In my review of 2024 a few days back, I mentioned only one book of note that was published that year and that was Adrian Shine's book on Sea Serpents. However, I had also ordered two books published towards the end of the year which I wanted to take a closer look at.
In fact, if one looks at the 2024 titles on Amazon, I estimated that 20 books had been published that related to the Loch Ness Monster. I would say that these sub-divided into three categories. The first is the majority market aimed at children which I reckoned was 9 titles. Then there was the second category of fiction aimed at a wider audience which came in at 6 titles. That left 5 titles which would be described as non-fiction as they aimed to talk about the monster itself and the places and persons associated with it.
The two titles reviewed here are by Gary Ogden and Thomas Shelton. The other three were skipped mainly due to cost, but also a feeling based on the first two that I would be wasting my money on them. If you are interested in them, the authors are Bezaire, Jensen and Summers. I maintain a list of Nessie books which can be found at this link, the question was whether these would make it onto that list?
LEGENDS OF LOCH NESS
Let me look first at "Legends of Loch Ness" by Thomas Shelton. It is a small sized paperback of 120 pages with no pictures whose Amazon description says:
Journey into the heart of Scotland's most enduring mystery with Legends of Loch Ness: Folklore and the Monster that Captivates. Author Thomas Shelton masterfully unravels the stories, myths, and scientific pursuits that have surrounded the Loch Ness Monster for centuries. From ancient Celtic tales of water spirits to modern-day sonar expeditions, this captivating exploration delves into how Nessie has become a global phenomenon, symbolizing humanity's fascination with the unknown.
Shelton combines historical records, eyewitness accounts, and cultural analysis to paint a vivid picture of how the legend has evolved over time. Whether you're a skeptic or a true believer, this book invites you to explore the intersection of myth, mystery, and science in one of the world's most enigmatic natural landscapes.
Perfect for folklore enthusiasts, cryptid hunters, and those curious about the stories that shape our world, Legends of Loch Ness reveals why the legend of Nessie continues to inspire and intrigue us all.
Reading through this book was a bit of a strange experience as it did not feel like a book I would normally look at on this subject. For starters, despite mentioning eyewitness reports, films, photographs, people and organisations, it was very light on naming any of them. In fact, with one exception which I shall come back to later, only three people were mentioned. These were St. Columba and the first tale of a monster, Neil Gemmell with his recent eDNA survey and Kenneth Wilson of the famous Surgeon's Photograph.
In terms of any discussion on an eyewitness event, only the Surgeon's Photograph got any extended text which was all focused on how it was a hoax. As the book moved in and out of the subjects of cryptozoology, scepticism, folklore, culture, ecology and tourism, there was a lot of general statements and little of the specific. Indeed, as one read through the twelve chapters, there was a good deal of repetition - as if each chapter was written by separate individuals without any cross-referencing to other chapters.
There was a lot of talk about conservation and ecology around the loch with the claim that even guided tours were now beginning to emphasise this subject more to paying tourists. I can't say I have been aware of such a ramp up. In that light, we read that the Loch Ness Centre exhibition is focused on such matters with ecology and science. This was sounding more like the previously curated exhibition than the current one!
This is where the book began to state things which were simply not true. For example, it mentioned that the locals celebrate the culture of the monster with the annual "Loch Ness Monster Festival". I have no idea what this festival is!
It then surveys the various documentaries made on the subject and mentions one called "The Loch Ness Monster: A 50-year Mystery" which allegedly informs us of "modern scientific exploration" and also the inevitable Surgeon's Photo hoax. However the title clearly implies it was made 50 years after the Nessie phenomenon began in 1933, in other words 1983! I doubt a 41-year old documentary will bring us up to date with modern scientific exploration and the Surgeon's Photo would not be exposed as a hoax until ten years after this alleged documentary was made.
The fabrications continued with a reference to another documentary entitled "Nessie: The Environmental Impact". I am aware of no such documentary and I doubt any such production would be made as it looks like a surefire loss making project. The confusion was exacerbated when the late great racer John Cobb, who was killed at Loch Ness in 1952, was referred to as an artist when discussing Loch Ness culture!
Furthermore, I am still trying to understand what the book means by the interplays between ecology and folklore? The errors continue down to minor levels when the book states that the loch attracts millions of visitors each year. The press releases I see from tourist agencies puts the annual maximum at about half a million.
I did mention one eyewitness report that is mentioned on page 106 of the book. This allegedly involved a fisherman by the name of Alastair D. McNab in 1975 when a "long, serpentine" Nessie surfaced near his boat. We are told this was such a "life-altering moment" for Gray that he became a noted researcher and advocate for the monster. Let me say that there was no such person or sighting!
The format and errors in the book could only lead me to one conclusion. This was a book whose text was largely generated by an Artificial Intelligence program such as ChatGPT but had not been properly fact checked afterwards by a human. The repetitive nature of each chapter suggested each one was the result of a separate chat session with the AI program.
As for the blatant untruths, one can only put these down to the textual equivalent of AI art programs that draw hands with six fingers or people with three legs. In other words, these technologies are still developing and not at the accuracy and finesse to make them indistinguishable from an exclusively human production.
Is the human author actually called Thomas Shelton? There are two long dead authors called Thomas Shelton. One was a famed stenographer who died around 1650. The other was a contemporary who translated Cervantes' "Don Quixote" into English. One can only describe this Nessie book as quixotic and I note Shelton has also published a short work on the Cadborosaurus under the same publisher "Revitalized Occult and Strange".
THE TIMELESS MYSTERY OF LOCH NESS
With all this in mind, I approached the second book by a Gary Ogden with some caution. The title is "Nessie: The Timeless Mystery of Loch Ness" and is shorter than the former book, though this is reflected in the price. The Amazon page does feature a photograph of the author who is listed as having over a dozen titles to his name, so perhaps this book was more human than the other?
This book does come with pictures, but every one looks AI-generated. There are no pictures of a historical or contemporary nature displaying the history of the mystery. However, I am glad to say that this book looks a lot more homo sapiens. Given the 64 pages of text and its lowish word count per page, it is not going to go into great detail and is very much an introductory text that I later found out was aimed at a more teenage audience.
Nevertheless, the text flows much better in this book, though it contains errors of varying degrees, such as the claim that there were further medieval references to the monster after St Columba. Sadly, no further references to the monster between the 5th and 15th centuries are known.
Ogden's handling of the Spicer land sighting has some errors. He says it occurred on the north side A82 road whereas it actually happened on the quieter southern side road. He further states the creature appeared as they rounded a bend. It actually came into view as the Spicers were on a straight stretch of road. Apart from that, he is right in stating that this was the event that propelled the monster from a local to national and international sensation.
The author continues to take us through the later decades as the familiar names of Dinsdale, the LNIPB, Robert Rines and Operation Deepscan are mentioned. However, I was somewhat disappointed that not much was said beyond the Spicers about specific eyewitness reports. Not surprisingly, the hoax of the Surgeon's Photograph got its usual large section.
As would be expected, chapters on the various theories about the creature and the culture surrounding it are discussed. That was where my knowledge failed me when it was stated that Genesis and Taylor Swift had mentioned Nessie in their lyrics. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on that. The author's explanation of how the creature and the national identity of Scotland are intertwined is interesting but debatable. How much does the mythos of Nessie reflect the national psyche?
The main problem with this book is chapters 10 and 11 which are both titled "The Future of Nessie: Will the Legend endure?". This is because they are practically the same text with the same sub-headings but worded in a different manner. One of these chapters is redundant, making 10% of the book redundant. How could such a basic error in proof reading be made? Was it because AI tools were used and were not up to the job? I don't believe a freelance author would allow this to pass on a human inspection.
It was a pity, because the book as an introduction to a younger audience stood up fairly well, which brings me to a time almost fifty years ago.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
In terms of publications on the Loch Ness Monster for a younger audience, Tim Dinsdale's "The Story of the Loch Ness Monster" remains the archetypal book. It was first published in 1973 and had at least one other run in 1974. How do you compare two types of books from two different generations? They have their pros and cons, but the current world of self-publishing suffers from the lack of resources that Tim enjoyed. The errors highlighted today would not have got past a professional publishing house like Target.
Likewise, the cover shows that publishers could call upon talented artists to render eye candy covers that still remain with us to this day. Can the same be said of the plethora of AI-generated images today? Dinsdale's book is multiple times bigger and came with its glossy photo sections and a lot of sketches inserted between paragraphs. Likewise, it was not shy to get into the material that matters as he recounted various eyewitness reports, photos and films as well as the people who pursued the creature.
Of course, the book is fifty years out of date. We now know about the Surgeon's Photo (although Dinsdale did not devote multiple pages to it like modern authors do), we know about the problems with other items of claimed evidence but what more do you expect from a sceptic-dominated field? Books today would be updated concerning sonar, webcams, drones, digital imagery and psychology. However, these are all a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. The main engine has always been the corpus of eyewitness testimonies and will remain so.
So by all means find a well written modern book for today's youth, but I suggest you also give them Dinsdale's book for balance.
WHAT ABOUT AI?
But today, AI-based tools present a problem. Maybe it's just my Facebook feed, but the flood of AI generated images now makes me doubt a lot of the pictures I see - and I am referring to such things as normal wildlife images, not ones allegedly of Nessie! The vast majority of AI Nessie images come straight out of the Dragon category and make no attempt (yet) to look like a convincing tourist snap or video.
The main factors driving the AI industry are profit-driven and that means creating tools which replace humans from the entry-level job up. In that they are succeeding to the point where they will almost match everything people do. The publication errors mentioned here will eventually be ironed out. What will come last is genuine artificial but creative thinking rather than just vast number of texts scraped from the Internet and stitched together in a legible manner.
Back in the 1970s, we also had a lot of publications which in some way mimic these modern books. They were called "boilerplate" books which referred to their unoriginality or cliched texts. By that we mean they tended to be written by authors who had no real experience of the given subject and just regurgitated that which had been said by those in the field. The ultimate motive was to cash in on a hot subject where almost any kind of book would generate worthwhile revenues,
The blocker to such books into the 1980s and onwards was a lack of interest by publishers in a no longer hot topic. The advent of self-publishing changed that and the boilerplate book was back, albeit with little chance of making the same kind of money as fifty years earlier. The ease of publishing now allied with an artificially intelligent companion to speed up the generation of words is a potent mix that leads to books which largely have nothing of substance.
So why produce them? The answer may well lie in the economy of scale. Self-publishing and AI gives the human author the scope to push out many more books across a wide range of topics they have little expertise in. Why try to produce and sell a book for £20 when you can produce 20 smaller ones which sell for £1? Even if the text is not 100% AI-generated, the AI tools at the author's disposal can still produce a lot of raw material for final assembly and editing.
So, if you were not aware already, tread a bit more warily in the world of modern cryptozoological literature. Check the reviews, check the author's pedigree and solicit the opinions of others on the usual well-known discussion forums. But the best approach is to give truthful reviews, be they positive or negative so that the author will respond accordingly.
Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.
The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
