“Ponik” – La bête du lac Pohenegamook

Ponik is what the locals call the unknown creature that dwells in the waters of Lake Pohenagamook on the Maine/Canadian border.  Witnesses have sized this cryptid with a lengthy tail, to be between 30 and 60 feet long. Its legs are said to be short and it moves around with flippers for feet.

Some say Ponik has 2 humps, others say they’ve seen 3.  It’s said that Ponik has either a “saw toothed crest” or a ridged crest, similar to that of the underside of a canoe, that runs from the back of its head down to its tail, and it has a head like a horse – hence the nickname “Ponik” – or  “pony”; as in “water horse, or “water pony”.

Although the local native people told tales of “the great beast” in the lake, the first documented sighting occurred in the 1870’s and reported sightings have continued ever since, peaking in the 1950’s/1960’s when road construction around the lake was at its highest.  Explosives and heavy machinery were used during this period and it can be logically ascertained that this activity caused a much noticeable disruption to the local wildlife.  Lucky observers have noted seeing Ponik’s humps, a distance apart from each other, in the water as it glided along before diving into the depths of the lake it calls home, leaving a streamline V-shaped wake where it disappeared.

Ponik became an official local star among the communities that surround Lake Pohenagamook in Quebec, in 1974, and the tradition of its celebrity has been celebrated yearly at a summer festival held in its very own honor.

On the Maine side, Lake Pohenagamook is sometimes called “Mocking Lake”. Even though the grand majority of the Lake is actually in Canadian territory, it does edge into the Maine border town of Estcourt Station, and this tiny section shares the legacy of the quiet and harmless beast that has been sighted by upwards of 1,000 people since 1873.

Some of the more reputable witness accounts by those who have been lucky enough to see Ponik first hand;

2 early European settlers claimed to have seen Ponik around the year 1873.  The first, Louis Berube, was a lumberjack in the area.  He offered a very short description of his observation, explaining it was “huge” and possibly a fish.  Shortly after Louis’ sighting, a man by the name of Benoit Levasseur sighted Ponik and claimed it to be a monster more than 25 feet in length, and that he observed it surface, submerge, and surface again before it disappeared into the darkness of the lake.

Gaston Painchaud, the mayor of Escourt Station (the American end of the lake), made his observation from the balcony of his home back in 1957.

A 10 year old boy came, literally, face to face with Ponik while he was swimming in the lake back in 1944.

In 1957 a local priest by the name of Father Leopold Plante, was fishing when he had his sighting.  He reported:   “The lake was as calm as a mirror.” he explains, “You could see a toothpick floating. All of a sudden, about a thousand feet from shore, I saw this big, black thing floating. It was like two pieces, with a depression in the middle. Then as I was pulling my line in, it went swoosh under the water and it was gone.” (Prescott Courier – July 9, 1978)

In 1976 Marcel and Danielle Denis saw Ponik while boating on the lake.  “We saw its back, no head. It was a silky smooth gray.” (Of Sea and Shore Publications Volumes 11-12 p.140 – 1980 )

Louis and Lucie Fournier (1976) claim they saw an 85 foot long version of Ponik, roughly 50 feet from shore.  They each described it as being black and having 3 humps on its back, and they definitely concluded it was not a fish. (Prescott Courier – July 9, 1978)

About Pohenagamook Lake
It’s a very dark lake, sort of like Loch Ness, the home of world famous Nessie, which Ponik is often compared.  Loch Ness is dark due to peat moss, but Pohenegamook’s darkness is attributed to high amounts of rust in the water, deposited into the lake from the iron rich mountains above.

“Pohenegamook” is Native American, which means “Rest and wintering, sheltered from the Northern winds.” but it’s mostly known to be nicknamed as “the lake without a bottom”.  Native Legend has it that the lake is shaped like a funnel – bottomless.  And even though modern day efforts have been made to record its true depth, 250 feet is as far as those efforts have gone.  The “average” depth being right around the 135 foot mark.

Conjecture and Theory
How does Ponik survive when the weather turns cold and the lake freezes over?  Local believers say there’s a cave somewhere underground, and it nests there until the ice clears up.

Some say Ponik is a plesiosaur. A Jurassic Marine Animal which somehow survived extinction, and is another example of Nessie, from Loch Ness in Scotland, or Champ from Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Some say Ponik is nothing more than misidentification of:

Moose swimming in the lake – hence the thought that Ponik’s head looks like a horse head.

Giant gas filled tree trunks, or logs, which have floated to the surface and, after dispelling the built up gasses within their waterlogged bodies, they sink, returning to the bottom of the lake to decay.

 A really large sturgeon, as they’re known to grow to lengths of 14 to 18 feet and they can live to be 100 years old.  Although, realistically speaking, a 9 foot sturgeon is considered to be a large sturgeon, and to have sturgeon that exceed normal growth expectations generation after generation in the same geographic location for centuries, is a possibility as plausible as the theory that there is a currently unknown species inhabiting Pohenagamook Lake.

Others say the “saw-tooth” fin that starts at Ponik’s head and stretches down to it’s tail is nothing more than wet hair ridged together, like what you might see on an otter – as an example.

Locals have noted that there have been Ponik sightings at a lake not too far from Lake Pohenagamook, at Lake Temiscouta.  The possibility these sightings are, indeed, Ponik gives reason to believe it’s traversing the distance between the 2 lakes via an underground tunnel or cavern system, which has yet to be discovered.

Reasons you might believe

While we do have a statement from world renown biologist/researcher Vladim Vladykov that Ponik could quite possibly be a sturgeon, the locals hold firm that they’ve fished Lake Pohenagamook their whole lives and have caught every sort of fish imaginable for that area, but never once caught a sturgeon –  not even a small one.

A local biologist, Guy Verreault, has studied Lake Pohenegemook in the 1990’s and is of the scientifically researched based opinion that there are no sturgeon in the lake, and there is no evidence that would support that there might be.  Furthermore, he clarified that a 9 foot long sturgeon would weigh nearly 500 pounds, so a sturgeon the size of what witnesses are reporting – 25 feet, 30 feet, upwards of 60 feet long – would put that fish into the multi-ton category, and that’s something that would leave a distinct impression on the lake, in terms of physical evidence, at the very least.

In 1977 a team of Toronto divers used marine radar and low frequency sound waves to search for Ponik and detected an unidentifiable form 25 feet long, 10 feet wide.  While they don’t know what it was that they found, they know it wasn’t a sturgeon.

Reasons you might not believe

Despite numerous scientific attempts at proving the existence of Ponik, no evidence has been produced.

While there are reported photos of Ponik, there are none that allow for certain identification that it is, indeed, of the size witnesses have claimed, or to have the physical attributes witnesses have observed.

What we think Ponik could be, and Why
Ponik could be a type of plesiosaur, similar to that of an Elasmosaurus or Cryptoclidus.  The last of a species thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago.  Our reason for figuring this as a possibility is directly attributed to witness account descriptions that Ponik’s body is long, has short legs, flippers, a lengthy tail, and a crest that runs from head to tail on its back.

The physical attributes witnesses describe are too similar to other famous lake monsters around the world, including Nessie, Champ, Ogopogo, and Poco, leading us to believe that Ponik could very well be a cryptid, and not a sole survivor from the end of the age of dinosaurs.

Pohenagamook Lake is 6 miles long and roughly 2 miles wide, large enough to support a food source for an animal the size of Ponik.  And Lake Temiscouta, where Ponik has also been sighted, is 28 miles long  and 3 miles wide, making both lakes prime real estate for a creature that has done a fine job of remaining as elusive as it has, for as long as it has.