Now, Manipogo News!
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 19th, 2010
Manipogo is the name given to the Lake Monster reported to live in Lake Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada.
Sightings of this cryptid have been known from at least 1908.
Other incidents include, in:
1948: Reported that some sort of creature rose six feet out of the lake and gave a “prehistoric type of dinosaur cry.”
1957: Visitors saw a “giant serpent like creature in the lake.”
(The creature was dubbed Manipogo in 1957, the name echoing British Columbia’s Ogopogo.)
Sketch by Louis Bretecher, who saw the creature in the 1950s when he was about 18.
1962: Two fishermen saw a large creature like a serpent or giant snake 70 yards away from their boat. A claimed “photo” was taken this year, also (see above and below).
According to an August 18th Winnipeg Free Press column by Neil Babaluk, the Manitoba government decided to name the Toutes Aides area park, the Manipogo Provincial Park, after the Lake Monster.
Babaluk writes, about his recent trip to the park:
Not surprisingly, we didn’t spot Manipogo while staring out from the beach, but there have been roughly a dozen documented sightings of the lake monster since the late 1950s. Of course, like the Loch Ness Monster, Ogopogo, and Sasquatch, no one has been able to conclusively capture Manipogo on film.
The two most intriguing sightings occurred in 1962 and 1997. The first sighting was during a fishing trip. Dick Vincent of KCND Television (later CKND, now Global) and his television colleague, John Konefell, spotted a serpent-like creature and chased after it in their boat.
They were unable track down the mysterious animal, but were able to take a blurred photograph. The photograph showed a large, dark object rising two feet out of the water. In subsequent years, Vincent denied that it was Manipogo, claiming he wasn’t sure what it was.
The 1997 sighting attracted national media attention. The Globe and Mail reported, on June 12 of that year, “People in communities around Lake Manitoba are buzzing about a 15-metre snake-like creature, with a head like a horse, that was supposedly shot and spirited away under cover of darkness recently.”
The story goes something like this: A man from the Sandy Bay First Nation, north of Portage La Prairie, had claimed to come across Manipogo, while harvesting hay from his lakeshore property. He said that he grabbed a rifle, shot and killed the creature, and then dragged it to a nearby barn. The RCMP was called and they loaded Manipogo on to a flatbed truck, covered it with a tarp, and drove off towards Winnipeg.
The story quickly unravelled though, when the RCMP denied any knowledge of the incident. Stories told by alledged witnesses contradicted each other and some denied the killing occurred. In the end, the story was deemed a hoax, the result of stories told at a party that were spread around the community. This event was the last supposed sighting of Manipogo.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
That’s a log.
yeah that picture is clearly a log ..unless this sea serpent moves like a giant inch worm