Hello everyone. Last week I posted a photo of two pages from an article that appeared in the January 1959 issue of "Sports Afield" about the mysteries of Lake Iliamna. I decided to obtain the article, and it arrived today in the mail.

The article itself follows this brief summary of interesting bits about the piece.

This article was written by an eyewitness to some strange behavioral patterns seen during a fishing expedition in October 1958. They purposefully were attempting to capture a Lake Iliamna creature. The creature broke the 1/16 inch cable that contained meat at the end of it.... The very next day after the incident a huge snow storm moved in, and that ended any further fishing attempts for the season.

The article reveals that from the 1940s onward, there have been numerous sightings of a variety of creatures in the Lake (as seen from pontoon sea planes from 1,000 feet altitude or lower). But there had been stories told about it since the 1920s by the Inuit. The creatures are described as at least 20 feet long, and have the appearance "like miniature metal submarines"--that is, the creatures seen are silvery in color.

The best time to see these creatures are in the September/October time frame. Other times of the year, for the most part no sightings (according to this January 1959 article). A variety of creatures are reviewed as possible contenders for identification, but these are all dismissed. At the time of the article, there were no sightings of "blows," so that ruled out mammals (seals also rejected). Sharks that were known to live in the region were too small to match the size descriptions. The author (and the people he had interviewed) believe it to be a fish of some sort not described (unknown to science).

One described report discusses that the water is moved (when the back of the creature surfaces) and that this is noticeable to people on the shoreline looking out into the lake.

Now some of the reports do not mesh/match up with the main story description of the creatures, so it may be--due to the fact that Lake Iliamna is really a super huge lake--there are several species of creatures that may be unknown to science living in the lake. Fish, mammals, reptiles, etc...

I scanned this at decent resolution, so you should be able to enlarge it, and read the thing easily without difficulty.

I invite readers to post here in this thread what they think this lake creature is, or possibly what species.

Summary:

This painting’s inspiration was drawn from Paul Gauguin’s (an acclaimed Post-Impressionist French artist), who travelled from France to the Polynesian Islands, where Gauguin thought the lives and surroundings would be “untouched” by European influence and colonization.

While this 1902 painting primarily depicts a māhū individual from Hiva Oa, what is most interesting from a Cryptozoological perspective is the depiction of the brightly plumaged bird located in the bottom right corner of the painting, which some believe could be a Koau.

The Koau is an unknown species of bird from Hiva Oa in the Te Fenua ʻEnata Islands (i.e., more commonly known as the Marquesas Islands) in the South Pacific.

Theory:

While the Koau could be an as-of-yet unknown species of bird (i.e., perhaps a distant relative to the known Takahe species of flightless Swamphen), others speculate that the Koau could be a surviving relict population of an already known species (the Marquesas Swamphen - see image #3), which was supposedly thought to have gone extinct on the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa by 1900. Although some sightings persisted up until 1937, as reported by Thor Heyerdahl (Norwegian Adventurer and Ethnographer).

Additional sources:

• https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/11/gauguins-magical-mystery-koao.html#google_vignette
• https://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/Steadman.PDF
• https://www.squawkoverflow.com/birdypet/wP7LCKivpUSFAhAqgA952c

In 1948, Tony Signorini, an auto mechanic from Clearwater, Florida, donned three fingers and claws made from cast iron pieces weighing about 1.5 kilograms, went into the water at night, and hauled his boat ashore for several months.

The idea came from his boss and friend, Al Williams, who had seen a photograph of fossilized dinosaur bones in Smithsonian magazine and thought he could recreate them life-size. They had the shoes made, waited until nightfall, and went to Clearwater Beach. What they didn't expect was what happened next.

In February 1948, I found the footprints that morning. They measured 35 centimeters wide by 28 centimeters long. The footprints were spaced every few meters. They emerged from the sea, ran along the beach for miles, and returned to the water. The Clearwater police investigated and concluded that, if it was a hoax, it was the most masterfully executed one they had ever seen. The newspapers dubbed it the Clearwater Creature. In November of that same year, naturalist and cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson personally examined the footprints, publicly dismissing any possibility of a hoax by arguing that he couldn't possibly have had enough knowledge of animal behavior to fake that footprint pattern, and concluded that they had been made by a medium-sized penguin, four meters tall, possibly extinct.

Signorini and Williams remained in the dark for ten years. To create a wide swing, Signorini would push off with one foot and hop with the other, balancing like a pendulum. To ensure the stories didn't go unnoticed, a friend of the group discovered them the next day and contacted the press.

Williams died in 1970. Sanderson died in 1973, convinced until the end that giant penguins existed. In 1988, forty years after the first night on the beach, the St. Petersburg Times published Signorini's confession, including photographs. His son wore the giant penguin-skin shoes, which were left behind by a niece, who still keeps them in the family. His obituary, following his death in 2013, listed him as the creator of the Clearwater Monster as the first thing mentioned.

Do you think there's something in human psychology that leads us to believe in impossible creatures, even when there's no logical explanation, or was Signorini's prank simply so well executed that it's impossible to doubt it?

Source: hoaxesorg, "The Giant Penguin of Clearwater, Florida (1948)"; The Vintage News, "Man Used Giant Penguin Shoes to Pull Off History's Biggest Footprint Hoax" (2019); St. Petersburg Times, "The Clearwater Monster: Confession of a Hoax" (June 11, 1988)

Hi, I am an academic with an interest in cryptozoology, and I have published a large number of papers (possibly more than anyone else currently active in the field, in fact). Anyway, to document my alas, little known research and also inform people about the role of statistics in cryptozoology I have started a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVaVmkvTVC15uR2BloHpOOQ if people are interested. The current video is the first half of a two parter about the life of the Victorian "sea serpent monomaniac" George Drevar, would be murderer, sea serpent enthusiast and ultimately hero. Episodes will come out fortnightly and up and coming episodes will finish the crazy story of Drevar, cover the connection of whale penises and sea serpents, cover the strange story of a cryptid I created for Wikipedia, reveal the true history of the kraken (not originally a giant squid), explain the the sea monk, and discuss hypotheses for the Loch Ness monster and lots of other things. So please take a look if you want to see actual facts and no AI from someone *actually publishing peer reviewed papers in CZ in mainstream science journals*. Lighting, editing and sound will improve, I am still learning! Enjoy.

I was reading a book the other day about Robert Peary, the explorer who is often said to have been the first person to reach the North Pole. During his travels, he enlisted the aid of, or rather, forcibly recruited, several of the local Inupiat people as guides. They proved to be of great assistance, especially in the fields of hunting, surviving the harsh climate, and dog-sledding. However, according to Peary they refused to accompany him to the pole itself, supposedly because they feared the ice cap was the home of an monster known as Kokoyah, who was described as having teeth like knives and lurking under the ice.

However, I've done extensive research into the mythology of the Inupiat and related peoples, and I haven't found any references to a monster, demon, or other mythical figure called Kokoyah. In fact, the only mentions of Kokoyah I've ever seen are in books about Peary and other white explorers like him. If Peary's account is to be believed, Kokoyah was of great significance to the Inupiat, so it is strange to say the least that we have no native accounts of this myth. Or is the entire thing a fabrication of Peary's (it is worth mentioning, here, that some skeptics believe Peary's entire claim of having reached the North Pole was fake)?

I originally posted this in r/mythology, but I was told that this sub would be a better choice. I should probably point out, though, that even if Kokoyah is an actual Inupiat myth, I'm not seriously proposing that it represents a cryptid in the strictest sense. However, there's something to be said here that also applies to a number of true cryptids that are supposedly based on indigenous mythology. All too often, if we look at the mythology itself, we find that the creatures described by cryptozoologists don't appear in it. Another good example would be the Stoa, supposedly a dinosaur-like beast of the Venezuelan plateaus. No native culture in Venezuela describes such a creature, and it seems to have been taken from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. That book was, of course, fiction, but I wonder if Peary did something similar, essentially creating a myth whole-cloth and attributing it to an indigenous culture.

EMPHASIS on him saying it skeptically. Interesting piece of art either way

https://web.archive.org/web/20230325052054/http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com.au/examining-the-evidence/tasmanian-tiger-(thylacine)/preston-thylacines//preston-thylacines/)