"When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?" Special Agent Fox Mulder
It is no doubt that the waterways of our country are extraordinary places of beauty, history, and of course...lore. It is easy for us to conjure up happy summer memories exciting kayaking trips, and peaceful and serene canoe outings. However, the stories of the lakes or rivers' darker reputation are likely to be floating along with them. Mysterious tales of ghosts, monsters, and space invaders have been infused into their watery realm, possibly activating our overactive imagination.
“These are tricks that the mind plays," declared Gillian Anderson character skeptic Dana Scully in the Television Series The X-Files, "They are ingrained cliches from a thousand different horror films. When we hear a sound, we get a chill. We see a shadow, and we allow ourselves to imagine something that an otherwise rational person would discount out of hand."
But for some, there is no rational theory or explanation. In the backwater of our minds, we are inherently fascinated with the unknown and the unexplainable.
What's out there along the shoreline? A ghost? Or worse, a horrifying monster? Or is just some urban legend meant to scare us while sitting around the campfire on a full moon night in October. Like the X-Files exclaimed, "The truth is out there."
So whether you're, daring or doubtful, here are a few creepy and spooky waters you might want to paddle (if got the nerve) this Halloween or anytime for your opportunity to see a ghost, a flying saucer, or a monster.
Big Moose Lake, New YorkBig Moose Lake is the perfect getaway spot. The quiet remote Adirondack lake is known for its scenic beauty and lake hamlet charm. But looks can be deceiving because the lake's placid waters are haunted by the restless spirit of a young woman who was murdered at the lake.
Grace Brown was just a country girl of humble means when she met Chester Gillette in 1906. From an affluent family, Gillette was considered a catch for any girl with his handsome looks and good family.
Pregnant with his child, she thought her it would be happily ever after when Gillette invited her on a romantic getaway to the Adirondack lake. Surely he would propose to her, or maybe they would get married while they were there, Brown must have thought. But Gillette had other plans of evil intent. A womanizer concerned about his social status, Gillette was about to let Brown upend his pursuit of the finer things in life.
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The boathouse on Big Moose Lake 1906
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On a bright and beautiful day in July, the couple rented a rowboat for a tour of the lake. While Brown reportedly didn't bring any luggage along, Gillette brought a suitcase, camera, and tennis racket. They never returned.
The next day the search party recovered the capsized rowboat and pulled up Brown's submerged lifeless body from the lake. She cuts on her face and mouth as if someone had beaten her. In the meantime, Gillette was nowhere to found.
The police caught up with Gillette at a nearby hotel under an assumed name. In their questioning, he told investigators that Brown had become distraught and leaped from the boat, and not knowing to swim, she drowns. The police weren't having any of it, after they found his broken tennis racket buried along the shore, they arrested Gillette.
The murder of Brown became one of the most fascinating crime stories of the early 1900s. In the subsequent trial, the prosecutor said Gillette planned out the murder in meticulous detail by beating her repeatedly with a tennis racket then tossed her body overboard. He was found guilty and was executed by the electric chair in 1908.
But our story doesn't end there. After over 100 years, people are still fascinated by this tragic tale of a woman who falls in love with the wrong man. Over the years, many books, movies, and even songs have been by the murder. But the most usual postscript is that even today, people claim to see the ghostly spirit of Grace Brown sadly roaming the shore of Big Moose Lake.
Scape Ore Swamp, South Carolina
Paddling at Scape Ore Swamp does not seem to be a recommended activity. First, there doesn't appear to be enough water. And most important, Its number one resident seems to have an appetite for chrome and possibly your aluminum canoe.
Thick overgrowth, oozing with mud and silt, the murky black amber water of the Scape Ore Swamp is a dreadful and eerie scene near Bishopville. And that might be the very reason some say a scaly creature just might refuge to go unnoticed by humans…well, almost unnoticed.
Like in an opening scene of a low-budget horror movie, our story of the Lizard Man began in 1988, after you guess it, a teenager blew a tire on his way home a deserted road late at night. Cue scary music. After putting on the spare, the man looked up and saw something running towards him out of the darkness of the swamp. What he would describe would become legendary. It was a seven feet tall reptilian humanoid with glowing red eyes, green scaly skin, and long black claws. The kid quickly got into the car, locked the doors, and gunned the engine. Trying to speed odd he looked into the rearview mirror and saw the green blur chasing and then jumping on his car. Cue even more scary music.
Swerving in the car from side to side, the teen managed to escape from eh clutches of the monster. However, the side-view-mirror was damaged, and scratch marks were found on the car's roof.
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| Scape Ore Swamp |
Throughout the summer, area law enforcement started getting reports of cars getting mysteriously damaged. Monster type vandalism of fenders being ripped off, the antennas were bent, deep scratches along the body, and chrome trim had seemingly been chewed off. But even more, alarming were the witnesses saying they had seen or even attacked an enormous scaly green humanoid lurking in the woods and swamps.
Overnight the Lizard Man became famous as folks theorized what this creature might be. Was it a long lost dinosaur? A cousin of Bigfoot?
A South Carolina Marine Resources Department spokesperson said the tracks neither matched nor could be mistaken for the footprints of any recorded animal. A local radio station wanted to know and offered a $1 million reward to anybody who could capture the creature alive.
But no ever cashed in, and the Lizard Man is still out there many think inhabiting the swampland. Over the decades, there have been a few sightings along with and some auto maulings. In 2015, a woman claimed to have taken a photograph of the creature with her cellphone, while leaving church. Cue scary music
The Ohio River, West Virginia, and Ohio |
The Mothman
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It was the deadliest bridge disaster in US history when in 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, sending 46 people deaths when they went into the frigid Ohio River. The investigation ruled a structural defect led to the tragedy, but while others suggest a more weird and disturbing theory.
In November of 1966, a year before the deadly accident, numerous witnesses reported seeing a large grey man-like creature with glowing red eyes and wings spanning upwards of ten feet and flying over 100 miles hour.
Skeptical police said the mysterious creature was likely a bird. But more and more sighting reported saying it was a man with wings, possibly an alien visitor or military went horribly experiment, and the legend of the Mothman was born.
Described as a nightmarish demon, many of the terrified townfolk thought the Mothman to be a sinister prelude to doom. And when the bridge collapsed only a year later, many thought the Mothman sighting and the bridge disaster were connected.
In 1975, in the book, The Mothman Prophecies, the creepy folk legend took flight with conspiracy theorists and fans of the paranormal saying that visitations from the Mothman were a foreboding of disaster. In 2002, a motion picture popularized the creature's prophetic powers. A couple years later, a 12-foot-tall chrome-polished statue of the Mothman complete with massive steel wings and ruby-red eyes was placed in front of Point Pleasant's historical museum for all to see.
The last sighting of the Mothman happened in 2016 when a man produced a photograph of the creature. How many disasters can we think that came after?
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area Park, Kentucky/Tennessee
The Land Between the Lakes encompasses hundreds of miles of wilderness lakes and river shores between Kentucky and Tennessee.with easy access points for kayaks and canoes to enter the water to enjoy picturesque views of nature and wildlife. It's a relaxing way to get away from it all, that is until you hear the bloodcurdling howls, but then it might be too late to get away.
The Beast of the Land Between the Lakes is said to be a werewolf, a frightening half-man, half-wolf creature that stands over seven feet with fiery eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and long jagged claws.
Stories have been told about The Beast since before the first white settlers came to the area. Legends told by Native Americans recounted how a massive beast, half-man, and half-wolf, would howl into the night when the moon was full, leaving behind a trail of mutilated animals carcasses. The French tappers called it Loup Garou, meaning werewolf.
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| Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area Park |
Before long frighting and gruesome folk tales emerged from the area's woods and bays. Hikers would hear its howling and have sensed something stalking them. Hunters would find deer carcasses that had been brutally torn apart or odd footprints and unusual tufts of hair. While canoeists would see it from the safety of their boats.
Of course, there were also horrifying rumors of the beast slaughtering a family of four in a camper and brutally killing a bow hunter by ripping his body apart.
In 2012 a hiker felt lucky to have survived the experience after coming in contact with the beast. In her first-hand account, she described the beast making the most bloodcurdling snarl she had ever heard. Frozen in fear, she began to pray as she looked at the massive growling beast. Her prayer was answered. The beast left in one direction, and she ran as fast as she could in the other, vowing to never return.
Just as in Bigfoot sightings, there is little physical evidence that the Beast of the Land Between the Lakes is indeed roaming about in the wilderness of the lake country, but don't take our word for it schedule a full moon paddle and listen for the howl.
The Honey Island Swamp, Louisiana The
Honey Island Swamp is menacing enough with alligators, poison snakes, bears, and wild boars. Add in a few tales of pirates, buried treasure and haunting Indian Spirits, and mysterious green lights flickering, and becomes a bit foreboding. But throw in a swamp monster, and the place becomes downright creepy.
Named because after honeybees were associated with a nearby isle, the swamp borders Lake Borgne on the south and sandwiched between the Pearl River on the east and the west by the West Pearl River and is considered by many to be one of the most pristine swampland habitats in the United States. It is also said to be the home of the Honey Island Swamp Monster.
According to the local folklore, a pair of hunters encountered an enormous creature standing over the body of a bloody dead boar and accompanied by a foul smell in 1963. They would describe it as a terrifying monster, at seven-feet tall with long, orange-brown gray hair and fiendish yellow eyes. Of course, they had never seen anything like it before in the swamp. But where did such a creature come from?
The story that was told was that a traveling circus' train crashed, and the monkeys had escaped and interbreeding with the local alligator population. Experts discounted the claim, however in 1974 hunters found tracks and made a cast of web-footed, four-toed tracks appear to be somewhat similar to an alligator's rear foot supporting the theory. However, the idea of a large, half-ape half-gator lurking in thew swamp has drawn a few doubters over the years, So don't take our word for it. Go see for yourself. There are several swamp tours of the area
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Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana
And while we will always recommend a reliable guide to lead the way, you just might think twice before following any creepy light blue light zipping through the trees along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, especially if you are a would-be treasure hunter seeking lost pirate gold.
Lake Pontchartrain is an estuary located north of New Orleans. Its brackish water can hasten the storm surge of any hurricane coming inland from the Gulf Of Mexico. As the first water route to New Orleans, it has a bewitching history of missionaries, soldiers, and pirates.
Pirate legend tells of a haunting tale of before the buccaneers would bury their booty, they would kill a member of their crew and toss his body into the hole with the treasure. His spirit doomed to guard the chest would take on the form of an ethereal orb of light known as a fifolet.
Now it was said, in the dead of night along the lake, two men witnessed the ball of blue flame and became mesmerized by it, knowing it would lead them to fabled treasure riches. They frantically chased the light till it stopped over the site and sank into the ground.
Furiously the two men began to dig until they uncovered a treasure chest. Greed overcame one of them as he hit the other head with his shovel monetarily knocking him out until he awoke to the screams of his assailant and treasure being sucked into the darkness of the swamp.
Fearing the same fate he ran away from the sinister spot only to return in the daylight where he found no trace of his partner or the treasure and found only undisturbed earth to mark the nightmarish tomb. Getting Scared?
Deer Island, Mississippi
Just as when Ichabod Crane encountered the Headless Horsemen, if you paddle to Deer Island right off the coast of Biloxi, you might just meet the Headless Skeleton. According to the local folklore, the pirate captain used his cutlass to sliced off the head of one of his crew and left his body behind to guard the buried treasure
As we all know, dead men tell no tales, but fishermen still do. The story goes back to the 1920s, two fishermen were exploring Deer Island when they heard rustling in the bushes, which they assumed was wild hogs. To their surprise, they came face to...well a terrifying headless skeleton ghost that chased them back to their boat. It seems ghost don't cross bridges or know how to swim.
Lake Worth, Texas
Texas is known for its tall tales. I'm sure that why one of the weirdest tales you'll ever hear comes from the Lone Star State. The legend of the Lake Worth creature has been told and retold since causing a widespread hysteria near Fort Worth in 1969.
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The Goatman
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A banner newspaper headline screamed “Fish Man-Goat Terrifies Couples Parked at Lake Worth” as witnesses claim to see a foul-smelling seven-foot-tall a half-man, half-goat type creature covered with both fur and slimy scales. Reports of hair-raising attacks followed as folks came forward to tell their story of their miraculous escape from the beast by the lake. One man saved himself by throwing leftover chicken at the attacking beast.
The paranoia was fueled even more after newspapers published fuzzy photos of the man-sized "white furball" they called The Goatman," and reports of dead sheep and blood and tracks too big for a man.
The alarm went out went. Texas has its Big Foot monster lurking on the shoreline. The quick draw Texans loaded up their rifles, shotguns, and six-shooters and headed to the lake to hunt the creature dead or alive. According to Dallas Morning News, the posse was at a clearing known for dumping near the lake, "When the monster made another appearance. It appeared on a cliff, looked angry, and threw a tire 500 feet. Everyone, including a group of sheriff deputies, ran away in fear."
The mystery of the "Goatman" was never solved. Real or imagined, even Over 50 years later, the Lake Worth Monster is still feared by many. And as the tale continues to be told and retold around Texas campfires, the legend of the Goatman only grows bigger.
Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Minnesota
The Great Lakes has always a destination for tourism. It is out of this world for picturesque lake views of scenic coastlines and beautiful beaches. And maybe that's why it gets lake visitors that are not of this world. The two lakes have been the backdrop of many well-documented UFO sightings.
In 1953 over Lake Superior, the U.S. Air Defense Command noticed a blip on the radar where it should not have been. It was an unidentified flying object. An Air Force jet with two crew members was sent out to intercept it. On radar, Ground Control tracked the fighter jet and the UFO as two "blips" on the screen until they converge. Something had happened. And then the first radar blip UFO, return quickly veered off and vanished. Attempts were made to contact the fighter jet without success. The subsequent search and rescue operation failed to find a trace of the plane or the pilots.
The Air Force tried the usual explanation for the disappearance, while others speculated that the jet had crashed into the UFO’s protective beam or beamed them aboard their spacecraft. To this day, it's one of Great Lakes' great mysteries.
But the so-called close encounters did stop there. In Duluth, Minn, in 1965, several eyewitnesses reported seeing a flying saucer over Lake Superior. The flashing object was reported at traveling in an erratic path and at high before disappearing in a few seconds. While back on Lake Michigan on March 8, 1994, 911 calls flooded dispatchers with reports of eerie lights filled the sky along nearly 200 miles of lake's shoreline as hundreds of people claimed to have seen the UFOs. Witnesses describe four lights in the sky that looked like "full moons hovering in the sky before vanishing. While the sighting of UFOs continues to occur to this day, that appearance of floating lights was one of the largest UFO sightings in Michigan history remains a mystery.
Lake Many Point, Minnesota
For years, scary tales around the campfire at Many Point Scout Camp have spooked many a young scout after sundown. Like many spine chilling stories, it's only when glowing embers are at their last that the legend is told. As one of those scouts, my son Taylor Carlson recalled this account from a campfire long ago.
The story begins with how glaciers formed Lake Agassiz and how that formed the land of Minnesota's lakes. In an Ojibwe legend. A young man was hunting a bear. They fight and both of them die in a river. Their blood mixes and flows back into the man and he awakens as a monstrous Yeti.
The Ojibwe people who had settled along "the lake with many points, " warned French fur traders and lumberjacks. They told them to stay away from the bog on the southeast shore. But, nobody listens, and people died.
In 1946, Wint Hartman opens a summer camp on the shores of the lake. It was said that in those early years, a brave boy and his two nervous friends went on a camp out on a hill near the bog while trying to earn the camping merit badge. They are never seen again. All that was found was a ransacked campsite. It's was ruled as a bear attack, but the Ojibwe knew better and claimed it's was the yeti.
In 1971, Daniel Kaiser is a popular camp commissioner at the camp. He's a beloved big man and certainly not afraid of any stories about a yeti. He builds Flintlock Lodge across the road from the bog.
It was on a cool night in June when Daniel tells jokes and stories at a campfire Ten Chief's Camp. As he leaves, he forgets his flashlight and walks alone in the dark woods back to Flintlock Lodge.
It was before sunrise when Daniel finally bursts into Flintlock Lodge in a terrified panic. The alarmed staff awake and discover him craving into a piece of leather a picture of the yeti. White with fear Daniel, passes out and sleeps for 3 days. He then quits the job and is never seen again.
Meanwhile, the leather picture is framed and hangs in Flintlock Lodge until it is lost in 1995 after a violent windstorm destroys the old lodge.
Sleep well, little campers.
Walgren Lake, Nebraska
In prehistoric days, in what now is Nebraska, there was an inland sea and filled to the brim with scary creatures from the deep. However, today you wouldn't think of finding any ocean creatures outside of fossils anywhere for a state known for its Great Plains. But you would be wrong. In Nebraska's Walgren Lake, stories have been told about the serpentine sea monster that has been circulating the lake for nearly 100 years.
Originally called Alkali Lake, Walgren Lake is a small lake located near the town of Hay Springs. As the story goes, the first sighting of the lake monster happened in 1921. Folks described a creature that was dull grey or brown and similar to an alligator, but much larger and heavier with a horn between its eyes and nostrils.
“There is something there, and very large too,” an eyewitness told the local paper. “Or it could not splash the water as it did.”
In 1923 the Giant fish story only grew, when eyewitnesses reported seeing a 40 feet long single-horned alligator-esque creature in the lake. They said it let out a “dreadful roar” from the water and began to devour anything in its path with its razor-sharp teeth, and it also had an atrocious smell.
Sightings continued throughout the 1920s with second-hand reports of claims of seeing the monster nearby ranchers reporting the loss of many livestock to the beast. The last sighting of the beast was reported in 1885, and it hasn’t been seen since. Unless you count, being celebrated in the community during annual parades.
Rogue River, Oregon
When it comes to UFOs, the Pacific Northwest includes some of the most famous reported sightings in United States history. One of the most famous reports of a UFO happened in McMinnville in 1950. However, almost a year before that sighting, 5 fishermen near the mouth of the Rogue River on Oregon’s Southern Coast near Gold Beach witnessed an object similar to the one in the McMinnville case.
They described it as a shiny plate-shaped object, shaped like a pancake about a mile away and hovering at 5,000 feet. Like the flying saucers from science fiction, it had
no wings, no antenna, no lights, no propellers, and no jet engines.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations looked into the sighting, and subsequent independent investigations report it as a UFO. Now that is a fish story.
Avocado Lake, California
Avocado Lake Park, located about 23 miles east of Fresno, California, is a great place to enjoy family time paddling and picnicking. Don't believe us? Just ask any member of the local Bigfoot family living near the northern California lake?
Now spotting Bigfoot here and there in Northern California is nothing new. The first report of the hairy, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature was over 60 years ago. But, according to a local farmer near the lake, he said he saw a family of five or six Bigfoot running on his ranch in the middle of the night in 2017.
“One of them, which was extremely tall, had a pig over its shoulder," he told the local media about the incident.
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Avacado Lake
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Sightings are not that uncommon near the lake. A woman who said her two sons saw a Bigfoot in their orchard and one from a man who saw five creatures in the same orchard. However, the most frightening account came from 2014 when a man described what felt like 'a pair of hairy arms wrap around both of my legs and started to pull me under' Fighting to getaway the man the escaped the disturbing attack like a....hmmm, a greased pig.
So are you a believer or skeptic? Are there really ghostly spirits, flying saucers, and terrifying monsters lurking along the shoreline? Or are they just some invented imaginary anecdotes told to try to scare us. That's up for you to decide when you paddle these spooky places for yourself. Go ahead. But don't say we didn't warn you. Happy Halloween!
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