Sea Monsters of the Lake… Not Just for Oceans Anymore.

There are many stories of monsters that roam the seven seas as told by the sailors who venture out in those waters. The tales of mega sharks, giant squid, mermaids and even temptress sirens of the sea that date all the way back to Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. The sea is a vast amount of water and is not easily explored both on the surface and most especially below. Most of the world’s oceans have yet to be explored and identified and that’s just the surface if we go below then there might just in fact be those sea monsters of legend and lore. Now that makes total and complete sense for the oceans of the world, but what about lakes?

It seas that lakes go through the same amount of legend and lore in relation to sea monsters as the oceans do. Through out the world there are reports of many lake monsters. Some of these lake monsters are more famous than others, but they still all come down to the same thing, monsters in a lake.

Some of the most commonly known lake monsters are tow in particular one being the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and then Champ located in Lake Champlain near New York. Loch Ness is truly the granddaddy of all lake monsters and thrives in tourism just from its legendary status. Now there have been expeditions of the lake to try and hunt down the elusive creature. If you look at all the experiments that have taken place to find the Loch Ness Monsters I think you would have to agree that the chances of us finding something in there is slim to none. Well through all the experiments they have found nothing, and people to this day are still spotting the great lake monster. Could all these people be lying or could their eyes be playing tricks on them? In a world where everyone wants that 15 minutes of fame I would venture to guess that a fair bit of them are lying and the rest have seen something that looked odd, but can easily be explained.

A lesser known lake monster is that located in Pennsylvania and is billed as PAs own loch ness monster. The lake is located in Raystown Pennsylvania and in the Raystown lake is said to exist a lake monster. Now being from PA I am particularly drawn to this because there haven’t been all that many sightings and they are all fairly recent. Now being the scuba diver that I am would love to venture into the lake and take a look for myself, but I highly doubt I would find anything.

The exploration of lake and the eco system that live within them should be a fairly easy task to accomplish. So long as there are no rivers or underwater lines to other bodies of water there should be no reason why we couldn’t drop a side-scan sonar, comb the lake and find these supposed monsters? One reason is because nobody wants to waste the time, effort and money on such an expedition because it is chasing a legend that doesn’t exist. Are there things living in lakes that people don’t know about? Sure there are and we find things everyday but if we can find the smallest of items in a lake then why wouldn’t we be able to find a giant lake monster? Do you think the lake monster is smarter than us and messing with us? If you do then I feel bad for you, there are no such things as lake monsters as for sea monsters I would be willing to believe that much more easily.

Be safe and don’t feed the lake monsters,

Jon Bolton @JohnCannonTBS

The Labyrinth…was it bull(aka Minotaur)???

When you were a young child did you ever take graph paper and create your own maze on it??? Did you enjoy doing the mazes found in random children’s magazines??? Have you ever spent a good amount of time getting lost in a corn maze around the fall season of Halloween??? I know I am guilty of all three of these things. I remember doing the mazes and having to erase the pencil lines I drew because I ran into a wall and then had to retrace my path till I found the correct route through…because somehow it mattered if I erased the incorrect lines, but I know I wasn’t the only one guilty of this. So we are all aware of mazes and in fact most video games are just a giant maze in which you have to make it through without getting killed by whatever evil presence there is. Again, we are very familiar with what a maze is and we have all had some sort of a run in with them. Oh and apparently there is a dispute as to what the difference between a maze and a labyrinth, but we will call it a maze because my spell check hates when I try and spell labyrinth.

Now picture being in a maze, a real life maze, made of stone that stretched for as far as the eye could see, in fact you were put in this maze to prove your innocence or courage. Ok no big deal, I mean what could be so bad about it. Other than the maze being made of concrete and not corn and being very long so you could possibly get hungry or thirsty during the event what else and how bad could it be. Well how about if there was a monster in the maze that was half man and have bull called a Minotaur and its only goal was to kill you and eat you…yeah now sort of sounds something like its out of the Running Man.

This myth of a labyrinth and Minotaur is from Greek and Roman mythology. Mythology is full of fanciful tales to help explain the unexplainable and to show the trials and tribulations of common man in regards to the Gods above. This maze of death was commissioned by the King of Minos and it held his Minotaur which ultimately within mythology was killed by a man named Theseus.

So there is your quick cliff note version of the labyrinth, now what if I were to tell you that this may not be a myth after all??? What if I were to tell you that this great large labyrinth was in fact a real and genuine place??? There have been four ancient labyrinths discovered located in Cretan, Egypt, Lemnian and Italy. The labyrinth in question that was said to hold the minotaur was the Cretan labyrinth. Now we know for a fact that this labyrinth existed, we know for a fact that King Minos had it constructed..so now what about the Minotaur???

Well the story is that King Minos pissed off the God of the Sea Neptune, yeah never do that, so Neptune then had the king’s wife sleep with a savage bull which in turn she then bore the Miotaur…way to go beastiality. So the labyrinth was created to house the half man half bull and thus is the story. So is there any truth to a half man half bull creature running around a psychotic concrete maze eating people and was the result of a pissed off God??? If you seriously asked yourself that question then slam your head into the wall. Of course there is no such thing to have ever existed. Hell you might as well say that there was a Bigfoot running around the maze…damn now cryptozoologists are going to be claiming that now, Im sure I’ll be seeing that on Searching for Bigfoot soon. You see the reason for the bull theory was that there were a number of artifacts found with bulls paint on them and one of the famous ones of a man jumping over a bull…try and pull that one off you rodeo clowns. Now I enjoy watching pro bull riding and I couldn’t imagine a thinking pissed of savage bull coming at me, try and ride that one for 8 seconds you cowboys.

This story as fanciful as it is, is just that…it is a story. Would I love to see evidence of a half man half bull that ran around killing people n some giant labyrinth…you’re damn right I would, but unfortunately it never existed. It all stems to people creating stories t scare one another and I would definitely consider this to be one of the original “campfire horror stories” that people would tell.

 

Be safe and if you mess with the bull you’ll get the horns,

John Cannon

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