As part of the Utah Centennial Celebration an article appeared in the Daily Herald, January 20, 1996 discussing the existence of “monsters” in the Utah Lake. The article was written by D. Robert Carter, a local historian and featured an ancestor George C. Scott, son of Sarah Sleeper and Andrew Hunter Scott.
The article discusses how Indians believed in “water babies”. “Most accounts agree that the Water Beings had long, black hair and cried like babies. Their task was to lure people into the water or swallow them and carry them into the depths. The lake or stream then became the victims’ home.” The early pioneers, many of whom came from England and Denmark, were told about the Water Babies; but putting a different twist on the story, found it easier to believe in the familiar dragons, kraken and sea monsters of their homeland.
The article discusses man sightings on Utah Lake one included “the most detailed report of a sighting” made by George C. Scott when he was 8 years old. “In June of 1880, both the (Deseret Evening) News and the (Utah County) Enquirer reported a monster sighting. Two truthful and intelligent young boys, Willie Roberts and George Scott, were taking a spring bath in Utah Lake near Provo. The boys had swum out a fair distance when they noticed something that looked like a dog or a beaver swimming toward them. They didn’t pay much attention to the animal until they heard a lion-like roar.
“Looking up, they saw a strange animal approaching them ‘occasionally raising itself out of the water and showing its four legs which were as long as a man’s arm’. The animal’s head appeared to be 2 or 3 feet long and its mouth, which looked like that of an alligator, looked 18 inches wide.
“The frightened boys swam toward shore as quickly as they could, and the strange animal followed making ‘savage gestures’. When they finally reached land, they turned and saw that the animal was only a few yards from shore. Not waiting to see if the creature could travel on land as well as it did in water, the two friends hurried home to tell their parents of the experience.
“The terror-stricken manner in which the boys told their story convinced their parents and neighbors that the animal the boys had seen was a monster or something equally frightful.”
An article appeared by D.T. LeBaron of Springlake which seemed for the time to debunk the boy’s story, but the author notes that people were “probably privately debating the pros and cons of monster life in Utah Lake for many more years, however”. He also includes a warning at the end of his article. “For more than 70 years now, nothing further has been reported on the status of the monster. However, future water skiers may want to keep a sharp watch for the missing kraken”.
Note: Thanks to Philip Sabey for sharing this fun and interesting article. Local resident may want to watch for this water monster sighted by such a credible witness and report any findings to this website. The Andrew Hunter Scott Bulletin, No. 59, Winter-Spring 1996
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