Is The Loch Ness Monster Real? Alaska Video Of 'Strange Thing' Floating In Chena River Leaves Facebook Viewers Stumped

The Loch Ness monster, or something close to the mystical Scottish creature, may be living in Alaska waters — or at least that’s what people seem to believe after a video surfaced on Facebook recently. The footage of a “strange thing” swimming in Fairbanks’ Chena River, which was posted to Alaska’s Bureau of Land Management's Facebook page last Wednesday, has been viewed more than 400,000 times as of Monday.

The Bureau — which credited employees Craig McCaa and Ryan Delaney for the video — didn’t weigh in on what the “strange thing” may have been, but instead let viewers try to guess what exactly was seen floating along the river. Hundreds of people left their responses in the comments section of the video post with several suggesting the sighting could have been an alligator, shark, rope of ice, chunk of a moose hide, debris, zombie salmon, a giant crustacean and — perhaps the most popular guess — an American descendent of Scotland's Loch Ness monster.

The Loch Ness monster’s existence has never been proven. The mythical aquatic creature was first mentioned in the biography of 7th-century Irish missionary Saint Columba, who wrote about the beast at Loch Ness during his travels throughout Scotland in 565 AD. Centuries later, Scottish newspaper Inverness Courier would tell the tale of a couple who allegedly saw the Loch Ness monster in the freshwater lake in May of 1933. Over the years, others have also alleged they’ve seen the creature. A famous photograph of what was supposed to be the Loch Ness monster was published in 1934. However, that image turned out to be a hoax.

Alaska’s 100-mile long Chena River — which is a tributary of the Tanana River — is home to a variety of aquatic life including rainbow trout, arctic grayling, northern pike and king salmon to name a few.