Raystown Ray and Snoligosters

 Raystown Ray

For decades there have been many sightings of a creature in Pennsylvania Huntingdon County’s Raystown Lake. Old photos show large shadowy figures just below the surface, boaters describing sudden water turbulence and strange appearances of a large water creature, Raystown Ray.

 

The first known photograph of Raystown Ray. Photographed by a local fisherman looking over the lake from the Huntingdon Co.

“We’ve known it’s been in there a while now,” admitted Managing Director of Raystown Lake Dwight Beall when he was asked his thoughts on this astonishing discovery. “It’s a private creature, but it comes out around this time of year (April). Call it Raystown’s own Punxatawny Phil.”

 

 

In 2006, when asked his professional opinion, Jeff Krause, Wildlife Biologist at Raystown Lake submitted the following statement in writing: “I believe it must be a vegetarian. We have not seen any evidence of this animal taking fish, geese, otters, or ducks. So I would suggest that our swimmers and boaters are very safe. It appears this animal’s habits are similar to Manatees, which are completely herbivorous and gentle. The increase of weed beds around the lake is probably providing more food in the shallows for herbivores and that would increase sightings.” Krause concluded

 

Sources: Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau

 

[Other sources DO state plainly that such creatures in other locations eat fishes,

otters, geese and ducks, and they are seen swallowing them-DD]

Raystown Lake is a reservoir but that only means that the creature was living in the river and got cut off: There does not need to be an ancient lake with a breeding population of monsters stuck in there for thousands of years, as many people seem to assume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raystown_Lake

 

 

One other place there are repeated reports of Plesiosaurian River Monsters is in the Potomac River, and there are even some photographs (of probable tree-trunks and the usual humps travelling along at speed and leaving a wake), Below is a mock-up made to accompany a newspaper article on the subject: Faked but then it does show the idea of what was being reported (and the newspaper was not taking this seriously) However it DOES seem that both river monsters (and probably in other rivers in the area) are only "Chessie" gone upstream, and when "Chessie" was neither an eel nor a manatee. The map above shows drainage into Chesapeake Bay and thus "Chessie"could be possibly found in any of the bodies of water connected up to the bay.

 

 

 It seems that further back in history the name used for such creatures was "Snallygasters" or "Snollygasters" which it seems originally referred to something like the Jersey Devil but was understood to be dragonlike and so the name was used in the sense of "Monster" (Generic) and referring to Devil Bats, Thunderbirds and other creatures, but also to dragon-like water monsters as well. The name was originally German meaning "Fast Ghost" and hence appropriate for a flying creature. (Other names for aquatic monsters in the area include Haneturtle (note reference to having a turtle-shaped body), Hoopinflinder ("String-of-buoys"), and Lun-the last being suspiciously like the Chinese word for Dragon, Lung. The descriptions given for these creatures both in recent reports and in tradition in general sound much the same as the Altamaha-Has further South.
 I am not saying we need to stop saying "Chessie" and revert to "Snolligaster" but I am suggesting that older historical sightings can sometimes be found under that name.

 

 "Fearsome Critter"(Tall Tale) version is below

In the case of the Snoligoster at the bottom, the "Long spike on the back" seems to be another way of describing the "Periscope"sort of sighting. The three-part tail flaps are rarely recorded in reports but in ancient depictions seem to mean a plesiosaur's sort of two rear flippers and the tail (A single cloaca is also commonly depicted at the juncture in bestiaries and such. This also occurs in some Snollygaster depictions) A  serious composite of Snolligoster reports and traditions as of about 1900-1910 would show something like a shortened version of Oudemans' Sea serpent, in the realm of 30-60 feet long and in fact Oudemans does included some Inland/estuarine reports in the Carolinas that should fall under that description (Oudemans in general disbelieved in inland/freshwater sightings)

Snallygaster can be used to mean creatures in the hairy humanoid category, but there is actually a special separate name for those

"Chessie" (The Manatee) Returns

"Chessie" is distinguished by several field marks, notably including prominent scars on his back. Some of the sightings supposedly of the same manatee further north failed to show the same markings and were later declared NOT to be "Chessie."








"Chessie" at home in Florida

Famous Manatee Sighted in Chesapeake Bay After Long Absence

7/15/2011

Gainesville, Fla. – A manatee spotted this week in Calvert County, Maryland is the same one that first made waves 17 years ago when he appeared in Chesapeake Bay just before the onset of winter and later had to be rescued.

Named "Chessie," the manatee's identity was verified by U.S. Geological Survey biologist Cathy Beck, who used photos taken July 12 and matched them with Chessie's photographic record in a USGS manatee database. Chessie;s tell-tale markings include a long, gray scar on his left side.

USGS scientists regularly document manatee sightings to analyze life histories of individuals as part of an ongoing effort to estimate adult survival rates of the endangered Florida manatee. Yet, biologists were surprised to find it was Chessie, a well-known manatee who has not been seen for about 10 years. The last time USGS researchers confirmed a sighting of Chessie was after he swam through Great Bridge Locks in Virginia on August 30, 2001.

By then, Chessie was already well known. After being found in the Kent Narrows area of the Chesapeake Bay in the fall of 1994, researchers became concerned about how he would fare in the oncoming winter. Manatees suffer negative health effects when they endure water temperatures below 68 degrees for any length of time. With water temperatures dropping in the bay, the Marine Animal Rescue Program at the National Aquarium worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Seaworld Orlando, and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to rescue Chessie. He was cared for at the aquarium for several days before being successfully flown back to Florida and released.

The current sighting is not driving any plans to rescue Chessie, as the water is still warm and manatees typically work their way back down the eastern seaboard to Florida on their own when cooler weather sets in.

Scientists are not sure whether Chessie visits the Chesapeake Bay every year. After Chessie's 1994 rescue, USGS tagged him and found that he did migrate back to Chesapeake Bay the following spring. Much of what scientists know about manatee migration comes from studies that use radio and satellite tags to reveal key facts about manatees' habitat needs, such as how they use seagrasses and winter refuges.

In general, scientists believe manatee migration from Florida to the Chesapeake Bay may not be unusual, and in fact Chessie was named after [pre-existing]legendary sightings of a "sea monster" in the Chesapeake Bay throughout the twentieth century.

Chessie was spotted and identified this year due to the help of two bystanders who took pictures of him and contacted Jennifer Dittmar, the National Aquarium's Coordinator for the Northeast Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Dittmar forwarded Beck photos of the manatees head and back.

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2855

The manatee "Chessie" is obviously NOT the same as the tubular twenty-foor-long, horizontally-undulating sea creature frequently seen and sometimes filmed in Chesapeake Bay. It is as if a common seal which got into Loch Ness and stayed for half a year and got called by the name "Nessie" for it.












Come to think of it, THAT has happened, too!
Best Wishes, Dale D.

Cressie and Chessie, Giant Eels.of the (US) East Coast

Chessie, The Chesapeake Bay Monster

Ever since this country was young, a strange creature has been sighted in the Chesapeake Bay. This creature, unofficially known as Chessie, is said to be a dark tubular or snake-like animal averaging 20- 30 feet long and capable of swimming up to 10 MPH. Chessie is known to be sometimes curious of nearby humans and is not afraid by those who work and live on the Bay, and who might therefore chance upon it. The creature is still seen intermittently. concentrations of sightings occur in May through September most likely because that is when the Bay is most populated with boaters and swimmers. Chessie has been sighted most often are Love Point at Kent Island, the mouth of the Potomac, and the Eastern Bay.

Chessie was by all acounts not your typical Longnecked, Humpbacked, Plesiosaur-shaped sea monsters. Instead, Chessie seemed to be truly serpentine and travelled along in a serpentine motion, in broad horizontal sine-curves or closer=knit sets of squiggles.

In May of 1982, the first hard evidence of Chessie's existence arrived. While at their Kent Island home, the Frew family, along with friends, believed they spotted Chessie and they made a videotape. Mr. Frew and his wife were looking out at the bay when they noticed a large snake-like creature. Frew and his wife spotted the creature in shallow, clear water about 200 yards from the house. The Frews grabbed their camera and started recording. That video tape was later analyzed by people at the Smithsonian. It was determined that the creature taped was a living animal. Frew video taped the creature as it swam toward a group of swimmers. It dove beneath the swimmers and reappeared on the other side of them. The creature they saw was about 25-30 feet long, 1-2 feet in diameter, dark brown with aa undulating back. In 1978, a retired CIA employee, Donald Kyker, also reported seeing Chessie and 3 others about 75 yards off shore. His neighbors, the Smoots', also witness the creatures. They gave descriptions of a 30 ft, sleek, dark gray creature swimming about 7-8 miles per hour.

In the summer of 1982, the Smithsonian had a minisymposium to determine if the videotape was indeed evidence of Chessie's existence. Along with the video, there was a photograph taken by a woman who was previously afraid to bring it to public attention. The officials concluded that the object was definitely alive, but they did not conclude what it was. The creature in the Bay was left Unidentified.

Although a manatee was discovered to frequent Chesapeake bay and frequently migrated to and from it, the descriptions of the manatee do not match the creature and there is virtually no chance that the manatee is responsible for any of the sightings, still photos or video footage.




Showing a frame of he Frew video.










[On the other hand, every now and then a sighting in the more typical Plesiosaur mode also pops up. At the beginning of the Wikipedia's entry on Chessie, it states:
"Chessie is a legendary sea monster said to live in the midst of the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years there have been many alleged sightings of a serpent-like creature with flippers as part of its body. According to Matt Lake in Weird Maryland, two perch fishermen, Francis Klarrman and Edward J. Ward, in 1943 spotted something in the water near Baltimore.
“This thing was about 75 yards (69 m) away, at right angles from our boat. At first it looked like something floating on the water. It was black and the part of it that was out of the water seemed about 12 feet (3.7 m) long. It has a head about as big as a football and shaped somewhat like a horse’s head. It turned its head around several times—almost all the way around.”[1]
(-After which the Wikipedia emphasises a snakelike creature swimming by horizontal undulations-DD )
[1.^ a b Lake, Matt: Weird Maryland, page 68. Sterling Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1402739060.]

Sources: Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chessie_(sea_monster)

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/05/chessie-monster-of-chesapeake-bay.html

http://www.gettysburgghosts.net/chessie.htm

The latter including an added photo page, "See what we came across during a trip to the Potomac area"-
http://www.gettysburgghosts.net/chessiemonster.htm

-Which look as if there might be something akin to the Frew video monster hiding just below the surface in several shots.


Shadowlands SS Page Excerpts:
"Cressie" Sighted in Newfoundland

Crescent Lake, located 400 kilometers west of St. John's, Newfoundland, appears to have its own version of the Loch Ness Monster. Sightings of "Cressie" have taken place several times over the last 50 years. No Cressie
sightings were reported in 2002, leading residents to wonder if perhaps the animal had died. But Cressie, described by witnesses as being a "snake-like creature with a fish-like head", resurfaced in the summer of 2003.

Source: CBC News

More 'Cressie' sightings in Newfoundland
The alleged sighting of a mysterious creature has reignited talk of whether Newfoundland's Crescent Lake has its own version of the Loch Ness Monster.
Reports of "Cressie" sightings in the lake near Roberts Arm – about 400 kilometres northwest of St. John's on Notre Dame Bay – go back over half a century.

But there were none last year, which led some residents to think Cressie was dead.

Vivian Short of Roberts Arm was one of those who used to think there was no Cressie – until she rounded a corner while driving with a friend.

"I was just a screamin', 'We saw Cressie, we saw Cressie!' Excited, eh," she said.

She described a snake-like creature with a fish-like head.

"Well, I said to my friend, 'Oh my that's big. That could eat four or five people if they were swimming, like.'"

Ada Rowsell, the town's clerk, said Short's wasn't the only reported sighting of Cressie lately.

"I've had several reports of sightings. People sighting some kind of a huge monster or sea serpent or some kind of a fish."

Some observers wonder whether there really is a Cressie, or if it's a gimmick to boost tourism.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/08/01/cressie_nfld030801.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cressie
http://americanmonsters.com/site/2010/02/cressie-newfoundland/

CRESSIE: (NEWFOUNDLAND)
04 February 2010





These large, eel-like creatures are notorious for attacking divers during search and rescue operations… and have even been credited with assailing their victims through thick sheets of winter ice.
Central Newfoundland’s Crescent Lake harbors a quaint fishing town – known as Robert’s Arm – along its shore, and a big secret in its depths. Known to the locals as “Cressie”, this animal has been reported as being eel-like in appearance and averaging between 5 and 15-feet in length [sometimes up to 25 feet-DD].

Chessie mock-ups, the last is a mock-up of Chessie's head representing it as an eel-like creature.

The first reports of this mysterious lake dweller can be traced back to pre-colonial Native American legends, which warned of the Woodum Haoot (Pond Devil) or Haoot Tuwedyee (Swimming Demon), both of which purportedly dwelled in the lake. Since the early 1900′s there have been numerous reports of encounters with this creature (or creatures) and not all of them have been pleasant.

One of the more recent accounts concerns the underwater search for the corpse of a downed pilot, who had crashed his plane into the depths of Crescent Lake in the mid-1980′s. The scuba divers, who braved the black depths of the lake in the hopes of finding the pilot’s corpse, found themselves surrounded by a vicious school of gigantic eels (described as being as thick as a man’s thigh) who proceeded to attack the them with voracious intensity. The divers retreated to the surface posthaste, neither of the divers was severely wounded, but both were visibly shaken by the event.

Another bizarre phenomenon which has been associated with creatures in Crescent Lake, involves mysterious holes which have been known to appear in the ice sheet which covers the water during the brutal, Newfoundland winters. Often mistaken (due to their size) as the results of tragic snowmobile accidents, divers who have mounted exploratory expeditions beneath the ice in order to ascertain the cause of the holes, rarely find any man-made objects to account for the ice rifts. This has, of course, led some to speculate that these tremendous breaks in the ice are not caused by something falling in, but, rather, by something bursting out.

On the afternoon of July 9, 1991, at approximately 12:00 PM a gigantic, eel-like entity was seen on the lake by retired school teacher and local newspaper correspondent, Fred Parsons. Parsons claimed to have seen a shadowy, 20-foot long, serpentine creature undulating across the surface of the lake.

Just two months later on September 5th, 1991, at about 4:30pm, Robert’s Arm native Pierce Rideout, was driving his pickup truck when he noticed a commotion on the surface of Crescent Lake. He watched a black, slow moving object (approximately 15-feet in length) drop below the surface and rise again: a black, some 500-feet beyond the shore.

Ironically, Rideout admitted that just a few days before his sighting he had openly ridiculed the idea of a “monster” in Crescent Lake, but that his attitude had changed since his not-so close encounter.

In July of 2000, Richard Goudie and Robbie Watkins were two of a group of people who saw Cressie while landscaping on the Hazelnut Hiking and Adventure Trail and as recently as August 14, 2003, the CBC published a report about a woman named Vivian Short who claimed to have seen a serpentine animal with a fish like head, which she believed could easily have been capable of devouring 4 or 5 swimmers.

On September 17, 2008 History Channel’s Monster Quest broadcast an episode entitled “Lake Monsters of the North,” which focused on the legends of the monster eels and in 2010, Robert’s Arm intends to revolve their 10-day (July 22 to 31) “Come home, spot Cressie, visit family and friends” celebration around the beast. According to Aubrey Golding, chair of the come home year committee:

“We have a unique theme for our come home year; one that centers around our Cressie. A lot of our events will also center around the lake and its monster, like a trail day at Hazelnut Hiking and Adventure Trail.”

Whatever it is that lurks beneath the waves in Crescent Lake — be it giant carnivorous eels or creatures as yet unknown — there can be no doubt that it is large, it is and vicious, and it remains one of the most credible North American lake cryptids.



Nova Scotia Sea Monster By Pristichampsus


"Sea Monster" Sighting Reported by Nova Scotia Fisherman
[Shadowlands SS Page]

In the early summer of 2003, Wallace Cartwright was headed out to sea to check his lobster traps. The native of Alder Point, Cape Breton County, saw what he thought was a big log in the water. The "log" had a head similar to
a sea turtle with a brown, snake-like body. It was approximately eight metres long, brown with smooth skin. The creature submerged and surfaced again two minutes later.

Cartwright and his assistant observed the animal for 45 minutes as it surfaced several more times. Mr. Cartwright, who has been a fisherman for 30 years, stated that what he had seen was unlike anything he had ever encountered before.

Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology at Halifax's Natural History Museum, is of the opinion that what Mr. Cartwright observed was an oarfish....
Both submitted by "Curlyjoe"
http://theshadowlands.net/serpent.htm

Lake Utopia ["Old Ned"]

Native american legends speak of a vicious serpent with a huge mouth and teeth that inhabits Lake Utopia in New Brunswick, Canada. The serpent has been known to break holes through the surface of the frozen lake and snap at people through them. There have been numerous sightings over the last 100 years. In 1982 the creature was observed by Sherman Hart, who saw the creature surface the and then submerge again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Utopia

Lake monster

Local legend has it that the Lake is inhabited by a sea monster known as the Lake Utopia Lake Monster. The story goes that long ago two Maliseet Natives were canoeing on the lake when suddenly the monster appeared and chased them from one end to the other. Since the arrival of Europeans to the area in the late 18th century, the story has continued, with new sightings being reported every three-five years.

As noted in research by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, the locals have called this cryptid "Old Ned." It has a decidedly long and bulky cetacean [or eel-like] appearance, and may be representative of an unknown group of animals that travel back and forth between Lake Utopia and the Atlantic Ocean in routine cycles related to breeding and feeding.

Sightings: 1867 - Sawmill workers claim to see something 30 feet (9.1 m) long and 10 feet (3.0 m) wide thrashing in the lake. Similar reports the following days. 1868 - A Saint Croix Courier reporter says he and one other witness saw the monster. 1872 - Natives describe a terrifying monster with a large head and bloody jaws following their canoes. 1891 - William Francis Ganong records in his notebook a description of a monster provided by a lumberman who claimed to have seen it 20 years prior. "It was dark red in colour, the part showing above the water was 20 feet long and as big around as a small hogshead; it was much like a large eel." 1969 - The Saint John Evening Times Globe reports on an interview with Mrs. Fred McKillop, who said she saw a huge creature 18 years earlier. "It looked like a huge black rock... It moved up and down the lake, boiling and churning the water, making great waves." 1982 - Sherman Hatt says he and his family saw a large creature that looked like a submarine with spray coming from both sides and a hump out of the water about 10 feet (3.0 m) long. 1996 - Roger and Lois Wilcox were canoeing on the lake when they saw ripples break the placid surface 100 metres away from them. It was heading toward Cannonball Island, a common monster sighting spot. Wilcox reports the monster as being 40 to 50 feet (15 m) long, undulating upward, not sideways. [Unfortunately this describes the typical standing wave action in a wake, it is not determinative of anything. At this location, the typical pattern is for creatures to undulaste laterally. There is a complication in that if one of these creatures scoots along at the surface, it can ALSO produce the same "String-of-buoys" effect!-DD]

Reference-The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep with Patrick Huyghe (NY: Tarcher-Penguin, 2003

Recent article from CFZ Canada is at:
http://cfz-canada.blogspot.com/2011/06/lake-utopia-monster.html