It may look placid, but this lake is harboring monsters!
Deep in the remote mountains of Hubei roams the legendary Yeren, or Wild Man, a Bigfoot-like creature more than 400 people claim to have seen. Thirty years after an expedition in search of the Wild Man failed, some Chinese scientists are hoping modern technology will help solve the mystery once and for all. The China Daily is reporting that the vice president of the Hubei Wild Man Research Association is behind the expedition, and he’s recruiting volunteers!
The view from this temple yielded a sighting of the Heavenly Lake monster
There are lots of stories like this from around China of various monster-like creatures, and in fact I have seen one myself! Two friends and I were climbing up to a Taoist temple perched on a hill overlooking the Heavenly Lake, or Tianchi, outside Urumqi when we paused for a rest and to turned around to get a view of the lake. Then all three of us saw it – out of the corner of our eyes, a flash of something big and silverly broke the water’s surface far out on the lake and was gone in a second. It was so fast that we didn’t see much, but we all saw it and it was way too big to be a fish or any other normal lake creature.
Actually, so many lakes in China seem to have similar stories that it’s hard to keep them all straight: At Hanas Lake, which is also in Xinjiang but much further north, there are stories of lake monsters that have dragged horses and camels under the water, and 10-meter-long fish. And even more confusing is that there’s another lake called Tianchi at Changbaishan near the border with North Korea. The monsters supposedly living in that lake are quite famous and have been seen multiple times, including by a journalist who filmed them in 2007 (from wikipedia):
“The first reported sighting was in 1903. It was claimed that a large buffalo-like creature attacked three people, but was shot six times. The monster then retreated under the water.[2]
In 21 to 23 August 1962, a person using a telescope reportedly saw two of the monsters chasing each other in water. More than a hundred people reported the sightings.
More recent reports describe the monster as having a human-like head attached to a 1.5 m neck. It is said to have a white ring around the bottom of its neck, and the rest of its skin is grey and smooth.[2]
The Chinese TV reporter’s footage, which you can see on youtube, shows six unidentified creatures swimming in the lake and others leaving circular ripples on the lake surface. He described them as “six seal-like, finned creatures swimming and frolicking in the lake for an hour and a half, before they disappeared around 7:00 a.m. ”
Well, who knows what we saw, especially with all these crazy stories floating around. They are fun to talk about even if they are just folklore or plots to lure tourists to random lakes. Do you have any stories of monster sightings?
Beijingology 