By Tim Binnall
A couple sailing on Canada's Okanagan Lake captured a remarkably clear photograph of a strange anomaly in the water that some suspect could be the site's resident 'monster' known as Ogopogo. The intriguing sighting reportedly occurred in mid-October as Dale and Colleen Hanchar were out on their boat with their friend Myrna Germaine Brown. Their proverbial pleasure cruise took an unusual turn when they noticed something odd had emerged from the water off in the distance. Concerned that the curious object could be a hazard to other boaters, Dale promptly steered the vessel towards the oddity, while Colleen prepared to photograph whatever the weird thing was.
When they got to around 10 feet from the aquatic anomaly, she snapped a picture of the curious object (seen in the video above and isolated below). "We were all puzzled as to what could that possibly be," Dale recalled, indicating that the group "kind of eliminated what it wasn’t in our heads, and we talked about it a little bit and then we just kept on going." When the Hanchars got home and could look at the picture on a larger screen than that of the phone with which Colleen had photographed the oddity, they were all the more perplexed by what exactly they had encountered out on the water.
Since that day, Dale says, he has "done some research" into various possible explanations for the anomaly, but has so far come up short. Eliminating, in his estimation, a plant, a sturgeon, and an upside down deer, he was particularly puzzled by what appears to be a pair of "nodular things" that are protruding from the water "about three feet apart." Those 'horns' also caught the attention of folklorist Adam Benedict, who examined the photo and marveled that he was taken aback by the image when he first saw it.
"I did have a moment of hesitation, like 'whoa, this is not like something I've seen before,'" he said, observing that "in a lot of classic depictions of lake monsters, people will note horns of some type." While he conceded that the oddity "at first glance does look monstrous looking," Benedict argued that the creature captured in the Hanchars' picture "appears to be some sort of aquatic bird, like a goose or a duck." With that said, what do you think the couple photographed while out boating on the lake? Share your theory with us at the Coast to Coast AM Facebook page.