raystown ray photo.jpg

A 2007 tourist's photo remains the best photo of something in Raystown Lake that some believe to be a Loch Ness Monster-type creature they call Raystown Ray.

(Submitted Photo)

A team from the Syfy channel's Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files visited Raystown Lake, an 8,300-acre, man-made lake in Huntingdon County, in 2010 in search of a Loch Ness Monster-type creature known as Raystown Ray.

They splashed around the lake, diving in the murky waters at night. They took sonar readings. They photographed a floating log in the lake, basically recreating the most famous photo of Ray. They towed a dead carp around the lake as bait, snagging the bottom of the lake.

Their conclusions: Witnesses seemed credible. "Something's down there." "There still may actually be some large creature out in the lake." "This case is still unexplained."





According to the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau, whose biggest tourist-draw is the lake, Raystown Ray was first reported in 1962 in the old Raystown Dam. That dam, built in 1905, was destroyed in 1971 to make way for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers creation of today's Raystown Lake, with depths as great as 185 feet.

Organizers of an annual Raystown Ski Club Water Show almost canceled the show when the creature was seen lurking near the jump ramps that would be used by the skiers. However, by show time, it seemed to have moved elsewhere in the lake.

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Subsequent sightings of Raystown Ray have been sparse. The website Raystown Ray, where visitors can buy patches, t-shirts and postcards in commemoration of the creature, and leave reports, has collected a handful of sightings since 2008.

A patch available for purchase through the Raystown Ray website carries an artist's rendition of Raystown Ray based on witness reports.

The shared description seems to be a large serpent-like creature or an even larger creature, maybe 50-60 feet long, with a body that remains submerged and a serpent-like neck topped by a reptilian head that occasionally appears above the water.

The latter description echoes reports of Scotland's more famous Loch Ness Monster, which seems to harken to a plesiosaur-type creature.

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Every now and then some national media outlet will take an interest in the creature. The Fact or Faked crew was preceded in 2006 by a reporter and photographer from The Sun tabloid.

However, a tourist's photo in 2007, which the Fact or Faked team nearly replicated with a floating log, remains some of the best evidence for Ray's existence.

Eric Altman, host of the Beyond the Edge paranormal podcast and radio program, and a field investigator, doesn't accept the idea of a massive serpent or dinosaur living in a man-made lake. Perhaps people have spotted an unusually large fish or eel, he speculated.

Loren Coleman, a long-time cryptozoological researcher and founder of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, agreed.

"Any sighting reported from man-made lakes tend to be folklore," he said.

Coleman believes there's a greater chance that similar creatures may actually existence in large, natural bodies of water.

"There seems to be a lot of good evidence" for creatures like Bessie, aka, South Bay Bessie, in Ohio's portion of Lake Erie, he commented.

Check out our entire Monsters of Pennsylvania series.