2018 Video That Might Show Canadian Lake Monster 'Ogopogo' Surfaces on YouTube

A still image with the mysterious object or creature featured center frame. (Blake Neudorf / YouTube) — A still image with the mysterious object or creature featured center frame. *(Blake Neudorf / YouTube)*

A video uploaded by YouTuber Blake Neudorf on January 2nd has some people wondering if he’s captured evidence of the popular lake monster Ogopogo, said to live in British Columbia’s Okanagan Lake.

Legends of a serpentine lake monster in the Okanagan Valley date back centuries, with countless witnesses reporting sightings—including the area’s indigenous people, who called the creature N'ha-a-itk. While no definitive proof of its existence has yet surfaced—despite numerous modern sightings, sometimes including video footage and photographs—some have speculated that Ogopogo might be a surviving member of a primitive species of whale from the Late Eocene period, which existed approximately 40 to 33.9 million years ago.

According to Neudorf, he was fishing off of a dock with his father in Kelowna, British Columbia, on July 10th, 2018, when they "spotted something massive in the water."

"The thing looks like it is close in the video but it was a few hundred yards off shore and it was huge, I would say at least 60 feet long," he said in the video's description. "You could visually see it rolling in the water. During this video there was a small group of people videoing off shore as well. Toward the end it goes into a small bay, so me and my dad hopped in the truck and drove toward the area it was headed, but when we got to the bay it was nowhere to be seen."

In the video, Neudorf and his father can be heard reacting to what they’re seeing.

“What is that thing?” asks his father.

“I have no clue,” responds Neudorf.

“Do you see that?” asks his father again.

“Yes! What the heck? I’m filming that. Dad, look at that!” exclaims Neudorf.

Neudorf can also be heard describing the object as looking “like it has spikes.”

The video has prompted speculation regarding the possible source of the aquatic object, with Chris Walker commenting on YouTube that it “looks like it could be two wave trains intersecting at an oblique angle.”

"I think the helicopter [heard in the video] might play a role in that, actually you can see a round spot in the water," added Rafael de Jongh.

But, according to Neudorf, "The helicopter was behind us landing at a house on shore, we were just off a dock."

"[We saw] it come out of nowhere and the lake was calm," Neudorf said of the wave hypothesis. "Plus it was moving straight, not sideways like a wave."

Others thought that it might simply be a log, swept along in the lake’s current.

"Looks like a tree or log that is being swept along," Nancy Desch commented. "I wish it was Ogopogo but it looks like a blunted log in the front."

Neudorf questioned how “a log [would] move that fast when the lake was calm,” adding sarcastically that "I guess [60+ foot] logs are pretty common to be moving at high speeds in the middle of a calm lake."

Cryptid researcher and folklorist Adam Benedict of the Pine Barrens Institute told Singular Fortean Society lead investigator Tobias Wayland that he found the video to be “very interesting.”

"While I can't lean one way or another on what I think it is, what I can say is that this is probably one of the best 'lake monster' videos the public has seen in a long time,” said Benedict.

Benedict might have been unwilling to make a precise determination, but he was willing to perform some informed speculation.

“It does appear to ‘move’ separate from the water, but that could easily be due to the distance and the way the water interacts with the object,” he said. “Looks like it could be a log that had drifted to the surface via gas and is caught rolling slowly along the surface. The shape repeats itself near the ‘head/neck’ region. The arch never moves, rather it appears to roll to the right and then back around, taking on the same shape it had moments before.”

Although, he added, “Aquatic animals are great at maintaining the same type of movement while travelling in a straight path. We see it all the time with aquatic snakes, otters, dolphins, etc.”

That alone isn’t enough to convince Benedict that the video is of Ogopogo.

“Somthing about this just seems really rigid,” he said. “It’s moving yes, but doesn’t register [to me] as moving by choice.”

If the object in the video is a log, it’s unclear how it disappeared so suddenly when Neudorf and his father went to look for it.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

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