LINDSAY SELBY: The Lake Conway Monsters.

Lake Conway is a 6,700-acre lake in Arkansas.. It is a man made reservoir and it’s construction began in 1948 from the original lake. Lake Conway has an average depth of 6 feet (2 metres) deep, and is 18 feet (5 metres) at the deepest point . It also has alleged monsters. There have been stories about large brown fish that lurk in it’s depths and in December 2003 John Mazurek Sr. caught a good-sized octopus at the lake's dam. It was thought someone had dumped it there.

Then there is the bigfoot type creature. It is said to smell terrible like the Skunk Ape .

In the early 1950s, several reports were made about a strange and unidentified creature seen and heard (and presumably smelled) in and around the lake. In the 1950s, the reports came to a sudden halt when Frank Robins Jr., then the publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat. Robins simply ordered, "No more stories on the Lake Conway Monster unless they are accompanied by a photograph."

The Lake Conway Monster stories reached a peak in the 1970s and less and less reports are now found. No photographs are known to exist of the creature .At the time it created great excitement and hysteria but now is almost forgotten.

Here is a personal report report of an encounter with the creature: http://www.texasbigfoot.com/reports/report/detail/353

So what is it? Is it collective hysteria that has now died down? Or could it be that the work on the dam and building the reservoir disturbed some creature’s habitat? And what of the monster fish said to lurk in the bottom of the lake? At only 18 feet at it’s deepest point there cannot be a huge fish but it is not unknown for Alligator gar and catfish to grow very large.

If anyone has heard of any recent sightings or has anything to add please leave a comment.