Arthur in Parlin, New Jersey called in to tell of a weird experience he had:
“I have a little story here that's...I don't know what to make of it. I'm hoping maybe you could tell me a little bit. I'm in my late 50s now. I grew up here in New Jersey. My brother and I, and my brother's best friend who turned out later, 30 years later, marrying my sister. He became my brother-in-law. What we would do was on his, he loves to fish, and on his birthday his father would drop us, which would happen to be the fourth of July, he would drop us over the lake here in Jersey. We'd fish all day. He'd then picked us up and go over to the park and watch the fireworks. Well, recently he passed away and now we wanted to go ahead and, in his memory, we traveled down there to Lake Okeechobee in Florida. That's where my sister's ex, he had lived, so we wanted to go.
There was a dozen of us there. We have three boats and we got there and it was close to a 100 degrees in the middle of August. So then we decided we were going to wait until night time to go out on the boat and fish. Now we get out there and we're fishing. Now, granted, we had a couple of beers but there's no alcohol amount in the world that could explain this away. What you do if you're fishing for bass at night, if you're using a lure on top of the water, one that floats to attract them. And we're out in the lake and my brother who's in the back of the boat, he turns around he says, 'Wait a minute. Stop!' That's when he says, 'I'm snagged' and my buddy says, 'Well, what the hell you mean it's snagged?' which is, there's nothing out there. Well, you know, we're out 75 yards from the shoreline, just, there's no trees or nothing and he says, 'Back up, I don't want to lose the line!
We put this spotlight out and we're following his line and meantime his pole's bending as if there's a fishing competition. So we get up there and he starts yelling we're only a few feet away. Well, I'm looking and I can tell there's nothing there. There's no branches, reel fishing line crossing the lake or anything. We get up to the fishing lure...and it's about, maybe, 5 feet off the surface of the water and he's standing in the back of the boat, so it was probably just about just level with him and he's holding on to his line and he's yelling, 'Look at this! Look at this!' and we're like, 'Here, go ahead, grab it!' and he says, 'Look at it!' and we put the spotlight on it and this lure is in mid air just hovering there. It had enough tension on it that he had about 12 or 15 pound test line and the rod was bent over till we got up to the tip of it and he says, 'Look!' He opened the barrel of his reel and we just back up. I was in total amazement. He circled his hand like a magician to show that there was nothing...there was nothing there. The only thing that was attached to that lure was the line that was attached to his pole.”
Source: Coast To Coast AM - September 6, 2017
JLB - Beyond Creepy
NOTE: Over the years, I have heard and read several weird occurrences at Lake Okeechobee. Below are a few links. Lon
Lake Okeechobee, Florida CE5
The Return of the Okeechobee Ogre
1901: Strange Monster Killed In Florida
Cryptid Creatures of Florida: Second Edition
Fearsome Creatures of Florida
Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species
Iguana Invasion!: Exotic Pets Gone Wild in Florida
