Watcher in the Water

The Watcher in the Water is a mysterious and horrific beast that lurked in a lake caused by the damming of the Sirannon river, beneath the western walls of Moria.

In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the Watcher attacks the Fellowship as they were attempting to open the Doors of Durin and enter Moria. There is very little known about the creature. Even Gandalf did not know what the Watcher was, or whether there were many of its kind. It grasped Frodo with a long tentacle, possibly with a fingered end, which was pale green and luminous. Many other tentacles emerged from the water after the one which grasped Frodo was driven away, but it is not totally clear whether these were all part of the same multi-armed beast, or a number of monsters acting together. In any case, the creature or creatures possessed great strength; after the escape of the Fellowship into Moria, the arms hurled the enormous stone doors shut and uprooted the trees which grew to either side, barring the doors. Gandalf noted that it siezed Frodo (as the Ringbearer) first, and therefor probably was connected to Sauron in some way, or had a sense of its own detecting the One Ring. Later, when the Fellowship finds the journal documenting the doom of Balin's expedition to reclaim Moria, it relates: "... run the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. We cannot get out." This is to the best of our knowledge the only name Tolkien ever gave to the creature.

In Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, the whole head of the beast is shown. See Peter Jackson's Watcher in the Water.

In the book A Tolkien Bestiary, the Watcher is identified as being a Kraken, it is implied that there are some differences between the kraken of Norse legend and the Kraken of Tolkien's mythos.