In other words, only someone in retrospect was genius enough to notice these “fatal” details? The problem is that the writer didn’t communicate the story well enough to fill in those details for some readers, but clearly he was smart enough to decide if the story hung together, or he wouldn’t have reported it.

As I understand it, they were there three days..

Here is another “version” of this story with a drawing if the alleged monster.

The monster of Elizabeth Lake was described as…” having bat wings, the neck of a giraffe, the head of a bulldog, six legs, a length of at least fifty feet.”

It also had a taste for cattle.

As a matter of coincidence, I just happen to own some property on the lake…….and Bigfoot has been seen in the area as well.

As for the flying dinosaur in Texas, when my family and I lived there, I was scared to go out and play, for fear that the monster would swoop down and attack me.

I was, of course, only 8 at the time.

So, you see these stories pop up quite often….though this one kinda sounds like a “Transformer”, goes from airplane (flying reptile) to submarine (lake monster).

The Elisabeth Lake Monster was said to do the same.

Reminds me of a large reptilian creature thought to exist in Japan that was revealed to be three crocodiles attempting to breed on top of each other, as mentioned in “The Field to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep” by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe.

However there are key differences between that case and this one as the sounds of wings are described in this report.

Quote: ““We watched it disappear in the gathering gloom of night, but were for a
long time paralyzed with fear, not knowing when it might return. It was
probably an hour later when it did come back.”

The first part essentially is worded to attract attention, example “gathering gloom”, the combined sound of those two words initially leads me to believe the person writing this was a skilled writer
a) trying to make the report more appealing
b) just randomly used those two words in that order

The last part seems very odd as unless I was on an expedition, I would not stick around for an hour to monitor if a creature with the head of an aligator came back for a “second round”.

Ultimately I believe there could be a thread of truth to this report. On September 6, 1903 a full moon was present see (http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/moonphases.html?year=1903&n=220)
… and although this report was published on the 3rd, the Moon certainly could been called “young” which would be consistant with the reported claim that “as it
drew nearer, by the light of the young moon in the West, we saw that it
carried in its great jaws a large horse”. I cannot verify the horse aspect but I encourage anyone to check the moon place during 1903 as well as any other source which can be verified as to conclude the authenticity of Utah’s fabled monster.

This story makes perfect sense to me. There is also in that area and through out the southwest the lovely “sacra datura” . If one, having knowledge of the powers of this blessed flower, chooses to venture forth on a path of enlightenment by partaking in the joys this flower has to offer, then indeed….a giant condor, a red tailed hawk, turkey vulture or raven would have no problem giving an aerial lift to its unfortunate prey-an unsuspecting mustang of the wild wild west.