FT260

If the Loch Ness Monster is the most famous such creature in the world, the earliest detailed reports of fearsome freshwater serpents in Europe come from Switzerland, in the 15th and 16th centuries. Vaguer accounts, such as that from Alsace in 1304, also exist. There are legends of lake monsters in the New World and the Antipodes that are probably far older, but these were not recorded until Europeans arrived there. And some later (and still current) American lake-monster traditions were almost certainly imported by settlers from Scandinavia, Germany and other haunts of these elusive animals. If animals they are.