Original headline: Bear Lake serpent sighting
GARDEN CITY -- Brian Hirschi may have doubted the existence of the legendary Bear Lake Monster when he purchased a pontoon-boat replica of the creature three years ago.
But all that changed one evening in the summer of 2002. After a long day of giving tours aboard the vessel, Hirschi was anchoring for the night a few hundred yards offshore when he had a haunting rendezvous with the slimy serpent.
Now, he's convinced that the scores of other eyewitness accounts of the monster, which date back to American Indian times, are true. And he shrugs off naysayers who suggest that the legendary creature is just a tall tale or marketing ploy.
"When you join the elite group of people who've seen it, you don't care what everybody else thinks," the 29-year-old Hirschi said Thursday.
That elite group reportedly includes LDS Church presidents Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith. Even Brigham Young is said to have once supplied a rope to a local resident who wanted to snare the creature.
Hirschi's encounter, one of the more recent sightings, occurred at about sunset as he was drifting backward to make the boat's anchor lines tight. About a hundred feet off the stern of the vessel, he noticed two small humps three feet apart in the water. His first thought was that somebody had left behind a water ski, but suddenly the humps disappeared beneath the surface.
"I thought this was strange, but I had seen stranger things on the lake," Hirschi said in a written account of the encounter he posted on the Internet last year.
About 30 seconds later, he felt something scrape the bottom of the boat and then lift it out of the water about six inches.
"This grabbed my attention because I knew there were no underwater rocks or obstacles that could have caused this, plus the 80,000-pound boat doesn't just get lifted out of the water easily." A few moments later, less than 50 feet from the side of the boat, the monster shot out of the lake. When it landed, it made enormous waves that rocked the boat violently. Hirschi clung to the rail to keep his balance, all the while trying to keep his eyes on "whatever had just come out of the water." The monster resurfaced about 200 yards away as it swam toward the middle of the lake at a high rate of speed.
Hirschi stood on the boat for 20 minutes in shock before deciding he'd better get to shore before dark. He hopped on his Sea Doo and drove back to his business, Performance Rental, as fast as he could, almost beaching the watercraft with the engine still running.
"I wondered if I should tell anybody," Hirschi said. "After some thought, I finally decided I wouldn't tell anybody because they might think I had gone crazy from spending too much time on the monster boat. Plus, there were no other witnesses to verify the sighting. ... It is not until now (a year later) that I have finally decided to tell my story and let people know to be on the lookout for the Bear Lake Monster because it is still alive and lurking."
Hirschi said he believes the monster approached his boat to determine whether it was a similar species. Conrad Nebeker, the Indian Creek resident who constructed the boat in 1996 to entertain his grandkids, modeled it as closely as possible after eyewitness accounts of the monster, which is said to be a green, slimy, serpent-like creature with red eyes, fangs and bunchy ears.
Hirschi said the creature he saw was also about the same length as the boat. However, based on his encounter, he's decided to add red lights to replicate the monster's glowing eyes, a smoke machine to emanate mist from the replicas nostrils and an audio device to play a roaring sound.
Hirschi, a Cache Valley native who graduated from Logan High School and Utah State University, said his father and grandfather were both from the Bear Lake Valley, and he spent summers there during his childhood. He has maintained that living arrangement as an adult, offering 45-minute tours of the lake aboard the monster boat seven days a week beginning in mid-June.
During the tours, Hirschi recounts some of the folklore about the monster. He said he always carries a camera, just in case his passengers are lucky enough to catch a glimpse.
"We tell them there's always a chance," he said.
"The Indians have a tradition concerning a strange, serpent-like creature inhabiting the waters of Bear Lake, which they say carried off some of their braves many moons ago. Since then, they will not sleep close to the lake. Neither will they swim in it, nor let their squaws and papooses bathe in it."
Original story by Joseph C. Rich
