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The nineteenth century
The first written that mentioning The Great Lake Monster, found through research by Jamtli are following:
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- A woman born 1799 in a village called Krokvågen heard her parents telling that seeing The Monster heralds a great misfortune.
- The winter 1840, Ersson and his friends from the village Sanne, were jigging on the winter ice when suddenly a unusually large animal rapidly swam past the big hole in the ice. The animal were told to be as wide as it covered the hole completely and that it took a long while before it had passed lengthwise. According to the witnesses the animal had spots varying in colour from black-green too yellowish grey.
- The summer of 1863, a hot calm day in July, statesman Jöns Bromée and several of his peasants saw when coming back from work at dawn, an unusual and large animal splashing in The Great Lake close to land and close to the stream just at the farm. Bromées mother in law meant that it was children taking a bath in the lake, slashing and making noises like that. After a closer look they found that no children were able to make the water that turbulent. The water cascades calmed down slightly and they could see that it was an unusual animal partly located on land and partly in water. It was big and ugly and had several short, stout feet. Everybody agreed that it had to be those feet when the sun shone on them that had made them think it were children playing. They all though it was an ugly beast and they agreed to follow it. Two guns were loaded and two boats were swiftly put into the lake. At that time the animal had slowly started to move out into the lake. It looked like when 10 to 12 black shiny linked anchors walking next to each other. Five men went to each boat, in one of the boats were Bromée armed with a gun and in the other boat were the miller G. Qvarnström, also with a gun. The started to pursuit the animal over the lake and were rowing as fast as they could but were not able to get close enough to fire one of the guns. As fast as the rowed the animal still advanced from the boats, at the middle of the lake the animal disappeared into the water and did not resurface again. Among the persuaders were the shopkeeper E Byström and the farmhands N Berglund and Nilsson. Many stood at the farm and watched the animal and the pursuit. The size of the animal were hard to determine when the animal did not seem to be completely over the surface but according to the visible part the animal were over 5 meters.
- Statesman Jöns Bromée did swear this to be the truth. The story were in the paper of Jämtlandsposten 1.11 1893.
- In October 1894 John Bergström and his wife were on their way by boat between Myssjö and Hackås when the boat suddenly bumped into ”some sort of soft object with the result that it raised and started to tilt to one side”. There were no sandbar on that location and the witnesses were convinced that the The Great Lake Monster started to ravage far down the Funäsviken . The company in Östersund who aimed to trap The Monster responded by putting traps in that location. A raft were also constructed in order to be able to quickly be positioned in areas were The Great Lake Monster frequently showed itself.
- 10 of July in 1898 a company of six people were down at the jetty of Vattjom in Oviken. It was sunny weather and the lake was like a mirror, not a ripple went over the surface. Suddenly P.E Åsén discovers something about a kilometres away, something he at first regarded as ”a stern of a heavily loaded boat”. His wife pointed out that it could not be a boat. He rushed down to his boat and rowed out on the lake to be able to look closer to what ever it was. He approached a body ” that shone brightly red in the sunlight of the calm lake”. At first he thought that a fox ended up into the water but as he realized that this were at least between 4-5 meters of length and about 1,5 meters wide. Åsén rowed around it and saw it both from the side and from the back. At the back it were risen about two thirds of a meter over the surface and in the front it were risen slightly lower than the back. In the back it ended in a flat and abrupt manner, in the front it narrowed and were slightly humpy. The colour was medium red with dark stripes. The body was slimy and scaled. When he were about three meters from the animal, lying almost perfectly still in the water, ”two fins or ears rose suddenly with a wood clattering noise and with a flapping movement”. These peculiar appendices’ rose up until ”they stood straight and tensed between the animals shoulders shining whitely in the sunshine”. Åsén had been able to study the animal for 15 minutes before the steamboat, Vällviken, honked its horn.
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