Ogopogo

What it is

Ogopogo is described as a serpent-like animal with smooth dark skin. Its body is said to be broader than a telephone pole and as much as 15 metres long. It moves fast, according to these accounts, coiling itself in upright waves and driving forward with a strong tail. Writers have compared it with Cadborosaurus, another reported creature, and with Basilosaurus, a whale that died out long ago. Okanagan Lake itself ranks as the biggest of five freshwater fjord lakes, joined one to another, in the Okanagan Valley. It runs 127.1 kilometres, reaches 232.3 metres at its deepest, and in the past 110 years has iced over eight times.

Older accounts

The Secwepemc and Syilx peoples knew the being as Naitaka. One widely repeated reading calls it an evil supernatural power, and says it demanded a life before anyone crossed the water. For hundreds of years, small animals were offered before people went into the lake. Oral traditions remember a visiting chief, Timbasket, who refused the offering and denied that such a being existed. He set out by canoe with his family, and the story says the water rose, the canoe was pulled down and all aboard were lost. In 1855 a settler, John MacDougal, said his horses were dragged under, and his own canoe nearly followed before he cut the rope. The name given to the being is rendered in English in several ways, among them water demon, water god and a sacred creature belonging to the water.

Naming the creature

The historian Mark M. Orkin traced the colonial name to a night in 1924, when a music-hall song from England was heard for the first time in Vernon, British Columbia. The closing line of that song gives the creature its name. Orkin also notes that a different version of the song had already been printed in the Vancouver Province, and that the name was said to have been used as early as 1912. Today people sometimes shorten it to Oggy, and speak of smaller ones as Ogopups. A play structure made in the creature's likeness stands in Kelowna.

Sightings and searches

Reports have come in from shore, road and boat. Susan Allison's account of 1872 was the first detailed one from a white settler. In 1968 Art Folden filmed a wake from Highway 97. About fifty tourists watched something off a Kelowna beach in 1980. Later sightings were dismissed by biologists as beavers, otters, birds or drifting timber. Searches have used sonar, boats, divers and thermal cameras. A Japanese expedition in 2000 recorded a sonar image of an object near Rattlesnake Island. In 2009 a dive team brought up a decomposed snake-like carcass; DNA testing showed it was a Kokanee, a landlocked salmon. Okanagan Lake holds tens of thousands of logs from the timber industry floating below the surface.

Meaning and respect

Pat Raphael of the Westbank First Nation, part of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, says the idea of a demon came from misunderstandings between early European settlers and the Syilx. In Syilx understanding the being is n̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ, a sacred spirit that guards the valley, living in caves beneath Rattlesnake Island or close to Squally Point. Jordan Coble, also of the Westbank First Nation, says it is a being to be respected rather than feared, and that the concept takes in everything in the valley. He notes that it has been reported on land as well as in water. Knowledge keeper Richard Armstrong, in Penticton, said that Western culture tends to explain things away, while for First Nations people the creature's existence is not in doubt.

How Ogopogo is kept

There is no ceremony. The being belongs to stories and to the watching of the lake. In older accounts, travellers offered small animals before entering the water. Today people along the shore keep an eye out and report what they see, and photographers, tourists and enthusiasts follow up with cameras. Search efforts have taken the form of sonar sweeps, helicopters with thermal cameras, chase boats and dive teams, often heading out at dawn. Each report is examined by biologists and video analysts, and most are explained as ordinary animals, debris or logs.

When and where

There is no fixed date. The oral accounts reach back hundreds of years, the first detailed settler report is from 1872, and sightings were still being reported in 2018 and 2024. Searches happen when a sighting or a question prompts one.

Okanagan Lake, in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada, is the centre of it. The being is said to rest in caves beneath Rattlesnake Island, also called Monster Island, and near Squally Point. The towns around the water, among them Vernon, Kelowna, Peachland and Penticton, are where most reports come from.

What Ogopogo means

For the Syilx, the being is a guardian spirit of the valley, and the word for it covers the creature and everything else that lives there. It is to be treated with respect, not fear. Others have read it as a dangerous power that must be paid off before the water can be crossed safely. Outside these understandings, it has become a regional emblem, used in advertising, television programmes and the naming of local things.

Questions people ask about Ogopogo

See also

Fortune-tellingReading cards, palms or tea leaves to tell a client what may lie aheadJack-o'-lanternA carved pumpkin lantern lit with a candle to brighten and protect Halloween nightsFairy ringA natural ring of mushrooms formed by fungal growth, surrounded by folklore across Europe and beyond.MaximónA folk saint of the Guatemalan highlands, asked for health, crops and protection

Good reading and sources

• Canada’s mysterious lake monsterBBC, Article
• It could be a lot colder: Kelowna historian remembers Okanagan Lake freezing over completelyCBC, Article
• Canada’s mysterious lake monsterBBC, Article
• It could be a lot colder: Kelowna historian remembers Okanagan Lake freezing over completelyCBC, Article

• Ogopogo on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-11.