Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

Significant sightings: In 1968, archaeologist
Pino Turolla glimpsed two apelike creatures in
the Venezuelan jungle.
In 1997, British travel writer Simon Chapman
searched for the Mono rey of northern Bolivia
but found no compelling evidence. He
heard rumors that a pelt had been purchased by
a foreigner for DNA analysis and that a living
animal had been exhibited at the zoo in Santa
Cruz, Bolivia.
Sources: Pedro de Cieza de León, The Travels
of Pedro de Cieza de Leon, A.D. 1532–50
[1553], Hakluyt Society Works, vol. 33, p.
339 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1864); Bernard
Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown
Animals (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958),
pp. 307–308, 328; Pino Turolla, Beyond the
Andes (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), pp.
123–124, 132–136, 253–254, 287–289, 293;
Michael T. Shoemaker, “The Mystery of the
Mono Grande,” Strange Magazine, no. 7 (April
1991): 2–5, 56–60; Simon Chapman, The
Monster of the Madidi: Searching for the Giant
Ape of the Bolivian Jungle (London: Aurum,
2001).
Montana Nessie
Freshwater Monster of Montana.
Etymology: After Scotland’s Nessie.
Variant name: Flattie.
Physical description: Apparently, two types of
animal are involved. Large animal—Eel-shaped.
Length, 20–40 feet. Brown to bluish-black.
Head like a snake’s. Distinctive, steel-black eyes.
Dorsal fin sometimes reported. Small animal—
Like a large fish. Length, 6–10 feet.
Behavior: Swims on the surface with vertical
undulations. Often seen cavorting in the water,
which could be either playfulness or feeding behavior.
Distribution: Flathead Lake, Montana.
Significant sightings: In 1889, Capt. James C.
Kerr, piloting the steamboat U.S. Grant, noticed
a whalelike object. Thinking it to be an approaching
boat, he kept an eye on it but soon realized
the object was an animal 20 feet long. His
passengers became frightened, and one guntoting
man pulled out his rifle and shot at it. He
352 MONTANA NESSIE
missed, and the creature submerged.
On May 27, 1937, L. J. Eakins saw what
looked like a large dog swimming down the
Flathead River. It held its head out of the water
and looked at him once as he shouted at it.
H. W. “Buck” Black and his family were returning
to Polson by boat on July 10, 1949,
when they saw a large fish about 150 feet away.
Six feet of its back was showing, but the head
was submerged. Black is convinced it was a 10to
12-foot sturgeon.
Howard Gilbert and his wife were driving
along the eastern shore on June 12, 1955, when
they saw two large fishes, one 8 to 10 feet long,
cavorting in the water. After two minutes, they
submerged, one disappearing and the other
swimming underwater toward the shore.
The E. E. Funke family saw a shiny, black animal
with a dorsal fin swimming toward their
boat dock on Indian Bay on August 19, 1965. It
created a boat-sized wake.
U.S. Army Maj. George Cote and his son
Neal saw a black object, as long as a telephone
pole and twice as thick, surfacing and diving in
Yellow Bay on May 25, 1985. It had a head like
a snake’s and a tail like an eel’s. They saw a similar
animal on July 1, 1987, near Lakeside.
Rich Gaffney and his family watched a
Nessie-like animal surface about 50 yards away
amid a school of fish in Skeeko Bay on July 29,
1993. It had shiny humps and was 15–20 feet
long.
On June 20, 1998, three brothers were wakeboarding
on the lake when they saw three darkgreen
humps in the water ahead. The animal the
humps belonged to was about 30 feet long, with
rough scales. It dropped below the surface and
swam past their boat, leaving a small wake.
Present status: Local investigator Paul Fugleberg
has identified ninety different sightings from
1889 to 1999. The Montana Department of
Fish, Wildlife, and Parks had collected seventyeight
sightings by 1998; 32 percent fit the description
of a large sturgeon, while the other 68
percent describe a snakelike animal with humps.
Possible explanations:
(1) The White sturgeon (Acipenser
transmontanus), though not officially known
from this lake, reaches lengths of 20 feet