The Lake Monster

Louis Hart
Weeds & Wildflowers
2 min readJan 22, 2020

It’s a big, blue lake. The water is cold and deep. Very deep. In some places, the bottom is over 1,600 feet below the surface. Due to icy temperatures and the purity of the water if a person drowns their body often sinks, forever suspended in the frigid depths.

Even with all its breathtaking beauty, Lake Tahoe has many mysteries hidden in its depths. There is about it an aura of forlornness. Many times when I am near the shore I sense a presence lurking. Although it doesn’t feel evil it’s unsettling enough that I always refrain from swimming or even wading in the water.

What could it be? Maybe the restless souls of those who have succumbed to those deep, cold waters over the years. I’m sure that there have been more than a few. Also the Native Americans who originally lived in the area considered the lake to be sacred. Perhaps their ancestral souls are unhappy over humanity’s typical development of the area.

Or maybe, just maybe, what’s lurking could be the lake monster. There have been reports of sightings over the years of something big. Something really big. The naysayers believe it’s probably a large sturgeon. However with descriptions of something about the size of a battleship and a long dinosaur-like neck the idea of an over-sized fish just doesn’t work.

As could be expected the lake monster has been given a name. Tahoe Tessie, patterned after Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Tahoe Tessie is pictured in drawings as a smiling, good-natured monster and that might not be so far wrong. There have been no reports of a massive lake monster swallowing boatloads of people or even going out of its way to scare them out of 10 years' growth.

Is there really a monster lurking in the lake? If so why haven’t more people seen it and why haven’t there been lots of pictures taken of it? I’m inclined to think maybe Tessie, along with many other reported lake monsters, is an inter-dimensional creature and does not reside permanently in the lake. This could explain why all the searches in places such as Loch Ness have never found anything. If this is, in fact, the case then in all probability the lake monsters of the world will forever remain an unsolved enigma.

--

--

Louis Hart
Weeds & Wildflowers

I’ve been a writer and photographer for more years than I want to try and count. My preferred genre is whatever comes forth when I sit down to write.