The Man Behind the Journal: Frances T. Rybak

    For those who are just joining in, let me introduce you to my grandfather, Frances T. Rybak. He was born in 1917 and spent his early years as a Riverboat Crewmember along the Mississippi River. People would describe him as brilliant, even a bit ahead of his time. But later in life, something changed. He began claiming to have seen a lake monster, a creature that no one else could see. His stories spiraled into talk of patterns in numbers, government plots, and secret societies. My family brushed it off as eccentricity at first, but things escalated quickly. The claims about the lake monster drove a wedge between him and the family. It became too much for my grandmother, who ultimately left him, unable to cope with the man he had become. After her departure, nobody in the family wanted to talk about him out of shame. I would hear bits and pieces about him from time to time, but for the most part, he was a taboo subject. 

Here’s a photo of him in his prime