Fabulous tales and unreliable reports didn’t start with Facebook. But it was on Facebook that I first saw the astounding 1927 story of a possibly prehistoric reptile wandering in the wheat fields near Killaley, Saskatchewan.
It was the name “Killaley” that caught my eye. My Dad was born there in February of 1927, and the amazing lizard story dates from just six months later. (The village was originally named “Killaley,” after a railroad employee, but the spelling was eventually simplified to “Killaly.”)
The story appeared in the Regina Leader. It describes an eight-foot-long reptilian creature with a body a foot wide. It had a forked tongue, and a mouth big enough to hold a ball of twine.
Perhaps most fearsome was the animal’s roar—a roar described by eyewitnesses as being not unlike that of a cow.
A roar like a cow! No wonder people were afraid.
The newspaper story had been discovered in digital archives and posted online by Kenton de Jong, a Regina writer and local history buff. De Jong researches the city’s stories through the lives of long-ago former residents. He conducts regular cemetery tours, giving voice to the stories that would otherwise lie buried with their late protagonists.
As a distraction from his historical research, he will follow ideas that occur to him. He was hunting for Saskatchewan “monsters” when he came across the Killaly story.
“I was looking for any kind of creature or monster I could find that was written about in the Regina Leader Post or Regina Morning Leader,” he told me.
“I found a couple, but that one definitely stood out because of its description, its location, and the fact that it kind of appears, causes the problem, and disappears and never is really talked about again.”
True enough: after it caused an initial fright, it was never seen again.
Facebook commenters offered explanations under de Jong’s post, with some suggesting the animal was probably a bullsnake.
Bull-(something else) might be at play here. I spoke to a Saskatchewan herpetologist (who didn’t particularly wish to be interviewed on the subject) who told me it would be impossible to mistake a bullsnake for anything of the Killaly reptile’s description. The snakes are not common in that area, and they certainly don’t roar like a cow.
The sighting had been reported to the provincial government by one Mr, Charles Whall who, as far as I know, had never taken a drink in his life. But a Pilsner-induced hallucination can’t be ruled out.
Or maybe it was a hoax meant to attract tourists?
De Jong did find a couple of other Saskatchewan monsters, notably the “Saskapogo” serpent that had allegedly been sighted more than once in Last Mountain Lake. He’s not saying it was seen by people operating local hotels and fishing lodges. But he’s not saying it wasn’t.
“From the time period when they were reporting on it, there were a lot of other lake serpents being reported, I think as a tourism hook. So I have my doubts on that one,” de Jong told me.
“But there was also an interview with someone else later in the article—from Moose Jaw—who said, oh, they've seen it too.
“So I'm thinking, okay, well, a couple of different sources. But again, if you only see a lake monster twice in 70 years, is it really worth following up on?”
No, probably not.
Nonetheless, de Jong is happy to have found some quirky legends from close to home—especially the tale of the Killaly monster.
“Usually they're not that close to Regina. It's a little ways away, but not that far,” he said. “Usually they're up in the Yukon or somewhere, or they're in Ontario or BC. But this one’s local. This is awesome.”
It is awesome. And really, who are we to doubt Mr. Charles Whall or the editors of the Regina Leader?