Lake Normon, built in the 1960’s is the largest manmade lake in North Carolina. It spans 4 countries and around 34 miles. Before it became a lake, it was originally home to the indigenous people of the Catawba Tribe. Later settlers built towns there, cemeteries and there was even a battlefield there. Some folks think this explains all of the unexplained phenomenon that occurs there.
One of the more interesting things going on in this area is the Lake Normon Monster also known as Normie. Descriptions on this creature vary, but most claim that it’s a large serpent-like creature over 50 feet long and has a head that resembles a horse. Some have also said that it seemed to have scales or fins.
Since the area was dammed up there have been hundreds of sightings of this creature, some say it was in the area before the dam was even built. The website lakenormanmonster.com has many of these documented. On their site they have a form where you can submit your sightings, they’ve even put out a book with all the sightings they’ve collected up till around 2012. On the site they have sightings as recent as May 2024.Out of the stories here are a couple that stood out to us.
January 15th 2020, Cowens Ford Dam. It was a quiet and peaceful winter morning – you know, one of those mornings where the mist rises out of the lake high into the sky – I was just paddling along when all of the sudden, a bright light flashed from beneath. I stared down into the water and saw to my shock that the depths of the lake were illuminated with a ghostly white light. I see all sorts of creatures swimming in the glowing depths. Some were beautiful, others ugly, and some were just plain terrifying. But the greatest shock came when I stared into the light and realized I saw a black circle like a pupil in the middle of the glowing sphere – I THEN REALIZED IT WAS THE GLOWING EYE OF A GIANT MONSTER!!!
Our second story:
In the late 1970’s, when my grandfather was still alive, he used to tell the grandkids about how he was a foreman in the 1930’s for a mobile lumber camp that had the job of clearing trees from the valley that is now Lake Norman. Mom grew up as a cook for the camp and she always swore that when they flooded the valley, several settlements, complete with houses, barns etc…were just left on the bottom when the lake was filled. I didn’t think much about it, but mom said that when they started flooding the lake, people started dumping buckets of fish into the lake so that the lake wouldn’t be bare of fish. Truly, because I went SCUBA diving in the lake looking for the old buildings in hopes of bringing back some old bottles and such. After consulting old 1920’s maps from the library, we picked a few sites to dive on, and loaded up our equipment and RHIB, and set up camp at the lake. On the 3rd dive, we found a small group of 3 buildings, one of which was a house, still with glass in the windows and a collapsed front porch at about 80 feet down. We thought we might get lucky and spotted a big hole in the side of the small house and decided to go in the hole instead of risking collapse of the front porch on us. We never made it in. We had Krypton underwater lights and while the water clarity was near perfect, it was dark, and black inside the hole, so we shone our lights into the big hole and to our complete astonishment, we saw a huge fish. It was enormous, bigger than a diver in full SCUBA, at least 8 feet long and 3 feet across the mouth. We hovered in the water for a good 5 minutes with our lights on it, not believing what we were seeing. I’ve never seen a freshwater fish that big. We were both a bit alarmed by what we saw, and still talk about it from time to time, but because neither of us had a camera on the trip, we didn’t get that all-important photo proof. Anyway, as we watched the fish for a good 5 minutes the only thing it did was to pump it’s gills and open and shut its mouth slowly, like it didn’t even see us. To guess at the species of fish, I’d have to say it was a catfish. A damn big, scary one too. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to dive Lake Norman again after that, not that the old house might still be standing, but that the fish might be a lot bigger in the 20 odd years since.
Big thanks to Matt from lakenormanmonster.com for giving us permission to use these stories, be sure and check him out for more!
