John Lennon and Paul McCartney are shown on their arrival at Palam airport, near Delhi, India, on their way to meet with their guru, The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Photo by UPPA/ZUMA Press. Copyright 1966 by UPPA [Photo via NewsCom]

It all began on October 12, 1969, when Russ Gibb, a DJ for Detroit’s underground station WKNR-FM, received a phone call by a man named “Tom,” who claimed that some Beatles records contained hidden clues suggesting that Paul McCartney had actually died.

The evidence for a conspiracy revolved around the theory that Paul had been decapitated in an automobile wreck after he left Abbey Road studios in London, where the Beatles recorded their music. Paul had apparently left upset over an argument with the other Beatles, took his Aston Martin sportscar, and perished in a horrible accident that killed him.

This accident supposedly took place at 5 a.m. on November 9, 1966, and was caused by a hitchhiker named Rita who Paul had picked up along the road.

With Paul’s death, however, a big problem arose: the Beatles were at the peak of their career and the loss of one of their members would mean the end of the show for them and for the industry behind them. Thus, somebody had the idea of never revealing Paul’s death and hiring an impostor in his place, somebody who looked like him and could play music. Some sources claimed that the imposter was an actor named William Campbell, the winner of a Paul McCartney lookalike contest and, conveniently, an orphan from Edinburgh. Of course, it didn’t hurt to assume that Campbell could write the same type of songs as McCartney and just happened to have the same voice.

The arrival of an impostor in November 1966, then, could have explained why the Beatles stopped touring that same year (it would have been too easy to spot a fake McCartney performance on stage) and started to grow moustaches (the face was almost identical, but not perfect: it needed some disguise).

However, this terrible secret generated in the remaining Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, a strong sense of guilt and induced them to insert many hints and clues to the truth in their songs and album covers.

I Buried Paul

Abbey Road cover art contains many clues to Paul McCartney’s (non)death.

What had revealed the existence of a conspiracy to the mysterious “Tom” was the publication, two weeks before his telephone call, of the Beatles’s latest album, titled Abbey Road. The album cover showed the four Beatles walking in a single file across the now-famous crosswalk at Abbey Road. This was thought to symbolize a funeral procession: John Lennon, dressed in white, represented the Church (and white is the traditional color of mourning in many Eastern cultures); Ringo, dressed in black, represented the undertaker. Paul was out of step with the other three Beatles, with his eyes closed and barefoot: in a number of societies, it appears that corpses are buried without their shoes; furthermore, Paul held a cigarette in his right hand, when everybody knew that the real McCartney was left-handed! George Harrison, last in line, was dressed in work clothes and, to many, represented the gravedigger.

On the street there is also a parked Volkswagen Beetle whose license plate shows an eerie message: “LMW 28IF,” interpreted to mean that Paul would have been twenty-eight if he had lived. The fact that Paul was actually twenty-seven years old when Abbey Road was released doesn’t seem to make much difference, for in far Eastern societies (the Beatles had quite a fascination with the Far East) an individual’s birth included the time spent in the mother’s womb. In that case, Paul would indeed have been twenty-eight.

These “revelations” quickly launched an unprecedented outbreak of hysteria in the pop world and in the media, as more and more “clues” were found in previous Beatles records.

First of all, the clue-diggers looked at Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the first album that the Beatles recorded after Paul’s supposed demise. Released on June 1, 1967, the record was among the most influential in music history. The cover, another famous picture, showed the four Beatles dressed in band uniforms, gathered around a bass drum bearing the album title and with a crowd of cut-out people around them. It proved to be a goldmine for clue-diggers. Again, the spectators resembled the mourners at a funeral and the flowers in front of them not only spelled the word “Beatles,” but also a set of yellow hyacinths formed the shape of a left-handed bass guitar, McCartney’s instrument.

Paul had a right hand raised above his head: again, supposedly, in certain Far Eastern societies, this was a symbol of death. Also, while the other Beatles held bright, golden, band instruments, Paul held a black clarinet: another supposed symbol of mourning?

A doll wore a striped “Welcome the Rolling Stones” sweatshirt: on her leg there is a small model car, strongly resembling an Aston Martin that seems to be heading towards the word “Stones.” Perhaps a hint of the accident?

If you then held a flat mirror perpendicular to the center of the words “Lonely Hearts” appearing on the bass drum this hidden message appeared: “I ONE IX HE <> DIE”. “I ONE IX” is a direct reference to the supposed fatal crash day (11/9/66), “HE” refers to Paul, as the diamond that points directly to McCartney confirms, “DIE”.

In the open album jacket, the Beatles appear still in the Sgt. Pepper’s uniforms and McCartney wore an arm patch that read “OPD”: an abbreviation for “Officially Pronounced Dead”?

This was also the first album in history that included the lyrics to the songs appearing in the record, and they were published on the back cover, along with a picture of the four Beatles in their outfits. Strangely, Paul is the only one turning his back to the camera, and also strange is the fact that George’s thumb points to the opening lines of “She’s Leaving Home.” The lyric states: “Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins,” another reference to the day and time of Paul’s fatal accident?

In another song of the album, “A Day in the Life,” John sings “He blew his mind out in a car,” and in another, “Good Morning, Good Morning,” he starts by singing: “Nothing to do to save his life” (and was the title a play on the words “morning” and “mourning”?) And what about “Lovely Rita”? Was the song a reference to the girl that caused Paul’s death? Could be, since in it McCartney (or the imposter) sings: “Took her home and nearly made it.”

More clues were also found in subsequent albums. The Magical Mystery Tour cover showed the Beatles dressed in animal costumes. In the centre was a black walrus and, in certain Scandinavian countries, a walrus is considered a harbinger of death. Was the imposter dressed in the walrus skin? Apparently not, for John Lennon sings in the album the song titled “I am the Walrus.” But on the album cover, as if scribbled later, the complete title appears to be: “I am the Walrus (‘No You’re Not!’ Said Little Nicola).” So who was the walrus?

In a later Beatles release (titled simply The Beatles, the record became better known as the White Album because the cover was plain white), in a song titled “Glass Onion,” Lennon sings: “Well here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul”!

On the booklet included in Magical Mystery Tour, the clues abounded: Paul is shoeless in some pictures, is the only one to wear a black flower on his lapel while the others are red, has a hand above his head in various pictures, and he even sits behind a sign stating “I Was.”

Near the end of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” upon careful listening, a faint voice stated something like “I buried Paul.”

You could also turn the Magical Mystery Tour album jacket upside-down and look at its reflection in the mirror: the title, detailed as stars, became the digits to a phone number. The rumor further explained that if the numbers were dialed, the listener would get the true details of Paul McCartney’s death.

On the White Album, if you listened to a strange murmuring following the song “I’m So Tired,” you couldn’t make out what it said. But, should you decide to play the record backwards the words became something like: “Paul is dead now, miss him, miss him, miss him.” Nothing compared to the chilling revelations of “Revolution No. 9,” where, after reversing the song, you could hear a voice saying: “Turn me on dead man,” and then the sound of a terrible collision, the sounds of crackling flames and a voice screaming “Let me out! Let me out!” A recreation of Paul’s terrible accident?

“My death? An exaggeration”

It seems unimaginable that the American public would believe such an unfounded rumor. However, this same generation had been raised on the idea that there may have been a conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy and that the Warren Commission had actually worked to hide this fact from the public. Would it be so impossible, then, to believe that Paul McCartney’s death may have been hidden from the public?

The rumors became so noisy that Paul McCartney himself had to reassure his fans that he was still alive. In an exclusive interview with Life magazine (November 7, 1969) he stated, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. However, if I was dead, I’m sure I’d be the last to know.” He also offered a number of explanations for the mysterious clues.

The OPD patch he wore on Sgt. Pepper’s actually meant “Ontario Police Department”; he wore a black flower in Magical Mystery Tour because they had run out of red ones; it was John wearing the walrus outfit and, on Abbey Road, he was barefoot only because it was a hot day.

Other “clues” had similar simpler explanations: John did not say “I buried Paul” at the end of “Strawberry Fields” but, as can be clearly heard now on a clearer take of the song in Anthology 3, he says “cranberry sauce.”

However, while it is true that most clues can be easily attributed to coincidence and wishful thinking, there are little things that must have been put there by the Beatles for some purpose, like the various “walrus” claims, the backward messages, and some other hints in the album covers. It may just be, as John Lennon said, that they only wanted to have a laugh at the expense of those critics reading cryptic messages in everything they did.

What is sadly true is the fact that Charles Manson and his “family” also believed that there were hidden messages in Beatles songs hinting at the Armageddon. He thought that the Fab Four were actually angels sent by God to reveal the secrets of the approaching apocalypse and that, in order to start the end of the world, they needed Manson’s help. This is the tragically absurd reasoning he gave for the murder of Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski, and the guests she was hosting at their house in Hollywood.

According to R. Gary Patterson, author of the well-researched The Walrus Was Paul (New York: Fireside, 1996), “Perhaps the Beatles became concerned that if they admitted to planting clues they could very well be charged in some sort of conspiracy that would indirectly link them to the Manson murders. Perhaps it would be much safer to give up the hoax and deny it ever happened. This way, the Beatles would be safe from any lawsuit implicating the band members.”

Perhaps. In a lighter vein, however, the rumor also helped to further boost the sale of the Beatles catalog and inspired a lot of cartoons and comedy skits, like one that was presented on The Ed Sullivan Show on Februrary 23, 1970, involving two angels in heaven:

Angel One: Is there any truth to the rumor that Paul McCartney is still alive?

Angel Two: I doubt it. Where do you think we get those groovy harp arrangements?

When Joe Nickell and I began our search for Ogopogo, the famous monster of Lake Okanagan, in British Columbia, Canada, I had an idea of what to look for: a creature thirty to seventy feet long, with dark skin and a characteristic series of humps. Though I went in search of one monster, in a way I found three. Ogopogo seems to have several distinct incarnations: as an Indian legend, as an elusive biological beast, and as a lovable local mascot.

N’ha-a-itk of Indian Myths

Because the evidence for lake monsters rests almost entirely on ambiguous sightings, fuzzy photographs, and a lakeful of supposition, native Indian tales have been used to suggest historical precedence for the creatures. Some lake monsters, such as Loch Ness’s Nessie and Lake Champlain’s Champ, are depicted as mysterious but fundamentally friendly beasties, playful and elusive. Not Ogopogo, or at least not the Indian stories upon which it is supposedly based: that of the fearsome N’ha-a-itk. [1] The N’ha-a-itk / Ogopogo link is firmly cemented in the creature’s history and lore, more closely tied to native myths than any other lake monster. Virtually all writers on the subject lump the two together, and in fact most use the terms interchangeably. For example, “the Indian name for the animal was Naitaka,” writes Peter Costello in his book In Search of Lake Monsters (Costello 1974, 222). Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, in Cryptozoology A to Z, state that “The monsters . . . are known both as Ogopogo and by their native name, Naitaka,” (Coleman and Clark 1999, 183) while the definitive book on Ogopogo, In Search of Ogopogo, by Arlene Gaal, is subtitled “Sacred creature of the Okanagan Waters” and has a chapter titled, “Native legends of the Ogopogo.”

N’ha-a-itk, variously translated as “water demon” or “lake monster,” [2] would demand a toll from travelers for safe passage near its reputed home of Rattlesnake Island (also known as Monster Island), a small rocky clot in Lake Okanagan (see figure 1). The fee was not just a bit of gold or tobacco, but a sacrifice—a live sacrifice. Hundreds of years ago, whenever Indians would venture into the lake, they brought chickens or other small animals to drop into the water. The drowned fowl would sink into the lake’s depths and assure its owners a protected journey. The island’s rocky shore was said to be littered with the gory remnants of passersby who did not make the sacrifices.

Indian traditions speak of Timbasket, the chief of a visiting tribe who paid a terrible price for challenging N’ha-a-itk. Historian Frank Buckland tells the story:

Timbasket, the Indian cynic . . . declared his disbelief in the existence of the lake demon. He was told that the Westbank Indians intended to sacrifice a live dog to the water god as they passed Squally Point, but he was quite unimpressed. He knew too much to concern himself with outmoded customs. . . . [Later when crossing the lake] Timbasket defiantly chose to travel close to the rocky headland. Suddenly, the lake demon arose from his lair and whipped up the surface of the lake with his long tail. Timbasket, his family and his canoe were sucked under by a great swirl of angry water (Quoted in Moon 1977, 25).

This was modus operandi for N’ha-a-itk: it would use its mighty tail to lash the lake’s waters into a fierce storm that would drown its victims. The white settlers apparently followed the Indians’ warnings. Yet white men also lapsed at times and had to be reminded of the wrath N’ha-a-itk could wreak. In 1854 or 1855, a settler named John MacDougall is said to have neglected the sacrifice. While crossing the lake with a team of horses, a great force sucked his steeds down with a tremendous slurp. MacDougall was terrified, but even more so when he realized that his canoe, lashed to the horses, was about to be pulled down to a watery doom as well. He grabbed a knife and cut the ropes, narrowly escaping with his life.

Mary Moon, author of Ogopogo (1977), cautions those seeking retribution: “Anyone thinking of killing Ogopogo had better ponder the fate of the Lambton family. . . . During the first half of the fifteenth century, Sir John de Lambton killed a ‘wyrm.’ As a result of killing the monster, the Lambton family fell under a witch’s curse: for nine generations no Lambton would die in his bed. None did. Some say the curse has pursued the Lambtons down to the 1970s.” Thus black magic enters the Ogopogo story. According to Moon, “The Indians . . . looked on it as a superhuman [supernatural] entity” (Moon, 32). Other writers agree, including W. Haden Blackman, who points out that the Sushwap and Okanakane Indians “believed that it was an evil supernatural entity with great power and ill intent” (Blackman 1998, 71).

N’ha-a-itk’s paranormal connection to the elements is perhaps the strongest of any lake monster. Not only does N’ha-a-itk seem to have supernatural control over the lake’s waters, it also commands aerial forces as well: “the Indians said no boat could possibly land [on Rattlesnake Island], for the monster would cause a strong wind to blow and baffle the attempt. . . . the monster was something more than an amphibian. It was always in some way connected with high winds. . . .” (Moon 1977, 32).

What manner of monster is this? The power to summon storms and create whirlpools? Witch curses? (Frankly, not dying in one’s own bed doesn’t seem like that terrifying a fate.) Such stories and descriptions suggest that N’ha-a-itk is a legendary disincarnate force of nature, not a corporeal creature actually living and eating, breathing and breeding, in the cold waters of Lake Okanagan.

One must be very careful about accepting native stories and legends as true accounts of actual creatures. Just because a given culture has a name for (or tells stories about) a strange or mysterious beast—be it Sasquatch or Ogopogo, dragon or leprechaun—doesn’t necessarily mean that those names or stories were meant to reflect reality. This highlights a problem that folklorist Michel Meurger points out in his groundbreaking book Lake Monster Traditions. Meurger suggests that claiming native evidence for unknown creatures is an “old gimmick of portraying the sighter as a kind of ‘noble savage,’” a process he aptly names “the scientification of folklore” (Meurger 1988, 13).

Figure 2. “The Dungeon,” a sea serpent lair in northeastern Newfoundland near Bonavista.

According to some traditions, Ogopogo’s history dates to even before it was known as N’ha-a-itk. In fact, N’ha-a-itk was actually a murderer named Kel-Oni-Won. According to Dave Parker, a traditional First Nations storyteller, Kel-Oni-Won murdered a vulnerable old man with a club. The gods decided that the killer’s punishment “was to change Kel-Oni-Won into a lake serpent, a restless creature who would forever be at the scene of the crime where he would suffer continued remorse. He was left in the custody of the beautiful Indian lake goddess and was known to the tribesmen as N’ha-a-itk; the remorseful one who must live in the lake with the company of other animals. It is said that the only animal who would tolerate his company was the rattlesnake” (Quoted in Gaal 2001, 122).

This folkloric motif—the unending punishment for the unforgivable crime—is common in many myths. The later ritual of making sacrifices (a warning to heed elders’ traditions and rituals) has an analogy in other lake monster legends. For example, children living around many reputedly monster-inhabited lakes are told by their parents that if they don’t behave and obey, they will be thrown into the lake, where the monster would eat them. This “boogeyman” method of social control is a common but largely unrecognized function of lake monster traditions. The origin of N’ha-a-itk, and by extension Ogopogo, is rooted in morality tales, not eyewitness descriptions of real creatures.

Celeste Ganassin, curator of education at British Columbia’s Kelowna Museum, explained that for many First Nations peoples the distinction between reality and myth in their traditions was not particularly important, because the stories held a culturally specific significance that renders objective truth somewhat arbitrary. Native Indians’ stories are not the White man’s literal, empirical reality. In the same way that one misses the significance of an urban legend by focusing on whether it corresponds to reality (Ellis 2001, 144), one misses the importance of N’ha-a-itk by treating it as simply Ogopogo or its predecessor. The beliefs and stories served important functions, Ganassin said, and divorcing the N’ha-a-itk myths from their cultural context strips them of their value. “People pick and choose parts of the First Nations myths to fit their needs, to support whatever argument they are trying to make. They take what they want and use it to support their ideas” (Ganassin 2005). Almost invariably it is white writers, not native people, who insist that N’ha-a-itk and Ogopogo are one in the same.

It’s not hard to imagine why native groups might create or perpetuate traditions about the lake. The area around Rattlesnake Island can be a cold, desolate, foreboding area. Nearby lies Squally Point, so named for the violent squalls that can quickly arise and menace boaters. As Arlene Gaal notes regarding a rock bluff across from the city of Peachland, “When you look down into the water from there, there’s no bottom whatsoever. The water goes out of sight. It looks eerie. Little waves hit the caves along the rocky shore, and they make sucking sounds. The combination of what you see and hear is kind of scary” (121). There are many “cursed places” around the world, where local legend warns off savvy travelers, and where monsters are said to dwell. I encountered one such area on the coast of Newfoundland: a huge, dark, unusual sinkhole near a rocky cliff that had washed out two holes toward the ocean. It is called The Dungeon, and is said to be home to sea monsters (see figure 2).

According to Ganassin, “you can’t look at a First Nations group anywhere without finding a tradition of some sort of entity in a lake they had to respect or fear. Typically they believed that some sort of spirit inhabits it. Any body of water in First Nations culture can—and often did—generate these stories to explain natural phenomena such as storms, sudden winds, and so on.” Indeed, the stories of N’ha-a-itk are virtually identical to those in many other North American lakes, including Ontario and Superior. Michel Meurger, for example, tells of an 1864 account by Indian captive Nicolas Perrot, who reported “That the [lake spirit] stays at a very deep level, and has a long tail which raises great winds when it moves to go to drink; but if it wags its tail energetically it brings about violent tempests.” As at Okanagan, the Indians would make live sacrifices to appease the water spirit. (For a fuller discussion, see chapter 3 in Meurger’s Lake Monster Traditions.)

If the N’ha-a-itk story is going to be seriously suggested as supporting evidence of Ogopogo, one has to explain not only what the link is but why all the other lakes with similar traditions—not only throughout Canada but throughout the world—also supposedly have lake monsters that no one has found. [3]

Though most writers gloss over the tenuousness of the link between N’ha-a-itk stories and Ogopogo, others acknowledge it but claim that ancient Indian petroglyphs, or rock art, depict the lake monsters. Peter Costello, in his book In Search of Lake Monsters, writes that “The Indians have left crude drawings on stone of what is thought to be Naitaka” (Costello 1974, 220). Another researcher, Roy Mackal, states that “There are at least three crude pictographs on rocks around the lake, now in an extremely poor state of preservation, which may be related to an alleged lake monster” (Mackal 1980, 225).

Figure 3. This Indian petroglyph, claimed to represent Lake Okanagan’s Ogopogo, is actually located far from the Okanagan Valley on Vancouver Island.

Mackal suggests that “The relationship is tenuous and can be inferred only from the nature and location of the pictographs themselves.” Yet the petroglyphs suggested as Ogopogo depictions are dubious for exactly these reasons. The petroglyph most often cited (figure 3) is in fact not from the Okanagan Valley at all, but instead from Sproat Lake, on Vancouver Island (Kirk 2005, Coles 1991). Another writer, Karl Shuker, suggests that petroglyphs dating from around 1700 b.c. might be evidence for lake monsters. One particular drawing, Shuker writes, “is a strikingly accurate depiction of the vertically undulating, elongate water monsters frequently reported from the lakes and seas of Canada—so much so that it could easily be taken to be a sketch made by one of these beasts’ twentieth century eyewitnesses” (Shuker 1995, 112). Yet the petroglyph Shuker describes was found not on the shore of Lake Okanagan, nor in British Columbia, nor even in the western half of Canada, but instead over 2,000 miles away, near Peterborough, just outside of Toronto. It may still represent a monster, but its location does not suggest Ogopogo.

The criterion for inclusion seems so broad that nearly any ancient drawing found anywhere in North America—that, to anyone’s eyes, might resemble some creature that could live in water—can be cited as evidence. Even desert-dwelling Indians (such as the Zuni and Pueblo) depicted horned serpents in their art and pottery. Writes Michel Meurger, “The Zunis of New Mexico have represented their serpent god of underground waters and of torrents, Kolowisi, as a horned reptile with many fins and gaping jaws.” Thus there seems little basis for the reputed links between ancient art and modern monsters. “There is no true academic evidence that specifically states that First Nations people ever put down in petroglyphs the shape of N’ha-a-itk,” Ganassin explains. “The pictures didn’t come with captions.”

Enter Ogopogo

N’ha-a-itk is clearly a supernatural entity; one writer states that “Naitaka . . . was part god, part demon.” Yet Ogopogo, the lake monster we and others searched for in Lake Champlain, is presumably neither part god nor part demon; it is instead a zoological reality. This second incarnation of Ogopogo is crucial to investigators, as it moves the creatures from the mythological realm and into the zoological one.

Though the N’ha-a-itk of the Okanagan Valley Indians is long gone, it has been replaced by a decidedly less fearsome—and more biological—beast whose exact form is a matter of opinion and debate. Some writers (e.g., Jerome Clark) claim that the descriptions of Ogopogo are “strikingly similar”; Roy Mackal, in reviewing hundreds of descriptive reports, was “struck by repetitive consistency of the descriptions, almost to the point of boredom.” Mackal continues: “The skin is described as dark green to green-black or brown to black and dark brown... [or] gray to blue-black or even a golden brown. Most often the skin is smooth with no scales, although the body must possess a few plates, scales, or similar structures observed by close-up viewers. . . . Most of the back is smooth, although a portion is saw-toothed, ragged-edged, or serrated. Sparse hair or hair-bristle structures are reported around the head, and in a few cases a mane or comblike structure has been observed at the back of the neck” (Mackal 1980, 231).

Furthermore, the head is said to look like that of a snake, or a sheep, or a horse, or an alligator. Or a bulldog. Sometimes it has ears or horns; other times it doesn’t. A surprisingly large number of sighting simply refer to a featureless “log” that came alive, such as in the following descriptions: “They saw what they thought was a log, six feet long, floating in the water,” and “It was like a great moving log, but alive, moving up and down a little in the water.”

This Ogopogo is supported not by Indian myths but by photographs, sonar readings, and eyewitness reports. A film taken in 1968 by a man named Arthur Folden is considered among the best evidence, and we examined and partially recreated the film during our investigation. (Joe Nickell is tackling this Ogopogo in his accompanying article on page 16.)

Figure 4. A statue of Ogopogo sits along Lake Okanagan near downtown Kelowna, British Columbia.

For cryptozoologists like John Kirk of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, Ogopogo is the most likely and best-documented of lake monsters, far more so than Loch Ness’s denizen. Loch Ness is a high-profile money pit, swallowing hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of effort over the last three-quarters of a century, yet yielding precious little in return. According to Kirk, “The Ogopogo phenomenon preceded that of the Loch Ness mystery. In the 1920s Ogopogo appearances were commonplace and the animal was regarded as just another member of the local fauna and not a mystery. Its reality was so strong to Okanagan Lake residents that when they built ferries to take people form Kelowna to Westbank there concern that the ferry needed to be armed with ‘monster repelling devices’ to ensure passenger and crew safety.” Furthermore, Kirk says, “The catalogue of films and video of Ogopogo are more numerous and of better quality than anything I have personally seen at Loch Ness and I believe that several of them are very persuasive that there is a large living unknown creature inhabiting the lake” (Kirk 2005). Jerome Clark and Nancy Pear, in their book Strange and Unexplained Happenings, also suggest that “Despite its silly name, Ogopogo is one of the most credible of the world’s lake monsters” (Clark and Pear 1995, 440).

Ogie Surfaces

A third Ogopogo exists: The regional mascot and hero, a cuddly bringer of cheer and love. Long gone are the echoes of live sacrifices, drowning deaths, and bone-strewn beaches. This is N’ha-a-itk and Ogopogo updated for modern Canada and presented by a savvy public relations department. Nicknamed Ogie, this Ogopogo is sometimes dragon-like, complete with wings and scales and an elongated body formed into the distinctive series of humps. Countless tourist items feature Ogie, including T-shirts, coffee mugs, keychains, and bumper stickers. Downtown Kelowna sports a life-size (?) Ogopogo statue near the waterfront (see figure 4), and a half-dozen books on the beast can be found in bookstores around town. The City of Kelowna’s coat of arms, adopted in 1955, even features a seahorse, which, according to a city brochure, “in heraldry is the closest approximation of our Ogopogo.”

The public-friendly Ogopogo can be found peering down from shelves in tourist hovels, next to snow globes and plush beavers in little red Mounties uniforms adorned with maple leaves. This Ogopogo is devoid of nasty scales or slimy skin, sheathed instead in a fuzzy and lovable countenance (see figure 5). Ogie is cute and green, often childish, and, as often as not, sporting eyelashes and a disarming smile.

A 1982 children’s book by Brock Tully is typical of the scrubbed-up, reformed beast. In the book With Hope We Can All Find Ogopogo, a “chubby, fuzzy, cuddly little ball of fluff with a big, warm and excited smile” named Hope becomes dismayed at the complex, alienating, and confusing world of adults. Seeking solace, he wanders to the shore of Lake Okanagan, where he suddenly “saw two of the biggest, warmest, lovingest eyes he had ever seen and he felt reassured. He was further soothed when the monster belonging to the eyes spoke so gently and softly and welcomed Hope to the cove.” Hope and Ogopogo developed a deep friendship: “Ogy was the most loving, forgiving, and patient living creature possible. Ogy was love!!” The story ends with Hope running back to his home yelling, “We are all Ogopogo!” It is this Ogopogo—not the murderous and fearsome N’ha-a-itk, not the dark and blobby images in home videos and photographs—that is love incarnate. [4]

Reconciling the Ogopogos

Ogopogo means different things to different people. This does not automatically relegate the beast to myth, of course: Hindus imbue cows with significance that eludes McDonald’s customers, and any cat fancier will affirm that felines are exalted among animals. But the differing versions do suggest that a real understanding of Ogopogo requires a broad view.

“Ogopogo has mellowed with the passing of time,” writes Arlene Gaal in her book Ogopogo. “Of recent years, he frolics in the water with almost impish delight, flips a flirtatious tail, and, with a sly wink, disappears into the froth to return from whence he came.” This mellowing occurred rather suddenly in the 1920s. In 1924, songwriter Cumberland Clark wrote a very popular music hall song called “The Ogopogo: The Funny Fox-Trot” (Shuker 1995). The song (which whimsically claimed that Ogopogo’s parentage was the result of an illicit union between an earwig and a whale) established the name of the creature. Shortly thereafter, Ogopogo sightings increased dramatically.5 But, notes Hayden Blackman, “reported Ogopogo attacks had ceased completely, and the peoples living on the lake were beginning to view the monster in a much kinder light. As fear gave way to curiosity and excitement, accounts of encounters with ‘the lake demon’ became much more lighthearted” (Blackman 1998, 71).

Unless lake pollution over the past centuries has had a sedative effect on the beast, this marked change in its (their) behavior is very curious. No real-world animals exhibit such a temperamental about-face. It seems that the public’s perception of Ogopogo—independent of its actions—influenced reports of the monster’s behavior. Part of this transformation is surely an effort to capitalize on tourism; what tourists are going to fly in from across Canada and around the globe to seek out a murderous leviathan that may demand a blood tithe, or the family puppy?

As with N’ha-a-itk, the real question is not what Ogopogo means in some absolute or biological sense, but what Ogopogo means to the culture and age embracing it. The First Nations peoples have N’ha-a-itk; the cryptozoologists and eyewitnesses have Ogopogo; and the tourists and Okanagan Valley children have Ogie. N’ha-a-itk and Ogopogo are fundamentally amorphous, while with Ogie we finally have captured the beast, in its cultural, if not its actual, form. The creature’s fame began with stories and songs of its exploits; years later those stories crystallized into (and influenced) modern reports of an actual beast; soon after that, stories and songs about the creature began to spread once again. Until and unless the beast is captured or identified, Ogopogo will surely live on: part god, part demon, and part chameleon.

Acknowledgements

I appreciate the assistance of many people—including Noel Dockstader, Arlene Gaal, Celeste Ganassin, and John Kirk—who helped with this investigation. Thanks also to my co-investigator Joe Nickell, who has been an invaluable source of inspiration and expertise over the years.

Notes

1. Though the spelling Naitaka is very common, I have chosen to use the more authentic spelling N’ha-a-itk throughout this piece, except in quotations.
2. While many writers prefer to emphasize translations of N’ha-a-itk that suit their agendas (such as “lake monster” and “snake in the lake”), other interpretations of the Indian word may be just as accurate but less amenable to conscription into lake monster mythos. Mary Moon gives other examples, such as “sacred creature of the water,” “water god,” and “lake demon.”
3. For a parallel example of native stories in the Bigfoot milieu, see anthropologist Wayne Suttles’ discussion in Dave Daegling’s book Bigfoot Exposed.
4. In fact, there may be more children’s books about Ogopogo than any other lake monster. Other titles include Ogopogo: The Misunderstood Lake Monster, by Don Levers (in which the beast heroically saves several buses of schoolchildren from drowning), and The Legend of L’il Ogie by Garfield Fromm.
5. Note that the increase in Ogopogo sightings was strongly linked to publicity and not other sightings. Unless the creatures frequented music halls, it is unlikely that they knew that their fame was being spread far and wide and thus decided to show themselves more often. The most likely explanation for the increased sightings is that people were more aware of the creature, were expecting to see it, and were interpreting ambiguous lake phenomena as Ogopogo even in the monster’s absence. A similar spike occurred in 1981 at Lake Champlain following the publicity surrounding Sandra Mansi’s photo of Champ.

References

• Blackman, W. Haden. 1998. The Field Guide to North American Monsters. New York: Random House.
• Clark, Jerome, and Nancy Pear. 1995. Strange and Unexplained Happenings: When Nature Breaks the Rules of Science. Detroit: Gale Research Inc.
• Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 2003. The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. New York: Tarcher.
• Coleman, Loren, and Jerome Clark. 1999. Cryptozoology A to Z. New York: Fireside Books.
• Coles, J.M. 1991. Elk and Ogopogo: Belief systems in the hunter-gatherer rock art of Northern lands. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 57(1):129—147.
• Constable, George. 1988. Mysterious Creatures. In the Mysteries of the Unknown series, Time-Life books.
• Costello, Peter. 1974. In Search of Lake Monsters. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghan.
• Eberhart, George M. 2002. Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Inc.
• Ellis, Bill. 2001. Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
• Gaal, Arlene. 1986. Ogopogo: The True Story of the Okanagan Lake Million Dollar Monster. Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House.
• —. 2001. In Search of Ogopogo. Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House.
• Ganassin, Celeste. 2005. Author interview, February 4.
• Kirk, John. 2005. Author interview, February 4 and 5.
• —. 1998. In the Domain of the Lake Monsters. Toronto, Canada: Key Porter Books Ltd.
• —. 1996. N’ha-a-itk known as Ogopogo. BCSCC Publication No. 1. British Columbia Cryptozoological Club.
• Kojo, Yasushi. 1992. Distributional patterns of cryptid eyewitness reports from Lake Champlain, Loch Ness, and Okanagan Lake. Cryptozoology 11: 83—89.
• Levers, Don. 1985. Ogopogo: The Misunderstood Lake Monster. Kelowna, British Columbia: Sandhill Publishing.
• Mackal, Roy P. 1980. Searching For Hidden Animals. London: Cadogan Books.
• Moon, Mary. 1977. Ogopogo. North Vancouver, Canada: J.J. Douglas Ltd.
• Meurger, Michel, and Claude Gagnon. 1989. Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. London: Fortean Tomes.
• Shuker, Karl. 1995. In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. London: Blandford Books.
• Tully, Brock. 1982. With Hope We Can All Find Ogopogo. Vancouver: Intermedia Press Ltd.

In September 2004, after having been charged repeatedly with false advertising, infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau became bound by an FTC consent agreement under which he agreed to pay a $2 million penalty and be banned from appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public, except for “truthful infomercials for books, newsletters, and other informational publications.” An FTC official stated that the ban was “meant to shut down an infomercial empire that has misled American consumers for years.” Around the time that the consent order was signed, Trudeau began flooding the airwaves with a thirty-minute infomercial for a book called Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About (see review on page 57). Although the infomercial suggested that the book would make specific recommendations for specific problems, it actually did not do this. Here are excerpts from a transcript of the infomercial, with my comments (boldfaced and in brackets).

Pat Matthews: I’m Pat Matthews. Welcome to a very special edition of A Closer Look. Today our guest is Kevin Trudeau. Kevin has written a book; it’s entitled Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. . . . Tell us a little bit about who “they” are. I think that’s the first question.

Kevin Trudeau: “They,” in this case, are really several government agencies—U.S. government agencies—and other agencies around the world, and the drug industry primarily, but also it involves the food industry. There are certain groups, including government agencies, as well as the food industry, the drug industry, and even some news and television and newspaper organizations that don’t want people to know about cures for diseases that are all-natural because people can’t make money on all-natural cures. So there are in fact cures for cancer. There are cures for diabetes. There are cures for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. There are cures—all-natural cures—for Attention Deficit Disorder, migraine headaches. . . .
[Trudeau attempts to gain sympathy and credibility by portraying himself as an underdog.]

Matthews: Now wait a second. Attention Deficit Disorder. Now, how can that be lumped in with all of these physical maladies?

Trudeau: Well, when you look at the way the system works today, you have the Food and Drug Administration—the FDA—and you have the drug industry. They really work in tandem. Unfortunately, there’s an unholy alliance there. People don’t know that the majority of commissioners of the FDA . . . go to work directly for the drug companies upon leaving the FDA and are paid millions and millions and millions of dollars. Now in any other format, that would be called bribery; that would be called a conflict of interest; that would be called payoffs. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. So what has occurred is the Food and Drug Administration is really working in tandem with the drug industry to protect their profits.

Matthews: There are natural remedies for psychological / neurological disorders or diseases, which they’re calling them now, right?

Trudeau: Absolutely, 100 percent. There are absolute natural cures for these problems. They don’t cost a lot. The problem is the manufacturers or the people that discover an herb, a food source—these are natural, an essential oil, a homeopathic remedy. These companies cannot by law say what the product does because if they say that this herb cures diabetes, then the Food and Drug Administration comes in and says, “Ah! You can’t say that because only a drug can cure a disease.”

Trudeau: The drug industry just started. Before then, there were only natural cures. [Actually, the number of curative products was close to zero.] But the drug industry in America is the most profitable industry in this country. You know what else is the most profitable industry is the insurance industry and the food industry.

Matthews: Right.

Trudeau: For example, obesity, weight loss . . . there are natural remedies for weight loss that the drug companies and the food industry does not want you to know about. . . . The lobbyists in Washington right now, as we speak, are demanding that the federal government and the various organizations—independent bodies—do not promote “eat less, exercise more.” The food industry does not want the message “eat less, exercise more.” Why? Because eating less means people consume less food. [This claim is a flat-out lie. Many government, professional, and educational organizations promote the idea of eating less and exercising more. The most prominent such effort is published every five years as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.]

Matthews: So the common threat in all of this seems to be money.

Trudeau: It’s all about money. The drug industry does not want people to get healthy. [It might be interesting to ask Trudeau what evidence he has for this claim.] Now think about that. People think, “[Inaudible] drugs are good.” No. The drug industry does not want people to get healthy. The drug industry wants people to buy more drugs. Healthy people don’t need drugs. If everyone in America was healthy, the drug industry would be out of business. [That’s literally true, but irrelevant. Illness is not going to disappear. The realistic view is that the drug industry could not succeed unless it produces safe and effective products.]

Trudeau: There was a study conducted on vitamin E . . . natural vitamin E . . . as a blood thinner. . . . And they compared it to the drug Heparin. And this research showed that vitamin E worked as good or better than the drug Heparin. Well, if you go to a hospital, you don’t get vitamin E. [By failing to identify the study, Trudeau makes it difficult to check whether he is interpreting it correctly. However, to anyone familiar with medical care, the statement is absurd on its face. Vitamin E has slight anticoagulant effects, but hospitalized patients who need immediate anticoagulation require a drug that is powerful and predictable. For many conditions, intravenous Heparin has been replaced by various derivatives that are safer and easier to administer.]

Matthews: No.

Trudeau: You get Heparin, because it’s a drug, and it’s a profitable drug. Drug companies do not want people to get healthy; they want them to buy more drugs. If you have, for example, a pain, headache, they don’t want your pain to go away forever. They want you to be popping some type of pain-relieving pill for the rest of your life. [Again, Trudeau offers no evidence that this is true.] See, if you have a headache, it’s not because you have an aspirin deficiency. Think about it.

Matthews: Right.

Trudeau: So . . . but if there was a way to cure migraine headaches forever so they never came back . . . if there was a way—and there is—a natural remedy you can put on the skin that will get rid of pain forever. [I don’t believe that.] Arthritis pain will go away. There is a natural, herbal supplement that the Asian Diabetes Association has called “the final cure for diabetes.” [I don’t believe that either.] It is the absolute cure. It’s an herbal remedy, it’s taken for three months approximately, and it will dramatically reduce or eliminate the need from any insulin shots, and it can cure diabetes type I and type II, in the majority of cases. Now do you think the companies that manufacture diabetes products want a cure for diabetes? [I find it difficult to believe that the medical organizations and all of the doctors who treat diabetics would not be promoting such a product if it existed. Trudeau, of course, wants you to believe he has nearly unique knowledge of the “cure” so you will buy his book.]

Matthews: I was going to mention that would put a real cramp in the insulin makers’—

Trudeau: It would wipe out a whole industry.

Matthews: Right.

Trudeau: And this is the problem. Do you think the food industry wants people to be thin? No. The food industry wants people to be fatter. There are ingredients being put in food right now that make you hungry. [Note that he doesn’t identify them.] There are ingredients being put in food right now that make you addicted to the food. There are ingredients that are being put in food right now that make you fat, and most of these products are called “diet products.”

Trudeau: Cancer . . . there are cures for cancer. There are ways to prevent cancer.

Matthews: What are some—I mean, without giving away too much of the book? [The book does not suggest any “cancer cures.” In fact, it contains almost no advice on how to cure specific conditions. People who buy the book with the hope that it will help cure what ails them are unlikely to find such advice.]

Trudeau: You know, I have been attacked by the FTC and the FDA for making statements that are true. [Not true. He was “attacked” for making statements that were false. In fact, he made so many that the FTC finally got a court order making it illegal for him to sell any products except publications. When challenged by the FTC, Trudeau had the opportunity to defend himself by presenting evidence that his product claims were true. Instead of doing this, he agreed to go out of the “natural cures” business. If he had facts to back him up, do you think he would have agreed to stop selling products whose sales totaled hundreds of millions of dollars?]

Trudeau: If your body pH is alkaline, you cannot get cancer. . . . [This statement is false.] Okay? If it’s acid, you can get cancer. In our—my personal observations, every single person who has cancer has an acidic body, acid pH, where it’s so [acidic] that it’s dramatically [inaudible]. [Considering the fact that there is no such thing as acidity or alkalinity of the body, I wonder what “observations” he can use to determine whether someone’s body is acidic.]

Trudeau: There are natural cures, that are not drugs, that absolutely work. And the companies that manufacture these natural remedies, or in some cases, simply foods that you can consume or foods to avoid—just take this food out and the problem goes away—these companies cannot state what their products do, what the homeopathic remedies do, what the essential oils, what the herbs, what the vitamins, the minerals. The companies that sell these products cannot say what they really do, because if they do, the FDA will come in and say you’re making a claim, therefore it’s a drug, therefore, you’re selling a drug without a license, and the FDA. . . . [These statements are false or misleading. The FDA has approved more than a dozen health claims that can be made for foods. The only requirement is that the claims be truthful and supported by competent scientific evidence. Even though all homeopathic products are worthless, the FDA permits products whose ingredients are listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia to be sold without a prescription for self-limiting conditions readily diagnosable by consumers. The FDA’s policy toward the other products is that no claim can be made unless it is supported by competent scientific evidence.]

Trudeau: The drug industry is trying to get—for years—has tried to get all vitamins and minerals labeled “drugs” so that they can control it. [This is a flat-out lie and scare statement used by the supplement industry to get vitamin users to ask Congress to weaken FDA protection. In the early 1970s, the FDA wanted to stop the sale of very-high-dose nutrients without a prescription. However, a health-food-industry campaign persuaded Congress to pass the Proxmire Amendment to the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to prohibit the FDA from limiting the potency of ingredients of vitamin and mineral products that are not inherently dangerous.] There are health freedoms in this country that are being taken away from us. There are more people sick today than ever before. There are more people that are overweight. There are more people that have diabetes. There are more people that have cancer. There are more people that have heart disease. There are more people that have migraine headaches. There are more people that have arthritis. There are more people that have virtually every major health abnormality. . . . [Trudeau doesn’t indicate how he does his counting. Since the American population is increasing and since Americans are living longer, I would expect an overall increase in the number of people becoming ill and in the number of people acquiring diseases that are prevalent in older people. However, Trudeau’s statement is false because the incidence of many diseases has decreased. Poliomyelitis, for example, has been wiped out in the United States.] It’s getting worse and worse. Medical science has failed. It’s obvious. When more and more people are getting the disease, isn’t it true that the medical industry is failing us? [As noted above, the answer is no. In addition there has been tremendous progress in helping people cope with various diseases.] More people take drugs today than ever before.

Trudeau: You’re sick. You go to a medical doctor. . . . This is what normally happens. The doctor is allegedly trained, looks at your symptoms; based on what he sees in his experience and knowledge, writes you a prescription . . . or he cuts out a part of your anatomy. That’s pretty much what doctors do, right? [Laughs] [Wrong. Doctors may also recommend dietary change, other measures, or simply waiting, if a problem seems likely to go away by itself.]

Matthews: Studies, for example, are very misleading. You take depression, and a study said St. John’s Wort, which is a natural herbal remedy for depression—it’s been used for centuries.

Matthews: I’ve talked to people who have touted that highly.

Trudeau: Okay. There was a specific study that came out, and on the front page of the newspapers, it said, “St. John’s Wort proven ineffective in studies.”

Matthews: Right. I remember that.

Trudeau: “Proven ineffective.” Well, nobody actually-

Matthews: By whom?

Trudeau: Nobody read the study.

Matthews: Yeah.

Trudeau: When you look at the study, there was St. John’s Wort and two prescription medications that are [inaudible] powerful and allegedly antidepressants.

Matthews: And placebo. Yeah.

Trudeau: Okay? So they had these in the study, and guess what? The study showed that none of them did anything for depression. So, obviously the study’s flawed or none of them work.

Trudeau: Drugs are not the answer for depression. Drugs are not the answer for cancer. [I don’t believe that mainstream practitioners claim that drugs are “the answer” to either problem. Drugs are highly effective against some types of depression. Similarly, drugs are effective against many types of cancer.]

Matthews: But . . . you could not have a homeopathic medicine advertised on Seinfeld to do the same thing and probably cause your body less harm. [That’s correct, because no homeopathic product is effective against depression or cancer.]

Trudeau: Now, I can’t tell you—the federal government is forbidding me to tell you these [testimonials] because they say, “They don’t mean anything.” [Trudeau is correct that testimonials are not evidence of effectiveness. However, he has not been ordered to stop telling stories. The court order forbids him to sell products other than books and newsletters.]

Matthews: You have a gag order.

Trudeau: That’s right.

Matthews: [Chuckles]

Trudeau: “They don’t mean anything. They’re only anecdotal.”

Matthews: Yeah.

Trudeau: Let me tell you something. You talk to these people. Tell them it doesn’t mean anything. It means their life.

Trudeau: There are all-natural cures. You’ll never hear about them because the manufacturers can’t tell you what they are. Diabetes, migraines, cancer, heart disease, acid reflux, Attention Deficit Disorder, depression, stress, phobias, fibromyalgia, pain of all sorts, arthritis, the list goes on. Lupus, multiple sclerosis; there are cures for multiple sclerosis. There are cures for muscular dystrophy that are all natural and people are not being allowed— [Manufacturers are not the only information sources. If these “cures” were effective, wouldn’t they be making headlines everywhere? Trudeau apparently would like you to believe that he is the only person who is willing to reveal the secrets. Would any such belief be logical?]

Trudeau: [Quoting from his book] “I would like to give you the cures for every disease; I would like to tell you the natural treatments available that can eliminate your symptoms and, at the same time, address the cause instead of suppressing the symptom. However, as I began to write this book, the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration took unprecedented action. I am forbidden to give you specific cures in this book. The FTC has ordered me not to give you any specific product recommendations, or say where you can acquire the cures and receive treatment. This entire chapter has been censored by the FTC.” [Do you believe this? I don’t. Trudeau signed a voluntary agreement that he would not sell health or disease products or use publications to sell them. He still has the First Amendment right to claim that various generic methods or product ingredients provide benefits, as long as he is not promoting a branded product. FTC attorney Daniel Kaufman, the lead attorney in the recent case against Trudeau, told me that the basic principle involved is that Trudeau is not permitted to use a book as a marketing tool to promote brand-name products.]

A few months ago, probably in response to widespread criticism that his book did not contain what it promised, Trudeau published a second edition that includes alleged “natural cures” for more than fifty diseases and conditions. However, I don’t believe that any of this advice is valid.