Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.
The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.
Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...
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Me and me brother both worked at the big white hotel that's situated right on the edge of Windermere throughout the '90s, me during two summers, him permanently, (I don't want to mention its name for a variety of reasons).
We had an eccentric but allegedly larcenous co-worker mate who the police came to arrest and to avoid capture he wrapped a multicoloured bath towel round his head, hoping they'd mistake him for an Arab sheikh - ye', he was also an idiot! - but of course he was spotted, at which point he dived in the lake and tried to swim for it.
Over the years, whenever he was asked about what happened in the lake, he'd become extremely agitated and mention having been extremely reluctant to dive in the lake in the first place, then'd mumble something about "the thing that's in there!" before clamming up with a haunted look in his eyes.
More recently, his own brother who also worked at the hotel told me his brother was a very strong swimmer and could easily've made it to the other side and maybe even've vanished into the terrain well before the cops could've reached him, (something he was apparently quite skilled at), so he was always mystified at what'd scared the crap out of him enough to make him allow himself to be so easily captured.
I didn't personally see the actual event, and've heard different takes on it from eyewitnesses, including the swimming 'shaikh' himself, but I know there was this whole central area which all the birds, including the swans'd stare clear of at all times of day; and of a night, when the lake'd be perfectly still, you could definitely hear something intermittently ploughing about under the water, as if searching for something; and sometimes, it'd sound like it was getting so close you'd suddenly feel caution was the better part of valour and find yourself moving further and further back from the jetty, especially on those clear starlit nights when it felt like something out there was actually watching you.
I'm not that interested in lake monsters, and probably err towards most of them being misunderstood sightings, but Windermere, which Bowness is on's definitely a spooky patch of water day and night, and the whole Lake District's definitely got this kind of time slip, clustered temporal vortices feel to it.
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