By: Mark Wayne, Lead Investigative Reporter

Date: July 2022

With summer temperatures rising, many people are turning to Yatesville Lake as a means to keep cool. Yatesville Lake was constructed in 1988 as a reservoir on the Blaine Creek tributary of the Big Sandy River and has continued to be one of the area’s most popular attractions.

            This past weekend, a couple of lake-goers allegedly found themselves face-to-face with a legendary lake monster. Adam Wicket described the scene, “Me and my friends were out jumping off some rocks when my girlfriend Samantha said she felt something run across her legs. Next thing we knew, she got pulled underwater by something. Then a few seconds later, the hat she was wearing floated back up, and we started freaking out. I dove into the water to try and go after her, but the water was so murky I couldn’t see anything. When I surfaced, she had already come back up and was clamoring back onto the boat.”

            When asked about the ordeal Samantha added, “Adam is not my boyfriend. I don’t like labels. We’re just sort of just having fun until I go back to Morehead State for the fall semester. He’s trying to ‘find himself’, but he usually just smokes pot in his friend’s garage and listens to Lenny Bruce comedy albums.”

            The legend of the Yatesville Devil Eel goes back to before the dam was constructed, with several people attributing it to an old family spirit. A collection of old Lawrence County wives’ tales and folklore mentions the tale of a Thompson family demon named “Old Mombasa” which fits the description of the Yatesville Devil Eel. The family reportedly kept the spirit locked away in the basement of their house using a combination of witchcraft and black magic. The family mysteriously disappeared one night with many assuming they had died. The house stood empty, eventually decaying and falling to the elements, specifically an underwater spring that ran below its foundation. The house resided in the area that was to be eventually flooded and dammed to form Yatesville Lake.

            Varla Sue Jenkins, our resident advice columnist, gave us her thoughts on what she knew as the Serpent of Blaine Creek. “Heard of it? Honey, I remember it back before it reached full-grown. The lake wasn’t built ‘til 1988, but my daddy always said to stay away from that old Thompson house where that little natural spring patch used to stand. Something dark has always been in that marsh.”

            The most famous sighting of Old Mombasa was in 1991 when a state wildlife surveyor was out photographing the lakes of Kentucky. His slow-flash camera caught a strange sight. While setting up, he thought the shadowed silhouette in the frame was a newly-fallen log. After firing an out-of-focus test shot, he looked at the lake where he saw the log turn and disappear into the water.

The single photograph remained locked away down in the Capitol archives in Frankfort until a declassified version made its way into the Lexington Herald-Leader on September 10th of 2001, allegedly at the behest of Fallsburg native Governor Paul E. Patton. Governor Patton touted its release as, “A Day Lawrence County and the state will never forget.”