So here in the Okanagan, we have been experiencing uncharacteristically warm weather for the month of October. Still hitting the mid 20’s, people are still out at the beach and on boats. Normally by this time, our highways have snow and the windshields start to freeze over – But I digress, so of these boaters out on the lake, this past weekend had a very interesting situation unfold. A man named Dale Hanchar and his wife Colleen were out with their friend Myrna Germaine Brown on Okanagan Lake when they saw it….

And I quote “As a boater, I was just looking to see if this something dangerous that needs to be marked so somebody doesn’t run into it, like a dead head or something like that,” Hanchar said. “We went on by and I got thinking about it, and I said to Myrna and my wife ‘that didn’t look right, we’ve got to go look at that again’,” he said. He told Colleen to get her camera ready and turned the boat around. When they doubled back, they came within 10 feet of this object and snagged a photo. “For one thing, the two nodular things are sticking up… whatever they are, those that are about three feet apart,” Hanchar said. Now, this photo is posted below with the interview, but I think it’s worth exploring more on this. Dale claims to have done more research since taking the photo and deduced it wasn’t a plant, and it wasn’t kelp because it’s a lake, not an ocean. We can also eliminate the possibility of it being a sturgeon, they don’t reside in Okanagan Lake. It’s not a dead deer either, claimed Dale Hanchar.

As he put it – “You can eliminate all these things but the next question is, what is it?”

When I look at this image they took, my mind tells me it’s too perfect. Although is this my own disbelief to blame? The imagery of any cryptid is rightfully going to be subject to doubt and rationalizations – like the Patterson-Gimlin footage. But then I wonder just that in this regard, why is there no footage – why was it just a photo taken? Surely the opportunity was there to record it moving through the water, thus allowing others to make either ration or more observational opinions on what it could be. Then I think, okay – they are certainly older folks, not super tech savvy and performed the best they could in this situation. But perhaps they are hoaxing it? Maybe they took the lawn ornament and tossed it into the water. But who am I to make the claim it’s real or not?

Adam Benedict, who’s a cryptid, and folklore researcher – stated he had a “moment of hesitation” when he was opening up the photo for the first time. He described it as a large water bird of sorts, where the 2 protruding horns are actually feet and diving just below the surface. While I like this theory, I still am hesitant to agree with that. And that’s not coming solely from a place of wanting this to be 100% genuine, it’s coming from a place of speculation based on how I interpret the photo.

These two protruding objects are very distinguished. To me, you can clearly see an eye on the side of its head, and then what looks like a snout/mouth type feature. The kicker is the shadow of what appears to be a neck descending into the water.

So if this was an inanimate object that coincidentally resembled the Okanagan cryptid, you would think someone else would have found it by now. Even though our local city is a big one, news travels insanely fast here – especially on topics regarding our lake. Now from my experiences on Okanagan Lake, it’s massive, holy smokes you could easily assume it’s the ocean if you didn’t know otherwise. And like I’ve told Reuben before, at one point – I think something existing here could have been plausible, this is highly unlikely these days sadly, because of the high frequency of boaters and tourists we see in the lake during the summer months. Holy smokes is it ever full of people, while we do get drownings, we never have any monster-reported injuries or deaths coming out of Okanagan Lake. And surely if this was a massive underwater cryptid, we would have seen something by now with our technology and all the tourists?

And while this new addition to the Ogopogo evidence may not prove anything concrete, it does a good job of keeping the cryptid’s fire alive in our community.