I should go and see if I can find a scholarly tome on the curious incidences of monster myths involving large inland bodies of water as it seems to be such a common part of local mythology of those living around said bodies of water. It's deep, it's dark and it harbors a creature that nobody has lived to talk about....
In the interim, perhaps I could suggest a watching of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Sh..._Giant_Octopus ) as part of your research? To be sure, it's a terrible B-movie, but it's so bad, it's hilarious and I wholly recommend the 747 scene....
The Walensee, however, is a completely different matter. It is a very deep lake (it is about as deep as the Churfirsten are high), and has a long history of weirdness. The name itself derives from the freshwater whales which lived there until they were hunted to extinction by Hapsburg fishermen in the 13th century, but there have been intermittent sightings of other large creatures frolicking in its unnaturally warm waves over the years.
The most famous incident occured in 1641, when a fishing boat was overturned and the occupants forced to swim for their lives, pursued by a mysterious creature as far as the landing stage at Quinten, where they were rescued by a group of villagers who described the creature as being something like a catfish, but monstrous in size. To this day, the residents of Quinten make an offering of locally-grown figs and bananas to the awful occupant of the lake each year on the last day of September, before retiring to their winter residences in Murg.
There are other tales, less well attested, of unspeakable tentacled creatures emerging at night to steal cattle from the lower alps, a lizard-like beast with glowing green eyes prowling the marshy shores, and a kind of finned aquatic monkey with a habit of stealing cheese from isolated farmhouses, but these are generally dismissed as the rantings of lunatics and drunkards.
It's certainly a place of awe and mystery. You should visit it!
Oooh awesome! The little one has a halo, and the tall one looks like Schmützli ........
I took a photo of a palm tree against the sunrise in SA ... and I swear there`s a UFO in the sky, but my family say its just a reflection on the lens ........
I couldn't find it, but my husband found it. He followed it down the road and the figures never move, even when inside the nearby tunnel.... there's even a wiki page on it, apparently. Some folks think it's just a dead bug on the lens.