In the spring of 1949, the small farming town of Churubusco was consumed by the hunt for “Oscar,” a prehistoric-sized snapping turtle reportedly dwelling in the seven-acre Fulk Lake. The legend began when farmer Gale Harris and a neighbor spotted a creature they estimated to be the size of a dining room table, weighing over 500 pounds—a biological impossibility for the region. The hunt that followed was one of the most documented cryptid events in American history, involving professional divers, a home-made diving bell, and even the use of a female turtle as a “decoy.” At one point, Harris attempted to drain the entire lake with a 12-inch crane pump, only for the machinery to fail repeatedly under mysterious circumstances. Divers who descended into the silty, 30-foot depths reported touching a “leathery, moss-covered dome” that moved with immense power, eventually snapping the heavy-duty steel cables of the traps set by the town.

The energy of the site is concentrated on the northeast corner of the lake, where the water is fed by deep, subterranean springs. Local lore suggests that Oscar wasn’t just a turtle, but a relict predator that used a network of underwater caverns to evade capture. Even after Harris went bankrupt and the lake was allowed to refill, the sightings never truly stopped. Locals still report massive, circular “wakes” that move against the wind and the sudden, silent disappearance of waterfowl from the reeds. The most unsettling recurring detail is the “Busco Stench”—a heavy, musky odor that rises from the water just before a surface disturbance, followed by the sight of a neck as thick as a man’s thigh breaching the surface. The lake remains private property, but the legend of the “moss-back” continues to define the area as a pocket of prehistoric survival in the middle of Indiana farmland.