American Cryptids: The Bear Lake Monster

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                                                          The Bear Lake Monster

This monster is a cryptid that appears in local folk-lore near Bear Lake, on the Utah–Idaho border.

The myth originally started from Indian tales but was made popular by articles written in the 19th century by Joseph C. Rich, a Mormon colonizer in the area, who to report second-hand accounts of sightings of the creature. However, he later recanted the stories.





The bear lake monster  is often described as being at least 40 feet long and with short, but powerful legs. Though others say it is more snake like.

The beast was known to wait for its victims by the shores and then pull them in. It is also known to attack unlucky swimmers in the lake. It is reported as grayish greenish with the head of an alligator. A man, who appeared in Monsters and mysteries in America, claims to have seen this monster in 2007. 

In recent years the monster is mostly considered to be a tourist attraction.

Said to resemble a huge brown snake, nearly 90 feet long, though in other accounts it is said to resemble a large crocodile or aquatic dragon like creature..


A few "recent" sightings ...



Sighting of the Bear Lake Monster continued even after Rich admitted that he fabricated the original sightings as a hoax. A 1907 letter published in a Logan, Utah newspaper claimed that two men had seen the Bear Lake behemoth attack their camp and kill one of their horses, a four-year-old claimed to see it in 1937, and a Boy Scout leader spoke of seeing it in 1946.

The last reported sighting of the monster was in June 2002, when Bear Lake business owner Brian Hirschi claims to have seen the monster.

The monster has become a part of local folklore, partly due to sporadic sightings and partly in jest. For years a Bear Lake Monster Boat—a tourist boat shaped to look like a green lake monster—offered a 45-minute scenic cruise of Bear Lake with folklore storytelling.

Another self-parody that the locals have done is to fill a float in the Garden City, Utah Raspberry Days parade with local children and label it “The Real Bear Lake Monsters. On another occasion, during the 1996 Raspberry Days, a competition was organized in Garden City to have local school children name the leviathan. The judges decided on the name Isabella, which had been submitted by an eight-year-old girl.

The Bear Lake monster also appears in an episode of Animal Planet's Lost Tapes  drama series, in which it is depicted as similar to a crocodile or a mosasaur. Lost Tapes also states that in one legend  Pecos Bill  fought the monster for days until he finally defeated the creature. The show also included a group of girls who were staying over in tents beside the lake being attacked.

 Most recently the search for this creature was the subject of SyFy Channel's Haunted Highway Season 1, Episode 1 (2012) "Bear Lake Beast; Vergas Hairy Man." During which investigators found a cow bone in a submerged cave, springing questions of how the bone arrived there.