The Barmouth Monster May Have Returned to Wales

Move over Nessie – there’s a new cryptid in town. OK, the town isn’t Highland, Scotland, but there definitely might be a cryptid in a waterway in the United Kingdom so that’s close enough. We’re talking about Barmouth, Wales, which is near where a man photographed what many are calling the legendary Barmouth Monster, a 10-to-30-foot-long water creature that has been rumored to exist for years but never been photographed.

The creature was spotted in early January by Mohammad Tahla, who says he saw something swimming in the River Aeron (Afon Aeron) near Aberaeron. Wait a minute – what happened to Barmouth? We’ll get to that.

Tahla told the local newspaper:

I took one look and thought: ‘Blimey, that looks just like the Loch Ness Monster’. I went down there two days later to see if I could spot it again but by then it had gone.

Fortunately, he took a picture of what he saw in the water which looks like … something. Why did the media say it could be the Barmouth Monster? Because Barmouth is just 60 miles north up the Welsh coast and has a reputed sea monster that may have gone for a swim.

Sightings of the Barmouth Monster in the River Mawddach (the creature is often called the Mawddach Sea Monster), which meets the sea at Barmouth, have been reported for over a century, starting with the tale of a woman who found four footprints on the beach “as big as an elephant’s.” In 1937, a man reported a crocodile-like creature on the river bank.

However, the biggest Marmouth Monster sighting occurred on March 2nd, 1975, when six schoolgirls reported seeing this creature on the beach:

It had a long neck and a square face and a long tail with a flipper at the back and its skin was black and patchy … It was like a dinosaur ... The monster was about 10 feet long, with a long tail, long neck and huge green eyes. It walked towards the sea and entered the water.

A police officer reportedly saw it as well. From the account, many think what the girls saw was a large seal.

Back to the recent sighting. The local media says “residents” spotted it but there seem to be no other reports. So what did Mohammad Tahla photograph? Another big seal? An escaped crocodile? A sea monster? A floating log? Is it a hoax? No one knows yet but he’ll surely have a lot of company sitting on a bridge over the River Aeron watching for its next appearance.