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Lake Van Monster(s) (Turkey)

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Turkey's Lake Monster footage on www.

Turkey's Lake Monster- video footage
Hello to all forteans out there.
I recently saw some interesting footage of an alleged monster swimming in Lake Van. The footage was shown on "Animal X" on the Animal Planet channel on digital TV, and I was wondering if anyone else has seen this or has any up to date info.

here's a link for anyone interested:

cnn.com/WORLD/9706/12/fringe/turkey.monster/
Link is dead. See later post for access to the MIA webpage content.


Filmed by Van University teaching assistant, features film from two seperate occasions.
This footage is worth looking at: it is very clear and close, I still cannot decide about it yet though.
Cheers!
__________________
It's only my opinion!

Last edited by Tubal Cain on 01-08-2001 at 00:09
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Its a nice film but it looks a bit suspect to me. The first shot that pans along the length of the thing seems unlikely for a living creature. Surely it would move about a bit more. Also when it dives down it looks like its being pulled on a piece of a string or something rather than actually using it's own body to propel itself under the water. And the last shots of its ?head? are unconvincing to me. it looks like a puppet and not very animate.
 
Seems well dodgy to me:

1) I'm suspicious about the fact that its not one continuous take.where are the zooms from the wide angle to the close up? Was the object really visible for long enough, and the camera person so confident that they stopped filming while they adjusted the camera?

2)The closest shot is the clearest, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect, as a zoom magnifies camera shake.

3)I can't be certain, but the water looks different in each take.

4) Having viewed it a number of times, I think there's somehting odd about the movement of the water in the final close up take. Could just be an artefact of the process, but could indicate fakery

5)The close up could be just about anything - there's nothing to indicate that its any sort of animal, much less a lake monster.


I'm not sure if its relevant, but the Van area of Turkey is the home of a breed of domestic longhaired cat that can not only swim, but actually do so voluntarily to catch fish. (I saw them on a documentary on the history of cats on the BBC in the late 80's/ early 90's)
 
Thanx 4 the input -
I admit it looks a lot better on my digital telly- the 'eye' looks very clear, but I thought it might be that old classic - a swimming elephant.

I think there is two seperate bits of footage spliced together here, taken by different people on different occasions, at least, that is how they showed it in the programme. The close-up footage was taken by a teaching assistant from a nearby university, apparently the guy set his camera up on a tripod in an area where the 'monster' has been seen often. The other footage was from a hand held camcorder. There appear to be historical accounts of encounters with this creature.
 
Wouldn't like to say, seems a bit dodgy to me, but so did the Roswell thing with the autopsy, now every country thats bigger than the Canary Isles has its own crashed saucers...still, as Forts we must except that its authenticity may be valid, just not proven yet!
 
It seems like the guy that filmed it has a bit of an obsession with the monster, is he obsessed enough to fake the evidence himself? I think it's a possibility...


But just for the interest, it beats the latest crop of Nessie photos into a cocked hat. I haven't ever seen lake monster footage close enough to see an eye clearly.
 
actually...

In my opinion, it is genuine. This is especially evident in the creature's blinking, as well as the bubbles which originate from just beneath the water near the snout, of course. And if you find the idea that it is genuine to be something one would be agast at, you have not seen anything yet! One of these days they will get around to showing the incanyamba episode, and then I bet you'll pull your hair out. And of course, this is to say nothing (simply nothing whatsoever) of the champ of Lake Champlain, the morag, the nessie, as well as the others. And then, for your basic living extinct creatures, you have the Texan pterosaurs, the African mokele-m'bembe and kongamato, the South American glyptodons and giant sloths, the gigantopithecus, the Inidan mammoths, the North American teratorns, the European Neandrethals (well, last I checked they went extinct some decades ago, actually), the American lions, and etc. etc. etc.
 
I'm still out on this one.It's definitely a very interesting piece of film.And it does beat hell out of most Nessie pictures.
 
There's nothing there to convince me, could be too many other things.
 
Lake Van Monster - Any Developments?

Any one remember the Lake Van Monster in TIurkey, with the weird footage?

paranormal.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://cnn.com/WORLD/9706/12/fringe/turkey.monster/
Link is dead. See later post for current access to the CNN article originally cited here.


Any developments that anyone is aware of?

LD
 
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...Any one remember the Lake Van Monster in TIurkey, with the weird footage?
paranormal.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://cnn.com/WORLD/9706/12/fringe/turkey.monster/

This link is dead. It was an indirect or 'bank shot' link to the story cited in post #1. For archival / reference purposes, here's the text from that 1997 CNN item:

Sea monster or monster hoax?
Amateur captures video of alleged lake beast
June 12, 1997
Web posted at: 5:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT)

eye.jpg


Sightings of the Lake Van monster were first reported about two years ago, but further evidence was offered on Tuesday: bad quality amateur pictures of something long and dark moving in the middle of the lake.

After each sighting, professional camera crews have rented boats to try to capture the alleged beast clearly on film, but were unsuccessful each time. ...

The subject became an obsession for 26-year-old Unal Kozak, a Van University teaching assistant who has been talking to eyewitnesses since the first sightings. ...

Stationing himself at spots where most of the sightings were reported, Kozak says he saw and filmed the so-called monster on three occasions. Kozak also wrote a book on the creature, including drawings of the monster based on the descriptions of some 1,000 witnesses.

He says the creature is about 15 meters (49.5 feet) long. Public opinion is divided over whether the Lake Van monster is a clever hoax to attract visitors to a region that could use some tourist revenue.

The city of Van is in an underdeveloped area of eastern Turkey that for years has lost out to holiday resorts in the west of the country.

The pictures have been sent to Cambridge University for examination, and Jacques Cousteau, the world-famous marine biologist, is expected to visit and examine the lake.

The video links in the CNN article are now dead. They pointed to two versions of the same video. The CNN article (quoted in full above) is now only accessible via the Wayback Machine::

https://web.archive.org/web/20200202223228/https://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/12/fringe/turkey.monster/
 
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Not many people on this side of the Bosphorus pay much attention to Armenian folklore, so I thought I'd introduce you to an aquatic menace straight out of H.P. Lovecraft that allegedly lives in Modern Turkey. Lake Van, aka Van Gölü is found at 38°38′N 42°49′E in what is now Eastern Turkey, but was once considered part of the Kingdom of Armenia in ages past. Lake Van is quite close to Mount Ararat, and both sites are said to be home to Vishaps.

So what is a Vishap? It is like a water dragon only worse. Vishaps are essentially dragons, but worse, as they never stop growing and if they grow large enough they supposedly have the ability to devour the world. They also live forever. Such was the threat of the Vishaps that the Armenians have a god/hero called Vahagn who made it his business to slay Vishaps each year before they grew too large and threatened the world, thus earning the title of vishapakagh or "reaper of the vishaps". Armenia has a lot of "Serpent Stones", which we might call menhirs but they call Vishapakars, which make them sound like the Lloigors of A. Derleth and R.A. Wilson, which can manifest as a telluric energy beings when not water serpents.

This would be okay, except nobody has seen Vahagn in a while, which is more than anyone can say for the local Vishaps. Back in 1889 an Ottoman newspaper called Saadet on April 29 published a story of a Turkish man who was grappled by a tentacled creature that dragged him into the lake while his two friends fought to save him but failed. Sightings persisted after that point, and the creature had allegedly been seen by Russians archaeologists in the area. The Ottoman government sought to find the creature unsuccessfully.

Then in 1997 a fellow called Ünal Kozak posted a film that allegedly shows the creature. Others have claimed that it is merely a submerged elephant, but I know elephants use their trunks as snorkels, and I don't see one in evidence. Needless to say the whole thing bears a lot of similarity with the LNM, and while relatively unknown in the West, there is a local push for tourism based on people hoping to sight the Vishap.

Link: Film of the Vishap taken by Ünal Kozak
 
Is Lake Van where the swimming cats come from? Something in the water perhaps...
 
I must admit that I still think it looks like a submerged elephant, bit like this:

effant.JPG

A shame that they didn't shoot a longer film to see if a trunk or any more of the creature emerged.

If you watch this gorgeous video of an elephant swimming, you'll see it raise its trunk briefly for a breath and then carries on swimming either totally submerged or with just the top of its head above the waterline:

 
I must admit that I still think it looks like a submerged elephant, bit like this:
A shame that they didn't shoot a longer film to see if a trunk or any more of the creature emerged. If you watch this gorgeous video of an elephant swimming, you'll see it raise its trunk briefly for a breath and then carries on swimming either totally submerged or with just the top of its head above the waterline:
I think the point of the exercise is that the critter in the water didn't show itself properly. Take the classic b&w LNM photo. That could easily have been an elephant's trunk. What we are looking at here might be an elephant, but normally they will snorkel pretty often and it would become obvious what was going on. The Kozak video could just as easily be a whale, which would of course beg the question of who introduced a whale to Lake Van. What I didn't see was tentacles.
 
I think the point of the exercise is that the critter in the water didn't show itself properly. Take the classic b&w LNM photo. That could easily have been an elephant's trunk. What we are looking at here might be an elephant, but normally they will snorkel pretty often and it would become obvious what was going on. The Kozak video could just as easily be a whale, which would of course beg the question of who introduced a whale to Lake Van. What I didn't see was tentacles.

Wiki offers this sceptical note:

"Kozak's video is under constant criticism, with questions like why it never pans left, possibly because of a boat that may have carried the creature. Or why the monster only goes straight, instead of curving through the water. Even criticism as to why the breathing is not in and out, but a continuous release, much like the effects of an air hose. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Van_Monster
 
Lake Van is one of the largest lakes that lacks any outlet. The lake's original outlet was closed off by a volcanic eruption sometime during the Pleistocene.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Van

This should rule out any possibility of any modern aquatic animal swimming upstream and taking up residence in the lake. In any case, I'm not certain any sizable aquatic animal could thrive in the lake's strongly alkaline waters.
 
... The Kozak video could just as easily be a whale, which would of course beg the question of who introduced a whale to Lake Van. What I didn't see was tentacles.

One of the problems with the Lake Van Monster claims concerns their inconsistency in describing the monster's features and specifying the extent to which the creature is tangible versus being a mythical element of regional folklore.

Modern accounts tend to reflect the classic Nessie / plesiosaur motif of a large long-necked reptilian creature. Folkloric allusions tend to reflect a generally serpent- or eel-like form. Save for the widely-cited but never quoted 1889 newspaper story* I haven't found any allusions to tentacles.

The Vishap connection isn't all that convincing, insofar as Vishaps were often described as winged serpents associated with fire. Armenian folklore variously claims Vishaps lived on land (especially mountains such as Mt. Ararat) and in the air / clouds as well as in bodies of water. It's impossible to garner additional details from Vahagn's story because the portion of his epic poem concerning Vishaps is lost.

* I have yet to locate a readable copy of the 1889 newspaper article's text (in Turkish, much less English) which might be run through Google Translate to get a sense of what it actually says.
 
... "Kozak's video is under constant criticism, with questions like why it never pans left, possibly because of a boat that may have carried the creature. Or why the monster only goes straight, instead of curving through the water. Even criticism as to why the breathing is not in and out, but a continuous release, much like the effects of an air hose. " ...

Kozak's video seems to be the sole modern video associated with the Lake Van Monster, but it's difficult to track down with any reliability. I've had to edit this thread at least twice over the last couple of years because links to the video have died. I once found one of the two CNN versions archived on the Wayback Machine, but even that one seems to have disappeared. It's unusual for archived material to be deleted from the Wayback Machine.
 
The Vishap connection isn't all that convincing, insofar as Vishaps were often described as winged serpents associated with fire. Armenian folklore variously claims Vishaps lived on land (especially mountains such as Mt. Ararat) and in the air / clouds as well as in bodies of water. It's impossible to garner additional details from Vahagn's story because the portion of his epic poem concerning Vishaps is lost.
The area definitely has an association with Vishaps, hence the Vishapakar menhirs. The association with fire is news to me. My own research suggests that Vishaps are primarily associated with thunderstorms, rain and water. In short, we now have fire, thunderstorm, telluric and aquatic associations. Vishaps sound like elementals.
 
The area definitely has an association with Vishaps, hence the Vishapakar menhirs. The association with fire is news to me. My own research suggests that Vishaps are primarily associated with thunderstorms, rain and water. In short, we now have fire, thunderstorm, telluric and aquatic associations. Vishaps sound like elementals.

That's a good point. Lake Van is surrounded by previously active volcanoes, and the region (including the lake itself) hosts hot springs and geothermal outlets. There's as much or more connection between vishaps and fire / air as there is with water. The most common geo-location association for vishaps I've seen cited isn't the lake - it's Mount Ararat and / or one of the other peaks in the vicinity.

In light of the area's subsurface / seismic instability I find it odd that the vishap-related elemental allusions don't seem to include "earth" along with the other three classic categories.
 
Seems to be more 'Elephant like' from what is seen of it in the video.

*Notice the strong venting of water in this clip...

2.jpg
*Also what's this blip of light doing in between frames - with what appears to look like seaweed in this clip?
Clip from Lake Monster.jpg
 
Seems to be more 'Elephant like' from what is seen of it in the video.

*Notice the strong venting of water in this clip...

View attachment 29497
Yeah, that could be a head-shot of an elephant's profile with an eye visible, but the trunk normally snorkels further from the body, so that might be exhalation from the mouth, but it isn't quite proportional. It could easily be a circus elephant going for a swim, which would also explain how it is an irregular sight at Lake Van. I notice that the video is edited and cuts away before more of the creature was revealed too. As a swimming circus elephant was one of the explanations of the LNM 1930s b&w photo, it would make sense.
 
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The video clips are so short & suspicion is immediately aroused that a few more seconds would reveal what the animal is.

It's the old question in many of these types of stories - why if you're filming something anomalous would you stop filming after a few seconds?
 
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