The Whales of Walborn
I was investigating The Toadman of Louisville, Ohio and staying at a Holiday Inn in Alliance, Ohio. The hotel was connected to an almost abandoned mall. The pool was closed and the small movie theater was also. I sat on the curb and smoked my e-cigarette and drank from my Wendy’s cup filled with a Walmart brand IPA. I said, screw this scene as my investigations of the Toadman only led me to an abandoned area in Louisville where a toad like man was fishing with his homeless friend. They were friendly and weird but, not cryptids. When I felt sleepy and decided to call it a night, I got a call from the front desk who said, a man named Lerp or Laper had left me a message at the desk. I went down and got the envelope. I went back up to the room expecting to check out the next day. The note had a map to a reservoir called Walborn not far from Alliance. The note said, that he was sure there was a whale in the lake and I should check it out. I called desk against my better judgement and wallet to stay two more days. The next day I took the map and went to the reservoir to investigate. I asked some locals if they had heard anything about a whale. They laughed and said, that was bullshit. As I was leaving a woman came up to me and said, she had seen something basking on the shore a couple of years ago that was quite large but, she had been smoking marijuana. I had smoked marijuana in the past and thought well I have never really hallucinated. She told me to go up Reeder Road and ask a man who had a fountain in his pond about it. He said he and his wife used to have a pontoon boat and were on the lake with friends and something hit their boat underneath. They thought it was a fallen tree or rock but, as they looked out the back of the boat something seemed to be swimming away. The more I investigated the more stories around the area I heard of something the size of a juvenile beluga whale with spiny fins and tail. The next day I booked a few more days in the vacant hotel and went out again. I walked around the lake several times and a fisherman asked why I was walking around so much. I said I was looking for a whale. He handed me a large tooth and said, it gave him good luck but, he would part with it for a hundred dollars. I gave him the Benjamin, and again, against my better judgement and found a local university biology department to have it analyzed. A couple of days later they called me and said it was a channel catfish bone. I asked them if it could be from something as large as a whale. They replied that nothing that big could live in a lake that size. But, from all of the stories I heard from the locals I’d still be careful out there in a kayak.
Chris Nelligan, Cryptozoologist
“There’s work and there’s labor.” -Stan Horace
“Take your whack rhyme and make it better.” -KRS-One