Kisiramuyaga, Tanzania, 1988

Two young Swedish women worked as aid workers in Tanzania for a period in 1988 through a solidarity organization. Marianne Ekdahl, 19 years old, and Sif Thorsén, 21 years old, lived with other aid workers in a camp near one of the shores of Lake Victoria. That day it had been very hot, muggy, like before a storm. And sure enough, in the evening it started to thunder heavily with lots of lightning that lit up the black night, because in this part of the world it got pitch dark quickly in the evening. After a while it started to blow hard into a storm and not long after that the sky opened up and the rain poured down. The two Swedish women were not really used to this type of darkness and stormy weather. In their camp, plastic chairs, steel buckets, tarpaulins and other loose things were blown away by the strong wind. People in the camp tried to hold things from flying away and others ran around to pick up things that had blown away into the jungle. The two young women put on their rain gear and boots to help find some of the important steel buckets used for cooking and collecting water.

Marianne had new expensive high boots and they quickly got covered in a lot of mud as they slogged around in the wet ground. They also had flashlights with them that they used to light up the path in front of them, but the rain and the pitch-black darkness still made it very difficult to see. Marianne shone the light on Sif's face and her blonde hair was soaked through and she looked scared. "I can't see those damn buckets anywhere! And I don't know where we are either!" Sif shouted over the rain, wind and thunder. "We have to find them, they're important!" Marianne shouted back. Marianne now also felt anxious and a little scared. The unpleasant feeling that they were in danger and had gotten lost was now imminent.

Suddenly they heard heavy clattering footsteps in the mud behind them and they turned around. “Who’s there! Come here and help us!” Marianne shouted in English. Both women felt goosebumps and they sensed an evil presence in the air. They shone their flashlights around the jungle and that’s when they saw the “Horror” in the light of the thunderstorm. It was a monster over 2 meters (6.5 feet) long. The flashing lights all around made the creature look incredibly terrifying. It was a mad mix of a lizard, frog, human and fish. It had big eyes like a frog, and its face and jaw almost resembled a pike. Its webbed hands were stretched out towards Marianne and Sif as if the creature was trying to grab them. The women screamed and tried to escape by running away, but the slippery mud made them fall over. That's when the creature grabbed Marianne's arm and she screamed in pain as its grip was tight and she dropped the flashlight which ended up in the water.

In desperation, she tried to tear at the creature's arm with her nails and with her feet she kicked its body. This threw it off balance for a while. Despite the rain whipping her face, she saw one of the steel buckets they had been looking for right next to her. She managed to grab the handle and swung it with all her might at the creature, and she swung again and again. At the same time, she heard Sif scream, "Let her go! Let her go!" ...and finally the creature dropped her into the mud. Sif then took the bucket and continued to hit the beast. It soon seemed to lose interest in the two young women and it sank into the jungle vegetation and disappeared.

When some colleagues found them a while later, they were still sitting there at the scene and they were completely shocked and they were immediately carried to a nearby medical station. There, the doctor found traces of green dried blood under Marianne's nails which they took samples of. What happened to this is unknown.

Later, when the two women were back in the camp and told the collegues what they had experienced, many thought the creature resembled the monster in “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”. Marianne and Sif had not seen this film themselves, so they could not refer to what it looked like. They also told the freelance reporter Stephen Roper-Stanwell about the creature, who recognized what they were describing. The local people who lived around Lake Victoria had often encountered these creatures and believed them to be old gods. The monsters often took people with them, dragging them down into the depths of the lake where, according to legend, they lived. The people they took were never seen again. Those who lived near the lake also told of shining “sky chariots” that came from below the lake and flew up into the sky or vice versa. Afterwards, the two young Swedish women were tormented by nightmares for a long time, but over time these disappeared. They never dared to return to Tanzania and work as aid workers again.

Source: UFO Information #3 1990