October 13, 2006

Italian Lake Monster

The following article excerpt is from the April 2006 issue of Fortean Times magaine. This is the Monster Hunters issue that has been discussed here previously on Cryptomundo.

Illustration: Xavier Lemmens

Although Italy’s second largest lake, with its palm trees and neo-classical villas, hardly looks like the kind of remote spot one would expect to find surviving plesiosaurs, the lake monster of Lago Maggiore is well known in cryptozoological circles, mainly through a reference in Peter Costello’s classic book In Search of Lake Monsters: "[I]n the Italian Alps Lake Maggiore is the reputed haunt of a monster. In 1934, fishermen reported they had seen it where the River Ticino runs into the lake. It was not however dreamed up just to cash in on the fashion for monsters, because this particular monster – said to have a horse’s head and to live on fish – was mentioned at the beginning of the 19th century in one of his travel books by the novelist Stendhal." The quote by Stendhal – who wrote extensively on Lake Maggiore – has not yet been traced and probably does not exist. As for the lake being the creature’s "reputed haunt", my own experience indicates that people around the lake are not aware of any monster, and that it is mainly tourists who see and report it. Also, strange as it seems, no Italian or Swiss source (the point where the Ticino joins the lake is actually in Switzerland) for the incident mentioned by Costello has yet been found.

Read the entire article by author Ulrich Magin on the Fortean Times website.

Filed under Bigfoot Report, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoology, Eyewitness Accounts, Lake Monsters, Living Dinosaurs, Loch Ness Monster, Sea Serpents