‘It was like a giant snake’: Did Kelowna man capture video of Ogopogo?

The video is erratic, sprinkled with four-letter expletives and captured while a lush Pink Floyd tune is playing in the background.

Amid many distractions, there are glimpses in the smartphone-captured movie of something definitively long and dark making its way across Okanagan Lake.

You wouldn’t be blamed for spotting a few red flags in David Halbauer’s video of an alleged Ogopogo sighting that was taken in West Kelowna last week.

1:02 RAW VIDEO: David Halbauer says he saw Ogopogo

Yet there is much to be told in this story about what Halbauer and his brother Keith saw at the water’s edge near Bear Creek Provincial Park last Friday.

There are compelling hints at the existence of the Okanagan’s legendary lake monster.

“When you’re sitting on the beach on a sunny day, you don’t expect to see a dinosaur coming out of the water,” Kelowna’s David Halbauer told Global News. “We were all just stunned.”

A long and dark snake-like creature emerged from the water about 100 metres offshore, Halbauer said.

“I don’t think I could put my arms around it,” he said of the creature’s diameter.

“It rolled up and down as it went in the water. Another lump of the same thing came up about five metres in front of it.”

He hastily grabbed his cellphone and tried to capture the amazing sight in front of him on video, but said a glare made it impossible to see exactly what he was recording.

Halbauer’s wife remained seated on a folding chair behind him and only captured video of his back, he said.

“I don’t know what it was,” his brother Keith, visiting from Edmonton with his wife, said. “But then I saw waves behind it. The rest of the lake was calm. So, it’s pretty neat.”

It was about 15 metres or 50 feet long, the men told Global News on Tuesday night.

In the video, Halbauer can be heard describing it as 40 feet long.

As with any tall tale, sometimes people can be forgiven for slightly exaggerating as they repeat their story numerous times.

Halbauer admitted that he’s been stopping people in the grocery store to tell them what he saw.

“Like a dinosaur,” Halbauer said. “It was like a giant snake.”

The sighting, they said, lasted about two minutes and ended when the creature submerged under a nearby log boom.

“The waves came in about 10 seconds later,” he said.

Whether it was truly the sighting of the legendary lake monster — or just a rogue wave, as science has shown in other sightings — their experience proves one thing: Ogopogo may be elusive, but the legend is very much still alive for those who want to believe.