Is this the Siberian Nessie...?
Known as 'Russia's Loch Ness Monster', the accounts of the creature in Yakutia predate the Scottish claims yet in many ways are similar.
Intriguingly, too, there are theories that Labynkyr - which has
unusual cracks on its 60 to 80 metre deep floor - is connected by
underwater channels to another lake, Vorota, where monster
sightings have also been recorded, including by respected Soviet
geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov, an academician not given to hyperbole.
Associate Professor of Biogeography Lyudmila Emeliyanova revealed to
The Siberian Times that on her own scientific mission to Labynkyr she
recorded 'several seriously big underwater objects' with sonar readings.
She is not the only researcher to have done so.
'It was our fourth or fifth day at the lake when our echo sounding
device registered a huge object in the water under our boat,' she said.
'The object was very dense, of homogeneous structure, surely not a
fish nor a shoal of fish, and it was above the bottom. I was very
surprised but not scared and not shocked, after all we did not see this
animal, we only registered a strange object in the water. But I can
clearly say - at the moment, as a scientist, I cannot offer you any
explanation of what this object might be.'
The readings were repeated and she became convinced there was more than one large living object in the pure waters.
'I can't say we literally found and touched something unusual there
but we did register with our echo sounding device several seriously big
underwater objects, bigger than a fish, bigger than even a group of
fish.
'This is why I fully support the idea of a new trip there and extra research.
'I would love to take part in another visit to this lake. I know how
to organise it and know enough good local people who can help on the
spot. It is a hard trip I must say but it is definitely worth doing it
again. This mysterious and very deep lake still has some secret to tell
us.'
Freshwater Labynkyr, some 5,000 km east of Moscow, is mysterious for
another reason, too. It is only around 60 kilometres from the settlement
of Oymyakon - the coldest inhabited place on Earth - yet,
astonishingly, the lake does not freeze over completely in winter, in
contrast to virtually all lakes in the region. The ice that does form,
unusually, can be too thin to walk on. It is not uncommon to driver
cars on lakes in Yakutia in winter: but not Labynkyr.
One unproven theory is that Labynkyr, where much of the rock is
volcanic, is warmed slightly from below by a fissure in the Earth's
crust.
Dr Emeliyanova, from the Biogeography Department of the Geographical
Faculty of Moscow State University, is struck by historical accounts of monsters in Labynkyr and Vorota and believes they are credible.
They date from the late 19th century, while accounts of the Loch Ness monster are usually held to have emerged in the 1930s.
On the basis of 'sightings' there has been speculation that Labynkyr
and Vorota might be inhabited by a school of ichthyosaurs, prehistoric
marine reptiles resembling dolphins or sharks, or plesiosaurs, a popular
theory concerning 'Nessie' in Scotland which is often depicted with a
long neck.
Another version has speculated that relic killer whales could have
become marooned in Labynkyr. Some accounts even suggest the 'creature'
makes a hideous primeval cry as it attacks its prey.
'Personally, I do believe that when the information about something
strange circulates among local people for so many years, it just can't
be groundless, it means something is there,' she said. 'I know the local
people very well - they are ingenuous but they do not lie,' she said
previously.
Now she adds: 'I have been on a dozen expeditions to this region and I
can say I know the character of local people quite well. They are
emotional - but are not intended to show their emotions and they are
very true and honest by nature, often more honest than is necessary.
This is why I am not ready to reject all these stories.'
For her another factor is how the stories of monsters in Yakutia relate solely to these two lakes out of more than 800,000 across this giant region.
'There are many lakes in Yakutia and around the Indigirka River,
hundreds of them, big and small, their shores are more or less
populated, but all the talk is about Labynkyr and Vorota lakes, and it
has gone on for many dozens of years. It makes us think about it. And
these stories about the local monster are older than those about the Loch Ness monster.'
Even so, she insisted of her 2002 trip: 'I did not go there to chase the lake monster: as a biogeographer I was interested mainly in that very territory, I wanted to visit and study it.
'But, of course, I was curious to see the place which has so many
legends and stories. I did not suppose we could really find something
there simply because we did not plan to spend there enough time. Our
stop by the lake was just for 12 days.
'As a scientist I know this is not enough to locate and study some
unknown creature. I can put it like this, however. I believe there is a
mystery in this lake because there is no smoke without fire.
'I am sure that numerous legends which exist and circulate for many
years just can't be groundless. I read many different legends but the
account below is what I heard with my own ears.
'Several fishermen who visit this lake from time to time say they
experienced the following when fishing from a boat in this lake: during
quiet, and not windy, weather when there were no disturbances in the
lake, some strange waves coming from under the water suddenly heavily
shook their boats.
'It was as if a big body was moving under the water and producing waves which reached the surface and shook the vessel.'
She explained: 'These stories shook me up, for instance, about a boat
which was lifted by something or somebody. Two fishermen were fishing
in the middle of the lake in late Autumn, they were in a 10 metre long
boat when suddenly the bow began to rise as if somebody was pushing it
from under the water.
'It was a heavy boat, only a huge and strong animal can do such a
thing. The fishermen were stuck by fear. They did not see anything, no
head, no jaws. Soon the boat went down.'
Another account of an entirely separate trip to the lake in August
2006 - where researchers used a Humminbird Piranha MAX 215 Portable
fish-finder - produced results echoing her findings. Images are
available from this trip - some are shown here - but the identities of
those who took part are hidden.
'The conditions were ideal - clear cold fresh water, no big waves,
stone bottom without plants there, no engine on the boat, soft and slow
moving - all this means there were almost no problems for the scanning,'
claimed one of those present.
'Often the device showed the long chain of big fish some 4 meters
above the bottom of the lake, when the depth was about 30-45 meters.
'The further we went away from the shore, the deeper the lake was, at
one moment there was no fish registered for a long period long, the
screen was dead. But all of a sudden it blew up with signals about a
huge shoal of fish, just like a cloud.
'Let me say a word about local fish - all kinds of fish here are
predators, the bottom of the lake is 'dead', stones with sand, very cold
near the bottom, no plants. Fish-predators just cannot swim all
together making such a huge shoal, anybody familiar with Zoology will
understand what I mean.
'This is why it meant nothing else but the huge swimming object with some air inside.
'We went twice above the object, it was at the depth of 30 metres
(where the floor was 50 metres below). The upper 'fish' was at a depth
of 25 metres, the lower 'fish' at 32 metres. It suggests the object was
seven metres wide. What was it? We can't say.
'I switched off the 'Fish ID' and we watched just pure
scanning.....soon we registered a 'shadow' some 15-17 meters under our
boat, it was about 6.5 meters long. It was pretty clear, it was not a
fish and not a tree. There cannot be fish that big, and a log would have
been registered in a different way. How can it swim under the water?
'The most active 'shadows' or 'bodies' were registered in certain parts of the lake when the depth was 42 to 60 metres.'
'The next shadow; the width of the object is about 70 cm, and
although the screen shows its silhouette differently to how we imagined,
my mind vividly paints a picture of a beast, swimming across the echo
device scanning ray.
'Another object was 'caught' at the depth of 20 meters. It was
definitely a live creature - look at the density! - but of a smaller
size, like 2.5 meters.
Perhaps another giant fish. Or a baby of our monster?'
Pictures here show the some of the images seen on the scanning
device, including sketches (drawn on the screen in red) to show how the 'monster' might look.
On another amateur trip to explore the lake, in 2000, Russian
traveler Vladimir wrote: 'There was a signal from our echo sounding
device, something was moving around our net with fish, something very
big, seven to ten meters, it is hard to say because we did not know the
speed of the object.
'And our nerves are not made of iron, there were two of us in the
rubber boat, far away from the shore... we did not want to find it out,
just got away from there...
'There were interesting trails on the water as if something big
enough is swimming not very deep and playing in the water... There is a
strange island there. It is in the middle of the lake and lots of broken
nests of the sea gulls. The gulls were just crushed alive when they
were asleep and did not have a chance to fly away. Some birds were
eaten, some just left there... Who did it?
'In my humble opinion... there are four or five big animals in this
lake, not more. If people do not rush there, maybe they will survive.'
In the 1960s, there are accounts of 'a monster with a long neck coming up out of the lake making an eerie sound'. Some versions say it was lizard-like.
In Soviet times and before, the lake was almost inaccessible. Today
that is changing. Travel companies in Yakutsk, capital of Yakutia or the
Sakha Republic, are already offering private trips to visit the lake,
enabling people to carry out their own monster hunts.
This perhaps gives an added urgency to Dr Emeliyanova's plans to
reach the lake and explore it in a fully scientific way: yet funds, so
far not found, are needed to support this venture.
She emphasised: 'Apart from the legends about this monster, this lake is quite mysterious itself, for instance distances are hard to measure there.
'Probably it is diffraction of light but still - I mean when you are
sailing in a boat and you clearly see the shore is quite far away, in a
minute you all over a sudden get there and hit the ground.... One shore
is just drift sands. One of the islands on the lake sometimes is not
visible, like a mirage in the desert, it comes and goes.
'There is an amazing fact, too, that this lake is never totally
frozen, not what you would expect as it is not far from the Pole of
Cold.
'But this is the fact, the lake is never fully covered by ice. If it
had been fully covered, we could have closed this story about the monster forever. It could not survive.
'The question is - why it is not completely frozen? Probably because
of its depth, I can suppose, too, it is somehow warmed from the bottom
but it is not really my part of science and would like to give you the
opinion of some colleague here rather then my suggestion. I met
scientist in Yakutsk who told me they registered the depth of 80 meters
in Labynkyr lake.'
There is also 'an absence of plants there... it is another mystery.
'There are 13 fish species in the lake. Of course they eat one
another but not all of them, some would need plants for food, yet these
appear to be absent.'
While she has conducted no research on it, she said that 'some
scientists believe that this lake is connected with other lakes on the
same plateau, at least with Lake Vorota, via some underground tunnel
system'.
Accounts of strange creatures in the lake - often called the
'Labynkyr Devil' - have been passed down from generation to generation.
One one version the monster is of dark grey colour with a
huge mouth and 'distance between its eyes is just as the size of raft
made of ten logs'. The legend says that this animal is aggressive, it
can attack people and animals, it can leave the water and go on the
shore.
A more recent 'sighting' involved a party of geologists some of whom
went fishing on the lake. 'Suddenly those in the boat started screaming -
apparently they saw a huge head of some creature. Others, who were
waiting for them on shore, started shooting, and scared the creature
away'.
Some years ago Itogi magazine analysed the sightings and concluded:
'Comparing the stories we can say that it is 9-10 metres long, 1.2-1.5
metres wide, its jaw is huge, up to one-third the size of its body,
looking like a huge beak with lots of teeth, and there is a sort of
bone-made horn on the top of the animal. The creature was met either in
Labynkyr or in Vorota lake - locals believe these lakes are connected to
each other with the help of underground passages.'
Grasping for mundane theories to explain what the creature might be -
if not a leftover from the Jurassic Age that somehow defied both
extinction and the Ice Age - some have suggested an abnormally huge and
well-fed pike.
Yury Gerasimov, head of the Ichthyology Department of the Institute
of Biology of Freshwater of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is dubious.
'I have never come across such a big pike and I highly doubt they can
exist.
'If we trust the stories about this 'Devil', there must be about 1.5
metres between its eyes. It means the length of its body must be about
7-8 metres.
'Pike do not live so long in order to reach such a big size. There
are two factors that help fish to grow - nutrition and comfortable water
temperatures. Even if nutrition is perfect there, surely the
temperatures are not that high. So in my opinion the view about a huge
pike is a fantastic one.'
Another Russian traveller Sergei Karpukhin, a former geologist who
once spent 35 days alone at Labynkyr, questions two basic premises of
the monster theory. If these monsters were to
survive down the ages, there must be sufficient of them to reproduce.
There would also need to be connections to other lakes, something he
disputes.
'A little pack of them, like male/female plus several cubs is not
enough,' he said. 'To survive this population must have such a number
of animals that the lake would be swarming with them.
'Or at least there should be such number of them, that they would not
go unnoticed - given the description of them being quite big, and the
lake is not that large.
'I even think that there will need to be more creatures in the
neighbouring lakes which the Labynkyr ones can be in contact with. Only
then they can survive.
'Now the Labynkyr Devil defenders would, I know, refer to Lake
Vorota, some 20 km away from Labynkyr. This is where Tverdokhlybov saw
that mysterious creature. Here the legend has some extra bits to it,
that allegedly the lakes are connected with some underground canals. I
will argue this from a position of a geologist: it is possible to have
two connected lakes. BUT, when the lakes of karstic origin. There must
be some carbonaceous stones, which can be dissolved by water.
'But there aren't any. The stones there are all volcanic.'
Accounts began reaching the outside world after nine geologists led
by Viktor Tverdokhlebov, of the East Siberian branch of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, were involved in an expedition to this remote
corner of the then USSR in the summer of 1953, a few months after the
death of Stalin. As they rode on horseback, their guide was the elderly
Varfolomey Vinokurov, a local man.
It took eight years his diary account to be published in a Soviet
magazine and this referred to his own sighting in Lake Vorota - a name
which literally 'Gates' (an unusual name for a lake, perhaps signifying
Gates of the Devil?) while also including historical accounts he heard
from locals.
'30 May. We left Tomtor village, went 70
kilometres up the Kuidusun Valley, turned left and got to the large
Sordonnokhskoe plateau. Ahead of us there is Lake Labynkyr where there
is storage with food and equipment.
'There are many legends about this Lake Labynkyr. In the evenings
sitting by the fire our old guide told us that a 'devil' lived in this
lake. He is so big that the distance between his eyes, as Varfolomey
said, 'is wider than a fisherman's raft made of ten logs'.
'I heard about this 'devil' before and many times. In Ust-Ner, I
heard that the devil ate a dog. The dog swam to bring the shot duck to
the hunter, then huge jaws raised from the water and the dog just
disappeared in a moment.
'One of the Tomtor villagers told me that one day he found a huge
bone on the shore of Lake Labynkyr. It was like the devil's jaw - if
you put it vertically, you could ride on a horse through it like under
an arch. He said this jaw bone remained near the fishermen house on the
shore.
'I heard legends how a whole caravan perished going under the ice
of Labynkyr. It was spoken that people saw a big horn stuck out of the
ice. People gathered around it on ice and tried to take it out but
suddenly the ice broke and many people and reindeer died'.
'5 June: Early in the morning we got to the
shore of Lake Labynkyr and reached the storage. Comfortable tents with
wooden beds and floor and table awaited us.
'7 June: We are having a rest. Lake Labynkyr is a
square, 15 km long and 3 km wide. I found the ruined fisherman's house
on the shore, carefully explored the house and all around it but did not
find any 'jaw bone'.
He did not witness anything untoward in Labynkyr but went on with his expedition.
28 July: Now we stopped at the shore of Lake
Vorota. Mikhail made a raft and went to measure the depth. It is 60
meters as in Labynkyr. But the lake itself is much smaller.
30 July: This is what happened today. It was
sunny friendly morning, Boris Bashkatov and I went on a walking trip
around Lake Vorota. We had to climb rocks on the way - about 11 am the
way became dangerous and we decided to go down a bit, closer to the
water. Looking at the water from the rock, I clearly saw a terrace under
the water with a huge white spot on it. But when I looked at the
terrace again a minute later there was no white spot there. 'Maybe
sunshine is joking with me', I thought. But suddenly Boris shouted
'Look! What is there, in the middle?' We stopped. Some 300-400 meters
away on the water there was clearly seen some white object, shining
under the sunlight. 'A barrel', said Boris, 'made of tin.' 'Maybe a
horse got into the lake,' I said.
Truly, the object was swimming, and fast enough. It was
something alive, some animal. It was making an arch - first along the
lake, then right towards us. As it was getting closer, a strange
coldness like a stupor was growing inside me. Above the water there was
big dark grey body, the white colour has gone. On this dark grey
background there were clearly visible two symmetrical light spots
looking like eyes and there was just stick in the body - maybe a fin? Or
a harpoon of an unlucky fisherman?
'We saw just a part of the animal but we could guess its
much bigger, massive body was under the water. We could guess this
looking how the monster was moving - raising from the water, it threw
its body forward then fully went under the water. At this time the waves
were going away from its head, waves originating under the water.
'Flapping its mouth, catching fish', I guessed.
The animal was obviously swimming towards us and the
waves made by the animal reached our legs. We looked at each other and
immediately began to climb up the rock. What if 'it' goes out of the
water? We witnessed a predator, no doubt, one of the strongest predators
in this world: such indomitable, merciless and some sensible fierceness
was in every his movement, in all its looks.
'The animal stopped some 100 meters away from the shore.
Suddenly it began to beat against the water, waves went all ways, we
could not understand what was going on. Maybe it lasted just a minute
and then the animal was gone, dived. It was only then when I thought
about a camera.
'We stood for another 10-20 minutes, it was quiet. We went further.
'There was no doubt, we saw the 'devil' - the legendary
monster of this area. The Yakut fisherman was right, the animal had dark
grey skin and the distance between its eyes was surely not less than a
raft of 10 logs. But he saw it in Labynkyr and we saw it in Vorota lake.
They are 20 km away from each other - and they are not connected.
'I recalled that white spot under the water. Obviously,
the animal was hunting at that underwater terrace and we scared it when
shouted going down the rocks.'
There is, now, the possibility that the waters of the two lakes are
connected by a subterranean channel. For Tverdokhlebov, the sighting
reminded him of the killer whales he had seen in the Sea of Okhotsk.
'At first I thought it that this animal is an unknown offspring of
extinct animals who inhabited this area ages ago. But this feeling of
fierceness was so familiar to me - where could I see it?'
In 1945 he had a clone encounter with such a creature when swimming.
'We turned around and some 30 metres away in the water we saw a huge
dark grey body with two light spots and a fin above them. The animal was
looking at us as if it was choosing who to start with.'
He also heard more accounts from locals of 'monsters' in
lakes on this plateau, which some geologists say maybe of very recent
formation. An old fisherman told how he took his net out of Lake
Yastrebiny and complaining it was torn, he nodded his head and blamed
some animal.
'I did not pay attention then, thinking it was just a big pike,' he wrote.
'I recalled the stories of the workers who saw holes in the ice of
Lake Labynkyr and one day they saw some grey body through the hole which
disappeared later. Maybe all these stories are not that fantastic, and
they are just a chain of real events?
'But if we imagine it is a killer whale, how could it get here? The
Sea of Okhotsk is some 300 km away, and the plateau is 1 km above sea
level. How would the sea animal survive in fresh water? How did it get
here? Is it alone here or is there a whole family? What do they eat? How
did they survive the Ice Age?
'What is obvious to me - the existence of this mysterious animal is
closely connected with the mystery of the plateau, how and when it
appeared.'
His suggestion of a killer whale led to some ridicule for his
account. Cryptozoologist Valeriy Nikolayev scoffed: 'What killer whale?
How on earth would it get there, miles from sea?!'
'A group of such creatures stranded, perhaps, when this plateau was
cut off from the sea that has gone on reproducing in these remote
parts? No, it's impossible!'
In a book 'Trip to the Cold Pole', author Gennady Borodulin recounts another tale from Labynkyr in the 1920s.
'An Evenk family of nomads followed their reindeer and reached the
shore of Lake Labynkyr. They decided to stay overnight on the shore. A
five year old child went to the bank of a stream which led into the
lake while adults were busy. Suddenly the adults heard the boy
screaming.
'The father and grandfather rushed to the bank. They stopped on the
edge of water and saw the child being carried away by an unknown animal
to the centre of the lake. It was a dark creature, with a mouth looking
like bird's beak. It held the child and moved away with quick rushes,
then it dived leaving huge waves and dragged the child under the water.
'The granddad swore to revenge the 'devil. He took a sack made of
animal skin, stuffed it with reindeer fur, rags, dry grass and pine
trees needles, put a smouldering piece of wood inside. He attached the
sack to a huge stone on shore with a rope and then threw the sack far
into the waters of the lake.
'At night there was noise and splashes and terrible screams of the
'devil'. In the morning the waves brought the huge dead animal, about
seven meters long with a huge jaw, almost one third size of the body,
and relatively small legs and fins.
'The old man cut the animal's stomach, took out the body of his
grandson, and buried him on the bank of the stream. Since then this
stream is called 'The Stream of a Child'.
'It is hard to say what happened to the remains of the animal but this jaw was put like an arch on the shore.'
Could it have really happened? Only a fully fledged scientific mission can hope to answer whether the Labynkyr Monster is myth or reality.
