Another Bowness Monster Sighting?
Posted by: John Kirk on March 9th, 2007
Following hot on the heels of the sighting of the so-called Bowness monster by Linden Adams last month, a canoeist who was on the lake has come forward with his story:
For full story see this week’s Westmorland Gazette.
New sighting of lake ‘monster’
ANOTHER sighting of a strange creature in Windermere has added weight to the theory that something unexplained is lurking beneath the surface of the lake.
Michael Bentley, from Ambleside, was the canoeist who was spotted by photographer Linden Adams paddling close to the scene of where he took a picture of what he claims to be a four-metre long beast in Windermere, as reported in The Westmorland Gazette last week.
Mr Bentley, who was unaware of the presence of the animal as he enjoyed a morning canoeing at the south end of Windermere, said. “I did not see anything that day but I remember the conditions on the lake were absolutely flat and calm. When I saw the report I contacted Linden Adams and he showed me the pictures he took and I was paddling right towards where the thing was feeding but I was going quite fast and did not see anything.”
A self-confessed sceptic, Mr Bentley has backed up Mr Adams’s dramatic pictures with his own shots taken while paddling in the same area of the lake, with his partner, last weekend.Paul Duncan
Westmorland Gazette
I am somewhat confused by Bentley’s comments that he took photographs as well. Does this mean that he took pictures of the lake in general or did he also claim to take pictures of the monster? If he did photograph the beast where are the pictures? It is also rather hard to fathom how he did not see the creature despite the flat-calm lake conditions and the fact that he was heading straight towards it.
One of the most promising things about this animal is its reappearance just six months after the initial sighting. When I was at Lake Windermere in August, I saw no trace of the beast myself, but I must say it was in my consciousness that it was odd that Windermere was at that time devoid of any sort of lake legend. Now we have heard of two sightings in six months.
As Loch Ness is a bit of a dead end for me these days, I can tell Cryptomundo readers that I will be revisiting Windermere again on my future trips back to the United Kingdom. It appears to hold more promise with the recent spate of sightings.
About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998).
In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur.
Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC.
In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.
Hello, John,
I’m speculating this creature is gilled and doesn’t require mammalian lungs. Huge eel? Very interesting.
John, when you’re back in the Lakes you might want to take a look at Wastwater as well. It’s the clearest of the lakes in terms of water quality and is regularly used by scuba divers as a result. My Dad used to do a lot of climbing in that are in the late 50’s and early 60’s. He heard tales that the divers installing pipes to supply cooling water to Windscale nuclear pwer station (Sellafield as it is now) had been scared by monsters in the lake.
The Wasdale Head Inn also has great food and beer!
By the way, a diver interviewed by the Centre for Fortean Zoology said he regularly saw 6ft long eels in Windermere. An account was in March’s edition of the Fortean Times, issue 220. More research is planned to see if it is this or something else.
MBFH- I have read somewhere about those very eels you speak of. Do you have any other info on it? The piece I read gave precious few details but it intrigued me. I hope this is not getting too far off topic, but does anyone know more about the expedition Jacques Cousteau had in Lake Tahoe when he famously said “The world is not ready for what is down there.”? This is one cryptozoological anecdote I have known about for years and it has always fascinated me.
Interesting. The continued sightings are certainly very intriguing. Lake Windermere (the United Kingdom’s 11th largest lake and about a quarter of the size of Loch Ness) appears to becoming England’s answer to Scotland’s Loch Ness. 🙂
Unidentified ‘presence’ in Lake Windermere continues to baffle scientists
More local sightings of unusual activity in the Lake reported
Lake Windermere, Cumbria – 7 March 2007 — Following a series of chance photographs of an unexplained creature in Lake Windermere by Cumbria-based photographer Linden Adams, scientists are still unable to offer any logical explanation.
The pictures were taken on 5th February by Linden Adams while on a professional photographic assignment on the edge of Lake Windermere. Adams explains: “We saw something surface in the middle of the lake which then began to swim at considerable speed in an easterly direction. At first we thought it was a large fish or bird, even a diver, but it was too large to be any of the wildfowl or fish normally seen on the lake. My wife and I estimate the object to be at least 15 metres long and dark in colour.”
The photographs taken by Adams were sent to Mark Carr, a photographer registered with the Council for Registration for Forensic Practitioners (CREP) in the field of Imaging. Carr was able to verify that the photographs were not tampered with in any way. Carr comments: “I have thoroughly examined these photographs, from the RAW files, and I am satisfied that they have not been digitally modified. Neither are the pictures the result of a camera or lens error. I examined the entire card so I could put all the images into context, and I also checked all the file data contained in the EXIF file attached by the camera software when the image is recorded, which give exact details of the camera settings and times.
From my examination of the disk, files and camera, I confirm that the position of the ‘anomaly’ was around 2.8 to 3km away from the camera and the visible area of the anomaly is approximately 4 metres in length. However from detailed examinations, pixel by pixel, and by looking at the patterns and characteristics of wake, I believe the total length of this anomaly to be in the region of 15m.”
The authenticity of the images has been further verified by Tim Atherton, Managing Director and Technical Director of FixerLabs Ltd., a company that specialises in image enhancement software. “I confirm that the image I saw of the object in the water appeared to be genuine. The image had mild softness due to the lens and a small amount of motion blur due to camera shake. I saw no evidence that the image had been modified in any way and everything was consistent with your description of the way the images were taken.”
Dr Ian Winfield from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology at the Lancaster Environment centre commented: “On the basis of my 27 years experience as a professional freshwater fish ecologist, including leading research programmes on Windermere for the last 17 years, this size estimate means I cannot explain the photographs by reference to any fish or other vertebrate species previously demonstrated to inhabit Windermere.”
In the mid 90’s, while I was at university studying environmental science, (a life sciences discipline incorporating chemistry, biology, physics, geology, zoology, etc.), I used to spend part of my summers working as a waiter at the Low Wood Hotel, which is situated right smack on the edge of Lake Windermere.
I loved getting up just as the sun was coming up and standing on the lake’s bank, looking out across this solid-looking ‘slab’ of perfectly smooth, undisturbed quicksilver for about half an hour or so before starting serving the guests’ breakfasts, and even though I never actually saw anything break the surface of the lake at those times, I could never shake the feeling of something mysterious going on in its unseen depths.
At night, though, it was a different story, and once the sky and the lake turned black and the stars came out, the lake seemed to burst into life.
Again, I never actually saw anything definitely suggestive of a monster, but I heard things out there – large things – and saw peculiar wave formations which clearly contravened the direction of both the wind and the gently lapping ‘tide’ the lake always seemed to have.
During the daylight hours, in the hope of explaining away my nighttime observations, I’d often circumnavigate the lake in search of the sort of land-based life-forms my university training had led me to expect to find living off the lake, but found none.
There were birds, of course, particularly swans, but I noticed how, even during the daytime, there were certain parts of the lake even the swans permanently steered clear off.
The other thing I noticed was how densely frequented the lake and its edge was during the daytime, but how quickly everybody deserted it as the light started going down.
When I asked guests and members of staff at the Low Wood (and the other local hotels) why they seemed to avoid the lake as it got dark, most couldn’t given an explanation, and were even slightly startled they hadn’t even noticed themselves doing this until it had been pointed out to them.
Some members of staff, though, privately confessed to a feeling of dread if they happened to find themselves out on their own while even remotely near the lake, even during the day.
The commonly used expression by way of explanation was the lake felt somehow ‘haunted’.
Whenever I tried to broach the subject with the locals, I was astonished how defensive and even aggressive they could become.
A highly eccentric friend of my brother, working at the Low Wood as a porter with him, attempted to evade imminent Police capture by wrapping his head in a bath towel – his hope being the cops wouldn’t notice him! – until, on realising he’d been spotted, he took a running dive into the lake, his purpose being, he later explained, to make a swim for it!
For some reason it’d skipped his mind he couldn’t actually swim, and of course he was captured; but he later freely confessed to me that even if he had have been an Olympic class swimmer, he would have never attempted a manoeuvre like that at night because of the ‘thing’ he was convinced that would’ve been lying in wait for him.
mystery_man: if you mean the eels in Wastwater, sorry, no I don’t have any futher information. It’s just a short tale my Dad related to me when I asked him if he’d every heard anything about the sightings at Windermere.
Going off alanborky’s atmospheric story however, you might not get a warm reception if you asked locally!
If you’re looking for accommodation in Windermere visit this website which lists hotels, b+b’s and guest houses in Windermere