In Episode 418 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger row out on Dublin Lake in Dublin, New Hampshire, to search for a strange lake monster and possible UFO crash site that only dates back to the early 1980s. The stories have made the news and books over the years, but how did it all begin?
BECOME A LEGENDARY PATRON:
https://www.patreon.com/NewEnglandLegends
CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST FOR FREE:
Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Podcasts | TuneIn | iHeartRadio
JOIN OUR SUPER-SECRET:
New England Legends Facebook Group
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[ROWING ON ROW BOAT]
RAY: It’s getting to be the thick of Autumn now, Jeff. I can’t imagine we’ll get too many more days to row out onto a lake.
JEFF: I get that. We had a slow start to fall this year, but it seems to be here now. Especially in southern New Hampshire.
RAY: What brings us to the town of Dublin, today?
JEFF: Ray we’ve come to Dublin, New Hampshire, specifically to the dark, deep, and spooky waters of Dublin Lake to search for… a monster and an alien.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger. Welcome to Episode 418 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. Thank you, Legendarians for riding along with us as we search for ghosts, monsters, aliens, roadside oddities, eccentrics, and all the Wicked Strangeness that makes New England like no other place. If you’ve got a story tip for us, please contact us through our website. That’s also the place to find a link to buy Jeff’s latest book, the 2026 Haunted New England calendar, and dates for Jeff’s story tour and dates to see my band the Pub Kings.
JEFF: We’ll go searching for the Dublin Lake Monster and alien right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: So Dublin Lake – though it’s also been called Dublin Pond—which gives you a sense of its size, is 236 acres of water. It’s .8 miles long and about .6 miles wide, and about 100 feet deep in its deepest parts.
JEFF: So not a huge body of water, but nothing to sneeze at.
RAY: Exactly. Route 101 borders part of the lake making it easy to get to, and the water is deep enough that people come here to scuba dive and to get their SCUBA certification.
JEFF: That’s cool!
RAY: It is. The town of Dublin was founded in 1749, but couldn’t be properly settled until the 1760s when the French and Indian War had ended. The town sits about half way between Peterborough and Keene, New Hampshire, and with a population of about 1,500 people, it’s a small town. (BEAT) Back in the 1880s, Dublin Lake started to become a summer playground for the wealthy and for artists who built summer homes on the lake. Famed flyer Amelia Earhart was here. So was Mark Twain for a couple of summers.
JEFF: I wonder if those folks saw anything strange out here.
RAY: If they did, they didn’t leave much behind by way of stories.
JEFF: Fair enough. So Dublin is a small town with an odd lake monster, if we’re to believe the legends.
RAY: We’ve covered lake monsters before. Champ in Lake Champlain is the most famous.
JEFF: True.
RAY: And we’ve covered sea serpents – that are described similar to Champ, but lurk in the ocean.
JEFF: Also true. Unlike Champ, the Dublin Lake monster stories only began in the 1980s.
RAY: Gnarly.
JEFF: Totally awesome, indeed. To find out what happened, let’s head back to 1982.
[TRANSITION]
[BIRDS/SUMMER/BOATS IN DISTANCE]
RAY: It’s late September of 1982 here in Dublin, New Hampshire. Ronald Reagan is President of the United States, “Abracadabra” by the Steve Miller Band is the number one song on the radio right now, Jeff and I are both sporting parachute pants and the most fantastic mullets you’ve ever seen, and here on Dublin Lake, summer is winding down.
JEFF: It is. The tourists and weekend warriors are heading home. There’s still some boaters and anglers out here. And of course the skin and scuba divers love this lake because it’s got a gentle slope from the banks that can lead you down 100 feet if you have the gear and stomach for it. There’s rumors of underwater caves and other mysteries… but those are just rumors. Either way, though, the outdoor recreation season is coming to a close pretty soon.
RAY: Today there’s a group of skindivers getting ready for a dive near the shores of Dublin Lake. One diver just swam out there with a rope so the other divers can follow it down and back.
JEFF: These skindivers don’t use air tanks or anything like that. Just a mask and snorkel. So once you dive, you’re just holding your breath.
[SPLASH SWIMMING]
RAY: There’s a small group out there today. Looks like four people. They’re swimming out maybe sixty or eighty feet from the shore, then diving below. (BEAT) I mean, that’s not MY idea of a good time, but they seem to be enjoying themselves.
JEFF: The divers swim out, dive down, and about a minute later they come up. I’m impressed how long they can hold their breath.
RAY: I imagine with fall approaching they won’t get too many more days like this for skin diving.
[YELLING IN THE DISTANCE]
RAY: Hmmm… what’s happening over there?
JEFF: I’m not sure, but the group of skin divers are yelling about something.
RAY: Hey… there were four of them, right?
JEFF: Yeah, I believe we counted four when they started.
RAY: I only see three people out there now.
JEFF: Oh no… Something must have happened.
RAY: The divers are frantically surfacing and diving again. I think one of their friends may still be below.
JEFF: This is awful.
[SIRENS IN THE DISTANCE]
JEFF: Soon, police divers arrive with scuba tanks.
[SPALSH SPLASH]
JEFF: They’re searching the waters below.
[SIRENS AND SPLASHES SLOWLY FADE]
JEFF: It’s the following morning, and there’s been no sign of the skin diver. It’s clear by now that this is no longer a rescue operation. At this point it’s a recovery.
RAY: Another day of searching passes, yet there’s no sign of the body. Search and rescue is forced to pack up their things and move on. There’s nothing more they can do. They figure the corpse may float to the surface at some point.
RAY: Two more days pass.
[HIKING IN WOODS]
RAY: A small group of hikers are walking some trails near Dublin Lake.
JEFF: What is that up ahead?
RAY: I… I don’t know… Is that a person? He seems to be naked!
JEFF: I think you’re right. Let’s go look…
[BABBLING MAN: LAKE MONSTER, LAKE MONSTER, LAKE MONSTER]
RAY: I think this is our missing skin diver! He just keeps babbling about a lake monster.
JEFF: He’s clearly in some kind of shock and not making sense. But he’s alive!
RAY: The hikers are wrapping him in a blanket and giving him some food and water.
JEFF: They’re getting him to his feet and helping him walk out of the woods. It looks like he’s going to be okay. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: Okay, there’s a lot more to say here. Not just about the Dublin Lake monster, but also about aliens.
RAY: Aliens?!
JEFF: That’s right. Most of what we know from this story comes from the July 27, 2017 Monadnock Ledger-Transcript newspaper. There are two versions of how the skin diver was lost. We told the most common version of the story. Another suggests he was using a diving bell to go deep into the lake, but the bell’s tether was too short. The diver found an underwater cave, explored it, and disappeared for a few days. The ending was the same, though. Hikers find him naked in the woods incoherently babbling about a lake monster.
RAY: Got it. But no description of what the Dublin Lake Monster looks like. And no word from the diver as to where he was for a few days?
JEFF: Nope. Just a lake monster and an incoherent witness. Also, we should point out that the early 1980s wasn’t all that long ago. No newspaper account ever gave the skin diver’s name or mentioned the search and rescue. It’s just a story that keeps getting passed around and quoted again in other news reports and even books about New England cryptids.
RAY: But it must have started somewhere, right?
JEFF: It always starts somewhere. There’s a New Hampshire Chronicle television piece that ran a few years ago where a local diving school takes the reporter out for a dive in the lake. One of the objectives is to search for the lake monster.
RAY: So maybe the diving instructors are using the story as a bit of a marketing ploy? Come dive with us and search for the Dublin Lake monster?
JEFF: I’m sure it doesn’t hurt business any. But as you said, it must have started somewhere. Divers use this lake often, and maybe someone has seen something they can’t explain under water.
RAY: I get that, but then there’s the problem of size. This lake isn’t that large. How big could an underwater creature get in waters like there? Lake Champlain is massive. I could see a hundred-foot serpent going unnoticed and finding enough food to survive. But what could be below the waters of Dublin Lake?
JEFF: Exactly, therein lies the mystery. And then there’s the story of an alien.
RAY: Right! That! Aliens too?
JEFF: Another vague story kicking around this lake is that a UFO crashed in the lake decades ago. Maybe the crashed spaceship is still down there, or it’s an underwater UFO base and maybe that’s what the skin diver saw all of those years ago.
RAY: So the plot thickens.
JEFF: It does. This legend was mentioned in a 2014 book, and we mentioned the newspaper articles and television piece that came later. But I had a hard time pinning down the exact origin date. Everyone just says early 1980s.
RAY: Considering the fashion and the mullets in the early 80s, maybe this lake monster was just another fashion reject out for a swim?
JEFF: I guess anything is possible. Even if we can’t pin it down exactly, when you look at Dublin Lake today, you can’t help but wonder exactly what may be lurking in the deep, dark, waters…
[OUTTRO]
RAY: Which is why I prefer boats or even better: dry land. And that takes us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometime swim off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is of course brought to you by our Patreon patrons! This legendary group of insiders keep us going and growing. We deeply appreciate their financial support. These are the times we live in now, if there’s something you enjoy, it’s up to you to help keep it going. All we’re asking is for $3 bucks for month and for that you get early ad-free access to new episodes, access to our entire archive of shows, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. Just head over to patreon.com/newenglandlegends to sign up.
To see some pictures of Dublin Lake, click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on episode 418.
As we ride off into the sunset, please make sure you’re subscribed to our podcast so you don’t miss a thing. Plus, it’s free! We also appreciate when you post a review for us, or post and share our episodes on your social media. It helps us grow. The more people who listen, the more people who email us with story leads. And we love getting those story leads… please keep them coming.
We’d like to than our patreon patrons, thank you to our sponsors, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… stay legendary.