Tag Archives: Lake Monster

Lake Monster

Age: 19

Interviewee:

This story was told by my father when both of us were swimming in a lake in my hometown, a town in China. My dad told me that there was a lake monster who dwelled in this lake. This lake monster will punish travelers who have done something evil recently, and the way that the monster acts out this, sort of, punishment, is that they will kill them in the water. According to my father, victims often described that something held on to their legs and pulled them down to the deep water. They were either killed or deeply injured.

Interviewer: Does this monster only haunt you if you have done something wrong? And if you are a morally good person, it will not haunt you?
Interviewee: According to the myth, yes.

Interviewer: Has this story been used to explain, or was it proved to be “real” in any real incidents?
Interviewee: Yes. A few years ago, a person in my hometown died in that lake, and his family explained this as him being killed by the water monster. That day, he went to swim in the lake near a reservoir. When they found the deceased person, folks in my hometown believed it was the lake monster who caused his death. While scientifically speaking, it’s seaweeds. He couldn’t really swim well, and it was wild water, so some seaweeds must have trapped him from the bottom.

Interviewer: When you’re swimming in the lake, are you scared of the monster?
Interviewee: No. Cuz I didn’t do anything bad (laughs).

Context:

In the words of the interviewee: “This story was shared by my father, a middle-aged man who grew up in a small town in China. He told it to me while we were actually swimming together in the very lake he was describing—it’s a lake in the wild, without much protection and very close to nature.”


Analysis:

  • Vernacular transmission: This story was told to the informant by his father when they were swimming in a local lake in his hometown. The monster is very specific to that lake. The way the informant’s father tells him of this monster legend makes it very vernacular—informal, local to their hometown, a small town in China.
  • Moral story and cautionary tale: This legend serves the purpose of “education” under Bascom’s functionalist framework. The informant’s father, by telling this legend, educates the informant to be a good person and live with integrity—when being asked if he was scared, the interviewee said he wasn’t scared “because he hasn’t done bad things.” This mirrors exactly what this legend is used for—to caution people not to do morally bad things, or they will get into trouble. Thus, certain moral ideologies are reinforced by telling a scary story. This makes this legend a mixture of a cautionary tale and a moral story.

“Ogopogo”, Lake Monster in Lake Okanagan

Age: 19

Text

According to the story, there is a lake monster named Ogopogo in Lake Okanagan, with a snake-like or draconic form similar to that of the Loch Ness monster.

Context

According to the informant, Ogopogo is a well-known monster in Canadian folklore. It has become a mascot of the region, with merchandise depicting the creature on souvenir shirts and other memorabilia.

Learned from a tour guide during a tour to the UBC Okanagan campus near Kelowna.

Analysis

Due to the lack of information I had to work with for this legend, its exact origins are unclear. I have two theories.

The first theory is that this monster was fabricated solely to attract tourist attention to the region, inspired by the popularity of the Loch Ness monster. If this is true, Ogopogo would be defined as fakelore.

It is also possible that Ogopogo dates back to legends spread by the Native people of the region, and the similarity to stories of the Loch Ness Monster is either coincidence or a sign of folklorismus as a result of outside influence and marketing.

Lake Spirit

Text: 

There was once a young lady who drowned her baby in a lake. As punishment, she was cursed to the same fate of drowning, and now her spirit remains by the lake. She comes to haunt those who do bad things.

Context:

There were lots of Mexicans and Mexican Americans where I grew up, so this was your typical boogeyman story to tell kids so they won’t do bad stuff, just with a deeper connection to Mexico/home. 

Analysis:

In this text, I see the theme of karma/ the golden rule being enforced: you are treated differently based on how you have treated others. Water is also dangerous for younger children if they cannot swim, so stories like this one can help to keep them safe by instilling a fear of the water in them until they are older and capable of being safe when near a lake, or knowing how to swim. This story also gives authority to the fear it attempts to instill by establishing that the lady has already drowned her own child, so she would most likely have no qualms about drowning someone else’s child.

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Water Babies of Pyramid Lake – Legend

Water Babies of Pyramid Lake

Text:

Long ago there was a Native American woman who had two children. She took her children down to the river to bathe them but they were dragged under the current. When she discovered her children’s death she took them to a burial sight to bury them. She cried so hard over her children’s grave that it filled with water and became pyramid lake. The woman then laid by the lake to watch her children where she turned to stone. To this day her babies can be heard in the lake and they drag unsuspecting victims down to drown them.

Context:

“I heard this story many times growing up as a kid and visiting the lake. Pyramid lake was on an Indian reservation so it always had some mysticism too it. I remember some of my uncles telling me the story while on a boat in the lake. After they told the story they threw me in to scare me. I guess I’m not much better than them now cause I use the story to scare my little cousins or brother whenever we visit.”

Analysis:

Pyramid Lake near Reno Nevada is often seen as a mysterious lake as it is a salt water lake with no outlets. The use of tears in the legend is used to describe why the lake is a salt water lake and its odd positioning without any outlets. The myth likely stems from the mysticism surrounding the Native American reservations that the lake lies on. Similar to the story of poltergeist and similar legends in which native Americans play a key role, the guilt of the actions taken by American settlers has led to stories of vengeful native spirits. Some state that the legend stems from the lake being used as a location where malformed native babies were drowned. All in all the legend of the pyramid lake water babies is another relic from the colonial Americans atrocities.

The Ogapoga

Informant AJ is a freshman at a university in the Canadian province of British Columbia whose family lives in San Jose, California. AJ moved to BC for the first time in August of 2022 to begin university.

Text:

“It’s a little unfamiliar to me but I’ve heard a few people talk about it here and there and seeing the statue posted downtown. It seems to be a creature in the Okanagan Lake just a few miles down south of the university. And there’s some sea creature that does something, I’m not very sure. I would say it looks like a sea dragon, kind of like a snake.”

Context:

“We have a little statue of it downtown and some people will take pictures of that and ride it for fun. I heard somebody mention it and they were like, ‘You’ve never heard of Ogopogo?!’ The lake is one of the biggest attractions here in Kelowna, so I’m sure that’s a fun story that people who live here can tell visitors.”

Analysis:

Because the Ogopogo has a statue in downtown Kelowna, the legend of the Ogopogo has taken on an aspect of capitalist appeal as the city utilizes the legend as a tourist attraction, representing an example of folklorismus. However, the Ogopogo traces its roots to stories from the Interior Salish First Nation people of a lake spirit known as the N’ha-a-itk. In this sense, the Ogopogo also carries a mythic nature, but as the story passed through the generations and through the colonization of North America, monetary interests grabbed hold of this myth and transformed it into the tourist attraction AJ knows it as. When he first moved to Kelowna, BC, there was a big reaction when AJ announced that he wasn’t aware of the Ogopogo, indicating its strong public appeal. Yet, the manner in which he learned about the Ogopogo, through visits to the statue in downtown Kelowna, indicate the weakening of the traditional myth of the Ogopogo.