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Ah, We've got a great couple hours coming up for you with Ken Gearhardward. The recognized cryptozoologist author They Just Spook as the Essential Guide to the Lockness Monster and other aquatic cryptids, frequently appears on television programs. He has traveled the world searching for evidence of mysterious creatures, including Bigfoot,
the Lockness Monster, the troop of Copra Mothman. In addition, Ken has written a number of books on the subject of unknown animals, and his research has been featured on various television programs as well. And here he is back on Coast to Coast Ken, Welcome back.
How have you been leaving? George? Is always an absolute honor to be here with you. I'm doing great.
You are one of the best crypto guys out there today. How did you get involved in all this?
Oh? Man, It's just been a lifelong passion of mine. You know, when I was a kid, I was really fascinated with creatures, collected all kinds of creepy Crawley's snakes and stuff, and I love monster movies. So when I found out about Bigfoot, in the Lockness Monster. I was about eight or nine years old and it just something clicked and it's been a lifelong passion of mine. I
certainly never planned on making it a career. I've just been very blessed and I've had a lot of amazing opportunities to pursue this kind of research.
There's something to be said about when we're kids, how it affects us with these things. You know what. I was the same with UFOs and I wanted to investigate them and decided I'm going into broadcasting. I'm going to find out what's going on with this stuff.
That's worked out pretty well for you. You've you've done quite a nice job with it. So yeah, it's you know, we're very blessed.
Now, tell us about this Lockness Monster expedition if it's one of the biggest and fifty years and you were part of it.
Yeah, it seems like just yesterday, but it was actually about eighteen months ago. End of August twenty twenty three went over with Scotland and there was an expedition organized by a guy named Alan McKenna. He's got a group called Exploration Lockedness and in conjunction with the Lockness Exhibition centered there, which is a really cool museum. They put out a call for volunteer researchers and much to their surprise, they had hundreds of people responding from around the world.
And so for that last weekend in August, about two hundred of US gathered there at Lockness and we did the largest expedition, biggest expedition sincerely seventies as far as
man hours. We had people stationed all around the lock watching, We had boats, we had hydrophones or micro underwater microphones that were utilized, and I'm proud to say I was the first researcher as far as I know that ever flew a drone over Lockedness at night and that was armed with thermal imaging camera, so we were looking for heat signatures and so yeah, scuba divers, I mean, you name it. We put out all the stops for a
weekend and the weather wasn't there great. No definitive evidence was collected, I'm afraid to say, but there were some interesting underwater sounds recorded and some possible observations of a strange animal. In fact, we investigated us a sighting on that Sunday morning by two of the observers and they got a video of something. It was kind of in the distance, but it looked like some humps sticking out of the water and moving against the tide. So that was all pretty cool.
Ken the Locke is about what twenty three miles long.
Correct and about one point seven miles wide at the widest part mile on average. So it's a very narrow lake on the surface. Is it very very deep?
Is it very calm?
No? Very turbulent? You have it. It's located in this great geologic rift, and it's very close to the North Atlantic, and so there's very narrow sort of it's sort of like a narrow valley with very steep walls. So there's a lot of wind and crazy currents and things. So
it's not very calm, you know, during the summer. It can be more often when it's warmer, and that's actually when you had the most observations of Nephi or the Lockness Monster has been in those conditions where the water's very flat and calm.
In the sightings of NeSSI started in nineteen thirty three. What happened? Can you go back? Can tell us?
Yeah, in nineteen thirty three they had built a new road alongside the north shore of Locknest called A eighty two, and it created all new visibility, great visibility of the lock for people that had never been able to get a good look at it before. You know, a lot of the brush was cleared away and stuff. And there
was a couple John and Aldi Mackay. They owned a hotel or an inn there in Drum to Drocket and they were tering home from Inverness and suddenly all these shouted out stopped the beast and you know, inferring that there was kind of a prior knowledge of something beast like in the loch right, So Aldie and John stopped the car and they described seeing two well John didn't
actually see it. All these saw two whale like humps about twenty feet in length, black and shiny, with water rolling off of them, kind of moving around the water. And so that was reported to the local newspaper in Inverness, Scotland, and that was kind of the first mention of the Lockness Monster. In May of nineteen thirty three.
Is it possible, ken that the Lockness Monster could be a prehistoric plesiosaur.
And it yets it is possible that is a seriod that's been around a long time since the early nineteen thirties. A pleice histor, of course, was a prehistoric reptile that was aquatic, lived during the Mesozoic era. It was a lineage that died out at the end to the Cretaceous, and they were quite large. They had the small they had the long neck and all that kind of thing. The problem with that theory is that actually not a lot of people see a head and neck. Those those
types of observations are very rare. Eighty five percent of witnesses only described seeing a large hump or hump in the surface of the water with no head and neck. And also the water is very cold, of course, George, So I mean you're talking about, you know, if feciosaurs were reptiles, and there is a theory that they might have been warm blooded, but we don't know. But if they're cold blooded animals, they're not going to thrive in that type of environment, right. Plus we'd also expect to
see them coming to the surface and breathing air. Reptiles or air breathing animals they need oxygens. So so there's some problems with that particular theory there. I think there are other theories that have kind of displaced that one a bit.
Could it be a large eel, that's what we're seeing humps part of the yel.
Yeah, that's kind of the one of the press the theories right now as we're talking. We know there are a number of eels, conger eels already living in locked nests. They average about two to five feet in length. But there's a theory that there could be a monstrous eel in there that's maybe fifteen to thirty feet in length, and that would explain some of the sciety. So that's not impossible. I guess that's one of the more popular
or pragmatic theories right now with researchers. I tend to advocate a theory of more of a mammal type of animal, maybe something ancient, like an ancient type of snake like whale, which we did have, you know, ten millions of years ago. And then some people think it might just be a giant catfish. You know, you've got these big European catfish, the Wells catfish, and they can be about seven feet in length and way over three hundred and fifty pounds
I think, so they're a huge catfish. Now there's never been one documented in locked nests, but that's another theory out there.
Well, it's not about two years. If we started at nineteen thirty three, is it conceivable that whatever people are seeing is the same object, the same creature. It's just that it hasn't died.
Well, that that is possible. There are certain species that get very old, you know, something like a sturgeon. You know, that's another you know, lake sturgeon are very weird looking, prehistoric kind of looking fish, and they can live about a century, you know. But you could also be talking about a small population, a small breeding population, which you know, there would obviously be some genetic issues there with bottlenecks
and things if there weren't very many of them. But or maybe something that comes in from the ocean, because Lockness is connected to the North Atlantic by a series of rivers and canals and things.
Well, it's Ken Garhart. His website is his name linked up at coast tocoastam dot com. Tonight we're going to be talking about Locknet, small Bigfoot, the tuop of Cabra, mothman sightings, the Jersey Devil dog man. How many cryptos are out there?
So like a bunch of them, right, You know, you have kind of the old guard or the traditional cryptids, like the Lockness Monster, the yetty or vomitable snowman, and Bigfoot, and then you have kind of this new generation with the chupacabra and mothman and dog man and things like that. So the field is a lot more vast and diverse than people realized. It's more than just a handful of cryptids.
There literally are all kinds of unusual things that have been reported around the world, from giant turtles and frogs to giant snakes, thunderbirds, mystery cats, and all kinds of weird creatures in different countries and far away lands. So it's it's all very fascinating.
Ken If you want to see a giraffe, it's easier to find if you want to see an elephant or a tiger or any or zebra. Why are these other objects, these other creatures so difficult to find.
Well, the only scientific explanation would be that they're very rare. And you know how rare is a matter of speculation. But for example, if we were talking about something like Bigfoot or sasquatch here in the United States, North America. You know, you would have to have a breeding population of at least in the low thousands, because if you get any you know, if there are any fewer than that, then you start running into genetic bottlenecks and issues with
that kind of thing. So there has to be a lot of genetic variation and diversity and a breeding population. So and the lowest it could be would be in the low thousands. That if you imagine a thousand bigfoots or sasquatches spread across the entire continent of North America, that makes them incredibly rare. You're like one hundred, one hundred and fifty times more likely to see a bear
than a big foot or a sasquatch. So that's the only explanation we can come up with Georgia is that they live in very remote areas and they're just, you know, very rare species at this point, perhaps endangered or critically endangered.
We wants to go back to the lock for just a second. Can regardless of whether it's a creature of any kind that we've talked about, are you convinced people are seeing something?
Yes, I am, and I think the best evans, you know, there's a there're about a thirteen hundred good eyewitness reports that have been logged through the years that are very consistent. Most people describe seeing a very large whaleke hump that sticks out of the water, or sometimes multiple humps that are you know, maybe twenty to forty feet in length, smooth skin, usually a dark color, and you know, they're very consistent reports. And then we have the sonar evidence.
That's another layer that a lot of people don't realize about. Going back to nineteen fifty four, there have been numerous sonar contacts with a large, unidentified animate object or objects in locked nets, usually ranging from thirty to fifty feet in length, and those have been analyzed by experts in sonar at places like Simrad and low Ramps, and they've determined that there's something down there they can't explain. They don't think it's a school of fish or floating debris
or a massive plankton or anything like that. You know. So these sonar contacts have been pretty consistent through the years and they continue, and I think that's some of the strongest evidence because those haven't been explained.
If it were a whale, they would know that, would they not.
Potentially Yeah, whales are obviously air breathing mammals, but some species of whales, such as sperm whales, also beaked whales or zefayads, can actually hold their breath for up to four hours at a time. That's been documented. So whales can basically take a breath from the surface and then dive some whale species and then dive very deep and
hold their breath for hours. So but you're right, it does seem less probable when you consider how many tourists visit locked nests every year, especially millions of people to send me un locked nests over the course of each year, So you think at some point these these things would be seen more often.
There are more people going than there are objects. Side. It is the locks salt water afresh.
It's fresh water, and it's defined as being an oligotrophic lake, which means that it's actually nutrient poor, so it is fresh water. But the water there's a lot of sediment in the water, stuff like peat that runs down these steep cliff walls into the law, and the water's very murky and there's not as a result, there's not much sunlight that can penetrate the water, so you don't have a lot of algae or plankton or the basic building block,
so it's a nutrient of poor lake. There's probably about twenty tons of fish and salmon that come in occasionally, so that creates some challenges too for different types of animals proposed NEPSI type animals.
I was gonna say, can a salt water based creature live in a lake?
Yes, Actually there are some examples of that. You have sharks that have swum into fresh water, primarily bull sharks that have been documented in rivers the Mississippi River and the Amazon River and stuff, and they go through a process called OSMO regulation where they actually convert to their whole body chemistry so that they can you know, adapt
from salt to fresh water. And then you have other fish that are what do we call anadromus, and that would be things like salmon and sturgeon and eels that will move back and forth for spawning reasons from fresh water to salt water. And then finally you have whales and you know, seals and other types of aquatic mammals that will occasionally travel into fresh water. So there are some species that can make that transition.
Well, just did a program on Bigfoot, so we won't concentrate too much on him tonight. They ken, but there are many people who believe that it could be interdimensional or connected to UFOs.
What do you think, Yeah, that's that's one of the most popular questions that I'm asked. People seem to really be fascinated with that idea. I have not seen the evidence for that personally. George and I've been researching the bigfoot sasquatch phenomenon for forty years. I've worked in most of the active most active areas around North America, worked
with most of the leading region searchers. There are some weird stories that are connection to bigfoot sidings, for sure, early seventies you had a lot of these big foot UFO encounters in places like Pennsylvanian stuff. But you know, I think there are I think the vast majority of sightings. I think it's like there was a survey done in like eighty five percent of the sidings are pretty nondescript.
So you can imagine someone's driving on there a remote mountain road and suddenly something runs across the road on two legs. That's the most common type of bigfoot report or people see them in the woods, you know, drinking water or hiding behind treaties. And interestingly, George, people have reported seeing them digging through garbage dumpsters and things like that. So why would they sentient being travel from another dimension
to dig through one of our garbage dumpsters? Of important question, I think, And.
I don't think it's an individual in a suit, because that person would probably get shot.
Oh sadly, I think that's happened. I mean, there was certainly a gentleman I think you remember it was somewhere up in Idaho or something that was dressed in a big foot suit and trying to scare cars and he got There was some tragedy involved there. So uh, And
here's an interesting bit of trivia for you, Georgie. If you didn't know that, you know, they filmed a Return of the Jedi, the Star Wars movie up in the California Redwoods, and they actually had a guy in orange Hunter's best type were of accompanying the Chewbacca character through the woods at all times because they were worried that Chewbacca might get shot by a hunter. A lot of people don't know that story.
But now, what is.
The Chupacabra of course, is in Spanish means the goat sucker, and in Latin American culture it is basically described as being a vampire like creature that drinks the blood of small farm animals like goats, rabbits, chickens and the like.
The main physical description, I should say, the primary physical description that came out of Puerto Rico in the nineteen nineties described a upright creature standing about three to five feet tall, kangaroo shaped body, short fur, and then these really big, weird like alien type of eyes, tear drop shaped eyes, and a row of spikes going down the back. And that's the image that kind of went viral in
the nineteen nineties when the Internet was getting started. Since that time, people had described all types of cupacaudas that I've heard of, winged chupacaudas, I've heard of. You know, here in Texas where I live, we've got these weird dog like animals that have been called chupacabras. They're just kind of grotesque dogs and things. So it's kind of
a broad reaching term. But you know, most people think of the Puerto Rican chuop of Capra as the original, and I honestly, I just spoke recently to Jorge Martin, who is the original researcher on the Puerto Rican chupacabra cases in the nineteen nineties, and he says that phenomenon is still ongoing in Puerto Rico and that he believes it's connected to UFO phenomenon.
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