Herrington Monster

[bevo]

I've seen a Herrington monster myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She was pale, had a pimply back, weighed about 185 and my buddy couldn't get enough of her one night. He swore off tequila after we wouldn't let him live it down.

[DJD]

HERE you go guys lol--http://www.geocities.com/unusualkentucky/herrington.html

I read it and it makes for a great campfire story!

[buzzking]

If the story came from a UK professor you can pretty much mark it off as lunacy, 90% of the profs up there are nuttier than squirrel turds......

[MrSplitshot]

Hmmmm....anybody reckon that thing would hit a carolina rigged buzzbait?

[jeremys]

Well all this being said does anyone remember reading a story in the lexington or danville paper, say 10-15 years ago, about some people driving over the old blue bridge and seeing a gaint shadow on-top of the water??? I'm thinking there might have been a picture to go along with it.

[Cobra190]

HERE you go guys lol--http://www.geocities.com/unusualkentucky/herrington.html

Read this story, but the origional sighting story came out in 1962. It also re-surfaced(pardon the pun), again in '92 and '94 in the Herald Leader. Could only see small pieces of the columns in their pay per view archives.

[cumberlandguy1]

I guess the weird thing is that we got an up close look (less than 15ft away) and it was in broad daylight. We watched it for a good 10 minutes or so and there was no alcohol involved.

[Hoodaddy]

Bevo,

Sounds like you got a pretty good look at that monster........Sure it was'nt you that had too much tekeelya....

[Cobra190]

Here's another copy and paste for ya!

http://www.amnews.com/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=16141&format=html

[Stonewall2002]

Here is some background.....

MIGRATING BIRD EVOKES CHILLING TALE OF MONSTER
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
January 6, 1994
Author: Don Edwards Herald-Leader columnist
Estimated printed pages: 2

I was driving on New Circle Road yesterday when I saw a pelican flying south. It was a strange sight in a snowy landscape, but there it was.

A couple of years ago, a flamingo was found in Kentucky during cold weather. A lot of people didn't believe that one, either, but there it was. It was turned over to the Louisville Zoo, where it was nursed back to health.

Weird cold weather phenomena always remind me of long ago and the Great Winter Search for the Herrington Lake Monster.

So return with us now to the 1960s, a decade that followed the UFO scares and Cold War paranoia of the 1950s with its own brand of madness.

Back then, some people thought that a 20-foot-long creature with a snout- like face and a curly tail was living in Herrington Lake. Witnesses claimed to have seen it.

Compared with the large lakes in the state -- Kentucky, Barkley and Cumberland -- Herrington is a mere swimming pool.

And yet, it is large enough to hide something in. About 35 miles long over 3,600 acres and once said to be up to 250 feet deep in spots, it still seemed an unlikely home for a sea serpent.

Where would the serpent have come from? Herrington Lake was created in 1925 when the Dix River was dammed.

It had been living in an underground body of water connected to a cave, the monster buffs theorized. When the river was dammed, the cave was flooded and gave the serpent access to the new lake.

Jack Upton, one of the buffs, was a guy who used to pester me constantly in those days. Jack was convinced that when the lake froze in winter, the monster would be easier to spot. It would come to the surface for air. Or maybe it would go into hibernation and you would be able to see it lying there in suspended animation just below the ice.

Once Jack even hired a plane to fly him over the lake while he took photographs. Later, he studied every shadow in the photos looking for monster shapes.

I was crazy enough to go with him one time. I thought: "Hey, what if the thing's really there? What a story this will be. I'll be famous!"

So there we were clinging to a cliff. And what was that floating under the water? See it? That long, dark shape? Look, here it comes to the top! It's a ... log.

That was the only kind of stuff we saw.

I have no idea where Jack is now, but if he called me today and said, "Hey, Don! I've found it! Come on down here!" -- well, I would just quietly hang up the phone.

Monsters are not as important to me as they used to be. Maybe life these days is monstrous enough by itself.

Also, I'm looking for cultural activities that don't involve freezing your appendages off. For instance, my big project for 1994 is to promote a Russ Meyer Film Festival in Lexington.

Meyer was a cult film director of the 1960s whose movies include such works of art as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens.

Those two will lead off the festival, and then I plan to follow up with Mud Honey, Motor Psycho, Mondo Topless and Faster, Pussycat...Kill! Kill!

Maybe we'll throw in a sea serpent on stage.

Wow. The '60s really were crazy, weren't they?



And Who could forget the great monster panic of 62'


THE MONSTER PANIC OF '62 STOPPED STATE IN ITS TRACKS
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
November 11, 1992
Author: Don Edwards Herald-Leader columnist
Estimated printed pages: 2

Some anniversaries are too weird to be recognized anywhere but in this column, and here's one of them:

The year marks the 30th anniversary of The Great Kentucky Monster Panic of 1962.

Ah yes, '62. JFK in the White House. Bobby Vee singing "Take Good Care of My Baby" and Shelley Fabares singing "Johnny Angel." Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies. And talk about weird -- the top show on TV that fall was "The Beverly Hillbillies."

And then it happened -- a monster sighting near Bedford in Trimble County.

The people who saw it said it was about 6 feet tall, walked like a gorilla, had arms that reached its knees, and was covered with dark hair.

And it left tracks!

A professor of zoology at Hanover College in Indiana was called in to examine the tracks and determine if the thing had been a bear or maybe just a big dog and too many six-packs.

The professor studied the tracks. He reported that he couldn't identify them.

While all this was going on, four young people double dating in a car near Mount Vernon in Rockcastle County said a big, hairy creature on all fours hopped up to their car and terrorized them by growling.

That really got things going. Monster reports began flooding in. The police yawned, but radio disc jockeys sensed a hit. They put monster-report calls on the air ("Did it attack you, Dwayne? How loud did you scream, Debbie?"), played "Purple People Eater"-type songs between calls and organized "monster sock hops" to help the fad along.

Then, in October, a new song called "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt Kickers hit the top of the charts.

There would be other grand Kentucky monster moments in later years, such as in 1972 when a University of Kentucky professor reported a sea serpent with a snout nose and a curly tail in Herrington Lake; and in 1975 when new monsters (this time making oinking sounds like giant hogs) returned to Trimble County.

But the Monster Panic of '62 was a classic. It was like Cold War paranoia, UFO movies at the drive-in and a little local hell-raising all rolled up together and dusted with fun.

So long ago, so long ago. And now I have to confess to something: I miss monster panics. Whatever they were, they weren't boring.





Thought these would help push the story along!





Keep on chuckin'

[Duayne]

I've only fished Herrington once that I can remember. There were three of us and we were in our mid 20s so this was a LONG time ago. We really didn't know what we were doing and where we were fishing. I do remember catching a few bass early then switching to panfish stuff once it got sunny and hot, then having to jump in when it got really really hot. We were back in some area where there was a pretty soft flat and the water had decent visibility but wasn't crystal clear. All of a sudden we see three or four really long shadows moving together in fairly shallow water. Doing what young\stupid and not young\stupid fishermen do, we cast whatever we had at them and of course got zero attention. They were gone as fast as they came but we got a really good look at them moving around before they swam off. I figured they were carp but if they were they were HUGE carp. These looked like 3-5 ft shadows in the water. Of course the shadows probably do get bigger the longer you've had time to think about them. ha!! But they were much larger than your standard lake fish regardless of what the size was. I really hadn't thought of it for years until I read this thread. I don't think it was monsters and it probably doesn't have much to do with what the OP saw, but it was a cool memory regardless.

[waterdog101]

some good reading for sure, and reminds me of a guy I used to work with, he would tell us guys he had 7 ghost that lived with him, and he new their names, some of the guys would give him a hard time over the stories he would tell, but I just told him to be nice to them, they need a place to live to, and he would tell me a ghost story about every day, it was like listening to a young father talking about his children, but the ghost he had living with him weren't children, they were older folks from the 1800 century, he would describe the clothes they wore, he said while he played his guitar sitting on the couch, that one of the ghost like to pull on his hair from behind him, he said once he was watching tv with his girlfriend and a couple of the ghost came and told him, there was a water line broken in the kitchen, and he went to turn the water valve off and when he came back to the family room his girl friend was gone, i asked him did she see the ghost and he said no she didn't see them, but she ask him who he was talking to and he told her the ghost that lived there with him was telling him he had a water leak, he said it was hard for him to keep a woman because of the ghost,he said one of the ghost women, that was there didn't look like the others, he said she must have been from the deep south because of the way she dressed, didn't mean to change the thread, just thought some folks see things others can't or don't, this guy said he lives with 7 ghost and when he talks about them he calls them by name, and when my daughter was a little girl she had an imaginary friend, or thats what we thought, because we couldn't see her, but my daughter talked to her and would tell us how long her hair was, i don't remember for sure how old she was when she stopped playing with her little friend we couldn't see, around 4 years old i think, some folks just see things others can't or don't, and because we never see them don't mean others don't... and back to fishing Herrington lake, I've fished it a few times and the biggest swimming thing that I ever saw came out of the water of Herrington was about 3 pound.