The Thetis Lake Monster

Thetis Lake lies inside Thetis Lake Regional Park, about 12 km from downtown Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It has a public beach near the recreation centre. In August 1972, that beach became the setting for one of Canada's strangest monster stories.

August 19, 1972. Evening had turned to dark. Gordon Pike and Robin Flewelling, two local teenagers aged 16 and 17, were at the beach. Something appeared on the surface of the lake. The Victoria Daily Times later described it as "roughly triangular in shape, about five feet high and five feet across the base." It came out of the dark water. It chased them from the beach.

Flewelling reported a cut on one hand, made by "six razor-sharp points on the monster's head." The boys went to the RCMP. On August 22 the Victoria Daily Times ran the story. Its account spoke of silvery scaled skin, sharp claws and spikes on the head.

August 23. About 3:30 in the afternoon. Michael Gold, 12, and Russell Van Nice, 14, were fishing on the opposite shore. "It came out of the water and looked around. Then it went back into the water. Then we ran!" Its body, they said, was silver and shaped "like a human being body, but it had a monster face, and it was all scaly with a point sticking out of its head and great big ears and horrifying eyes." The Victoria Daily Times commissioned an artist's sketch from their descriptions.

The RCMP judged the first two boys credible. "The boys seem sincere, and until we determine otherwise we have no alternative but to continue our investigation," one officer said. After the second sighting the search widened. It turned up no evidence.

On August 26, The Province reported a call from a man who had lost a pet tegu lizard near the lake the year before. Police closed the case. Accounts still differ on how long the search had run.

The tegu never fit well. Critics pointed out that tegus are not aquatic, weigh under 30 lb and would not survive a British Columbia winter.

The sharper answer came in 2009. Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic, tracked down Russell Van Nice, then 49. "It was just a big lie," Van Nice said, adding that Gold had been trying to get attention.

Loxton also found that Monster from the Surf, the TV title of the 1965 film The Beach Girls and the Monster, had aired on CHEK-TV in Victoria shortly before the first sighting. In Loxton's words, it was "a movie about a scaled humanoid gill-man attacking teenagers at the beach after dark." Its monster had a pointed head and ear-like gills. Yet the confession covers only the second pair. Gordon Pike and Robin Flewelling are not known to have ever taken back their account.

The monster outlived the debunking. Retellings compare it to the Gill-man of Creature from the Black Lagoon. W. Haden Blackman's field guide gave it gills, webbed hands and "bulbous fish-like eyes." The Canadian blog of the Centre for Fortean Zoology weighed Indigenous figures such as Sisiutl and Wasgo, and rejected them. Cryptomundo carried Loxton's verdict that the reports were groundless. In 2006, Jesse Martin claimed the creature came out of bushes and left scratches and fish scales on a vehicle. A Japanese toy company even made a figurine.