Aquabeasties

Another such beaching (directly above) was called the “Four Mile Globster,” and described as an unidentified mass washed ashore on Four Mile Beach, Tasmania, in 1997.
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/globsters-gone/

The New River Inlet Globster

121

The Pensacola Sea Monster

US 121

Saint Johns River Dragon

US 121

Saint Johns River Monster

US 121

Herry

US 116

The Portsmouth Sea Serpent

US 115

The Loveland Frogmen

Spotter

Products of pollution

Plesiosaur-like creatures

http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com/2010/09/freshwater-plesiosaurs.html

Freshwater octopuses

Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez)

Gulf of Mexico

The Pensacola Sea Monster

Caribbean Sea

Mediterrannean Sea

North Sea

Indian Ocean

Southern Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

Asian Pacific islands

Australia & New Zealand

Asian Pacific islands Australia New Zealand

Oceania

Scotland

Europe

Scandinavia

Europe

Ireland

Europe

Iceland

Europe

England

Europe

Quaint villages and grey metropoli give way to wilder forests and flat lakes. Coasts like that at Land's End are famous for their rugged cliffs and sea monster sightings, while ponds that dot the English countryside play host to consistent and ongoing lake monster sightings.

Lake Windermere

Bownessie

Africa

Asia

Patagonia

Central & South America

Patagonia

Austin Whittall, a self-made expert on Patagonian monsters, has generously allowed Aquabeasties to use the vast library of information he has gathered on the subject. On his blog, Patagonian Monsters, Mr. Whittall regularly posts meticulously studied and analyzed information about cryptids in Patagonia, and over a couple years he has built a veritable encyclopedia on hidden animals in the region. We owe him a million thanks for providing this knowledge which one can only find through diligent research in multiple sources (the internet doesn't come close to providing such information). Through a lifetime of experience in and obvious deep appreciation for the beautiful South American region of Patagonia, Mr. Whittall has given armchair cryptozoologists and field explorers alike the opportunity to search for hundreds of monsters in the jungles of deep South America.

Patagonia is a region covering the southern parts of Chile and Argentina. It stretches from the southernmost section of the Andes, east along the Río Colorado and all the way down to the tip of South America. Patagonia is full of stark, rocky mountains and huge deep blue lakes--and it seems almost every lake in Patagonia has its own monster. Lake serpents and plesiosaur-like monsters abound in the region, but Patagonia's most unique hydrocryptozoological attribute is its water bulls. For centuries villagers have reported seeing bulls that inhabit the region's lakes. One wonders what's so unusual about a bull that's standing in a lake, but often these bulls have unusual horns or even the hindquarters of a fish.

Water horses, or Calimayos, are also found throughout Patagonia, and the landmark lake cryptids of South America--El Cuero and Nahuelito--abound.

One of the oddest creatures to inhabit Patagonia is a leftover from thousands of years ago--the giant marine ground sloth. Giant ground sloths died out several thousand years ago, but many believe that some still stalk the jungles of Latin America, and in Patagonia Austin Whittall alleges that there may be a marine variety.

Chiloé Island Sea Horse

Chiloé Island Sea Monster

Creature of Lago Buenos
Aires / General Carrera

El Cuero

Culebrón

Fañanito

Gable Island Cave Monster

Iemisch / Water Tiger

Joselito

Lago Blanco Monster

Lago Cisnes Creature

Lago Colhue Huapí Creature

Lago de Las Rocas Monster

Lago Esquel Creature
Lago Lacar Monster
Lago La Plata Creatures
Lago Lolog Creatures
Lago Maihue Monsters
Lago Nonthue Creatures
Lago Paimun Creature
Lago Pueyrredón Monster
Lago Tar Monsters
Lago Todos Los Santos
Creature
Lago Vichuquen Monster
Lago Vidal Gormaz Monster
Lago Villarrica Monster
Lago Vintter / Palena
Creature
Laguna Tagua Tagua Monster
Lake Horses / Calimayos
Lakooma
Lampalagua
Long-necked Seals
Marine Ground Sloths
Maripill

Nahuelito
Negros del Agua
Patagonian Hippopotamus
Patagonian Plesiosaur
Llanquihue Plesiosaur
Lago Plesiosaurio Monster

Patagonian Sea Cows

Patagonian Walrus

Patagonian Water Bulls
Lake Lacar Bull
Pulau Tiga Plesiosaur
Río Aluminé Monster

Río Colorado Water Animal

Río Deseado Monster
Río Plate Sea Serpent
Río Tamango Monster
Río Senguer Monster
Río Toltén Creature
Saapaim
Strait of Magellan Sea
Monster
Sucuriju Gigante / Giant
Anaconda
Trehuaco
Walichus
Water Trauco

Amazon region

Central & South America

The Amazon

Central America

Central & South America

Costa Rica

Memphre

Chessie

Black River Monster

Spotters

Europe

Home of the Loch Ness Monster . . . and that pretty much says it. No other water-going monster on the continent comes close to the level of fame enjoyed by Nessie. Lesser known internationally are the numerous lake and sea monsters of Iceland, Sweden and Norway. Those rocky peaks and craggy, fjord-studded coasts allow for plenty of unknown denizens of the deep. England has its pond creatures, too, and Ireland is slowly getting the point that a local lake monster spikes tourist dollars. Germany has a couple lake monsters, but the rest of mainland Europe has surprisingly few outside of mythology. At least if we're talking about widely recognized monsters. Mysterious lake creatures known only in the local province are common throughout Europe, making a romp through the countryside of anywhere from Germany to Ukraine an exciting hunt for localized monster lore.

Among the countries and regions in Europe most notable for aquatic monsters are:

England Iceland Ireland Scandinavia Scotland

Mexico

North America

Hola.

Canada

North America

Nowhere in the world can rival the island of Victoria for sea monster and Bigfoot sightings. Canada is also well known for its sheer number of lakes that harbor lake serpents. Many of these serpents are said to be dangerous, and First Nation peoples were known to make offerings to appease them. Certainly the strangest Canadian monster that inhabits the water is the Gougou, a legendary giantess who wades into the sea to pluck up unlucky sailors.

Cadborosaurus (Caddy) Cameron Lake Monster (Cammy) Cressie Gougou

Igopogo The Kraken Lake Utopia Monster Manipogo / Winnipogo

Mugwump / Old Tessie Muskrat Lake Monster (Mussie) Ogopogo Ol' Slavey Ponik

Thetis Lake Monster Turtle Lake Monster Yatzutzin Lake Monster

View Lake and Sea Monsters of Canada in a larger map

The U.S.A.

North America

Home of endless folk monsters from old prospectors' tales and frontiersmens' campfire stories, America the Beautiful has a strong history of lake, river and sea monsters as well. When European settlers started exploring the wide open spaces of what is now the United States, they discovered tales of fearsome monsters lurking in deep lake bottoms.

Soon the Gloucester Sea Serpent started to appear to hundreds of people, and the Midwest revealed some very credible river monsters.

The steamy swamps and mangrove forests of the South concealed all manner of real threats--snakes, gators, crocs--and it's no surprise that the numerous waterways of the good ol' South have given birth to countless monster legends--among the strangest is Florida's giant penguin.

Mountain lakes of the great Northwest share nearby Canada's notoriety for lake monsters, and that coast is dotted with islands and winding channels that support a thriving population of sea monster sightings.

Lakes and streams among the towering peaks of far Northern California are said to be home to nine-foot salamanders, while in the desert Southwest a surprising number of man-made reservoirs have hatched local lake monster legends.

And let's not forget about Thunderbirds, which made a long-lasting and inexplicable appearance over Illinois in 1977. Legends of massive birds are also found in the Appalachians and in the Southwestern states, particularly Texas.

Herry
The Loveland Frogmen
The New River Inlet Globster
The Pensacola Sea Monster
The Portsmouth Sea Serpent
Saint Johns River Dragon
Saint Johns River Monster

Lake Alexander Monster

http://www.aquabeasties.com/2009/11/random-monster-stories-non-monsters.html

Loch Arkaig lake horse (MYTHOLOGY)

http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/lifestyle/outdoors/open_country_1_1691043

Oak-ness monster

http://www.aquabeasties.com/2011/06/lake-monster-in-oakland.html
http://thelakemerrittmonster.com/HOME.html

Lake Murray Monster (Messie)

Lake Murray
Near Irmo, South Carolina, United States

A prehistoric-looking serpentine monster is said to inhabit Lake Murray near Irmo, South Carolina. Its first sightings were in the 1930s.

Spotters 64

Colorado Platypus

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/ak-platypus/

Extraordinary Animals Revisited

The USA Canada Mexico

The Beast of Busco / Oscar the Turtle

Fulk Lake

Churubusco, Indiana, United States

An Oscar float from a long ago Turtle Days parade.

Oscar the Turtle is the reason Churubsuco, Indiana is called Turtle Town USA. According to reports, Oscar, otherwise known as the Beast of Busco, is a gigantic snapping turtle with a shell as large as a car, a neck the size of a stovepipe and a head as big as a child's.

Numerous reliable eyewitness reports, including mass sightings, lend credence to the story. The farmer who owned the land containing the lake the beast supposedly called home conducted numerous searches for the gigantic turtle in 1949. Although there were several close encounters, these searches yielded no tangible evidence in the end.

The Sightings

In 1898, farmer Oscar Fulk claimed that a huge turtle was living in the small lake on his farm. Of course no one took him seriously--for now. A subsequent sighting took place in 1914, again to little fanfare.

But on July 27, 1948, locals Ora Blue and Charlie (or Charley) Wilson told Gale Harris, now the owner of the property, that a gigantic turtle had surfaced near their boat while they were out fishing on the lake.

Its body was as big as their rowboat and its head as big as a child's. According to some sources, the men claimed that the turtle had stolen their fishing poles. Churubusco resident and turtle expert Rusty Reed talked with Blue and dismissed the story as a hoax.

"Charley Wilson was known to tell tall tales and Gale Harris was known to believe anything," Reed says.

Despite this, the enormous turtle quickly became a celebrity. The local newspaper reported it, and Harris had a sighting of his own. Some began to say that the turtle had former owner Oscar Fulk's initials carved into its shell. The newspapers in Fort Wayne, poking fun at the townspeople for believing in such a creature, nicknamed the creature "Oscar" and "The Beast of Busco." The names stuck.

In 1949 Harris spotted the creature again. Desperate to prove he wasn't a lunatic, he decided to conduct a monster hunt and finally lure the great turtle out of hiding.

An actual turtle in Fulk Lake.

The Hunt

News of the hunt spread far and wide, even reaching newspapers in Europe, according to the Churubusco Chamber of Commerce.

Harris and local garage mechanic Kenneth Leitch began constructing traps to capture the beast, and Harris reportedly built a periscope to try to spot the turtle from the surface.

On the first day of the hunt, in early March of 1949, Harris and the crowd he had drawn actually penned the beast in about 10 feet of water with a trap of stakes and chicken wire. Footage that has now vanished showed turtle swimming just below surface. But Oscar the Turtle somehow managed to escape.

On March 7 the newspaper in Columbia City reported the ongoing search. The next day, reporters from Fort Wayne showed up. A day later, updates on the great monster hunt were reported across the nation.

By March 12, 200 people gathered at Harris' farm to watch the hunt. The crowd soon ballooned out of control. Twenty years short of Woodstock, bumper-to-bumper traffic wound around Harris' farm and planes flew overhead trying to spot the creature from the air. In two days, 3,000 curious citizens, reporters, professional trappers, zoo officials, and deep-sea divers had swarmed to the farm. Here is a reprinted news article from that point in the search.

A giant concrete turtle statue in Charabusco.

On March 18th, Harris got hold of a complete dive suit, and diver Woodrow Rigsby tried to walk the bottom of the lake, but the helmet began to leak and Rigsby called off the operation. Another diver, Walter Johnson, tried his hand at the search as well but gave up after two-and-a-half hours because he kept sinking chest-deep into the muck.

In April, two men from Indianapolis claimed to have finally caught the giant turtle. This, however, turned out to be a hoax; the men had simply bought a sea turtle to try to trick the public. According to Unknown Explorers, this hoax is what sparked the idea to lure Oscar out of the lake using a female sea turtle.

With no giant turtle to marvel at, the public's interest had dwindled by May. Harris kept at it, though, at one point using dynamite charges to try to scare the monster to the surface.

Finally, in September, Harris attached water pumps to his tractor and began to drain his lake, drawing some crowds back. The crowds began to grow again, and Harris charged a fee this time to make up for the cost of the pumping operation and all the crops trampled by crowds. On October 13, as 200 spectators looked on, the Beast of Busco reportedly surfaced in an attempt to catch a duck being used as a lure. Soon after, however, the muck at the bottom of the lake wore out the pump and broke Harris' tractor. Never one to quit, Harris brought in a crane to dredge the lake. But even when the lake had been drained to a depth of five feet, there was no giant turtle in sight. The disappointed locals speculated that he had migrated to another lake or river through underground channels.

In December Harris came down with appendicitis and when he had recovered sufficiently to resume the search, rain had mostly refilled the lake. The next year, dejected and out of money, he sold his farm and his turtle traps.

There have been no reported sightings of Oscar since then.

Rusty Reed and Steve Cook
bring Crunch, a 120-pound
alligator snapping turtle, to
Turtle Days in 1993.

Jim Guiff, the nephew of Oscar Fulk, wasn't surprised that Harris didn't find the turtle.

“I was always suspicious about the turtle being as big as he was,” he says. “I used to hunt for snapping turtles when I was a kid, and I never saw them that big. I never disputed

them, though, because maybe I was wrong.”

Guiff does believe Harris believed in the turtle because of the amount of money he lost looking for it. Rusty Reed agrees.

“Gale Harris lost everything over trying to prove that he saw that turtle,” he says. “Does a person get so caught up in a lie that he can’t turn back, or did he really see it?”

An Explanation?

Reed believes the Beast of Busco could have been an alligator snapping turtle that somehow made its way 200 miles north of its natural habitat in southern Indiana's rivers (they're rare in northern Indiana). Alligator snapping turtles are one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world, having been known to grow to two-and-a-half feet. The largest confirmed specimen weighed 249 lb (113 kg) and an unconfirmed weight put the heaviest at 403 lb (183 kg). They can live more than 100 years, allowing the long span of sightings in Churubusco.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to Reed, travelling salesmen from southern Indiana sometimes took young alligator snapping turtles with them when they went north as an emergency food source. The salesmen might sell, give away, or release the turtles. Reed says that if Oscar ever did exist, he probably either suffocated under the collapsing mud when the lake was drained or hid in a puddle until the water came back.

Still Swimming

Guiff remembers Gale Harris as an honest, humble man and remembers his uncle Oscar Fulk as a "character." He remembers the great turtle hunt well, and recalls one night when a man, perhaps Harris, steering a boat toward a trap while about 12 men stood watching. Someone shone a light onto the trap, but all that was visible was murky water.

Amusement rides are part of the attraction
at Turtle Days.

Aside from in Guiff's memory, the Beast of Busco lives on in Churubusco's annual Turtle Days festival in June. The festivities at Turtle Days celebrate the monster with live bands, raffle drawings, rides, turtle races, and a parade.

In nearby Decatur, Indiana, a restaurant wall displays a yard-long turtle shell which the owners claim is Oscar's. Check it out.

Resident Larry Kenner snapped this photo of the animal.

Indianans seem to have an odd habit of spotting large creatures in small lakes. During the summer of 2010, the residents of Wayne, Indiana began seeing something strange in the lake at Lakeside Park. The creature, according to one witness, had “a snake’s tail. It was really long and really big in the middle and it had fish scales.” Though many who heard the tales thought the creature was just an escaped carp, witnesses claimed that the creature was bigger than a snake and seemed to slither through the water. One witness said she had seen the creature acting strangely, as though it was strangling a fish.

This unidentified creature is known as Lakeside Nessie. See more about it on Lakeside Nessie's page in the Monster Galleries.

Giant Turtles

Tortuga!

Giant North Atlantic Turtle

North Atlantic, off the eastern coast of Canada

According to The Cryptid Zoo, giant turtles have been reported off the eastern coast of Canada. These turtles are said to have pure white skin and two tusks each four inches in diameter and three feet long. The turtles are 50 feet long.

INDEX

North America

South America

Asia

Africa

Europe

Oceania

Antarctica

Pacific

Atlantic

Mediterranean

Caribbean

North Sea

Southern Ocean

More news

U.S. river, lake and sea monsters by state