Monster in Lough Foyle!
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on April 25th, 2013
R. Johnston brought this to Cryptomundo’s attention:
I live on the other side of the Lough from where this was filmed. I’m not sure what to make of it.R. Johnston
Was shooting in Lough Foyle when this thing went past us. It was massive. Really don’t know what it was. There have been whales in the Lough before so maybe that’s what it was but Matthew was closer than we were and says it was no whale. Looks like we have our own Loch Ness Monster?! Any experts out there ?
We’re still filming so if it shows up again we’ll do our best to get a better shot of it.
Our film’s called ‘Fishing with David Lynch’, which was why I was wearing the suit (a David Lynch costume.)Conall Melarkey
I also found a link to it hear in American siteR. Johnston
R. Johnston even reposted the video to youtube:
This was filmed near to where I live by students out on Lough Foyle. I took it off the web. For years theres been stories about this, and cover-ups saying it was dopey dick a whale! and wrecked german u-boats. My granda always said it was Loch Ness Monster looking for a mate!R. Johnston
What do the Cryptomundians think?
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
looks fake to me, the ripples and movement don`t look right.
Hmmm, David Lynch has said,
“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”
Did you really record a big fish or did you simply catch the glimpse of a big idea?
looked sort of like Gameras back when he’s swimming
@ Sasquatch- HA! That is exactly the thought that I had when I first saw the video!… I can’t watch it with sound but I imagined a bunch of japanese children singing the Gamera theme.
Ikasuzo Gamera, Ikasuzo Gamera, Ikasuzo Gamera!!!
Kidding aside, at first it looks to be mechanically towed or propelled, except that there is a really massive ring of water when it submerges. I dunno, it is impressive whatever we are looking at.
Dressed up like James Bond on a fishing trip?
Interesting.
It appears to be pretty high out of the water initially, but not breaching or diving or rolling. For me, this rules out whale, especially when we do not see any air being expelled from a blowhole. Which is one of the things whales do when they surface.
It also looks very mechanical in the beginning of the clip, almost as if it is being towed. If that is the case, they did a pretty good job at concealing the tow boat’s wake.
It just looks suspiciously odd to me. And usually when I say that, it sends up an orange flag.
The simplest question I have though, is why did not the people in the boat pursue it. I mean, they are already near it, in a boat, with a good working motor and yet no one thinks to pursue it to get a better look. That is just not the behavior one would expect if they saw something unusual in the water. I have been in that position and I did pursue the animal that surfaced and submerged. We put the boat in forward drive and motored towards the direction it was last seen headed for a closer and better identification. In my case, it turned out to be a seal. But these guys just sit there? A bit odd unless you know it is not a real animal. Why pursue a hoax being towed by another boat. If that is the case, their reaction is what I would expect.
I can not discount it completely but my spidey senses are pointing towards hoax.
Let’s keep in mind that we’re living in the days where hoaxing has become easier than it’s ever been before. Remember the eagle snatches baby video that was all done with CGI? That’s the first thing that ran through my mind when I saw this.
I would have to agree that the motion looks more like an inanimate object being pulled through, or propelled though the water than an animated creature swimming.
Around 00:16 or 00:17 it almost looks like a fin or such breaks the surface a little behind the hump as it is submerging, but could just as easily be the wake.
Not sure if a link to an imgur album works, but I pulled a few frames that seem the clearest.
I’d say it was a seal, which are common around Ireland, except that locals should identify anything common in these waters and these folks couldn’t say what it was. Therefore it was uncommon in these waters. Sea turtle maybe? They can get up a pretty good rate of speed when they want to and would have the observed rigid appearance.
Yes, what is above the water almost looks like a hard shell or some thing…don’t know if it’s back a head or what…
Looks like some sort of ridge on it–whatever it is, it is big. I’d be curious to see if they found out who the other guy was in the boat on the other side of it. He was closer and may have gotten a better look at it.
While I’m excited, the problem with water footage is that:
A) you only get a real thin slice of whatever it is that’s going through the water,
B) water tends to distort images (there were dark spots visible though whether that was a play of the light or something else it’s almost impossible to tell), and
C) the time you get to really look at something is usually little more than a few seconds as in this.
I’ll keep following this…
Boy, I’m not at all knowledgeable about whales but it sure seems too “vertical” to be a whale. Look at the first few frames– it’s seems, to my uneducated eye, unlike any whale I’ve seen. Gamera indeed. Maybe it’s fake, but I’ll tentatively say I’m impressed with this one.
Impressive, I wish some footage like this had turned up at Loch Ness! The film needs some expert eyes cast over it.
there didnt look to be any ‘swimming’ motion…. if a creature is moving, there MUST be motion to the body…. left to right or up and down…. fact there was none of either, to me, was a bit odd… looked as if it was getting towed or something….
While passive-aggressively avoiding work this morning, I thought I would look at this again.
Two things impress me that I did not notice yesterday. When the object is first shown, the wake behind it is very short. It looks as if it had just started from a standstill.
The second thing that I notice is that it starts from the highest level and submerges at an even rate that corresponds with travel, then submerges (apparently) straight down.
When you combine these two observations with the straight course of travel that was apparent from yestrday’s viewing, it might indicate a device using compressed air or gas as a form of bouyancy when starting, a manner of propulsion when traveling, and a mechanism for submerging once the gas is spent.
Other than that, one might check the tourist trades for that area to see if mini-subs are in operation, and assume someone has attached a huge alligator head (or a giant Gorn head from Star Trek) to one.
Yes, it looks like the object is pushing through the water, and I don’t see anything behind or around it to suggest fins or anything else propelling it.
As for the whale theory, the “hump” looks too pronounced without any other movement or change in shape to be a whale back–that and the bumpy hide. I’ve been looking at pictures of sturgeon, because it looked like some sort of ridge on top, but this doesn’t look like any part of a sturgeon–
What is visible looks to be about a third the size of the boat in the background.
While interesting, I did notice that while going frame by frame, the wake of the object seems to start out of nowhere in the very beginning. It looks as if the thing was either just sitting there and then pulled or is some sort of CGI effect put in later. Of course I could be totally wrong.
All sea creatures are built and designed for moving through the water. Look at the backs and bodies of any fish, whale, even squid and octopi–they’re all steamlined and this thing is not streamlined–it still reminds me of a turrle shell–or Gamera:).
I considered a tree stump, because whatever is sticking out looks misshapen. However, it’s moving too fast for it to just be a log–even with an undercurrent–it’s pushing a lot of water.
I considered a complete photoshop of the whole thing, but in looking at it, the object looks like it fits in with the surrounding water and with the camera going in and out of focus, I don’t think it looks fabricated.
I’m really itching to get more out of those guys, and descriptions of what they might have seen around it or in the water under the surface.
Viral marketing at it’s finest.
Perhaps R. Johnston can do a little digging for us–am curious to know where at on the lough it was filmed in relation to the rest of the body of water.
Also would like accounts from the three witnesses–whether they indeed saw anything underneath the water, what, and any other details.
Were there any more signs after it disappeared? I doubt it only because they probably would have filmed it if it had reappeared.
Unless it was an elaborate set up–
Better qualified people than me have viewed the footgage and seem to agree its a hoax. A towed object. Brings back fond memories of the 1997 Lake Van Monster footage and that made the CBS evening news! Also a towed object. Welcome break from squatchblots though.
This thing whatever it was, seems to be going extremely fast. Far too fast to be a turtle. In fact, I thought maybe it was a sea lion or giant seal but even if one of those it seems to be zooming along too fast. Not sure what this was, but to me it appeared to have hair or fur and the color of a mammal.
That is clearly a large but normal turtle. If I had to guess, I would submit that it was a loggerhead, which is a large turtle with a bumpy shell that is native to the region.
That is clearly a large but normal turtle. If I had to guess, I would submit that it was a loggerhead, which is a large turtle with a bumpy shell that is native to the region.
This is a hoax. No swimming animal moves through the water without some sort of movement, either side to side or up and down. No tail action, no fins/flippers action. The wake starts just as the object is moving. There would be a lot of water displacement if something that size where actually swimming by. Go look at whales swimming or turtles swimming for that matter.
Remember Lough Foyle is large but very shallow…an average depth of 5 meters or less.
A large animal in shallow water would make a great disturbance going that fast.
I thought turtle at first, but if that had been true, we’d have seen some indication of the head. Loggerheads are, again, streamlined for cutting through the water and their shell isn’t that humped. I do see the ridge though– I was looking at sturgeon because of that, but once again, sturgeon, while bony, are longer and their backs don’t look like that.
Second, if the bulk of a turtle’s shell was out of the water, we’d see some sort of disturbance on the sides from the flippers propelling it.
If it’s a hoax, then someone off camera is dragging the whatever, and they’re keeping a tow line submerged to keep from announcing the ruse. They’re also pulling it at a pretty good clip. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but it’s also possible it’s a real critter.
I’m not making a judgement until I get some more answers.
You can roughly guesstimate its speed. If the boat is around 7.6 meters in length, it covers the same length in about 3 to 3.5 seconds. That is about 8 kph, which is within a leatherback’s ability, they’ve been clocked upwards to 35 kph, but usually average 6 kph. Even using different boat lengths and times, from a length of 4.5 meters to 9 meters, and times of 2 to 3.5 seconds, the speed range is 5 to 17 kph.
Ironically the largest leatherback specimen was found on a beach at Wales, and was over 3 meters total length and weighed just over 900 kgs.
That being said, I think it is odd that the front flippers are not seen, particularly at the start where it appears to be quite high in the water, as turtles do raise them fairly high with each stroke. The ‘shell’ doesn’t have the appearance of a leatherback either, which has five dorsal ridges that run the length of the shell, whereas in the video it has a lumpy look to it. Most aquatic creatures do not spend a great deal of time swimming at the surface as the turbulence created causes more drag than remaining submerged.
I pulled some stills from the video, imgur album.
Two videos that show leatherbacks at the surface, but not at any speed. But does show how the shell may look at the surface.
SeaTurtleRestoration
BlueOceanWhaleWatch
Interested in hearing more information about it.
If you want to view it in slow motion, go to keepvid(dot)com, use it to download the video, and then play the video with your computer’s media player, setting your media player on slow-motion.
ROFLMAO!
a TURTLE?!
really?
what kinda drugs are you guys on?
turtles move SLOW… .that thing was hauling butt… and a turtle that big? you think it’s going to move fast?
cmon man…. thats gotta be the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while…
and last time i checked… turtles have 4 flippers… they swim….. meaning there’s a flapping action…. (i.e. they slow down and then speed up as they flap)…. this has neither.
I swear… some of the comments here are absolutely hysterical….
If you google ‘Lough Foyle monster’, you’ll find there have been stories in the past about creatures in the Lough. However; each and every one of these instances turned out to be an April Fool’s joke. It seems to be a bit of a running gag over there.
I do think the fact that one of the students (another hint that this is a prank) is dressed like David Lynch makes the footage more believable. They’ve been explaining over and over again on their Youtube channel that he was dressed like that because they were shooting a student film called ‘fishing with David Lynch’. If they were just there to shoot this hoax they wouldn’t have bothered to dress him up like that. It would have saved them a lot of explaining.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if this footage turns out to actually be part of their student film and they released the clip to have a bit of fun with the unsuspecting public. 😉
I’ve been watching the footage and it at least appears that the object slows slightly as it reaches the other boat. Not sure what that means, but I was watching to see if it looked like something being dragged, and then speed backed off to let it slowly submerge. I couldn’t decide anything concrete.
I did contemplate what if the object is not being pulled, but being propelled from persons or a craft from underneath. I think the initial speed is too fast for an individual, but I don’t know about a submersible. CryptoKellie is correct that the lough has a average depth of 5 meters, but the maximum depth listed is 15 meters. I have no idea where they are on the lough or where it gets deeper. Most of those “johnboat” vessels are between 15-20 ft in length, like the one in the foreground. Just shooting in the dark, the visible part of the object looks to be about a quarter to a third as long as the boat, making it sizeable, especially if it were only a portion of the whole.
Like whales, turtles, and other fish, if it dived, I’d expect to see some sort of kick up of the back end when it “dove”, but it just drops below the water line. This is not completely unheard of in sightings of Nessie and others–a hump is sighted or head/neck or other part and then it just drops straight down.
Eh, I’m still on the fence. My gut tells me it looks like something being towed through the water, but I’ll keep an open mind until I have more facts.
He’s got a fishing pole in his hands fer Crissakes! What kind of fisherman wouldn’t at least TRY flinging a hook in front of that great Beastie!!?
Seriously though, it really looks like it’s being pulled, as opposed to self-propelling itself, through the water. The lack of a wake, at the beginning of the video, is perplexing as well – unless, of course, the object was already just sitting-there, prior to filming…
Also, as others have mentioned, why not follow the “creature?” Then again, that might have revealed the tow-vessel (if such existed).
Intriguing, but too many red flags for me.
Folks…Google Conall Melarkey (Con All Me Larkey – really?) and all will become clear. This is a hoax clip for one of his films that he and his crew make on various subjects which can be viewed on You Tube. Ahh the dry Irish wit. Just look at his choir boy expression at the very end.
Kudos to Insanity for posting excellent stills from the clip. We need more of this skill on this site.
another lier . it’s something being towed ………….. not even a good hoax .