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In Canadian folklore, the Ogopogo is a lake monster said to inhabit Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Some scholars have charted the entity's development from First Nations folklore and widespread water monster folklore motifs. The Ogopogo now plays a role in the commercial symbolism and media representation of the region.
The lake monster has been mostly described as being a serpentine creature with smooth dark skin with a large body thicker than a telephone pole and being up to in length. The monster has said to move at incredible speeds, coiling its body in vertical undulations, and propelling itself with a powerful tail. Many have compared the creature as being strikingly similar to the cryptid Cadborosaurus, or the extinct Basilosaurus.
According to Pat Raphael of the Westbank First Nation, a member nation of the larger Okanagan Nation Alliance, the demonic view of Naitaka came about through miscommunication between Canada's early European settlers and the Syilx/Okanagan people. To the Syilx, it's n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ (n-ha-ha-it-koo), a sacred spirit of the lake that protects the valley. The spirit was said to dwell in caves under Rattlesnake Island (a.k.a. Monster Island) or adjacent to Squally Point.
While driving on Highway 97 in 1968, Art Folden noticed something moving in the lake. He pulled off the road and filmed what he claimed to be footage of the alleged creature, showing a large wake moving across the water. Folden estimated that the Ogopogo was offshore. A computer analysis of the footage concluded it was a solid, three-dimensional object. Folden noticed "something large and lifelike" out in the distance on the calm water and pulled out his home movie camera to capture the object. A 2005 investigation conducted by Benjamin Radford with Joe Nickell and John Kirk for the National Geographic Channel television show Is It Real?, utilized surveyor boats to find the actual distance of the alleged creature from the shore. They found that it was much closer to shore than originally thought, resulting in a reduction of actual size and speed. They concluded that it was likely a real animal, but its size had been greatly overestimated and that it was probably a water fowl, otter, or beaver too far away to be identified.
In the 1980s, a local tourism agency offered a cash reward for a proven sighting of the beast. Greenpeace announced that the beast must be filmed and not captured: the Ogopogo was listed as an endangered species.
In 1980, around 50 tourists watched an alleged Ogopogo for about 45 minutes off a beach at Kelowna. Larry Thal, a tourist from Vancouver, captured 10 seconds of the sighting on 8 mm film. Some skeptics have suggested that this footage captured only a pair of otters.
In 1989, John Kirk reportedly saw an animal which was long and consisted of "five sleek jet-black humps" with a lashing tail. He believed it to be traveling at around per hour.
Another sighting occurred in 1989, in an area of near Lambly Creek. Ken Chaplin and his 78 year old father Clem staked out the area with a video camera. Chaplin caught what he described as a slim, serpent-like creature measuring up to in length swimming approximately from their canoe. The creature slapped its tail before diving, with force Chaplin described as being enough to "have killed a man if it had hit him." Chaplin returned to the location with his daughter a few days later and sighted the same creature again. These sightings were cataloged in magazines and newspapers, and appeared in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. However, after analysis by local biologists, Robert Lincoln stated that the size of the animal had been overestimated. Lincoln concluded it was a beaver by the behavior and shape of the animal. Chris Bull, who ran the local fishing department, would later state it was possibly meant to grab attention from the community.
On July 24, 1992, Paul Demara videotaped "something or some things" that were "traveling just below the surface of the water at a fairly good speed," which was estimated to have been . In the footage, a boat towing a water skiing suddenly appears in frame and the skier falls into the water near the object. Within several minutes, DeMara made two other videotapes, each showing what appeared to be multiple animals in the water. Benjamin Radford suggested that the creature was only several otters. In 2005, FBI video specialist Grant Fredricks concluded that the object "was very consistent with debris from a fallen tree in the water," noting that it "very slowly bobs up and down." He also pointed out that the alleged creature did not react to the water skier, and the skier did not seem alarmed.
In 2000, a Japanese expedition caught a 40 foot sonar image of an object about 7 meters below the point near Rattlesnake Island. Several underwater caves were also discovered off of the island as well. A following expedition in 2001 resulted in inconclusive sonar readings of a large object, and another in 2006 discovered more caves at much greater depths.
In August 2008, a local photographer named Sean Viloria and his girlfriend Jessica Weagers were sitting by the lakeshore at Peachland when Weagers noticed a disturbance in the water. Viloria snapped one photograph, but his camera died and he wasn't able to capture any more. Viloria did not publicize this photo, but described a creature having black hump-like ridges. Eight days later, south of the original sighting, Viloria had pulled his car over to look at the Highway 97 widening project when Weagers spotted another disturbance. Viloria snapped 11 photographs of the unknown object as it surfaced near a boat. Viloria has only shown 3-4 of these photographs to the public. One of them shows a tail or neck-like object surfacing the water, while the others show the back and head of the creature. Viloria estimated the creature as being long, judging by the size of the boat in the background. The photos were examined by many local experts. Chris Bull concluded it didn't look like any known animal of the lake. A biologist noted the black/red texture was possibly a different creature or pollution. Members of the show MonsterQuest examined the photographs and found no evidence of tampering, as featured in the 2009 episode "Lake Demons". This broadcast marked the first appearance of the photos on television. Viloria also sculpted a small statue of Ogopogo, which resembles a plesiosaur.
In 2009 an expedition was led by Ogopogo enthusiast Bill Steciuk which consisted of thermal imaging by helicopter, a zodiac chase boat, and a dive team to investigate various caves reported near Rattlesnake Island and Squally Point. The expedition started near the break of dawn where immediately the Chase Boat encountered a cluster of bird activity North of Rattlesnake Island hinting something large was preying below the surface. The thermal imaging helicopter found large heat trails near the surface offshore of Squally Point. Ray Snitynsky who took the thermal images analyzed the object that made the trails ranged from 40-50ft in length. A dive expedition led to the divers recovering a decomposed snake like carcass off an underwater ledge. Unfortunately, a DNA analysis revealed the carcass was a Kokanee salmon that deteriorated to the point it was unidentifiable. The following day, diver Craig Smiley was dropped into the lake near Rattlesnake Island, and hydroacoustic baiting via underwater recordings by Bill Steciuk were used to lure in the creature. When the sound frequency increased, Smiley's signal was temporarily lost after sediment was stirred around him supposedly triggering an animal. Smiley also discovered large sinkholes on the lake floor with some up to 5 meters long. This expedition was broadcast on the show Monster Quest in the episode "Lake Demons".
In 2011, a cell phone video captured two dark shapes in the water. A suggested explanation is that the video shows two logs. Radford analyzed the video for Discovery News and concluded that "the video quality is poor and the camera is shaky, but a closer look at the 30-second video reveals that, instead of one long object, there are actually two shorter ones, and they seem to be floating next to each other at slightly different angles. There are no humps, nor head, nor form; only two long, darkish, more or less straight forms that appear to be a few dozen feet long. In short, they look a lot like floating logs, which would not be surprising since Okanagan Lake has tens of thousands of logs harvested by the timber industry floating just under the lake's surface."
Three sightings were reported in September 2018, one of which described a giant snake approximately long.
In June 2024, there was a reported sighting which described a long snake in the water.
Sturgeon are often mistaken as lake monsters, but their existence in Okanagan is unclear. There is currently an unclaimed $10,000 reward for concrete evidence of sturgeon in Okanagan.
Benjamin Radford has pointed to waterspouts as a likely source of inspiration for First Nation myths. Waterspouts are fairly common on Okanagan Lake, often forming when air temperatures drop and the lake still has a relatively warm water temperature.
The Ogopogo is referenced in the English language translation of the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy IV, lending its name to a superboss in the game's final dungeon. The creature manifests as a more deadly incarnation of the summoned monster Leviathan, and uses a water attack named Deluge.
The animated series The Venture Bros. references the Ogopogo in the episode "Return to Malice". Number 21, a henchman of the series' antagonist and a prominent secondary character, claims the creature is real, clarifying that it is a plesiosaur, and derides Champ and Nessie as hoaxes.
Lake Okanagan and the Ogopogo feature prominently in the plot of "Ogopogo!", an episode of Mike Tyson Mysteries.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game features a set of monsters based on cryptids from around the world. Among them is a version of the Ogopogo, with an appearance based on its commonly accepted features.
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