Poll on Existence of Loch Ness Monster

Hard on the heels of the latest news items about Gordon Holmes' video, the local Telegraph  and Argus newspaper ran a snap poll asking "Do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster?". In total, 45% said "yes" or double what I have seen elsewhere. Nice one, Yorkshire!

New Record Depth for Loch Ness?

Has a new depth of 889 feet been recorded in Loch Ness, beating the established record of 754 feet by 135 feet? New sonar readings suggest so, but some third party verification may be required here. You may remember "Edward's Deep" of 812 feet which failed to stand up to verification, so some caution is required when side echoes from the loch all can "muddy" the waters.

What more interested me was this line, though I doubt we will hear more about it:

But two weeks ago, I got a sonar image of what looked like a long object with a hump lying at the bottom. It wasn't there when I scanned the loch bed later. 

 

Link to original story here and also here.

It has evaded capture for years, with dozens of alleged sightings and endless speculation about its whereabouts. 

But the hunt for the Loch Ness monster has just become even more arduous, after a retired fisherman used sonar equipment to show that it could be hiding at previously undiscovered depths. 

Tourist sightseeing boat skipper Keith Stewart, 43, claims to have found a crevice large enough for the phantom beast to be hiding in, about nine miles east of Inverness. 

Britain's deepest loch is Loch Morar, allegedly home to another elusive “water kelpie” Morag at 1017 feet. 

Loch Ness is the UK’s second largest, with an official maximum depth previously recorded at 754 feet. However, Mr Stewart says that his newly discovered crevice measures 889 feet deep, according to his state of the art sonar equipment. 

His colleagues at Jacobite Cruises, which operates sightseeing cruises down Loch Ness from Inverness, have labelled it “Keith's Abyss”. 

"I wasn't really a believer of the monster beforehand,” Mr Stewart said. 

“But two weeks ago, I got a sonar image of what looked like a long object with a hump lying at the bottom. It wasn't there when I scanned the loch bed later. 

"That intrigued me and then I found this dark shape about half way between the Clansman Hotel and Drumnadrochit which transpired to be a crevice or trench. 

“I measured it with our state of the art 3D equipment at 889 feet. I have gone back several times over the abyss and I have verified my measurements. 

"It is only about a few hundred yards offshore whereas previous sonar searches have traditionally been down the middle of the loch. 

"Searches of the monster have also been in those areas as well as Urquhart Bay so maybe the local legends of underwater caves connecting Loch Ness to other lochs and perhaps even the waters of the east and west coast are true.” 

Mr Stewart conceded that his discovery will “need more research” adding: “It is possible that an underwater earthquake has opened this up in recent times because the Great Glen lies in a well known fault in the earth's crust and tremors have been felt along it.” 

Adrian Shine, leader of the scientific research organisation The Loch Ness Project, said that he and his colleagues “may well take a look at the area” identified by Mr Stewart. 

However, he urged caution about sonar readings taken close to the edge of the loch. 

“I would be cautious [about Mr Stewart’s findings] because there is an anomaly which occurs with sonar readings taken close to the side walls called lobe echos, which can give misleading results about the depth. 

“It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your sonar equipment is, you can still get this anomaly.” 

Gary Campbell, president of Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and Registrar of Sightings said that Mr Stewart’s discovery “adds another dimension” to the search for the phantom beast. 

“We thought the loch was 810 feet deep and just had a 20 foot diameter hole at the bottom,” he said.

“Now we've discovered a whole trench that makes the loch nearly 900 feet deep which is twice the depth of the North Sea. There could be more trenches which make it deeper. 

"Loch Ness is part of a huge earthquake fault line that runs from Canada to Norway. In 2013, there was a 2.4 magnitude quake in the loch - this was when Nessie disappeared for a whole year for the first time since 1925.” 

More on Gordon Holmes and Giant Eels

Our Nessie man in Bradford, Gordon Holmes, continues to get publicity on his 2007 video of a strange object making its way up Loch Ness.His local newspaper has chimed in with a video of Gordon talking about his film as well as further information.

The article can be found here and it seems it was making sufficiently big headlines.

A LOCH Ness monster hunter from Shipley believes he could finally have helped solve the mystery of what really lurks beneath the water. 

A computer expert in the US has used advanced techniques to analyse a night-time film Gordon Holmes shot from a layby almost a decade ago. 

The analysist has now concluded the creature side-winding across the 800ft deep Scottish loch at about 6mph might in fact be a giant eel. 

On May 26, 2007 Mr Holmes, of Shipley, was about to to finish Nessie-spotting for the day when he had his 'lucky break' looking through binoculars and had to make a mad-dash for his camcorder.

The fascinating which appeared to show the black, long-necked monster-like creatures with flippers moving close to the surface swimming in the direction of Inverness, hit headlines worldwide ending in a media-frenzy. 

"There's been lots of opinions on what I filmed that night," said 63-year-old Mr Holmes, a retired university IT technician. 

"They do look eel-like on my film and I did say that back in 2007. One thing all the experts have agreed on is that my footage isn't fake." 

The film has been newly analysed by Bill Appleton, chief executive of US-based software firm DreamFactory, who was able to reduce camera shake and make the images clearer. 

Mr Holmes said: "Unless they discover some unknown creature from the depths of Loch Ness, I believe Bill has finally solved this major mystery in my life and the lives of many others. 

"He is not David Attenborough but he is an expert in his own field.". 

Mr Appleton has told leading Loch Ness investigators that Mr Holmes' footage had framed giant eels, concluding: "I believe they display a giant eel side-winding across the loch. 

"The animal is at least 10ft long, maybe 15f. You can see in some frames the classic, Plesiosaur neck, but this is just the eel moving away from the camera." 

Mr Holmes, who has featured in a TV show called Missing Evidence, plans to return to Loch Ness later this year with a new drone he has been test-flying over Ilkley Moor. 

He said: "Of course the mystery and intrigue will go on. 

"Unless I had concrete proof and the Loch Ness monster came out of the water, shook hands with me, then safely went back into the water I still can't be 100 per cent certain what it is and even if I was fortunate enough to get all of that on camera there would still be people who would not believe it.

"With progression of science and software we are getting closer to the truth but we might be narrowing it down to more realistic things." 

Mr Holmes' first visit to Loch Ness to try to unravel the legend was in 2003 after his mother Winifred died from Alzheimers. She had given him a tiny glass ornament of Nessie bought from a gift shop in Saltaire when he was 12 and he has been fascinated ever since. 

Equipment he has built so far in a bid to track the real Loch Ness monster has included a hydrophone to pick up sound signals in the water, a spy in the sky camera carried by ten helium-filled foil balloons and now a new drone and a special raft trialled out at sea off Bridlington which will carry a weather-system and a camcorder. 

"I will keep going back. My search isn't over yet," he said. 

More on Infrasonic Nessies

In a previous post, I had looked at a theory proposed by Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor. This concerned the idea that infrasound emissions from resonating pipes below the roads around Loch Ness may have physiological and psychological effects on people around the loch. The implication being that this could partly explain reports of monsters in the loch.

It was also suggested that this resonant frequency of about 19Hz was also the resonant frequency of the human eyeball, causing it to vibrate and disturb peripheral vision. This was seen as having an effect on what people saw in the loch. The theory was also applied to other strange phenomena including even Bigfoot sightings.

As a postscript to all this, I was at a recent meeting of the Edinburgh Fortean Society where the subject of "paracoustics" or the link between infrasound and the paranormal was discussed by Steve Parsons who has just published a book on the subject.

All this began with Vic Tandy who claimed he felt and even saw strange phenomena when in an environment resonating at 19Hz. The route to the conclusion was based on an experience at his workplace and the story of his fencing sword resonating at this frequency.

As it turns out, Steve told us that the 19Hz story was misconstrued. Fencing swords do not resonate at 19Hz, more like ten times that frequency and Tandy's measurements turned out to be suspect as he had not taken the entire dimensions of the room into account when calculating the alleged frequency. Indeed, the environment around us is already filled with infrasonic waves and it is not unexpected to find 19Hz amongst a range of frequencies across the infrasonic spectrum.

The idea that the human eyeball resonates at 19Hz is also suspect. The background to the story came from NASA stress tests on astronauts. But the energy levels involved in this test were huge in order to mimic astronauts sitting on top of a Saturn V rocket, not driving over a roadside pipe! NASA were simply testing if astronauts could still see the dials on a control panel as their entire body was shaken in simulations of a rocket launch. Indeed, it turned out different shaped eyeballs have a range of resonant frequencies.

In other words, this has no relevance to Loch Ness, as does the idea that 19Hz is relevant to the Loch Ness Monster (Steve Parsons confirmed that paracoustic theories are not primarily visual based theories).

But this does not mean infrasound or even ultrasound are irrelevant to paranormal research. It is just that this narrow band around 19Hz can be safely discarded as being important. Whether other frequency ranges can affect human perception is an ongoing subject, but until something more solid and beyond the realm of speculation turns up, it is irrelevant to the Loch Ness Monster.

So what is the conclusion of all this? The role of infrasound on the Loch Ness Monster mystery is at best an interesting item of idle speculation and at worst another example of sceptical pseudoscience (or McScience as it is sometimes referred to).

Gordon Holmes' Giant Eel

Well done to Gordon Holmes, who took that intriguing 2007 video of a strange object in Loch Ness. He pressed on and now the Scotsman and Press and Journal have run the story on his further analysis of the video and his theory concerning the possibility that it is a giant eel.

Gordon is one of the good guys, sacrificing time, money and energy to go up to the loch multiple times in pursuit of the famous Loch Ness Monster. He continues in the tradition of an array of men and women who took up the challenge to try to capture that conclusive footage and confound the sceptics once and for all. He may yet be the one who gets that evidence; but, like me, I am sure he will be only too glad that anyone gets that final footage.

Good luck on your next expedition, Gordon.

More here.

Is Nessie a giant eel? More thoughts here.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

A Modus Operandi

I want to clarify something before I go onto the analysis of various photographs and films this year, such as the O'Connor, Cockrell and Taylor images. Clearly, such images are controversial and generate claims and counter claims.

The bottom line is how do you prove a photo or film depicts the Loch Ness Monster? Even when you have a purported close up shot of something consistent with eyewitness testimonies, you are going to get interpretations of the photograph that attempt to prove fraud (or, less likely, misidentification).

Despite what people will tell you about photos and films being objective data which lends towards objective analysis, this is not always the case (if at all). The reason for this is because all interpretations have a degree of subjectivity, be it in assumptions made about numbers or what a small, blurred section of an image is showing.

As you can see, guesstimation and blurriness are the antithesis of objective analysis. That's why when even so-called critical thinking is brought into this arena, you can assign large error bars to a lot of what passes for analysis. That, of course, applies to both sides of the debate. The trouble is, some people think they are immune from such things.

So, how do you prove a photo is a Loch Ness Monster? What is the acid test for monster? Long neck? Hump like an upturned boat? Shiny, leathery skin? All valid tests, but fakeable features to varying degrees (especially in this age of CGI). That, of course, does not mean every picture is a fake, but when these arguments are brought against a photograph or film, it is the motivation of the pro-Nessie analyst to answer them.

In fact, the main modus operandi of this blog in this regard is to disprove counter arguments against photos and films, or at worst expose their weaknesses. And, to borrow from Sherlock Holmes, having eliminated the improbable, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Well, that is the ideal to aim for, but everyone is influenced by their internal prejudices and biases. There is nothing that can be done about that, and everyone who reads will make their own minds up.

As an aside, photos are also assessed on the basis of how consistent they are with the overall story. For example, I reject the so called "gargoyle" photo taken underwater by the Academy of Applied Sciences in 1975. The basis for this is simply that what this photo purports to show bears little resemblance to what eyewitnesses have described concerning the head and upper neck of the creature.

In fact, not all Nessie photos are created equal. We will all have our own ratings for each photo across time. I myself will rate such images on a personal scale taking into account arguments both for and against the image in question. For example, the Surgeon's Photograph is a fake to me, and on a for-against percentage rating, I would give it 20-80, meaning my opinion is that I am 80% certain of the arguments against it being real and give 20% to the arguments that it is real.

But there are pictures which I do regards as images of the Loch Ness Monster and I give them, on balance, positive ratings. So, I give the Hugh Gray photo a rating of 90-10 and for the Peter MacNab picture, I give 80-20. Nearer the line of indecision (50-50), I rate the so called F.C.Adams photo at 55-45, purely on the basis of the back story I unearthed last year.

And, of course, we have the many pictures which show distant wakes and blobs. They may be monsters or they may be something else. These will be near the 50-50 line as we simply do not have enough information to assess them. 

People who take a 100-0 or a 0-100 stance on many or all pictures probably need to ask themselves a few questions about what motivates their assessment of the evidence. Remember these points when I present various articles on Loch Ness Monster photographs and films.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

 

Nessie Review of 2015

2015 has come and is nearly gone and that means times to look back on the World of Nessie these past twelve months.

At Loch Ness itself, Gary Campbell, who runs the "Official Register of Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster", recorded five sightings he judged as genuine. The first does not actually make it onto his list but it made the national newspapers in March as Connie Ross and her daughter, Reyshell, observed something like a "big black belly", submerge in the midst of a big disturbance of water by Urquhart Castle. She got this image just as it was vanishing from sight.

Some critics, completely ignoring what the witnesses described, dismissed it as bubbles from divers. However, the witnesses described themselves as "mesmerised" by the sight; I can't say I have ever been mesmerised by some scuba bubbles! I accept this as a genuine sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

The following month some independent witnesses described an object they described as large and dolphin-like surfacing up to six times. Whatever is was, it was certainly no dolphin and I am not aware of any seals being reported in the loch at that time.

Only a few days later on April 25th, a Dee Bruce and Les Stuart from Elgin, saw a dark creature emerge three foot out of the loch at the north end. Unfortunately, it all happened so quickly that the camera could not be employed in time.

The next report occurred in July and was covered recently here. Crystal Ardito from New York noticed she had snapped something that was only fleetingly noticed at the time. Opinions naturally vary as to what it could possibly be (picture below). Something splashing through the water perhaps, but what exactly?

Another picture was taken on the 13th August by a Mr and Mrs Bates as they observed an object moving in an undulating fashion at mid-afternoon for about five minutes. This event involved multiple witnesses and this photograph below. Unfortunately, nothing can be deduced from this picture due to its lack of detail.

Finally, on the 15th September, local man Connor McKenna was one mile south of the castle at 1245 in his car when he had a 6-7 second view of dark object 15-20 feet long about 250 metres away. Despite having a clear view, the object submerged, leaving a wake behind.

Standing back, we see that four of these six sightings were brief in duration, only seconds. That mitigates against them, but three out of the six produced images of varying quality, mainly due to the distances involved.

These are certainly not sightings that would be classed alongside those of yesteryear, it would be great to report on such an event for the edification of readers, only time will tell on that matter. But it is good that the monster has been seen on at least six occasions this past year.

And what would Nessie research be without some odd looking sonar readings? Amongst the images come across this year are the ones below (see here and here). Sonar images are not as intuitive to interpret as optical images. However, their interpretation has come on strides in recent years as clearer resolutions have become more affordable. The trouble, of course, is what exactly would a sonar image of the Loch Ness Monster look like?

Other Nessie stories this year we were not so sure about were such as this photo by Geoffrey McSkimming which has more of the heron than the plesiosaur about it.

And did Flying Saucers zoom over Loch Ness this year? Given they look like mirror images of each other, we're not so sure about this one either.

OTHER EVENTS

Extending beyond the creature itself and to round the loch itself, it was sad to see one of the iconic sights of the lochside being nearly destroyed by fire only mere days ago as Boleskine House was in flames. Most of the house was destroyed in the blaze and its overall future must now be in doubt and in the hands of the insurance company.

As most readers may know, this house was the residence of the infamous magician, Aleister Crowley, between 1899 and 1913 as he homed on in an area which he believed focused the magical energies he needed to execute his magical rituals. He paid twice the asking price of the house to get what he wanted. I say this was an iconic place, but one would be lucky to get a decent view of the tree-sheltered place, let alone get a chance to visit this reputedly haunted abode.

Meanwhile, tales of old regarding people and Nessie were to the fore in preparation for Gareth William's book, "A Monstrous Commotion". For example, was a renowned academic pushed out of the Natural History Museum  in the 1960s due to his enthusiasm for the Loch Ness Monster? Or was it more the case that Dr Denys Tucker was a bit too cantankerous with his colleagues?

Who was it that suggested that the monster should be christened "Elizabethia nessiae" after her Majesty the Queen? Such was the enthusiasm and expectations regarding the monster in the 1960s. Though an old controversy came to light when the tale of Digby George Gerahty and his claims to have invented the Loch Ness Monster in a 1930s pub were resurrected.

MONSTER HUNTING

Going by headlines this year, one would have been forgiven for thinking the mystery had been finally solved as Steve Feltham, long running monster hunter, was quoted as saying he thought Nessie was no more than a catfish.

However, Steve was quick to state he was being (once again) misquoted. What he meant was that the catfish was one possible solution from many as perhaps some catfish had been released into Loch Ness over a hundred years ago. An interesting theory, but one that needs further research as regards such fish being let loose on Loch Ness.

Meanwhile, yours truly continued on this blog and at the lochside. Research uncovered some previously forgotten reports from 1909 and about 1880. Contact was also made with the family of the late Lachlan Stuart, famous for his 1951 triple hump monster picture while a forgotten hump picture from 1934 was brought back into the light.

The hunt continues and to end this review, I had some game cameras in action around the loch waiting to be triggered by anything that moved in front of them. One such camera was trained on one small patch of the vast area that is Loch Ness.

You know, I had fought through rocks and thistle to find a secluded spot for this camera (kindly donated by a regular reader) and then who turns up as if it was placed in Piccadilly Circus?

It got worse as you can see below. Anyway, whoever you were, thanks for not stealing the camera!

Furry or feathery fiends would also get in the way of serious research. I have no idea what this was!

But at least the night infra red worked admirably as these insect shots show.

These shots amongst other were copied off the camera between August and November. Let us continue to hope the decisive shot of the Loch Ness Monster makes its appearance on such a camera or others in 2016!

A Happy and Prosperous 2016 to you all.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com