Sweden Put a Lake Monster on the Endangered List
Cryptids are creatures people report but science has never confirmed. In each episode Poss Jonah tells where the legend comes from, what people say they saw, and what a sensible explanation might be, then lets you decide.
The story
In Sweden, a lake monster was once protected by law as an endangered species, and its nest too. Meet Storsjöodjuret, the Great Lake Monster, said to live in Lake Storsjön, smack in the middle of Sweden. A manuscript from 1635 tells of a lake serpent, bound to the bottom by a rune master, who carved his spell into a runestone.
Later folk tales said two trolls brewed it up in a cauldron, with a black serpent body and a head like a cat. In 1894, locals formed a company to catch it, backed by King Oscar the Second. But they never caught it. Hundreds of sightings have been reported since the 1800s. And then in 1986, the county declared it endangered, protecting the monster, its young and its nest, till the law was revoked in 2005.
But so what's down there? An 1899 naturalist figured it was some water animal nobody had named yet. And nobody's caught one. But you decide. I'm Poss Jonah.