Herman and Kia Regusters' Mokele-mbembe sighting at Lake Tele

Lake Tele lies in the Likouala swamp forest of northern Congo, some 400 miles north of Brazzaville. It is about 8 by 6 kilometres, shallow, and ringed by swamp on every side but the north bank. In 1981 Herman A. Regusters, an aerospace engineer and former consultant to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, was meant to join Roy Mackal's expedition there. The two fell out over money and leadership. Regusters went his own way, with his wife Kia beside him.

The couple reached the lake after an overland journey in September 1981. Accounts of the team differ. One wire story counted three Americans, three Africans and 13 native porters. Later write-ups speak of about 30 members, most of them men from Boha. Regusters said the team included regional game wardens and experienced hunters.

Late October and early November. The Regusters said they saw the animal on several occasions, five times by most counts, four in one report. In the water, only its head and rear portion surfaced. Kia described it plainly. "I saw a large serpent-like head and neck rising out of the water. The head moved side to side."

They called it "a small brontosaurus" with "a long, thick neck," longer than two hippopotamuses. Herman later spoke of "a massive body and long neck and tail," about 35 feet long. They also reported a large creature moving through the brush on land, 40 to 50 metres away by one account.

Then the sound. A roaring, trumpeting noise, heard often at the lake. They caught 20 seconds of it on tape, described as a "low windy roar [that] increased to a deep throated trumpeting growl." On 28 November 1981, sitting in a small boat on the lake, Kia took a photograph.

22 December 1981. About 75 reporters gathered for a press conference in Los Angeles. The couple had neither the photograph nor the tape to show. The film was still at a private laboratory, after the Jet Propulsion Laboratory declined to develop it. Regusters cautioned that the recording did not sound very impressive. The picture released later was described as showing "a large, but unidentifiable, object in the lake." Twenty-three rolls of film came out underexposed. Movie film was said to have been ruined by the heat and humidity. Footprint casts and droppings were mentioned, but no analysis has surfaced.

Mackal was blunt. "He's not qualified," he said. "Without zoological training or experience an animal which is new to an observer may be unidentifiable to him but not to a zoologist." Later he argued that the roar could not belong to a Mokele-mbembe, which he said does not make calls, and pointed instead to the emela-ntouka.

The record wavers too. Two weeks at the lake, or 32 days. Four sightings or five. The photograph has been called largely discredited. Loxton and Prothero, in Abominable Science!, criticised how the early 1980s expeditions accepted eyewitness reports without question. The leading mainstream view traces the Mokele-mbembe legend to the black rhinoceros.

Regusters published his report in 1982 through Caltech's Munger Africana Library Notes. By 1985 the Congolese authorities had authorized only him to lead expeditions to the region, and he planned a return. His claim stands as the first Western eyewitness sighting reported at Lake Tele, two years before Marcellin Agnagna's. The tape still circulates online. And the expeditions kept coming, as recently as 2018.