Kingstie was a cryptozoological

Cryptozoology

Cryptozoology refers to the search for animals whose existence has not been proven...

 hoax

Hoax

A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...

 invented in 1934 as an echo of the 1904 Lake George Monster

Lake George Monster

The Lake George Monster was a hoax invented by painter Harry Watrous in 1904. The monster was purportedly sighted at Hague Bay in Lake George in New York, United States. This was a reported solution to an ongoing rivalry that Watrous had with another resident. After word had spread about, Mr...

 hoax. It was reported as "a strange creature with the head of a dragon and eyes of fire" in Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...

 near Kingston

Kingston, Ontario

Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

It is explained in the book Mysteries of Toronto as follows: "As a prank, they had fabricated a semblance of the creature using a barrel filled with empty bottles for buoyancy and fitting it with a dragon-like head, rope and anchor to keep it in one place, and twine attached to the rope that ran underwater to the shore of Cartwright Bay to permit them to bob its barrel body and head up and down". (As quoted by Joe Nickel, writing for the Skeptical Inquirer.)

Popular culture

A kingstie was depicted in the Secret Saturdays videogame, Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th sun. Here it is shown as massive Axolotl

Axolotl

The axolotl , Ambystoma mexicanum, is a neotenic salamander, closely related to the Tiger Salamander. Larvae of this species fail to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain aquatic and gilled. It is also called ajolote...

-like cryptid with curving bull

Bull

Bull usually refers to an uncastrated adult male bovine.Bull may also refer to:-Entertainment:* Bull , an original show on the TNT Network* "Bull" , an episode of television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...

 horns, a snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

head, and one blue eye. The player must defeat it right before the end of the level.