play.

It was peaceful after a long day of driving, and she was happy to soak in the silence and fresh air while Tony brought their things over from the car.

She might have even closed her eyes for a bit, but at some point, She glanced back out toward the children and caught her breath.

There was something moving through the water water toward the shore.

It was large and at first she thought it might be a person in diving gear, but then the shape lifted up above the water.

It was a head.

Soon the head was high up on a long serpent-like neck, and a large hump could be seen behind it.

The children were clueless, though.

With their backs to the water, they were happily playing with whatever they had found, driftwood, toys from the car, or just digging in the sand.

Sandra was about to scream, about to run toward her children and drag them to safety before it was too late, when Tony arrived from the car.

He called out that lunch was ready, and the children immediately dropped what they were doing and rushed away from the water.

They were safe and had no idea why.

Sandra though wasn't satisfied with just moving away from the lake.

She wanted to leave and so she and Tony packed everything back up again.

and they left the park as quickly as they could.

Tony and Sandra kept their experience to themselves for a very long time.

It sounded crazy and they didn't want a reputation as the sort of people who made irrational claims.

And yet, well, they had seen something and it was much more than just a bad reflection on the water or a misidentified log.

Sandra even took a photo of the creature.

Over the years that have followed their sighting, they've been interviewed extensively.

Legendary cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman has even sat them down and walked them through their experience.

It's a story that's difficult to believe, for sure, but at the end of the day, maybe that's not important.

Perhaps the true lesson here is that there's something about Lake Champlain that has a way of getting under our skin.

For centuries, countless people who have visited those dark shores have walked away believing that the world is bigger and more mysterious than when they arrived.

Lakes have a way of doing that, after all.

They're physical gaps in the landscape that remind us of a larger gap in our minds.

We simply don't know everything about the world we all live in, and it's possible we never will.

And that, more than anything else, is what truly frightens us.

We live in a golden age of information.

Most people carry tiny computers in their pockets that have access to everything we've learned up to this point in human history.

New tools and ideas are transforming important fields like technology and science.

We know more about our world today than we ever have.

Take the field of medicine as an example.

In March of this year, medical researchers revealed that they discovered a new organ in the human body known as the interstitium.

It's so new that the spell check in my writing app doesn't recognize it, but it's been in our bodies forever.

You see, there are still gaps, and we still work every day to fill them.

Because we want answers, because we love a challenge, and maybe because we're more than a little afraid of the unknown.

In the face of not knowing why something is the way it is, humans have always been good at stuffing anything they can think of into that gap.

Whatever lurks beneath the dark waters of Lake Champlain, whether it's just a really big fish or some undiscovered remnant of an ancient species, that unknowingness has a way of haunting us.

Sure, today they call it CHAMP.

And if you visit the lake, you can buy all sorts of merchandise that uses champ as its mascot.

Beneath the glossy surface of capitalism, though, there is a darkness.

Rivers and lakes have a sort of mystery that we've spent centuries, thousands of years even, populating with the fantasies inside our minds.

Whether or not they are inhabited by actual monsters, they're teeming with belief systems and folklore.

The water these ideas inhabit can cleanse us and quench our thirst.

but they can also drown us or steal our loved ones.

The river has always been unpredictable and unsettling.

One of the oldest European stories about a freshwater monster actually dates back to the year 521.

That was when an Irish monk named Columba encountered something terrifying on one of his missionary journeys.

As the story goes, Columba was with some friends and they were walking along the side of a river while looking for a shallow point that they could cross.

Instead, they came upon a burial in progress.

When Columba asked the mourners how their friend had died, they told him that it was a huge water beast that had attacked them while they were in their boat on the river.

They had managed to pull their friend out of the water, but by then it was too late.

The creature had injured him too badly, and he had died as a result.

Columba decided to find the beast.

Perhaps he wanted to see it for himself, or maybe he wanted to punish it.

Whatever his motivation might have been, he took one of his companions to the edge of the river and asked him to swim to the other side.

As his friend did, Columba noticed that something large and dark was quickly moving up from the depths of the river, straight for his friend.

Raising a hand, the monk made a sign of the cross and then shouted at the creature, You shall go no farther, he commanded.

Go back.

The legend says that the monster was so terrified that it stopped and retreated back into the dark waters.

It was seen as a testament to the power of Columbus' God, both by his friends and the men they had encountered.

Or, at least, that's how the story is presented.

And that's the trouble.

For many people, this is nothing more than a fable.

It's a fantasy constructed 1500 years ago to teach something rather than to record an actual, real-life event.

Or was it?

Because that story seems to have held on over the centuries, and despite its near-mythical status, it seems to be more relevant today than ever before.

Why?

Because even though Columba was an Irish monk, this encounter took place in the land he spent most of his life.

Scotland.

And the river where he witnessed this enormous water monster?

Well, it's located near the northeastern coast of the country, just north of a very large freshwater lake, what the Scottish would call a loch.

And that river's name would sound eerily familiar to most people.

The river Ness

In the century between P.T.

Barnum's grand prize and Sandra Mancy's road trip encounter with a mysterious beast, Lake Champlain was anything but quiet.

In fact, things were witnessed in the early 1900s that would send a chill down the spine of most skeptics.

Stick around after this break to hear all about it.

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and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

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P.T.

Barnum's prize of $50,000 might not have ever been claimed, but that doesn't mean the waters of Lake Champlain were quiet in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In fact, it was quite the opposite.

In 1915, a number of people claimed to see something near the midway point of the lake, an area known as Bulwaga Bay, where the eastern and western shores come closer together.

All of these witnesses described the same scene.

A large, monstrous creature was in the shallow water near the shore.

and was apparently stuck in the mud.

Those who saw it described it as over 40 feet long, with dark skin and a long neck.

After thrashing around in the water for a long while, it managed to break free and quickly retreated back into the depths of the lake.

They even described it as moving like a submarine, with a long neck and head slowly descending into the water as it moved off toward the middle of the lake.

In 1939, a couple from New York was in a boat fishing on the western side of the lake when they noticed an object in the water.

It was moving fast, and there was a long white wake trailing behind it on the surface.

When they realized that the thing, whatever it actually was, was headed straight toward them, they fired up the motor and managed to move out of the way before it could ram them.

In 1945, dozens of passengers on the steamboat Ticonderoga witnessed something from the safety of the deck.

Out in the water some distance from them, Multiple people reported seeing a shape rise above the surface of the lake.

It was a large, horse-like head perched atop a long, serpent-like neck.

They had never seen anything like it and would probably never again.

Others did though.

All through the 50s, 60s, and 70s, sightings were reported up and down both sides of the lake.

The descriptions were always the same, echoing the accounts that dated back to the days of the Abenaki and the French.

What it was, though, remains a mystery.

It's interesting to note that the Ticonderoga was built at the end of the steam-powered riverboat era.

When more modern technology arrived in the 1950s, the ship was purchased by a local museum and kept in port for tourists to explore.

Eventually, though, it was moved onto land, and the reason is both logical and sad.

Steamboat technology, it seems, had drifted so far into the past that there was no one left who knew how to maintain and repair a ship like the Ticonderoga.

It was once a part of everyday life, but eventually we forgot, and in doing so, mystery and romance crept in and took over.

What was the creature witnessed in Lake Champlain by so many over the centuries?

It's hard to say, but it's clear from the stories that something is there, waiting to be remembered, to be pulled back from the fog of the past and learned about all over again.

Or maybe it was nothing more than a story.

A story so powerful and attractive that even today, we still whisper about it with a quiver in our voice.

We may never know for sure.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Carl Nellis and music by Chad Lawson.

If you're new around here, this is my friendly reminder that lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories.

There is an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more.

And you can learn about everything going on over in one place: theworldoflore.com/slash now.

You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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