Lake Van Monster

Lake Van is Turkey’s largest lake, a soda-rich body of water high in the mountains of the east. Its monster is a recent cryptid but the lake has a long dragon tradition. Armenian writers such as Movses Khorenatsi and Anania Shirakatsi mention vishaps, water dragons, and a tale in which the god Vahagn dives into the lake to haul out any vishap grown large enough to devour the world. Armenians of the basin called sudden storms ‘dragon wind.’

The first modern report is a story in the Ottoman newspaper Saadet of 29 April 1889, which said a creature had dragged a man into the lake; the government sent a scientific party that saw nothing. The modern craze dates from the 1990s. A local, Ünal Kozak, said in 1997 he had filmed the creature and co-wrote a book on it with academic Mustafa Nutku. According to Hürriyet Daily News, about 1,000 people claim to have seen a creature of some 15 metres with spikes on its back.

Critics note that the camera never pans left, that the object may be a boat, and that its ‘breathing’ looks like a continuous stream of air. The scholar James Russell, who interviewed Kurds in Van in 1994 and 1997, wrote that they dismissed the monster as a commercial ploy and attributed the sightings more to Western lake-monster stories than to the Armenian tradition.

A 4-metre statue stands in the city of Van, and in 2009 a comedy film, Van Gölü Canavarı, was filmed there to promote tourism.

Reported as 15 metres long with spikes along its back and a serpentine neck; filmed sightings show a dark moving shape.

Open waters of Lake Van, an alkaline lake at 1,640 metres elevation; sightings cluster in the Erciş and Van areas.

A statue in Van city, a poem by Bülent Ecevit titled ‘Van Gölü Canavarı’, and appearances in television documentaries and cartoons.