Lake Memphremagog stretches across the international border between Quebec and Vermont, surrounded by mountains, forests and communities that have lived alongside its waters for generations. It is a beautiful lake, but for more than two centuries, people have reported seeing something unusual moving beneath its surface.
The creature has become known as Memphré.
Descriptions vary considerably, as they often do with cryptid sightings. Some witnesses have described a long, serpent-like animal, while others have reported seeing humps moving across the water. Several accounts describe a long neck and a head resembling that of a horse. Whatever witnesses believe they saw, the stories have become an enduring part of the folklore surrounding Lake Memphremagog.
According to the City of Magog, reports connected with a mysterious creature in the lake stretch back to 1816. By 2001, approximately 223 reported encounters involving 465 witnesses had accumulated. The city also notes that traditions concerning a mysterious creature in the lake existed among Indigenous peoples before the modern sightings were recorded.
One of the most interesting historical accounts connected with Memphré reportedly came from a journal written by Ralph Merry IV in 1854. The journal discussed sightings dating back to 1816 in which witnesses reportedly described a serpent roughly 30 feet long with a horse-shaped head and a neck extending above the surface of the water. According to later accounts, the journal was discovered beneath floorboards during renovations to an old house in Magog and eventually given to the Stanstead Historical Society.
But Memphré wasn’t confined to stories from the nineteenth century.
On August 12, 1983, Barbara Malloy was overlooking the lake near Horseneck Island on the Vermont side when she and three other people noticed something unusual. It was approximately 5:00pm, the water was reportedly calm.
Then something began moving rapidly across the lake.
Malloy described the creature as dark brown, with a long neck and a head that reminded her of a horse. She believed it was extraordinarily large—longer than a house.
Perhaps the strangest detail was the wake.
Whatever the witnesses were watching appeared to be travelling quickly enough to leave waves behind it resembling those produced by a speedboat. Yet what Malloy believed she was watching wasn’t a boat.
For somewhere between one and two minutes, the four witnesses watched the object or animal moving through the water. It eventually headed toward the middle of the lake and disappeared.
Malloy’s experience would become particularly important to the modern Memphré legend. She became involved in documenting other reported encounters and worked alongside Quebec researcher and diver Jacques Boisvert, who spent years collecting accounts associated with the lake.
Interestingly, Boisvert himself reportedly conducted thousands of dives in Lake Memphremagog without obtaining definitive proof that an unknown large animal lived there.
The reports nevertheless continued.
One particularly intriguing multiple-witness encounter occurred on September 25, 1994.
Four people – Diane Tétreault, Normand Rheault, Gisèle and Réjean – were reportedly on the lake in two separate boats. The weather was overcast, but importantly, witnesses said the lake itself was calm. There was reportedly little or no wind and no significant waves that would obviously explain what they were about to see.
Something dark appeared on the water.
The witnesses described what looked like three black humps moving across the surface. Estimates of its apparent length ranged from roughly 40 to 50 feet.
They watched it for at least three minutes. Then the encounter became considerably stranger. According to the account, whatever was producing the humps moved toward one of the boats occupied by Diane and Normand.
It reportedly passed underneath them, and then it disappeared into the lake. There is no physical evidence proving that the witnesses encountered an unknown animal, but the circumstances make the report especially interesting. Multiple people in two boats were apparently observing the phenomenon at the same time, giving investigators more than a single person’s perception to consider.
And the sightings didn’t end in the twentieth century.
On the morning of May 26, 2016, Magog residents Carl Poulin and his mother, Joan Thouin, went fishing near MacPherson Wharf. Both were familiar with the lake. At approximately 10:30am, they noticed something unusual.
The lake that morning was reportedly extremely calm, described as being almost like glass. Their boat was approximately 300 metres from the wharf in water around 15 feet deep when they noticed a strange wake. Then they saw something dark. Approximately 100 metres away, a black, shiny surface appeared above or immediately beneath the water. Poulin described its texture as resembling the back of a leech.
Whatever they were watching was apparently large enough and unusual enough that both immediately noticed it against the otherwise calm lake. Once again, however, there was no capture, body or biological evidence afterward.
That is ultimately the problem with Memphré.
There are stories. There are witnesses. There are historical reports spanning generations. But there is no scientifically verified animal.
Photographs have occasionally been offered as possible evidence, but none has conclusively demonstrated that an unknown giant creature inhabits Lake Memphremagog. In at least one instance, a supposedly mysterious object photographed in the lake was subsequently identified as a swimming moose.
And that provides an important reminder when considering cryptid sightings.
Water is remarkably good at fooling the human eye.
Distance can make an ordinary animal appear enormous. Several swimming animals travelling together can resemble humps belonging to one much larger creature. Floating logs can suddenly move when caught by currents. Wakes from distant boats can travel surprisingly far. Swimming deer, moose, otters and other known animals can look extremely strange when only a small portion of their bodies is visible above the surface.
Even experienced people can misjudge size and distance when there is nothing nearby providing an obvious point of comparison. But some Memphré witnesses insist that what they saw wasn’t a log, a wave or an ordinary animal.
Barbara Malloy certainly believed something unusual inhabited the lake, and she continued documenting reported encounters for years. Jacques Boisvert similarly devoted enormous effort to investigating the mystery, despite never obtaining the definitive evidence that could settle it.
That leaves Memphré occupying the strange territory where folklore and unexplained eyewitness testimony meet.
There is no scientific evidence demonstrating that a prehistoric marine reptile, giant serpent or other undiscovered monster lives in Lake Memphremagog. The popular plesiosaur-like depictions of Memphré are interpretations of the legend rather than established descriptions of a known animal.
But people really have reported seeing strange things there. Some accounts involve only a fleeting hump in the distance. Others describe long necks, unusual heads or enormous dark shapes. And occasionally, several people claim to have watched the same thing. Perhaps every Memphré sighting has an ordinary explanation. Perhaps generations of witnesses have encountered swimming wildlife, unusual waves, floating debris and optical illusions that became more mysterious with retelling or perhaps something less easily explained occasionally moves through the deep waters of Lake Memphremagog.
More than 200 years after the earliest documented reports, nobody has produced the evidence needed to answer that question.
And so Memphré remains exactly where a good lake monster belongs in the murky space between folklore and possibility, beneath the dark waters of a lake where, every once in a while, someone looks across an otherwise calm surface and sees something moving.
Sources used for this story include the City of Magog, Kingdom Games/In Search of Memphre, Le Reflet du Lac, historical material associated with Jacques Boisvert and the International Dracontology Society of Lake Memphremagog, and contemporary reporting on Memphré sightings.
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