• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
19,408
Tales of Tahoe Lake Monster Just Story?

Posted: January 28, 2004 at 9:10 p.m.

TAHOE CITY, CA (AP) -- Since sailors first started navigating earth's waters, tales of sea monster sightings put fear in their hearts. But reports of these creatures have not been limited to the world's vast oceans -- they've also been seen in lakes.

Reports of beasts shaped like giant serpents or waterborne dinosaurs have brought fame to places such as Scotland's Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, which borders New York, Vermont and the Canadian province of Quebec.

Even Lake Tahoe reportedly has its own sea monster, Tahoe Tessie.

Do the creatures really exist?

Dr. Charles Goldman, a limnologist who is engaged in the scientific study of lakes and the foremost expert on Lake Tahoe, tried to answer the question recently.

Goldman said he was invited last August to study Loch Ness by professor Robert Rains, head of the Applied Science Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rains, a firm believer in the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, used sonar in the 1970s to take strobed photographs of "Nessie." These photographs depict a humped creature 20 to 30 feet long.

While other photos of Nessie, such as the famous one showing a long-necked creature rising out of the water, have been determined to be hoaxes, Goldman said Rains' photos are more difficult to discount. One shows a flipper "that looks terribly authentic," according to Goldman. Another shows a 20-foot-long body and head.

Goldman said most sea monster sightings tend to be in deep, cold lakes that produce mirages brought on by temperature changes in the water.

"That is why people see things that really don't exist," he said during a recent lecture on "USOs: Unidentified Swimming Objects."

Other mysterious sightings have occurred at Lake Manitoba and Lake Okanagan in Canada, Lake Van in Turkey and Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina's Patagonia region.

The difficulty in verifying the existence of lake monsters, Goldman said, "is that you can prove something is there, but you can't prove something is not there."

Thus far, the search for a lake creature has yet to produce any concrete evidence, he said.

Twenty years ago, Goldman held a conference at the University of Nevada, Reno on the subject of USOs. While a number of scientists said they'd seen Tahoe Tessie, Goldman said all the sightings have one thing in common: no one ever saw a head or tail, only dark objects in the water.

Goldman decided to conduct his own experiments. He created a photo of "Tessie" by capturing the splash from rocks thrown in the water. Another photo shows what looks like a series of humps in the lake, but in reality are only waves.

"You have a flat lake with no boats visible, but boats did pass hours before, and the waves come back and amplify," Goldman explained.

Goldman said other explanations include someone mistaking a river otter or beaver for "Tessie" -- or the possible existence of a very large sturgeon.

Sturgeon have been known to reach 1,500 pounds and live for as long as 100 years, and could have been planted in the lake years ago, Goldman said. Given the lake's size and its fish population, a massive sturgeon would have plenty of food to sustain it.

Just in case the existence of a giant Tahoe sturgeon turns out to be true, Goldman has given it a scientific name -- Acipenser Tahoensis.

Goldman said he hopes to get a better look at Tahoe's depths next summer in "Project Deep Blue." If funding is available, Goldman would use the same remote-operated sub employed by Rains in Scotland to explore Lake Tahoe's bottom.

While the existence of Tahoe Tessie is unlikely, the Loch Ness Monster is more probable. Since the Irish Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through a series of lochs, something could swim in from the ocean, Goldman explained.

One possibility: An oarfish, the longest of all fish, which can be as long as 30 feet and weigh up to 400 pounds. Although the ribbon-like fish lives at 700 feet below the surface, they've occasionally been spotted on the surface and been mistaken for sea serpents.

kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1621137&nav=5D7lKUDN
Link is dead. The MIA webpage (quoted in full above) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2004021...4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1621137&nav=5D7lKUDN
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Mysteries of the deep at Lake Tahoe

Tom Stienstra
Sunday, July 25, 2004

If you own a small deep-water submarine -- or know some eccentric big-bucks diver who does -- drop me a line. I'd like to borrow the thing.

Once and for all, I'd like to prove or bust the legends or myths that hide in the depths of Lake Tahoe.

The way this idea came about is that I was told another crazy, unverified story this past week about Tahoe's darkest legend of all. As the story goes, a fisherman snagged something for a moment in the deep water just offshore of the South Shore casinos, but it easily broke free. When he reeled up his line, to his shock, on his hook was the top of a human ear.

This might sound crazy, but in the past 25 years, I've heard different versions of this story at least a dozen times. In one account, a fisherman snags up, gets it loose, and reels up a partial hand where two of the fingers had been lopped off Mafia-style. It is a tale passed around called "The Legend of Three-Fingered Tony."

Many have told me that, if you were to take a submarine down 900 feet just off South Shore, you would see hundreds of bodies suspended in the water, preserved perfectly like an underwater wax museum, most wearing clothes from the 1920s, '30s and '40s.

The legend is that this is where the Mafia killers dumped bodies after executions. Some fishermen even call the spot The Grave. At Tahoe, many locals talk as if everybody knows about this, that there are lots of gangsters down there, wearing pinstriped suits, with sneers on their faces and bullet holes in their foreheads.

This makes sense. It has long been verified that Tahoe is a lake that does not give up its dead. That is because the lake is so deep, with an average depth of 989 feet, and so cold, with the temperature hovering just above freezing. So that prevents the creation of gases that would otherwise bloat and float corpses to the surface as in other waters.

This reality brings bizarre possibilities.

Lake Tahoe, as first theorized by the famed geologist Josiah Whitney, was created by a colossal earthquake where a center block of land collapsed between two faults. It might be possible that another massive earthquake here would disrupt the underwater currents and suddenly float all the suspended corpses to the surface at once.

Another possibility is that the bodies will remain submerged for eons of time, just as the woolly mammoths were preserved in glaciers from the last ice age 14,000 years ago.

Even famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau is said to have had a brush with something horrific in a deepwater dive in the mid-1970s. "The world isn't ready for what was down there," is the quote most commonly credited. Cousteau never released any photographs or data from the dive, adding to the mystery and legend.

Some believe Cousteau was talking about a Loch Ness monster-like creature that locals call "Tahoe Tessie." Unlikely. But if I could get a loaner sub, maybe I could find out.

Apart from Tahoe's maximum depth of 1,645 feet, another legend is that there is a hole somewhere on the bottom of the lake that is linked to an underground river system that feeds into Pyramid Lake north of Reno. This would explain how drowning victims at Tahoe have floated up at Pyramid. Or would it? Others say it just means that bodies floated over the spillway at north Tahoe could be carried via the Truckee River to Nevada and Pyramid Lake.

So this past week, I went submarine shopping. I found a personal submarine called the Gemini, "the family submarine," available for 5,000, but it would only go 150 feet deep. Plus, my boss said the paper probably wouldn't spring for it. So I went to EBay to see if a better deal was available. Nope.

A little more searching led to the Phoenix, "a 213-foot personal luxury submarine," but it was priced at million. That's a little on the high side.

A Bay Area engineer, Graham Hawkes of San Anselmo, has invented a glider- like submarine that he says is certified to 1,600 feet deep. This could be ideal for Tahoe, but the price is well over $1 million. So I contacted his agency on Friday and suggested Hawkes take me on a demo dive at Tahoe. Together we could solve the legend of Tahoe.

Or perhaps you own your own submarine as a great little hobby and would like to take part in this expedition. So, like I said, drop me a line -- just not a line off Tahoe's South Shore with a hook on it. ...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/25/SPGV17SQ7K1.DTL
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not assuming the beast is real or anything, but it's interesting how the same old explanations (including the cyclopean sturgeon) are being thrown up again and again.
 
If I had known years ago that Tahoe had a lake monster, I would have made an effort to get there much more often. Over the years I have turned down quite a few invitations to go there because it didn't catch my interest. I could have had a real sighting and perhaps produced a photograph! Sometimes I think my true calling is to be a paranormal investigator.
 
inkedmagiclady said:
If I had known years ago that Tahoe had a lake monster, I would have made an effort to get there much more often. Over the years I have turned down quite a few invitations to go there because it didn't catch my interest. I could have had a real sighting and perhaps produced a photograph! Sometimes I think my true calling is to be a paranormal investigator.

LOL - you are really going to have to learn to go with the flow a bit more ;)

Or else we need some kind of location database which you can consult (possibly from a mobile phone) so things would go more like this:

"inkedmagiclady would you like to come to Lake Tahoe?"

"Hmm hold on ~clicky noises~ darn tootin'!!!"
 
Emperor said:
LOL - you are really going to have to learn to go with the flow a bit more ;)

Heh, that isn't the first time someone has suggested that. :D

That database thing is a good idea. Because really, if it doesn't have some sort of Fortean or "extra" type attraction, I'd rather stay home.

"inkedmagiclady, how bout a trip to Las Vegas?"

~clicky noises~ "Uh...I have an important appointment with a good book on my couch that weekend, sorry. "
 
Class: Lake Monster
Length: Unknown
Width: Unknown
Country: USA
Body of Water: Lake Tahoe
Nearest City: Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Description: Lake Tahoe has its own creature, dubbed "Tahoe Tessie" by the locals. Of indeterminate size and shape, some believe that she is actually a giant sturgeon. Supposedly Jacques Cousteau dived Lake Tahoe, but refused to divulge the film, as "the world wasn't ready" to see it yet. Though Tessie is not as well documented as other lake monsters, Lake Tahoe and nearby Reno are great places to visit, so a trip to Lake Tahoe to search for Tessie would still be entertaining whether you see the creature or not.
source http://www.mysteriousworld.com/Journal/ ... aSerpents/
 
This Weird U.S. online article provides some info on the history of Tessie sightings along with other mysteries associated with the lake.
Tessie, the Monster of Lake Tahoe

The state’s largest freshwater lake, Tahoe has long been rumored to be home to both an underwater Mob graveyard, and a huge, unknown creature. ...

According to local legend, the 900-foot-deep waters off South Shore served as a dumping place for Mob victims from the 1920s to the 1950s. ...

Even stranger are the tales of “Tessie.” Locals maintain that a large, unidentified, serpent-like creature lives in the deepest parts of the lake, and usually appears around June in even-numbered years. Dubbed “Tessie” in imitation of Loch Ness’ “Nessie,” the beast allegedly appears in Washoe Indian legend, and may have first been spotted by 19th century settlers.

Tessie made headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 12, 1984, when the paper reported that two women had seen the Lake Tahoe leviathan a month earlier. Tahoe City residents Patsy McKay and Diane Stavarakas were hiking above the west shore when they spotted the creature swimming in the lake.

McKay said the beast was about 17 feet long. She watched it closely and saw it surface three times “like a little submarine.” Her companion said that the creature had a humped back, and seemed to surface in a whale-like, lethargic manner. She was also sure that it wasn’t a diver, a log, or a large ripple.

Two years earlier, a pair of off-duty Reno policemen had also taken a turn with Tessie. Officers Kris Beebe and Jerry Jones were water-skiing in the lake in June 1982, when an “unusually large” creature swam by them. ...

The closest anyone ever came to figuring out Tahoe’s mysteries was in the mid-1970s. Famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau brought a mini-submarine to the lake, and did several dives in search of the 1,600-foot bottom.

He returned to the surface allegedly saying, “The world isn’t ready for what is down there,” and to his death refused to release any pictures or data from the expedition.

What did the legendary diver find? Pinstripe-suited, bullet-riddled corpses bobbing in the dark depths? A colony of living, amphibian dinosaurs? Or something even weirder?

The answers lie in the chilly depths of blue Lake Tahoe.
SOURCE: http://www.weirdus.com/states/california/bizarre_beasts/tessie/
 
Divers conducting a major cleanup project in Lake Tahoe didn't find Tessie, but they found what may be "shipwreck planks" at a location where Tessie was long claimed to live.
No sea serpents, mobsters but Tahoe trash divers strike gold

They found no trace of a mythical sea monster, no sign of mobsters in concrete shoes or long-lost treasure chests.

But scuba divers who spent a year cleaning up Lake Tahoe’s entire 72-mile (115-kilometer) shoreline have come away with what they hope will prove much more valuable: tons and tons of trash. ...

The dozens of dives that concluded this week were part of a first-of-its-kind effort to learn more about the source and potential harm caused by plastics and other pollutants in the storied alpine lake on the California-Nevada line. ...

Divers think they spotted shipwreck planks near Dead Man’s Point, where tribal tales tell of a Loch-Ness-Monster-like creature — later dubbed “Tahoe Tessie″— living beneath Cave Rock. ...
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/science-lakes-california-nevada-7e74aa67d25e37b272a3781e1bdc1499
 
Back
Top