Revisiting a possible land sighting from 2003

I have been aware of this land sighting for some time, but never really addressed it until now. However, I recently found a recounting of it in an old issue of "Animals and Men" published by the Centre for Fortean Zoology. I will reproduce their take on the matter at the end of this article, but I did not think this would be the only coverage of the story back then. So with that in mind, I went to the National Library of Scotland and looked for the primary sources as I could not find them online. As it turned out, the sighting was reported in the Inverness Courier dated 2nd January 2004 from which I extracted the text from the clipping below using OCR.

Loch Ness monster r-eely does exist 

TWO Canadian visitors and a Scottish friend had a monstrous experience when they saw a giant sized creature on the shores of Loch Ness. However, a Beauly woman to whom they reported their sighting does not believe the three were treated to a close up view of Nessie. She had her own close encounter with strange creature on the loch some years before. The three young women, aged between 19 and 21, saw the creature close to Dores a few weeks ago and reported the sighting to family friend Christina Palmer, who had her own Nessie sighting experience in 1998.

 "They were walking along the shores of Loch Ness when one of them shouted that she had found an 'anaconda'," Mrs Palmer said. "When the others reached the spot, they saw what they described as an enormous eel about 28 to 30 feet long. They thought it was dead to begin with. but it appeared to move its tail as they watched, and all three ran off screaming. They went back to their car and after deciding it was not Nessie and unlikely to harm them, they ventured back to take pictures of the thing, only to find that it had indeed been alive and had slithered back into the loch."

Mrs Palmer said the women were certain they had seen an eel and were definite about the estimated size of the creature. "I said to them that was some length, but they were adamant about it," she said. Eels 10 to 15 feet in length have been seen in the loch and a giant eel was recently suggested as the most plausible explanation for monster sightings In Loch Ness. The Devon-based Centre for Fortean Zoology announced plans this autumn to visit Loch Ness. They hope to find evidence to support their theory that the monster sightings are actually of a eunuch eel - which does not travel to the Sargasso Sea to breed, but remains in freshwater and continues to grow. However. Mrs Palmer rules out this explanation from personal experience. "What I saw was the size of a whale." she said.

Her sighting came during a birthday cruise for her husband aboard the Jacobite Queen "We were going up the loch towards Urquhart Castle", she recalled. "Just after we passed the Clansman Hotel, I was down on the lower deck with my younger sister and a couple of other people. All of a sudden this thing rose in the water in front of us. To all intents and purposes, it looked like the back of a whale. I didn't know which end was front or back, it was just this big thing. "It frightened me and I'm not easily frightened. It was longer than 30 feet, but we never saw a tail or the head. The creature was caught on camera by someone videoing the birthday celebrations. We've shown the film to people, but because it's mainly about the party we don't say anything and just put it on. Everybody notices it."

Loch Ness Monster Fan Club president Gary Campbell said the theory that Nessie could be a giant eel is a valid one. "There's a hypothesis the Loch Ness Monster is a giant eel or number of eels and of all the rational explanations It is the most plausible," he said. "We've had reports from a guy in a 16 foot long fishing boat who saw an eel go past him and it was longer than the boat. He said to us 'If that wasn't the Loch Ness Monster, I don't know what is.' But I would say that if someone saw a 28-foot eel, that has got to be a record".

This seems a topical event, given the talk some months back about eDNA surveys and giant eels. So we have the three witnesses: two Canadians and their Scottish friend plus a local named Christina Palmer, who we are told saw the creature five years before. However, Christina was dubious that they saw Nessie because her sighting was whale-like whilst theirs was eel-like. We also have the curious circumstance where they decided it may not have been Nessie and went back to check it out. What was the thinking behind that? The animal was described like an anaconda which sounds like a fair description as the Green Anaconda can grow to 30 feet long and has a diameter in excess of 12 inches.

I was particularly intrigued by the reporter's matter of fact comment that "eels 10 to 15 feet in length have been seen in the loch". I would like to know more about those creatures, but doubt any such eel has been officially caught in the loch. But we do have the intriguing third account of an eel-like creature longer than an eyewitness' fishing boat. The next installment in this story came on the 13th January when the Inverness Courier quotes local monster hunter, Steve Feltham, on his opinion on the case.

Nessie-hunter explains away 'mystery' creature 

(Steve Feltham with a length of alkathene pipe which he believes was mistaken for a giant eel. )

NESSIE-HUNTER Steve Feltham believes he has solved one mystery of the loch and the identity of a strange beastie found on its shores. The "creature" was discovered on the near Dores by two young Canadian visitors and a Scottish friend. Christina Palmer of Beauly, a family friend of the Scots girl, told The Courier the person in the group who had spotted the creature shouted to her friends she had found an anaconda. On closer inspection, the three young women saw what they described as an enormous eel, 28 to 30 feet in length.

"It appeared to move its tail as they watched it and all three ran off screaming." Mrs Palmer revealed. The three later returned to the spot to take photographs, but the animal had disappeared. Giant eels have been reported in Loch Ness and have been suggested as a possible source of Nessie sightings. though these are usually only half the size of the object seen by the three girls. However. Mr Feltham believes there is a more mundane explanation for the girls' close encounter. "Lengths of alkathene pipe from the nearby fish farm." he declared. 


"It's black and about two to three inches in diameter and comes with an adaptor that looks like a hump. There are great big shards of it about and, when it's flapping about on the shoreline, it looks a lot like a live eel." Mr Feltham, who has lived in a converted van on the shores of Loch Ness since 1991, believes the pipe could easily be mistaken for a living creature. "There was about 60 feet of it in the water along there and great big chunks of it on the beach," he said.

However, Mrs Palmer was adamant the girls had not seen a pipe. "No way — it was definitely mobile," she commented. "They knew what it was. One of them goes fishing on the lakes in Canada with her father and has seen some pretty big fish there. She knows what she has seen. I believe they definitely saw something like that, but whether it was as big. I don't know." Mrs Palmer has been told where the girls had their sighting and intends visiting the scene for a closer look. "I think it was dying because I don't think it would have been on the shore if it was able to move." she added. 

Notice that Christina Palmer has now warmed to the experience compared to the first article and is defending the view that the women saw something alive and unusual. She also seems to be speaking on their behalf, though two of the witnesses were still around. Steve is in the other corner explaining it away as the plastic pipe. Note the diameter of the pipe is substantially smaller than that of an anaconda - 2-3 inches versus up to 12 inches. Mention is made of an adaptor which can look like a hump, but I see no mention of a hump by the witnesses. The final communication was by Christina Palmer  by way of a letter to the Inverness Courier, dated 3rd February 2004.  

Further findings on giant eel 

Sir. For those who are interested in the giant eel that was seen on the Loch Ness shore in November 2003 - the area has now been inspected and measurements taken at the location in the presence of two of the witnesses. The measurements were approximately 22 feet eight inches and judged to be the minimum length of the eel. The student who identified the eel is studying marine biology. One person, not involved, suggested that what the girl saw was some black piping used at a fish farm. As the "sighting" was nowhere near to the fish farm there is no such possibility. 

Yours etc,

Christina M. Palmer. 

Christina now comes out saying the object was a giant eel and here the estimated length drops a few feet to just under 23 feet. One would presume that if one of the witnesses was a marine biology student, they should be able to figure out an eel when they saw one. On the other hand, I do not accept her comment that fish farm pipes could not reach Dores. Another important factor is the time between when they ran away and when they came back. The shorter that time, the less time for an alleged pipe to be washed back into the loch (which I do not think happens that quickly). Finally, the witnesses are not recorded as describing the colour of the object but anacondas are sure not black like these plastic pipes. I believe they are green or yellow.

So what do we make of all this? This land report was mentioned in the comment section of an older article here on this blog and Steve was still sticking to his guns: 

The pipe was at least 20 metres long. It rolled in the waves as they washed onto the beach, as I remember it was there for more than a week before I pulled it out. Came from the fish farm (a mile away up the loch) Lots of this sort of piping used to wash in, along with numerous other bits of "fishfarm'ary" including a cage.. Twice.

A long time ago now, and laughed about at the time.

Hope this helps.


One thought from that comment was that if Steve's bit of pipe lay there for more than a week, then why was the eyewitnesses' alleged pipe gone when they came back? I also managed to track down Christina Palmer who still lives in Beauly and talked to her on the phone about her own sighting as well as the land sighting. Sadly, 17 years on, she had lost contact with the eyewitnesses, though she was also sticking to the eyewitnesses' version of the story. But at the end of the day, it is not protagonists on either side, but the people who actually saw this object on the beach that I would really like to talk to. For now, that objective has not been fulfilled. Anyway, these events happened seven years before this blog started, but this led me to do some further thinking. So I decided to find out what a thick piece of plastic pipe on a beach looks like. What would you think if you stumbled upon this item on your local beach?

Yes, you're right. You would say "Oh look, a piece of plastic pipe". Now transfer this scenario to Loch Ness and apparently this becomes "Oh look, it's a 30 foot long giant eel. Run!". I usually take the view that eyewitnesses are not that stupid, or rather one should not assume it as a first step. Given that at least one was a marine biologist and another (or the same?) was a regular angler, they would seem to be people not so easily fooled. Moreover, a piece of plastic pipe lying on the beach should still be there when they came back as the prevailing south westerly winds push debris to the north of the loch. But then again, why did the girls go back thinking it may not have been the monster? Only they can answer that question.

But, do we have a corroborating report from another eyewitness? In the first newspaper article mentioned above, Gary Campbell, who runs the Loch Ness Monster sightings register had this to say at the end of the clipping:

Mr Campbell added that he had received another report from the Dores area, very similar to the sighting by the three young women. A man walking by the loch had seen an eel-like creature on the shore, which slithered back into the water as he approached. "It stacks up." be said "Eels do travel over land and there is the number of eels in Loch Ness but it's not something people want to hear." 

I asked Gary if he could expand on this report, but 17 years on he could not find it in his files and it is not mentioned on his website chronology, so this is a bit of an outlier. To complete the coverage of that time, here is the article from "Animals and Men" issue 35 authored by Jon Downes. I don't think it adds anything new other than to promote the giant eel theory which would seem to be the main beneficiary of this story if it is indeed accurate.

Over the past year we have been extolling the theory that the Loch Ness monster - and indeed other northern European and North American lake monsters - are giant eels. which have achieved an immense size because they have become sterile due to some unknown chemical agent in the water. This theory was given a boost recently when two Canadian girls, and a Scottish friend - visitors to the loch - saw what they described as an enormous eel, 28 to 30 feet in length. ''it appeared to move its tail as they watched it and all three ran off screaming."

They reported the incident to veteran Loch Ness monster expert Steve Feltham - the man who became famous after featuring in the BBC documentary "Desperately Seeking Nessie''. He has a less exciting explanation for what the girls saw. ''Lengths of alkathene pipe from the nearby fish farm," he declared. "It's black and about two to three inches in diameter and comes with an adaptor that looks like a hump. There are great big shards of it about and, when it's flapping about on the shoreline, it looks a lot like a live eel."

Mr Feltham, who has lived in a converted van on the shores of Loch Ness since 1991, believes the pipe could easily be mistaken for a living creature. "There was about 60 feet of it in the water along there and great big chunks of it on the beach.'' he said.

However, Mrs Palmer - a friend of the three witnesses - was adamant the girls had not seen a pipe. "No way - it was definitely mobile." she commented. ''They knew what it was. One of them goes fishing on the lakes in Canada with her.father and has seen some pretty big fish there. She knows what she has seen. I believe they definitely saw something like that. But whether it was as big, I don 't know." Mrs Palmer has been told where the girls had their sighting and intends visiting the scene for a closer look. ''I think it was dying because I don't think if would have been on the shore if it was able to move", she added.



The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com