Regular Episode
037 – HAYLEY STEVENS: LAKE MONSTER MYSTERIES
The episode centers on a photograph taken on February 11th, 2011, by Tom Pickles and his colleague Sarah Harrington while kayaking on Windermere during a corporate team-building weekend — and on what Hayley’s methodical investigation turned up.
🌊 A Monster With a Local Name
The name “BowNessie” is a portmanteau of Bowness-on-Windermere, one of the towns on the lake’s eastern shore, and “Nessie,” the popular nickname for the Loch Ness Monster. (An earlier nickname — “Windy” — didn’t stick.) Sightings began circulating around 2006–2007, when the Centre for Fortean Zoology conducted two early expeditions on the lake. British psychic Dean Maynard later ran his own expeditions in 2009 and 2010, though he declined to share full reports with Hayley, citing a forthcoming book.
Reported characteristics of BowNessie are entertainingly inconsistent across witnesses: 12 to 50 feet in length, silvery-grey and scaly, three or four humps, able to leap out of the water — and, memorably, a head described by one witness as resembling a Labrador dog. Ben notes that Champ, the Lake Champlain monster, has also been reported with a vaguely canine head — so at least BowNessie is in mixed company.
📸 The Pickles Photograph
On February 11th, 2011, Tom Pickles claimed to have grabbed his mobile phone and snapped a single image of a humped object gliding through the water roughly 300 metres from his kayak — “the size of three cars,” he said, and snake-like in appearance. The photograph was picked up by local and then national media, and the Daily Mail subsequently purchased and copyrighted the image, hampering independent analysis. Fortunately, the local Westmorland Gazette had already published the uncropped version on its website before the sale, and Hayley’s BARSOC site hosts that fuller image.
The panel identifies several oddities in the photograph: it was taken in portrait rather than landscape orientation; the kayak itself is not visible; the perspective appears too elevated to have been shot from a seated kayaking position; and only one frame was captured. A dark blob visible to the right of the humped shape prompted discussion about whether something might have been towing the object in the water.
🔍 The Tire Hypothesis
Almost immediately, commenters — including people Hayley does not consider especially skeptical — pointed out that the humped shape looked exactly like a car tire that had been cut and partially submerged. Shortly afterward, a tire cut in precisely that fashion was discovered near the lake’s shore. When placed in the water, it produced an image essentially identical to Pickles’ photograph. Hayley’s BARSOC site includes a photograph of this comparison.
Whether the tire was the actual prop used in a deliberate hoax, an object that happened to drift past two genuinely startled kayakers, or a plant intended to frame Pickles after the fact remains unresolved. Hayley rates the hoax probability at around 8 or 9 out of 10, while leaving open the more charitable reading that Pickles and Harrington simply panicked at a floating piece of rubber and embellished the size in retrospect. The panel also notes that the film 🎬 Rubber 💵 — about a murderous sentient tire — was in the news at roughly the same time, prompting the observation that Mr. Pickles would probably find it unwatchable.
🐟 What Could Actually Live in Windermere?
Hayley consulted Dr. Ian Winfield, an ecologist who had worked on Lake Windermere for over two decades. His assessment: there is nothing in the lake of a size or shape consistent with the reported creature. When the Daily Mail quoted him suggesting the sighting “could be a catfish,” he clarified that there are in fact no catfish in Windermere — a nuance the tabloid unsurprisingly omitted. Ben adds that no known living animal produces the kind of dorsal humping profile described; serpents swim laterally, not dorsally, and the “multiple otters in a row” explanation Joe Nickell has applied to hump-sightings elsewhere doesn’t map well to this photo either.
🗺️ Ongoing Investigation
At the time of recording, Hayley had been unable to reach Pickles or Harrington directly, despite locating an email address through the Westmorland Gazette and an accidental Twitter invitation. She was planning a visit to the lake to attempt a photographic reconstruction — using fixed buoys and visible islands (possibly the Lily of the Valleys islets) as reference points to triangulate the object’s actual size and the photo’s likely vantage. She also notes that the first BowNessie photograph, taken in February 2007 by Lyndon Adams, had allegedly been examined by a forensic photographer, and she was pursuing that analysis report.
📚 Further Reading
– 🎬 Rubber 💵 (2010 film) — the killer-tire horror-comedy briefly discussed in the episode
🔗 Related Links
– Lake Windermere — Wikipedia
– Loch Ness Monster — Wikipedia
– Champ (Lake Champlain Monster) — Wikipedia
– Centre for Fortean Zoology — Wikipedia
– Taphonomy — Wikipedia
– BARSOC.org — Hayley Stevens’ BowNessie investigation (archived)
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
There are very few people who make their living hunting monsters. For most of us who investigate such mysteries, it is a labor of love. Today on MonsterTalk we get to talk with one of our listeners about her investigation into a lake monster. In her investigation she went where few would dare to tread. Join us as we talk with amateur investigator Hayley Stevens about her dive into lake monster mysteries.
Further Reading
- The Telegraph’s coverage
of the BowNessie story. - Hayley Stevens’ investigation
at BARSOC.org - Dr. Darren Naish discusses “the beast”
in lake Windermere. - Details on the film called “Rubber”
about a killer tire. - Information about Lake Windermere.
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster
by Peach Stealing Monkeys
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