Case file · Cryptid
Von Stein's report on the 'mokéle-mbêmbe'
In 1913 the German officer Ludwig Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz, surveying the colony of Kamerun, recorded local accounts of an elephant-sized animal in the rivers of the Likouala and Sangha that overturned canoes but ate only plants.
1913 CE · 1.60, 16.50 · status: account
The account
His informants described smooth grey-brown skin, a long flexible neck and a single tooth or horn. The report was never formally published, but Willy Ley quoted it in 1959 and it became the founding text of the modern Mokele-mbembe hunt. The point is approximate.
The sceptical view
Von Stein never saw the animal; elements of rhinoceros, elephant and river spirits may have merged in the stories he heard.
Connections in the atlas
- Proyart's giant footprints in Loango
- Blancou's 'elephant killer'
- Marcellin Agnagna at Lake Tele
- Mokele-mbembe