The Raystown Ray is an alleged sea-serpent creature similar to the Loch Ness Monster that lives in the Raystown lake located in the US state of Pennsylvania in Huntingdon county. The lake is the largest entirely within Pennsylvania, the lake was created through the construction of two dams, one replacing the former, with the former allegedly containing the first sighting of the creature in 1962, the lake was made for hydroelectricity and flood control.
The lake was also made for support of recreational activities and to attract tourists, the lake offers boating, swimming, mountain biking, scuba diving and fishing as popular attractions and there are a number of campsites, boat launches, restaurants and trails to further attract people to the area for recreational activities and vacations.
Some reports have indicated that the Raystown Ray once interrupted one of these recreational activities, the annual Raystown Ski Club, with the creature being observed underwater near the area of the event, almost leading to it being cancelled by organizers. From my research this appears to have perhaps happened sometime in the 1970s, but I am unable to confirm it, but it appears some minor incident may have gone down.
For decades there have been alleged sightings of the creature in this lake but it didn’t really reach much wider attention until a 2006 tourist photo that alledgedly captured a picture of the Raystown Ray. In 2010 the Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files Syfy show also visited the area in an attempt to prove or debunk the legend on the sea serpent, although they were able to re-create the photo fairly well, they still could not come to a full conclusion on whether the Raystown Ray was real or not but said they believed something was down there.
The description of the Raystown Ray is similar to that of the Loch Ness Monster, being a large 50-60 feet long creature with smooth skin and a long serpent-like neck with a reptilian head that has been described as peering out of the water while most of the rest of its body is submerged underwater.
The Managing Director of Raysdown Lake, Dwight Beall, said in a press release in 2006 related to the tourist photo, that they know it has been in there for a while and also said it had been known to scare off 50-pound striped bass. Jeff Krause, a Wildlife Biologist at Raystown Lake speculated that the creature must be vegetarian as there was not any evidence of animals being taken such as geese, fish, otters, ducks etc. He also said that due to this swimmers and boaters should be “very safe” out on the Raystown Lake. Many boaters have described unusual water turbulence out on the lake as if a large creature underneath is swimming around close by, while other boaters have reported appearances of the creature.
Krause went on to say that the increase in sightings of the Raystown Ray could be due to the increased amount of weed beds that provide food for herbivores, meaning the creature is more likely to come up to the shallows to feed. He also speculated that the Raystown Rays behavior was similar to that of a manatee.
There have been a whole host of reported sightings of the Raystown Ray, such sightings have been reported on the official Raystown Ray website, two of the most interesting are…
August 2008 Penny Foor
“One warm still evening, during late August of 2008, we decided to drift the boat out off shore to do some night fishing, right at the bend of where we camp at the Senoi sites, that is just around the corner from Seven Points. Well, we were using our new ‘fish drawing’ light (it is neon green, longer than a floresant light, waterproof of course…and guaranteed to draw in fish when dropped overboard with a rope and a weight to pull it down to about 30 or so ft.) Anyway, we were using the light, fishing in the stillest water (like black glass) so calm, no breezes, just quiet. Well, along about 11-12pm, we were deciding to head back, we were just sitting there on the stern talking and enjoying the calmness of the warm night. All of a sudden, from out in the middle of the lake, there was this whooshing sound, I thought it might be a boat, but there were no lights, no motor sound, just the sound of water swooshing straight towards us. He grabbed the spotlight and about 100 feet from our boat, there was something…looked like an upside-down canoe, rushing thru the water, at us! He told me, “grab that fish light, now! get it up!” (I had actually forgotten about it) I grabbed for the rope and started pulling like crazy! He kept the spotlight on the thing as I grabbed hand over hand trying to get the underwater light up and in the boat. As soon as I got the light up, I turned it off, and stood there with him watching this thing get closer, it came within 30 ft of the boat when it went completely under, where it went I have no idea, but it left a wake that shook us in the boat, we rocked enough to almost push us to shore. I tell ya what, we headed back to camp, and sat in the RV drinking tea, and tried to make sense of it. There are no fish that act like that that are native to the lake. Not even eels break the water like that. And definitely none that big. We know fish at the lake can get huge, but they lay at the bottom, they don’t even hunt at the surface. After seeing this site(raystownray.com), we wonder if this may have been a “Raystown Ray” sighting. We have heard the swooshing in the water late at night, from our campsites on shore, at various times of the year, and you can only see the water breaking under the light of a bright moon, it makes me think that the cove by the Senoi campsites may be a “play area” for whatever it is.”
August 3 2008 Mike Sieber “I heard about this Raystown Ray a few years ago and thought it
was just a hoax to get more people to the lake. But after Sunday
August 3rd Im not so sure that he doesn’t exist. It was 7:15 PM
and we just loaded the jet skis and started to dry them off. My
girlfriend jokingly said “Look, Its Raystown Ray”! I looked to see
what she was talking about and saw a neck and a head
sticking about 3 to 4 feet out of the water and it was striding toward
a boat that was coming into the no wake zone at the 7 Points.
We watched it for about 3 minutes. We saw a wake in the water
from its neck and about 15 to 20 feet behind that wake was
another wake, but we couldnt see what was causing that wake.
It disappeared the closer it got to the boat. My mom, dad,
girlfriend and I all saw this thing. If it wasnt Raystown Ray,
I would like to know what it was!”
You can check out more eyewitness accounts on the raystownray.com website.
Due to the sheer number of tourists to the lake many wonder how such a large creature could be hiding in the lake without having been discovered or properly evidence yet or have been seen more often, but the size of the lake is very large, spanning 30 miles and containing 8,300 acres of water, with depths as deep as 185 feet and a number of other areas go down as far as 100 feet. As well as that there are a number of coves and natural debris, all of which give the Raystown Ray, if it exists, many places to easily hide from prying eyes.
Skeptics have said that the Raystown Ray sightings may simply be mis-identification of bigger than usual water life such as carps or eels or mis-identification of submerged debris such as logs.
Sources
Raystown Lake wikipedia page
Raystown Ray Cryptid Wiki page.
Raystownray.com
Pennlive.com article – Meet Pennsylvania’s Loch Ness Monster, the Raystown Ray: Monsters of Pennsylvania
Author note: I attempt to cross-check sources as best I can and anything I am unsure about or unable to find from multiple sources is excluded from the blogpost. When using wikipedia I will normally cross-check using the references provided, if there is no reference or citation is needed then that part is not included unless I am able to confirm it through follow-up research.
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