← The founding

Lars Mikkelsen

Commercial fisherman

Thirty years on the water. Boat kept at Everett.

Lars reported something in Puget Sound in the summer of 1952 and was, by his own account, "more annoyed than frightened." He had spent thirty years learning what things in the water look like, and here was one he could not name.

He kept his boat at Everett, an hour down the valley, and made that drive before four in the morning for most of his working life. It is the reason he is the founder who turns up in other people's accounts from all over the Sound, and the reason a man who lived in the mountains is in this book at all.

He was the founding member most hostile to embellishment. He resigned twice, both times over accounts he considered exaggerated, and returned both times.

The Institute's classification system, five classes running from Apocryphal to Active Advisory, exists because Lars refused to have his sighting filed alongside a story somebody's cousin told at a bar.