Scientific cryptozoologist John Kirk intrigued by sightings at Cameron Lake “There is definitely something in the water and it is moving.”
That’s the opinion of John Kirk, the president and head field researcher for the B.C. Scientific Cryptozoology Club, about a photograph of a strange wake in Cameron Lake.
He says what he saw was convincing, and now he’s considering an expedition to Cameron Lake to look at the situation first-hand.
The picture, taken by Brigette Horvath, reputedly shows evidence of something unusually large swimming in the lake. A TV segment featuring Horvath’s story and photo caught Kirk’s attention and a subsequent Internet search by his team pulled up the story in The News.
It wasn’t the first time they’d heard about this creature. In fact, he said his group first heard about the cryptid — the name given to unidentified species — in 2004.
“We have been aware of the Cameron Lake cryptid for a long time,” Kirk said.
Kirk and his team studied Horvath’s image. They have since been in contact with her and he said he’s contemplating an expedition to the shores of Cameron Lake. If he does come, Kirk will bring with him a wealth of experience spanning 20 years that has seen his search for strange creatures take him from the shores of Vancouver Island lakes to the jungles of the Congo.
He leads a group of about 70 members — among them, he notes, two members of the prestigious Royal Society. He plans to bring some of them with him, and he has invited Horvath.
The sighting, he said, fits in with a surprisingly large and widespread body of local lake creature lore. In fact, he said, British Columbia is number one in the world for lake monster sightings, beating out Norway and Sweden.
“There are 39 lakes in this province where some type of creature has been seen,” he said. “These phenomena happen all over the province.”
Other Island sightings, he said, include giant salamanders in Nitnat Lake, and an Ogopogo-like creature in Cowichan Lake.
“There’s a story of a guy fishing there in the 1950s or ‘60s being towed around the lake for an hour when his fishing line snagged on something very large.”
Tales of lake cryptids on Vancouver Island, he said, go beyond the 20-odd year history of the Cameron Lake creature, noting another lake may provide a clue about the history of lake creatures.
“Sproat Lake is also a body of water with an unknown animal inhabiting it,” he said. “In April, 1987 my family and a friend saw two large black humps swimming parallel with the shore at the northern end of the lake. We watched it for about minute. At Sproat Lake there are famous pictographs depicting an unknown creature known in the rest of the province as a Naitaka. This is the same name given to Ogopogo.”
An author and law enforcement support worker, Kirk has travelled to Scotland, Ireland and parts of the United States in his cryptozoological investigations. However, he said for him, his adventure in Africa stands out.
“We were looking for a semi-aquatic creature in Congo and Cameroon, called Mokele-mbembe, which is described as a long-necked animal with a body similar to a hippo and elephant-like legs,” he said. “It sounded like a sauropod. We heard reports of Pygmies seeing the creature.”
One father and son, he said, reported watching a Mokele-mbembe for three hours when its bulk blocked their passage on the river, and they were able to describe it in detail. Some of the locals, he said, were able to pick out a picture of the creature from a book — a picture which turned out to be of a plesiosaur. Interestingly, he added, the Pygmies described dermal quills on the neck of the beast — a feature of plesiosaurs largely unknown until very recently, and which weren’t in the pictures.
While Kirk said Mokele-mbembe could be some sort of holdover from another time, the Cameron Lake cryptid appears to be something different.
“Someone said it was silver coloured and looked like a fish,” he said. “I don’t think this is a pleisiosaur or something left over from he age of dinosaurs. I think it could be an undiscovered species.”
Journo turns animal-hunter
John Kirk wasn’t always a cryptid hunter. He says he was a hard-nosed journalist when he moved to Canada in 1987. It was on a holiday at Okanagan Lake that year when his life changed forever.
“I saw a thing in the lake called Ogopogo,” he said. “My entire life was turned upside down by my experience. I was ridiculed by some and even my good friends think I am a bit odd because I have spent 20 years pursuing unknown animals. But I thought, why isn’t anyone investigating this animal from a scientific perspective? That got me started.”
Quebec next on list of sightings
Right behind British Columbia in terms of lake cryptid sightings, Kirk said, is Quebec.
One instance of a lake creature in La Belle Provence comes from Lake Champlain, where sightings of a strange creature are so common the locals have come up with a pet name for it: Champ. In the Eastern Townships area, people talk about a creature they call Ponik.
Cameron Lake Cryptozoology
Cameron Lake Cryptozoology