In 1953 Viktor Tverdokhlebov was on a geological expedition in the remote wilderness of Siberia. The team had ventured far into eastern Siberia and had made their way to Lake Labynkyr. As the team went out on the water, they would soon encounter a legendary beast, one that many locals had told stories on for centuries. In this post, we will examine the creature known as the Labynkyr Devil.
As Viktor and his men ventured out on the lake that day, they had been warned by locals of the monster that lurked beneath the pristine waters of Lake Labynkyr. Still, the team had work to do and needed to venture out onto the lake. As they travelled across the lake, Viktor and team would see a disturbance on the water in the distance. It appeared to be moving in an arc like way.
Then as if it became aware of their Prescence, the disturbance on the water began heading toward the men.
As it reached them, the team was terrified and then the creature rose out of the water. Viktor would describe the beast as being grey with piercing eyes. It rose a little higher and then dived back into the water in one motion.
At that point, Viktor and team knew what they had seen. It was the monster the locals had warned them about.
Viktor and team would return from the wilderness and report their findings to the scientific community along with their encounter. Up until that point, the legend of the Labynkyr Devil was considered only fiction in Russia. However, the expedition had given much credibility to the sighting. Viktor and team were respected scientists, and they told the Siberian times that they were able to find jaws and a skeleton of some animal on the lake floor. Still, it’s important to point out that the remains were never brought back for testing.
In time, more interesting events concerning something living in the lake would happen in the years to come.
In 2012, Ludmila Emeliyanova, an associate professor of biogeography at Moscow State University, said she used sonar readings on Lake Labynkyr. She found something unusual though. The Professor claims she saw several large, underwater objects on her equipment in the lake.
She would state to the Siberian Times in April 2014:
“The object was very dense, of homogeneous structure, surely not a fish nor a shoal of fish, and it was above the bottom. I was very surprised but not scared and not shocked, after all we did not see this animal, we only registered a strange object in the water. But I can clearly say – at the moment, as a scientist, I cannot offer you any explanation of what this object might be”
‘I can’t say we literally found and touched something unusual there but we did register with our echo sounding device several seriously big underwater objects, bigger than a fish, bigger than even a group of fish.’
The Professor would also state they recorded the anomalies on multiple occasions.
One unnamed fisherman reportedly had an encounter on the lake. He claimed something large, bumped the bottom of his boat causing it to almost capsize. He believes something massive and unknown lives in these waters.
After Viktor’s expedition, the Lake would be the subject to more investigation in the following years.
Lake Labynkyr is located in Far East Russia and has about 17 square miles of shoreline. Although the lake isn’t extremely deep, with only an average depth of 171 feet, it should be said the lake has many mysteries. For one, despite being in the freezing wilderness, the lake doesn’t freeze. Other lakes around the area do. Many have speculated that a underground hot spring keeps the lake from freezing.
Still tales of this cryptid go back centuries and even predate the Lochness monster. In such a remote and difficult location to reach, very few travel to this region, especially in the freezing cold months.
Theories:
One theory is that the witnesses saw a Giant Pike fish. Giant pike are known to grow very big, around 5 feet. They are known to exist in the lake, but many don’t believe it is a pike because what has been seen or spotted is much larger.
Some think it is a prehistoric Amphibious creature, like a Plesiosaurus or another type of animal that hasn’t gone extinct. Others question this as the lake is very cold and desolate at the bottom. Many question if there would be adequate food to sustain a huge creature.
One interesting theory is that the creature is a Greenland shark. Greenland sharks are known to live for hundreds of years and eat algae. This eliminates the argument around food sources, these sharks live in the deep remote parts of the oceans in the north around eastern Canada and Northern Europe. The sharks grow to be around 10-15 feet long and much is not known around them since they live in such remote parts of the ocean. Could a Greenland shark have swam into lake centuries or millennia ago somehow?
It appears at this point, the evidence for this cryptid has still not been found. It seems though that if a lake monster was going to exist though, this remote lake would be one of the best places in the world for it to exist.
