A similar process occurs in lakes and woods where mysterious creatures are said to lurk. Waves, large fish, and logs are thus turned into lake monsters; bear, elk, or other creatures are turned into Bigfoot. The process is well documented, but many cryptozoologists insist that eyewitnesses are more reliable than they are. Monster researchers and writers often mention that an eyewitness is an upstanding member of the community (or a reverend, or a police officer), as if that somehow ensures against misidentification. Would such cryptozoologists argue that Mr. Plucknett is not an upstanding citizen, or that he is more likely to be mistaken than others?
We also see another common element of eyewitness identifications: overconfidence. Plucknett was absolutely certain about his identification; we can assume that there was no doubt in his mind that he had a boar in his sights. If he had been uncertain, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. If he hadn’t shot his son, if he had missed or the gun had misfired, he would probably still be absolutely sure that he had seen a boar, because it wouldn’t have been proved otherwise. Now transfer this situation to a Bigfoot sighting in a wooded area or a monster sighting on a lake: A person sees something large and dark move in the woods or in the water. He turns and, for a few seconds, observes an unknown creature disappearing into the brush or into the lake. He’s absolutely sure of his identification and reports it with total conviction and confidence to a researcher. Yet without a body or photograph to compare the description to, we can’t be sure what he saw. All we have is a sincere, believable, convinced eyewitness. Yet eyewitnesses can be absolutely honest and certain—and dead wrong.
Mistaken or hoaxed eyewitness reports had terrible consequences in 2002 when snipers terrorized the Washington, D.C., area. Based on eyewitness descriptions, law enforcement agencies alerted the public to be on the lookout for suspects in a white box truck or white van. Fairly detailed descriptions were offered, including a roof rack. Thousands of vehicles were stopped and searched, jamming highways for miles. The focus on a white van intensified after the October 14, 2002, shooting outside a store in suburban Virginia, when a man claimed to have seen the shooter standing next to a white- or cream-colored van. It was later revealed that the man had lied to police and made up the story.
At least one “eyewitness” lied, and others got it wrong. The snipers, John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, were found in a dark blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice. “We were looking for a white van with white people, and we ended up with a blue car with black people,” said D.C. police chief Charles H. Ramsey. In the end, the emphasis on the white van by both the police and the public almost certainly cost innocent lives. According to the Washington Post, the police had stopped the Caprice on at least ten separate occasions in the area of the sniper attacks, but it had been let go because it wasn’t the white van that eyewitnesses had reported.
If eyewitnesses can be mistaken in these life-and-death cases, they’re probably no more accurate in monster sightings and descriptions. This doesn’t mean that all eyewitness accounts are mistakes, though many probably are, as most reputable cryptozoologists agree. But the psychological literature is clear and uncontested: we are all subject to misunderstandings, misperceptions, and mistakes, and we are all overconfident in those beliefs and perceptions. These cases can serve as an important lesson for investigators of all types, and cryptozoologists in particular. Can you always trust your eyes and perceptions? How sure can you be about what you see? Sure enough to take a life if you’re wrong?
There is also a bias that leads to what’s called a “file drawer effect”: sightings that seem mysterious at first but are quickly proved otherwise are only rarely reported. With few exceptions, researchers and investigators don’t hear about eyewitnesses who were confident in their initial reports yet proved wrong.
Cases like that of Dennis Plucknett are examples of verified misidentifications. But they are only a small fraction of such cases and are notable for the fact that they were proved wrong and exposed. Logically and statistically, it stands to reason that for every case that makes the news or gets written up, dozens or perhaps hundreds of similar misidentifications aren’t reported. Witnesses may feel silly admitting they were fooled or they may believe that their sightings aren’t worth reporting, since nothing unusual was discovered. If I realize that I’ve been fooled by a floating log or a strange wave, why would I bother to mention it to monster researchers? And even if I did, would they be interested and recognize the value in my report?
This fundamental—but rarely recognized—bias in eyewitness (and investigator) reporting naturally leads to a focus on the unexplained sightings, while the explained ones are ignored or downplayed. But to accurately understand eyewitness accounts, researchers can’t pick and choose. They must consider all reports, focusing not just on the unidentified but also on the misidentified. Only with this scientific and statistical understanding does a valid picture emerge, demonstrating how easily we can misunderstand what we see.
APPENDIX 3
ANIMATING THE
CHAMP PHOTOGRAPH
Sandra Mansi’s photograph of the Lake Champlain creature renewed popular interest in Champ, and it has been studied and discussed for almost thirty years. Some critics thought that it might be a waterfowl, a jumping fish, or possibly a floating log. I favored the last theory, yet no one had actually shown how a floating log could look like the image Mansi had captured. I took on the task and created an animated sequence that shows how a floating log might, from a certain angle, look like a rising and submerging lake monster. Figures A.1 to A.5 are stills from that animated sequence.
Figures A.1 to A.5 Model of a tree trunk sculpted from clay to show one possible explanation for the object in the Mansi photograph. (Photos by Benjamin Radford)
APPENDIX 4
OGOPOGO FILM AND
VIDEO ANALYSES
Our primary source for images of the Lake Okanagan creature, Ogopogo, was Arlene Gaal, an invaluable resource and a tireless researcher. Gaal has collected photographs, videos, and sighting reports since she moved to Kelowna, British Columbia, in 1968. During our investigation, she shared her photos and videos with Joe Nickell, John Kirk, and me, as well as with the National Geographic producers, explaining picture by picture what each image suggested to her.
In 2004 several Ogopogo films were professionally analyzed for the SciFi Channel show Proof Positive. Although it was the most thorough and sophisticated computer analysis done to date, each film failed to provide good evidence for the monster. In one case, when the image was stabilized and compared to fixed objects in the background, the investigator concluded that the dark humps that appeared to be moving weren’t moving at all. In another, the Ogopogo humps were misaligned in the water and therefore couldn’t be from the same creature—suggesting waves or several small animals (perhaps beavers or otters) instead of one large monster. One video was interesting because of the eyewitnesses’ disagreement about what it depicted; what one person described as “three very distinct humps,” another saw quite plainly as waves created by “something pushing the water up.”
One widely seen Ogopogo video shot by a man named Ken Chaplin became a local joke, with viewers pointing out that the “mystery creature” was obviously a beaver swimming with its head raised—the tail slapping the water was a telltale sign. John Kirk was “flabbergasted at how Chaplin could possibly have thought he captured Ogopogo on tape. He had categorically stated that the animal was between nine and twelve feet long, but what we were seeing on the screen was obviously nowhere near that size.” One Kelowna resident told me that many local folks were embarrassed when the film was broadcast because it made them look like they didn’t know a beaver when they saw one. (I pointed out that it was probably an honest mistake, and besides, it was an American TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, that had paid $30,000 for the most expensive beaver footage in history!)
Most films, of course, are more ambiguous, and some misidentifications are to be expected. The poor quality of the majority
of Ogopogo images means that they yield little information, but Gaal offered a few as the “cream of the crop.” None had been thoroughly examined, and she was pleased to have our expertise and the National Geographic crew available. Here I highlight our analyses of two of the best Ogopogo films.
THE THAL FILM
On August 11, 1980, a tourist group near the Bluebird Bay Resort Motel in downtown Kelowna saw a dark green creature about sixty feet long out on the lake. The object was said to be about a hundred yards away, moving at twenty-five miles per hour. The object passed back and forth in front of the group four times and was observed for about forty-five minutes. One Vancouver resident, Larry Thal, had a Super 8 movie camera with him and managed to capture about ten seconds of the activity.
Gaal owns the unedited 8mm film, but no projector was available; the best we had was a VHS transfer done many years earlier—not by a paid professional but by “a friend who had some sophisticated equipment.” This was, Gaal said, the first time this film had been examined by experts. As we watched, several dark humps moved around briefly out in the water. Gaal estimated that each protrusion “appeared to be two feet or more out of the water” and three to five feet long. Yet the footage shows nothing of scale nearby, so distance and size are impossible to verify. It did appear to be one or more live creatures—not a log or a wave—but they could have been a number of known animals.
As we watched, with Gaal narrating and the TV crew looking on, the segment looped twice, then an image of a dark, vertical object froze on the screen. Gaal described a head and neck in the freeze-frame. In her book Ogopogo (1986, 54) she wrote: “One frame clearly shows a prehistoric-like image, similar to the sketch drawn by the Wong family during their 1976 bridge sighting. The next frame really caught my attention. The mouth opens as the jaws do indeed separate. Nothing like this had ever been nor has since been captured on film.” But in all honesty, Joe and I saw little of what Gaal described. I didn’t see a mouth or a prehistoric image. All I could see was a thin, dark, vertical form. It was nonetheless very unusual and presented a real mystery; this wasn’t a log, a wave, a beaver or otter, or any other known animal’s neck or appendage. Curiously, Arlene said that the eyewitnesses hadn’t reported seeing the long neck come out of the water. A review of their signed, written description in Gaal’s book (1986, 52) confirms this. Why would a detail as remarkable as a huge, dark neck and head with jaws separating not be noted by over a dozen eyewitnesses?
I also noted that the “neck” was significantly darker than the darkest black in the frame. This suggested to me (and to Ian Kerr, the National Geographic cinematographer I later consulted) that the dark spot may have been dirt or debris on the 8mm original or a glitch accidentally superimposed during the (nonprofessional) video transfer. I asked Gaal to replay the video because, though I had been watching closely, I had somehow missed the neck rising out of the water. The video just cut from a film of the two small objects to a still shot of one long “neck.” “It’s only in this frame,” she explained. That clinched it: since the dark neck sticking up out of the water appeared in only one frame—it can’t be seen rising out of the water or sinking back into it—the Ogopogo neck is almost certainly a film artifact. The eyewitnesses didn’t report seeing the long, dark neck because they didn’t see it.
Further expert analysis was provided by forensic video specialist Grant Fredricks, who works for the FBI. Using the best available originals and state-of-the-art image stabilization and clarification techniques, Fredricks (2005) found nothing monstrous in the videos. He concluded that the Thal film “has all the characteristics of waves moving. … I don’t see anything that would tell me this is anything out of the ordinary.”
THE FOLDEN FILM
The best evidence of Ogopogo, according to Gaal and other writers, is about a minute of footage shot in 1968 by a man named Arthur Folden. On a sunny August day, Folden and his wife were driving on Highway 97 south of Peachland when Folden noticed “something large and lifelike” out on the calm water. They immediately pulled over on a nearby bluff overlooking the lake, which, according to Gaal, “at this point runs fairly high above the lake and about three hundred yards from the shore.” Folden, an 8mm movie buff, pulled out his camera and captured the object in the water. Concerned that he was near the end of his film, he stopped and started the segment several times, turning the camera off when the object submerged and starting again when he saw it resurface.
Though we were unable to see the entire unedited film, we did our best with what was available. Joe and I examined a video clip containing about forty-five seconds of footage. The object was estimated at seventy feet long, according to Folden and his wife. Though the quality is mediocre at best (it’s fuzzy and scratched), Folden was professional enough to hold the camera steady most of the time. Thankfully, the film begins with a wide-angle shot, allowing us to roughly estimate Folden’s distance from the shore. The object Folden filmed was estimated at another two hundred yards out in the lake. If the camera was about three hundred yards from the lakeshore, then the object, whatever it was, was seen at five hundred yards. If this estimate—nearly a third of a mile—is correct, the object would have to be truly monstrous to be seen with the naked eye from the highway.
According to Loren Coleman in his Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep, “The short footage shows a large creature diving and reappearing, until it finally takes off, churning up waves and leaving a heavy wake, before making its last dive. Based on the size of pine trees onshore, about twenty-five feet tall, the creature was estimated to be about sixty to seventy feet long.” The film begins by showing what appears to be a noticeable disturbance in the water. Since it isn’t clear how far out in the lake the disturbance is, there’s no way to tell how large an area it covers. Within a few seconds, the object begins moving to the right of the screen. A tree in the foreground provides a basis for comparison—not necessarily of the creature’s size, but of its horizontal journey. The object picks up speed as it moves away from the tree, even creating a noticeable crest as it parts the water. The object then slows somewhat, and the film ends.
In an independent inquiry, Fredricks (2005) concluded that the creature Folden had filmed was far smaller than previously thought and suggested that the unidentified beast was almost certainly among the known lake fauna, probably a large fish. “We can see that there?s a light object in front of this darker object. This object is quite reflective and very, very consistent with the side of a silvery fish,? he noted.
It?s important to remember that although the footage itself lasts about forty-five seconds, Folden reported that the whole sighting lasted two to three minutes. Distance is crucial, because an object moving across a film frame can be either a massive object covering a great distance or a much smaller object covering a much smaller distance, depending on how far away it is. Without something of known scale near the object, it’s difficult or impossible to distinguish between the two possibilities. We could, however, use elapsed time to roughly estimate distance.
Though we knew that many specifics would be impossible to establish nearly forty years after the fact (and with Mr. Folden unavailable to help), we were able to set some parameters and answer a few basic questions. For example, how large must an object be for Folden to see it and film it from his position along the highway? Are small or medium-sized animals such as fish or otters discernible from his position, or merely imperceptible dots?
Having previously conducted field experiments to reconcile lake monster sightings with information from photographs, I was asked to bring my knowledge and experience to bear on the Folden film. With input from Joe Nickell and John Kirk, I designed and arranged a set of experiments to see what information we could glean from Folden’s film, despite the nearly four-decade time lapse. Our experiment was filmed for the National Geographic documentary.
We located a site along Highway 97 that all of us agreed was either the original site or
very near it. For the experiments, we took photographs of the Folden site and placed a survey boat out on the lake at set distance intervals. Runnalls Denby, a professional land surveying firm located in downtown Kelowna (less than a block from the city’s famed Ogopogo statue) was contracted to help with these tasks. The resulting surveyor’s map (figure A. 6, next page) shows the distance from the eyewitness’s position to various plotted points out on the lake. We took photos and measurements at various distances from shore, including at the distance Folden estimated. As the experiment progressed, it was immediately clear to all of us that Folden had dramatically overestimated how far away the creature was. Because of this, we can also conclude that the creature’s speed had been overestimated. It was nearer to the camera, and thus covered a relatively short distance (perhaps a hundred yards) during its two- or three-minute journey.
Skeptic and proponent alike agreed on several conclusions: (1) we had located the original site of the Folden film, or one very near it—a feat never before accomplished; (2) the object in the water was indeed a living creature of some sort; and, most important, (3) the creature’s distance from the camera had been greatly overestimated, meaning that the creature was much smaller than previously thought. Perhaps luck and better technology will one day yield irrefutable proof of Ogopogo, but until then, it seems that the beast is as shy as ever.
Lake Monster Mysteries Page 16