Ogopogo

 


Ogopogo is the most famous lake monster in Cananda. It’s found in Lake Okanagan in British Columbia It’s said to live in an underwater cave somewhere near Rattlesnake Island. The name Ogopogo comes from a 1920’s folk song The Ogo-pogo funny foxtrot, which was a satirical song making fun of local monster sightings. The name stuck.


Ogopogo is described as being 30 to 50 feet long and serpentine in shape. It often travels with an undulating up and down motion, which creates humps on the surface of the water. Ogopogo has two small horns that are similar to a giraffe’s ossicones. Ogopogo is dark green to black in colour. Other details are less consistent. It’s described as having either a horse or sheep like head. Sometimes it has a hairy mane down its neck. Sometimes it has sturgeon like scales down its back and sometimes it had either a fish’s or whale’s tail.


Long before settlers came to the area Ogopogo was known to the Syilx people as N’ha-a-ikt. They saw Ogopogo as a benevolent spirit and guardian of the lake. The creature’s presence in the lake was deeply connected to nature and the prosperity of the land. According to the Syilx, Ogopogo took the form of a giant snake. There is a misinformed idea that sacrifices had to be made to N’ha-a-ikt to appease the serpent, or it would kill anyone to tried to travel across the lake. The origin of this likely white settlers witnessing the Syilx ceremonies to the lake spirit and misunderstanding the context. As described by the Syilx themselves, offerings take the form of tobacco and other herbs, and are given as a form of gratitude to N’ha-a-ikt, not to appease an angry monster.


The first sighting by settlers was in 1873. Mrs Susan Allison, a local author, saw Ogopogo off the coast of her home at Sunnyside Ranch, which is the current location of Quail’s Gate Winery in Kelowna. She described Ogopogo as a giant snake.


There have been many, many more sightings over the decades. Other notables ones are:

-A sighting in 1926, where 30 cars filled with people saw Ogopogo off Mission Beach.

-In 1968, Art Folden took the first video of Ogopogo. The video has been extensively analyzed by experts, who were able to determine it was an object and not just a wave, but were unable to determine what the object was.


Unlike many lake monsters, the sightings of Ogopogo haven’t slowed down, and reports are still happening in recent years. There’s a library of sightings at https://www.ogopogoquest.com/


A recent sighting of note happened in 2022. The sighting happened to three witnesses, Dale and Colleen Hanchar, and their friend Myrna Germaine, while they were out boating. Dale was able to get a photo of Ogopogo’s head just under the surface of the water. This photo has made its rounds around the internet, being posted as evidence of Ogopogo. Meanwhile skeptics insist its just a duck diving underwater. I think the photo is inconclusive. No single photo is going to be enough to prove the existence of a lake monster, yet at the same time I don’t see the duck, even after someone on Reddit red-lined in the duck’s outline. The news story can be found here https://globalnews.ca/news/9211632/ogopogo-or-unusually-large-bird-kelowna-couple-spots-something-strange-beneath-the-waves/


Another sighting of note happened on 2009. It was reported about in Loren Colemen’s website, Cryptomundo. It was about a news report in the Kelowna Daily Courier, but as usual my ability to find old new articles failed miserably, so I wasn’t able to corroborate this. A man named Dan Poppoff had had found the carcass of an unknown creature on the shores of lake Okanagan, while he had been out kayaking. Apparently this carcass was much smaller than Ogopogo is typically depicted as, since Mr Poppoff was able to collect it up and keep it in his freezer. DNA samples were sent off to a lab in Ontario. However, there’s no further news about this sighting on Cryptomundo, nor was I able to find any updates about the DNA results.


So what are the explanations for Ogopogo? The skeptical answer is that Ogopogo is misidentified logs, waves, sturgeons, groups of otters, and in the case of that one photo, waterfowl. Cryptozoologists are convinced Ogopogo is a flesh and blood animal, this time pinning it as a basilosaurid whale, rather than the usual plesiosaur for a change. You would notice a population of whale in a lake, if they were there. Personally, I don’t think either of these explanations do justice to the endearing legacy of Ogopogo, but I don’t have any better explanations myself.




Sources


https://www.ogopogoquest.com/


https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Ogopogo


https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ogopogo


https://visitpeachland.com/about/ogopogo/


https://www.pugetsoundmonster.club/ogopogo-canadas-loch-ness-monster/


https://cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/ogotiss/


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