A Monster in Monaghan
Drumate Lake, near the town of New Bliss in County Monaghan, is quite a small lake. It covers only 11 hectares and is 4 metres deep at its deepest. Yet, in August 1944, it was big enough to hide a monster.
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| Genuinely, this is the only photo I could rescue off the SD card! |
It was first seen by some men who were fishing from the shore. It appeared as “a black patch a few inches above the water.”
Soon after this first sighting, some local farmers - armed with shotguns - rowed out to look for the beast. They were in luck: soon after their search began, the monster broke the surface, 20 yards from the boat. One of the farmers, P J Clerkin, fired both barrels of his shotgun. The creature rose partly out of the water before diving and making its weird rumbling noise.
Two hours later, the creature appeared at another part of the lake. It was immediately shot at by another farmer, Joseph Dickson.
According to reports, a total of six shots were fired at the monster during the initial sightings. It’s not recorded if any of the shots found their mark.
A number of newspapers covered the story, but they all appeared to have used the same Press Association report. Only the Belfast News-Letter attempted to independently verify the story: “When the ‘News-Letter’ made enquiries at the Bewbliss police barracks last night, however, all knowledge of the ‘monster’ was denied.”
The next reported sighting - there may have been other sightings, but they weren’t reported - occurred at the end of August. Arthur Davidson and three other men were in a boat on the lake looking for the monster when it surfaced - only two yards away from their position. It goes without saying that Davidson tried to blow its head off.
He explained: “I was out in a boat with three other men searching for the monster. Seeing it over the edge of the boat, I fired. It gave a splash and raised a big wave on the water. Then it disappeared.”
But in the time between the creature surfacing and Davidson scaring the bejesus out of it, Davidson managed to get a good look. He said that, though it wasn’t fully visible, it was about seven feet long; it had two arms that ended in either claws or webbed feet; it had a tail that was 18 inches long and six inches wide; and it moved in the water “aided by its arms.”
According to all of the newspapers that covered this encounter, all bathing in the lake and fishing from boats had stopped. But was it fear of the monster or fear of being shot by a farmer that stopped the water based fun? It’s a question that no one asked.
So, August 1944 was a month that would have kept a Fortean clipper busy. But it did make one of our neighbours a tiny bit jealous. The following appeared in the “Bats in the Belfry” column of the Daily Record on Wednesday, 30 August 1944:
“Are the tycoons of Scottish tourism asleep? Only the other day Brazil announced the appearance of a sea-serpent off her coast [1], and now Eire has proclaimed the presence of a small wyvern or gryphon in a County Monaghan Lake.
“Considering that the success of a modern tourist industry depends almost entirely on monster-appeal, it is a trifle chawing to find Brazil and Eire getting in on the ground floor with inferior phenomena while Albyn keeps mum about the curvaceous colossus of Loch Ness.”
Whatever it was in Drumate Lake, if there ever was anything to begin with, it stopped appearing after the Davidson encounter.
But, if you know otherwise, please let me know.
Notes:
- Something was making appearances off the coast of the Brazilian state of Maranhāo in August 1944. A “U.S. naval observer” had described it as "a gigantic sea-serpent.” Whatever it was, the Maranhāo fishermen were refusing to to put to sea.
Sources:
- Belfast News-Letter, 19 August 1944
- Daily Record, 30 August 1944
- Fishing in Ireland (fishinginireland.info)
- The Gloucestershire Echo, 10 August 1944
- The Newcastle Journal, 29 August 1944
- The Nottingham Journal, 19 August 1944
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