A northern Ontario resident recalled the time, as a boy, when he saw what is called the Trout Lake Monster while visiting his grandmother. He said that it was green and shaped like an eel.
I received the following account:
"I live in a small city in northern Ontario, Canada, and I remember thinking this place was just.. odd as a kid. When I was 7, I used to tell my friends a lot about how I thought the whole town was haunted. But I've actually seen some pretty weird things here.
My grandma lives down in Waterloo, but every once in a while she comes up to visit and stays in her old house by one of two large lakes in our city called "Trout Lake". Trout Lake is quite large at 69m maximum depth (yes that really is the maximum depth) with cold dark brown waters a mystery below the waves.
When I was younger I used to hear stories from my father about a creature called "The Trout Lake Monster", an apparently large fish, or crocodile-like creature. He had heard most of these stories from his own grandfather, and the first sightings of the creature supposedly took place in the 20s or 30s. This monster isn't exactly famous or anything, but a lot of the older generation know of it or have at least heard of it.
One summer when I was visiting my grandma, I ran down to the lake's edge with my sister to throw some rocks. We liked seeing if we could throw them into the drop-off area of the lake which was 40 feet offshore or so. That day I remember looking out into the water and probably about 150-200 feet away I saw something that I always described as an "eagle beak" rise up out of the water and then submerge again. I remember it being yellow, or yellow-tinted, and I still don't know what it was, but I suspect it was trash now. When I told my family, no one believed me (I was 8 and had a very active imagination, so they were sure I was making it up) and my sister never saw it.
I didn't really like swimming in there after that. But that wasn't the only time I saw whatever it was either. The same year, my dad and I were driving on a road that was elevated higher than the lake, so when you found a clearing in the trees where you could just look down at the lake from above. The road we were on led to an old abandoned army base, and no one drove on it, so that day we stopped to watch the lake and my dad talked about the army base. Right when we were about to leave we looked down at the lake and saw a huge shadow under the water right near the beach. It looked like a giant snake and I remember specifically asking my dad if he saw it too, to which he said that yes, he did. We drove away not long after because whatever it was was just moving slowly toward the shore. Now looking back on that "sighting" I'm quite sure it was just a shadow from a cloud we saw. Because if it was a real animal, it would have been about 60 feet long, or more, and an animal that size would not realistically be able to live in Trout Lake, let alone maintain a breeding population in Trout Lake. Also, it was moving extremely slowly toward the shore where people were swimming. All in all, there's no way it was an animal.
A year or two later, I think this was in 2014, I was at my grandma's house again and was looking out a window that faces the lake with binoculars. At this point, I WAS actually looking for the monster. I believed in lake monsters as a kid, and my two prior sightings coupled with the stories meant that every time I went out there I was searching for the creature and sitting down by the lake. While I was looking out the window I spotted something swimming with its head above the water, and this is the only sighting I can't easily explain away. It was swimming through the ice, (the ice was melting at this time, it was around early March.) I FREAKED when I saw it because not only did it validate me, but it was something I had never seen before anywhere, except in deep sea documentaries. The creature was green, and had a head similar to an eel, with "lips" and all on it. The head was above the water, and the creature also had its back sticking out a little too. The back had a sail-like fin on it - not anything crazy, but small and rounded in shape. People came over to see what I was yelling about (I was basically screaming "Look, the monster. Look!") and my aunt actually looked through the binoculars and said that she couldn't tell what it was.
The creature then kept swimming and I lost sight of it because it was obscured by a tree in front of the window. I waited for it to appear on the other side, but it never did. My family members who didn't see it said it must have been a beaver. What beaver is green? I tried everything to think of what a rational explanation would be. I looked up Muskies, which do live in the lake, but they didn't look like the creature, which was about 5 feet long, with a rounded head. Muskies also don't have fins on their backs. I thought about frogs, but again it didn't match of course. The only thing I can think of is an Eel.
The last time I saw something odd in the lake, was in 2021 during the summer, when my dad and I drove out to my grandma's house to check up on it (this was one of the times she wasn't visiting, and the house needs to be checked on every once in a while in case there's flooding in the basement.) As we drove past the road where you can best see the lake, I noticed something in the distance that essentially looked like the water was boiling or bubbling in a circular shape. I took out my phone to take a video of it, but it was almost impossible to see on the camera because of the distance it was from the moving car and also because my phone's camera quality was just bad. I'm not sure if I still have the video. I think the most likely explanation for it is fish feeding near the surface. Not sure what else it would be.
Also, there was a boat accident on the lake in the 50s where a couple and their dog went out onto the lake in a fibreglass boat and disappeared. Their remains were discovered in 2007, but for a long time, some people believed the monster was the cause of the disappearance.
Also, I would like to add that this is a complete rumour, with probably zero truth behind it, but allegedly when the OPP were searching for the boat and bodies they also found a huge tooth among the wreckage, which was later destroyed because it was feared talk of a monster would harm tourism and fewer people would fish and swim in the lake. Again, purely a rumour, there is nothing to prove it at all.
The stories my dad told me of monsters in the lake, that his grandad had told him, were nothing like the creature that I may have encountered. The most popular story is of a woman walking her small dog onto the edge of her dock in the thirties, and when the dog walked to the edge of the dock a massive fish lunged out of the water and dragged the dog under. Of course, nothing proves this story is true, but it certainly makes me think twice about swimming in that lake.
One day I'd like to buy an ROV and pilot it in the lake. Just to see what it's like down there, monster or not. Still have no clue what it was." D
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