Hi there. My name's Shane, calling from Waterford. I'm an artist by trade, and back in 2000 I was working on a tourist guide for Omey Island out in Connemara. Beautiful place, County Galway. My wife and I spent weeks out there photographing the landscape, mapping the island, just soaking it all in. The project was going great, you know, peaceful work. Until the day we saw something in the lake that I still can't explain. This happened in late summer, August I think it was. We'd been on the island for maybe two weeks at that point, so we knew the area pretty well. There's this lake on Omey, not huge but deep, surrounded by rocks and grass. We'd passed it dozens of times. Never saw anything unusual. Just water, maybe some birds. Normal stuff.
That particular morning we were heading out early, around seven or so, trying to catch the light for some photographs. My wife had her camera, I had mine. We were walking along the eastern shore of the lake when she grabbed my arm and pointed. At first I didn't see anything, just the water. Then I caught movement. There was something in the lake. Something big. It was swimming from the western shore straight toward the east, and it was moving fast. I mean really fast. The lake's maybe two hundred meters across at that point, and this thing covered that distance in what seemed like seconds. that fast must have been incredible - Marcus' I've seen otters before, plenty of them in Ireland, but nothing moves through water like that.
The creature itself was massive. Dark coloring, almost black in the early light. The most striking thing was its feet, or flippers, whatever you want to call them. They were bright orange, just vivid against the dark water. Webbed, clearly built for swimming. The thing moved with this smooth, powerful motion, and there was this wake behind it, white water churning up. My wife got her camera up first. She started snapping photos[ while I just stood there watching. I remember thinking I should be taking pictures too, but I couldn't look away. The creature reached the far shore and suddenly it just launched itself out of the water onto this huge boulder. Had to be six or seven feet long at least, maybe more. The way it moved, so quick and agile, was unsettling.
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