Lake Norman's Cryptid Water Monster

Mysterious Unknown Animal Lake Serpent is, Fittingly, Named Norman

Nov 13, 2009
Jill Stefko

Norman’s Logo - Matt Myers

The Duke Power Company, when constructing the Cowans Ford Dam in 1963, created North Carolina's largest man-made lake, fed by the Catawba River, that's Norman's home.

Nessie is probably the most well known of fresh water monsters or serpents residing in Scotland’s Loch Ness. Chesapeake Bay’s Chessie and Lakes’ Champlain’s Champ, Tahoe’s Tessie, Okanagan’s Ogopogo and Erie’s South Bay Bessie are gaining recognition. Arkansas’ White River Monster, Whitey, has his own refuge where it’s illegal to kill or harm him. There are yearly festivals for the unique Silver Lake, New York, serpent.

There’s a dearth of information about Norman. The best source of information is Matt Myers’ website, LakeNormanMonster.com.In addition to excellent information, there are gratis fun games and email cards featuring the Lake Norman cryptid.

Norman’s Realm

The lake’s shoreline is about five hundred and twenty miles. Its surface area is almost sixtysquare miles and parts of this man-made lake are more than one hundred feet deep.

There any many different types of fish in Lake Norman and the Catawba River including trout, bass, catfish, carp, bullheads, crappies, bluegills, perch and walleyes. In the late 1990's, scientists were baffled by discovering a species of freshwater jellyfish that hadn’t been known to live in the lake or river. It’s a perfect home for a fresh water monster.

What Norman Looks Like

The earliest reported sighting was over thirty years ago and approximately twenty after the lake was constructed. Witnesses reported they saw Norman near or swimming in the lake. Initially, he resembled a slowly moving mass of muck, then he raised his head, similar to a dinosaur’s, with large glowing eyes. His neck is brownish and about ten feet long.

Details vary slightly, but most agree that Norman is an elongated serpentine cryptid with weird fins and that he emits a foul odor. There have been over fifty documented sightings of this Unknown Mysterious Animal.

What Could Norman Be?

There are several theories about the precise nature of Lake Norman's cryptid monster.

Some speculate Norman is an alligator gar which can grow to be ten feet long and weigh up to three hundred pounds. The fish has a head that looks like an alligator’s which gives it an ominous appearance. The cryptid is much larger and has a dinosaur-like had. Others suggest the cryptid might be a sturgeon, snakehead fish or fresh water eel. The rebuttal to this is the same.
There is a theory about the White River monster. Biologist Roy P. Mackal believes the cryptid is a known animal living outside of its natural habitat. He theorizes that the cryptid is an elephant seal that swam up the Mississippi River to the White River. The natural habitat of the pinniped is California. The animal would have had to swim through the Panama Canal to reach the Atlantic, then the Mississippi to reach the White River. Applying this theory to Norman makes even less sense.
One of the local fishing guides postulates that Norman is a genetically altered catfish resulting from when people were trying to improve the lake’s breeding stock in the 1960s. This is plausible because mutant animals do exist.
The theory that makes the most sense is that these cryptids are dinosaurs that still survive. The coelacanth is one example of a living “fossil.” This fish was believed to have become extinct about 65,000,000 years ago when the dinosaurs died away. But one was caught in 1938. Since then, others have been discovered.

How Did Norman Arrive in the Lake?

Another problem is how the freshwater monster got into a man-made lake. There’s at least one other one cryptid that did this, Hodgee, California Lake Hodges denizen. One theory is that these cryptids swam through underground rivers from their native waters.

An example is Hellertown, Pennsylvania’s’ Lost River Caverns which has an underground natural waterway. The cave’s entrance was created accidentally created in 1883 when a limestone quarry operation was mining. Attempts to find its source and where it flows to haven’t provided answers.