The Lake Utopia Monster at the Ludgates' Sawmill

Lake Utopia lies in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, its southern shore about 1 km north-east of St. George. A stream perhaps 400 yards long joins it to a smaller lake well known to the sporting fraternity. About midway on that stream, Messrs. H. & J. Ludgate ran a saw mill. Sawn deals floated down to deep water in Lake Utopia. There, men built them into rafts for St. George.

The lake already had a reputation. Locals spoke of "the tradition of forty years".

Wednesday, July 24, 1867. Morning. The rafting men saw "a violent agitation of the water, about 100 yards distant out in the lake". It went on for a time. Then "there appeared distinctly above the water a huge bulky object." They put it at 20 to 40 feet long and 4 to 10 feet across. The skin had "a shaggy appearance, not unlike a buffalo robe, and of a reddish brown color." Foam drifted ashore in huge flakes. No head ever showed. But 20 or 25 feet behind the mass, something moved like a tail.

They called the mill owner. H. Ludgate, his son and others ran down to watch. Ludgate said it churned the water "to a perfect boiling, seething state", throwing up edgings and mud from the bottom. A dark cumbrous body rose now and then, "not unlike a large stick of timber", and vanished almost instantly. Finally it moved off. They traced its course long after it went under.

Later that day, Thomas White was haying in a field with his two sons and a hired man. They saw it seven different times. Once it came up at the outer end of the raft, quite close. The men at the inner end had their backs turned. When most exposed, White said, it resembled "a large rock left bare of the tide, 10 feet across". He could safely swear to 30 feet of it.

Thirteen people saw it that day, among them Charles Ludgate, Charles Mealy and Robert White. The St. John Globe's correspondent at St. George had been sceptical, and went to hear the witnesses in person. The conclusion: "some huge animal of fearful aspect exists in the waters of Utopia". Locals were "really afraid to cross it in boats".

H. A. Smith and W. W. Shaw set hooks on buoyed lines, so far without any satisfactory result. A large net was planned quietly. The letter was reprinted in the Hamilton Daily Spectator and the Summerside Progress. In 1872 the Canadian Illustrated News ran an engraving that, according to CBC, shows the monster chasing two paddlers, an older Indigenous canoe legend.

No official inquiry followed. A commenter on Cryptomundo later pointed at the mill itself: floating timber, root wads, tangled cables, perhaps mass hysteria. Ludgate's own comparison to timber fits. Stephen Turnbull of CFZ-Canada cited an 1868 Harper's Weekly report of a "sea serpent" killed in Passamaquoddy Bay, judged likely a basking shark. Sturgeon and sea turtle have been considered and rejected. None of these explains a shaggy, reddish brown hide.

The creature became known as Old Ned. Sightings were reported in 1982 and 1996, and according to researcher Norma Stewart, the last came in 2000. In 2009 Loren Coleman transcribed the full 1867 letter on Cryptomundo. The witnesses' own words were back in print.