The Ogopogo is a mythical aquatic creature that has been said to live in Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, since the mid-nineteenth century. It is one of many cryptid lake monsters reported worldwide. The First Nations peoples were the first to report a creature they dubbed the Naitaka, which translates from Salishan as “lake demon.” In 1926, the creature was given its current name, christened after a fictional, demon-like creature referenced in the 1924 fox-trot song “The Ogo-Pogo.”
Sightings extend back to at least the 1860s, beginning with stories that European settlers heard from the First Nations people with whom they came into contact. It is even suggested that ancient pictographs from the immediate area depict the Ogopogo. According to the indigenous population, the creature was malicious and was to be feared. As local legend has it, First Nations boatmen crossing the lake often carried a small animal with them that could be thrown overboard to appease an Ogopogo, should it attack. In the early part of the twentieth century, stories would emerge that, during poor weather, the creature would upset ferries taking horses to the opposite side of the lake, devouring them once they fell into the water.
As the area was increasingly populated by European settlers, and Kelowna became a regional center of commerce and culture in the early twentieth century, sightings became more and more frequent. Although, at eighty-five miles long, Okanagan Lake offers numerous places to hide, the majority of the sightings come from the Rattlesnake Island region south of Kelowna. Reports of the creature’s size and shape vary greatly, but generally Ogopogo sightings report its length as ranging from fifteen to thirty feet, although some reports go as high as sixty feet. The snake-like body is reported to be about two feet in diameter, and the head has been reported as being horse-like or goat-like. One observer described it as appearing like “a telegraph pole with a sheep’s head.”
Perhaps the most famous sighting came in 1926, when a large group of people, simultaneously, all claimed to have seen the creature just offshore. As Roy Brown, editor of the Vancouver Sun, wrote following reports of this incident, “Too many reputable people have seen [the monster] to ignore the seriousness of actual facts.” Subsequent multiple sightings have also been compelling, including one in 1947, when unrelated people on a number of different boats all simultaneously saw what was reported to be the creature. One such observer claimed that the creature had a forked tail, and that much of its massive length was hidden at intervals underwater. Yet another sighting, from 1978, involved multiple observers. Bill Steciuk was crossing a bridge bisecting the lake when he stopped to examine something strange about seventy yards away. Other cars stopped as well, and approximately twenty onlookers watched the creature swim around for more than a minute before disappearing.
In 1959, the publisher of the Vernon Advertiser, R. H. Millar, was able to clock the creature relative to his own boat speed, which the beast easily outstripped. According to Lionel Fanthorpe, author of The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries, the creature’s speed has been reported to be even greater, such as in a 1968 sighting: “The water-skiers got within a couple of metres of the thing before it submerged and made off at high speed: they tried to catch up with their power boat, but ogopogo’s speed was greater than their thirty-five knots, and they soon lost sight of him” (Fanthorpe 1997).
Historically, as with most large aquatic cryptids, anecdotal sightings, shoreline indentations that may or may not pertain to footprints, and distant or out-of-focus photographs have provided the only supporting evidence of Ogopogo, although, on occasion, washed-up carcasses on the shoreline have caused widespread interest. The pieces of evidence most often cited in support of the Ogopogo’s existence include the Parmenter photograph (1964), the Fletcher photograph (1976), the Gaal photographs (1978, 1979, and 1981), and the Wachlin photograph (1981). Some of these photographs are thought by skeptics to be pictures of logs. Others are thought to be waves caused by either wind or passing boats. On the other hand, Ogopogo proponents point to the fact that, in some of the photographs, light can be seen reflecting off a surface, perhaps scales.
In an age of digital immediacy, sites like YouTube have both increased interest in the Ogopogo and made debunking posted sightings easier. Some of the putative pieces of evidence have been proven definitively, through photographic analysis, to contain images of logs floating in the lake; others are thought to show otters or beavers that, due to distance or poor weather, appear to be bigger than they actually are.
Although it has not attracted nearly as much attention as the Loch Ness Monster, the Ogopogo has generated a fair amount of interest. Some cryptozoologists believe that the Ogopogo, like the Loch Ness monster, may be a remnant creature from an earlier time period, such as a member of the Mesozoic reptile order Plesiosauria or a primitive Basilosaurus whale from the Late Eocene period. Roy Mackal, a cryptozoologist who extensively researched Ogopogo sightings, notes that many reports of the creature could suggest a Basilosaurus.
The Ogopogo has been featured on numerous investigative television series, including In Search Of, Unsolved Mysteries, Destination Truth, and the National Geographic show Is It Real? Monsters of the Deep. The show Monster Quest presented evidence that potentially supported the existence of the creature, although most of that information was later discredited. The creature is referenced in other aspects of popular culture, including songs, movies, and television episodes. One notable reference came in The X-Files, a popular 1990s television show about the paranormal. In the episode “Quagmire,” special FBI agents Scully and Mulder search for an aquatic cryptid named Big Blue.
In cinema, the 2005 New Zealand film Mee-Shee: The Water Giant was originally going to be called Ogopogo. The title was changed, however, following complaints lodged by First Nation tribes from the Okanagan Lake region. Allegedly, the cinematic creature’s face was modeled after Walter Matthau’s by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. Some of the popular culture references to the Ogopogo are aimed at children or teens, including Harry Horse’s book The Ogopogo: My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster, a statue of the creature at a playground in Kelowna, and the fact that an Ogopogo appears as a sub-boss in the final level of the video game Final Fantasy IV.
Naturally, the cultural impact of this lake monster has been most pronounced in Canada, where a postage stamp featuring an artist’s rendering of the creature was issued in 1990. A depiction of the Ogopogo serves as the team logo for the Kelowna Rockets of the Western Hockey League. Images of the Ogopogo are common throughout the city of Kelowna, which lies on the shores of Okanagan Lake and has taken advantage of the local legend to bolster tourism. The term “Ogopogo” has even diversified within the lexicon following an infamous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. In the 1972 decision Horsley v. MacLaren, the court ruled on a case where MacLaren, captain of a boat named Ogopogo, did not risk his own life to save two friends who fell overboard and expired from hypothermia. Following what was widely known as “The Ogopogo Case,” the word Ogopogo became a colloquial term referencing a canoe or other small boat.
As Canada’s most well-known lake monster, the Ogopogo has lent its name to at least three other aquatic cryptids, each of which is much less well known: the Igopogo of Lake Simcoe in Ontario, the Manipogo of Lake Manitoba, and the Winnepogo of Lake Winnipegosis, which is also in Manitoba. The lake monster to which the Ogopogo is most closely related in popular imagination, however, is the Loch Ness Monster. Both rose to prominence as aquatic cryptids during the interwar period, and both appear in long, narrow lakes at approximately the same latitude. Although not nearly as famous as Nessie, the Ogopogo is nevertheless one of the more famous of the world’s cryptid lake monsters, and perhaps the most intriguing in that it is essentially the only one with numerous sightings by large groups of people who shared no previous, or subsequent, contact. Nearly all sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, by way of comparison, have been by individuals, married couples, or families.
The Ogopogo is said to be the resident lake monster of Okanagan Lake, British Columbia. In this lithographic label from about 1925, a playful image of the Ogopogo has been employed to market an eponymous brand of apples from the Okanagan Valley. (Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
Andrew Howe
See also Big Water Snake of the Blackfoot; Champ; Chessie; Hudson River Monster; Igopogo; Legends; Sharlie/Slimy Slim; Whitey
Further Reading
Budd, Deena West. 2010. The Weiser Field Guide to Cryptozoology: Werewolves, Dragons, Skyfish, Lizard Men, and Other Fascinating Creatures Real and Mysterious. San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser.
Coleman, Loren, Patrick Huyghe, and Harry Trumbore. 2003. Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. New York: Penguin.
Fanthorpe, Lionel, and Patricia Fanthorpe. 1997. The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries. Toronto: Dundurn.
Gaal, Arlene. 2001. In Search of Ogopogo: Sacred Creature of the Okanagan Waters. Blaine, WA: Hancock House.
Regal, Brian. 2013. Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads and Cryptozoology. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.