OGOPOGO

As you might have guessed, monsters of all kinds fascinate us here at Wormwood. The many fictional monsters of movie and TV are perennial favorites, but we talk about them in the Philm Phreak section. And then there are the “real” monsters...the cryptids, the unknown beasts seen by many but captured by none.

I love all cryptids, but have a special liking for creatures of the water...or “creeps from the deep”, as I like to say. Books about sea serpents were some of the earliest books I can remember reading. We’ve written about some of them, like the Gloucester Serpent, here at WC. Now the vast and mysterious oceans have plenty of space to hide strange creatures...but lakes and rivers are a slightly different matter. Even more than the serpents of the sea, I was attracted to monsters of fresh water lakes. Of course, Nessie of Loch Ness dominates lake monster discussion so much that every lake monster, no matter what country it’s in, is always called a “Loch Ness Monster”. Rather insulting if you’re a distinct creature like the Lake Van Monster of Turkey or Champ from Lake Champlain in the USA. Or if you’re the subject of this particular article, the jauntily named Ogopogo of Lake Okanagan in Canada.

The Great White North is packed with lake monsters. Not surprising given its enormous size and the tremendous amount of lakes there. But none is as famous as Ogopogo. This finny fiend has almost as much evidence in his favor as Nessie and has been seen for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. There’s way too much to cover here, but I hope to hit most of the major evidence, including a very recent photograph that might just be a smoking gun.

But first, a little background about its environment.  Lake Okanagan is located in British Columbia and is a very sizable freshwater lake created thousands of years ago by melting glaciers. It is actually one of a series of five similar lakes that are linked together and the largest of them It sprawls for 79 miles and reaches a maximum depth of 760 feet…not quite as deep as the abyss of Loch Ness but very respectable. Keep in mind that adding the other smaller lakes in the area adds to the distance and volume where Ogopogo can roam.

Lake Okanagan is located in the “monster belt”, a defined area of latitude and longitude in the Northern Hemisphere that is home to a vast majority of “monster lakes”. Loch Ness and Lake Champlain are also in the monster belt. Okanagan is not some terribly remote area; many communities such as Kelowna and Penticton dot the shore of the lake and it is quite a popular tourist destination even without the Ogopogo connection. The lake also rarely freezes over in its entirety and the area is noted for having a lot of sunny days. Kind of a nice location for a giant creature, even with the proximity of many annoying humans.

How did Ogopogo get such a goofy name? Well, thereby hangs a tale, because Ogopogo is actually not his name. Or at least, not his first name. No, he was first called “n’ha-a-itk” by the local Syilx Indians, who were the first to see him. The name means either “water demon” or “sacred of the water”...the translations vary. N’ha-a-itk was later changed to “naitaka” for Non-Native speakers. But as far as the infamous “Ogopogo” name goes, it seems that can be traced back to 1924 and a waggish drinking song first sung in the city of Vernon. The song’s lyrics went like this…

                           “His mother was an earwig

                             And his father was a whale

                              A little bit of head

                              And hardly any tail…

                             And Ogopogo was his name…”

Needless to say, the Ogopogo name really caught on big and might be second only to Nessie as a nickname for an aquatic beast.

To trace the history of Ogopogo, you must naturally start with the lore and legends of the First Nations people who lived in the vicinity of Lake Okanagan for thousands of years. The major tribes in that locale are the Syilx and the Secwepemec and both have many stories of the n’ha-a-itk. It can be tricky when talking about native lore as evidence, because facts are often mixed with supernatural mythology. The beast may be described as just another animal in the lake in one tale and then the next will call it a god that can summon up storms or change shape. This sort of effect is often noticed with native reports of the Yeti and Bigfoot.

1959 brought another such sighting. Two married couples, the Millers and the Martens, were on the lake in a motor boat when they saw “a tremendous creature with a snake-like head and a blunt nose” swimming steadily along about 250 feet behind the boat. All four observed the monster for over 3 minutes, keep a steady distance from the boat, until it finally submerged completely. They had the feeling that Ogopogo was almost curious about them. This is yet another example of reliable witnesses making a detailed report under favorable conditions.

A real breakthrough in Ogopogo sightings happened in 1968 when Art Folden was driving along the lake when he saw something apparently swimming in it. For once, the witness had some proper equipment with him: a home movie camera. Folden shot several minutes of footage of a dark object moving in the lake. Details couldn’t be made due to distance, but Folden was convinced it was a large unknown creature. The “Folden footage” has since become one of the best known examples of a lake monster in motion, rivaling anything ever taken at Loch Ness. Some experts claim the object in the film is much smaller than it first appears, but for every expert who claims that, there’s another one who says the creature is indeed a large one.

The sightings of Ogopogo have remained remarkably steady throughout the years, with fluctuations of both more and less depending on the year. This would seem to indicate a reasonably healthy population of the animal. The late cryptozoologist Roy Mackal from the University of Chicago said “the naitakas are real” and said the descriptions of them matched a snake-like prehistoric whale called a zeuglodon. Mackal believed that many of the creatures in the “monster belt” were zeuglodons or something similar.

Adding a different kind of evidence, several sonar readings made deep underwater also indicate something large lives in the depths of Lake Okanagan. In the year 2000, a Japanese expedition investigating the lake made a strong sonar hit on a moving object 40 feet long. That hit came near Rattlesnake Island, which has been said to be Ogopogo’s home since the days of the Syilx natives. It’s worth noting that sonar also detected several sizable underwater caves near Rattlesnake Lake. The natives said that n’ha-a-itk always made its home in such caves.

Amongst the many sightings made over the years, it must be admitted that many are easily explainable. There are several moving images said to be the monster that are nothing more than larger than usual waves in the lake. Other sightings can be explained as local animals like otters, beavers or swimming moose. And there have also been questionable examples that seem to be obvious hoaxes. Many skeptics make the observation that Ogopogo is really good for business in the Lake Okanagan area, drawing thousands of visitors who otherwise would have passed the area by. A fanciful local sculpture of the beast has become extremely popular and well known across the world.

But a very sizable number of pictures, movies and eyewitness reports seem to be authentic or at least open for debate. Of course, there are so many that it would take a book to cover them all, but two made in the 21st century are worth looking at more closely.

August 2008 brought an artist and photographer Sean Viloria and his girlfriend Jessica to the shores of Okanagan. The pair saw a churning in the water on a day when the lake was flat calm; Viloria grabbed his camera and snapped a picture. He planned on taking more than one, but as usually happens with maddening frequency in these cases, the camera glitched. Viloria himself admitted the picture was not very detailed and he never publicly released it, but this experience lit a fire under him and Jessica both. They often staked out the same general area where they saw Ogopogo in the hopes of getting some better images of it. Eight days after the initial encounter, their prayers were answered. They saw a large object surface next to a boat...Viloria was ready and this time took 11 consecutive pictures of the object.

Viloria was very careful in releasing the photographs and at first only allowed experts to look at them. The results were impressive.  Using the nearby boat to make a comparison, it was estimated that the object was about 20 feet long. A long neck or possibly a tail could be made out as well. The TV show “Monsterquest” got in on the act and examined all the photographs. No signs of trickery or tampering could be found. Several of the photos wound up on the Monsterquest episode “Lake Demons”. The local fisheries manager judged that the photos showed an unknown animal. The Viloria photographs remain some of the very best evidence for Ogopogo.

The sightings have continued, which brings us to one of the most recent...and perhaps the most exciting of all. On a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon in 2022,  Dale Hanchar, his wife Colleen and their friend Myrna Brown were out on Lake Okanagan in a sailboat when they spotted an odd mass bobbing up and down in the middle of the lake. Dale thought it might be a “dead head”, some kind of floating garbage that can interfere with sailing.

They turned the boat around and approached the object again. Mystified, Colleen took a picture of it. The object itself just seemed to placidly bob on the waves. When they looked at the picture, they couldn’t explain it in terms of easy answers. It wasn’t a blob of weed; it definitely was not man-made. Nor was it a fish or an animal like a beaver or otter. The most logical explanation: it was Ogopogo, leisurely floating on a pleasant fall day.

I’ve posted the photo here. On close inspection, one can make out what seems to be two widely separated funnel-like horns. Such horns have been described as being part of Ogopogo since the time of the First Nations. Then, on the right side, there seems to be an eye of some kind. A wave obscures the left eye. This gargoylish head seems to narrow to a snout. There seems to be either hair or maybe some kind of weeds floating between the horns.

The Hanchars and Ms. Brown are almost ideal as witnesses. Their descriptions of what happened are detailed, matter of fact and devoid of any excessive emotion. If this object isn’t Ogopogo, the question is: what else could it possibly be? One “expert” declares it is an upside down duck...an explanation that sounds crazier than the existence of an actual lake monster. Dale estimated the distance between the “horns” to be about three feet. If there is a duck that size, it would be as much a cryptid as Ogopogo. Plus, what waterfowl would hang upside down motionless for the length of time it took the sailboat to come back around and take the picture?

Unfortunately, this was a single picture. If the witnesses had taken more of a movie, it could have shown movement and may have possibly given a better view of the “face”. As it stands, the Hanchar photograph is one of the most intriguing and exciting in the history of lake monster research.

The Hanchar sighting was the last major Ogopogo encounter, but if history is any guide, it won’t be long before the creature is seen again. A recent documentary “Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan” has made some waves of its own and has been featured on Amazon Prime. It examines much of the recent and historical evidence for the elusive beast.

With climate change, pollution and habitat destruction as ongoing threats, it seems like we are in a race against time to find solid evidence of Ogopogo and the world’s other aquatic monsters. There can’t be many of them left and indeed, it seems very likely that some have gone extinct already. But there’s more reason for hope as far as Ogopogo is concerned. Lake Okanagan is large and deep and is in pretty good shape as far as its ecology goes. With the connection to other local lakes and the known existence of underwater caves, our watery buddy has a great chance at swimming free for many more years. And despite the fact I’d love to see incontrovertible proof of his existence, I hope he is never caught. Mystery is good for the human spirit!

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights!