Locating Margaret Munro's Monster

 

I blogged a piece a few years back about the area around Borlum Bay and the famous land sighting reported by Margaret Munro on June 3rd 1934. At that time a new tourist path had been opened going further into the bay which I had explored. However, I don't think my attempt back then to locate where her beast lay turning in the sun was accurate enough.

So it was time for another attempt as I came to the end of my recent trip to the loch in August. The original account states that Munro "watched the Loch Ness Monster for twenty five minutes on Sunday Morning as it enjoyed a sun bath on the shore, some yards west of Atlan Deor burn". The stream called "Atlan Deor" is a garbling of the Gaelic name as it was presumably transmitted vocally over the phone to the Inverness Courier offices. Its' actual name is "Allt an Dubhair" which I would say means "the dark stream".

So the above map marks the location of the stream whose source lies high amongst the hills south-east of Fort Augustus and it lies beyond the aforementioned tourist path, so it was time for a bit more clambering along the loch shore. While we are on the map, note the Glendoe Holiday Cottages in the bottom left of the Google Maps shot. This is the location of the original house where Margaret Munro was inside watching the beast through a pair of binoculars.

Wading through the loch water, it was not long before I came upon the Dark Stream trickling into the loch. Since the account states the creature was "some yards west" of this stream, the monster's location would be somewhere not far to the right of the picture below as "west" refers to the north-east to south-west alignment of that shoreline.

Swinging round in that direction toward Borlum Bay and another camera snap shows the location of the holiday cottages left of top centre from where Munro watched the Loch Ness Monster. Obviously, if I could see the house, then an occupant would see the beach. The distance from the house to the stream area is just over 650 metres. Since Munro was watching through 8x binoculars, this reduced the effective viewing distance to about 80 metres. So it would be reasonable to place the creature somewhere along the strip of gravel beach going off to the left in the picture.

We are told that Munro's employers, the Pimleys, walked this stretch after her account and found a stick depressed into the beach. Certainly, the granularity of this shoreline looked fine enough to accommodate such a scenario. The narrow width of the strip also backs up the statement that the creature was partially in the water - suggestive of a creature longer that the beach was wide.

I would also say that the strip of shoreline provides a convenient frame of reference to gauge the size of a large creature resting upon it. Based on my observations at this location, the proposed sceptical solution of a grey or harbor seal doesn't make sense as a typical member of either species would easily fit onto the whole shore unlike the beast said to be partially in the water.

From there, I looked back to the forest behind me, in the direction the creature was facing those 91 years before. Before me was a small half-stone and half-grass path leading into the woods. I walked along it to come into a circular area almost bereft of vegetation compared to the lush trees and undergrowth surrounding it. 

It was unusual in that I do not recall in my travels around the loch such a bare area compared to the growth around it. I jokingly thought to myself, this must be a curl up and snooze area for Nessie and she had just woken up and was heading back to the loch when Margaret Munro spotted her. The bare ground was, of course, due to the slime from her skin killing off the grass below.

Well, anyway, I mused whether this was a natural or man-made area. There was traces of human activity on the shore in the form of the usual little fires wild campers set up. I don't think this had anything to do with that. There was logging operations going on further up the hill towards the main south road and so perhaps it was connected to that. It could also be some natural form of dieback due to environmental factors such as disease, but the answer was not immediately apparent.

A visit back to this spot in 2026 to see how the area has changed may answer some of these questions. But for now Winter approaches with its cold winds, snow, hail and rain. I know some fellow Nessie hunters who aim to be back up at the loch before year end, so I hope the weather fares well for them and the beast puts in an appearance (thinking everyone has disappeared for Christmas!).

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Loch Ness Hoodoo

 The Autumn of 1971 proved to be a period of interest for Loch Ness Monster historians. The "hunting" season was drawing to a close for the likes of Tim Dinsdale who had been patrolling the waters of the loch in his heavily equipped boat known as "Water Horse". Tim had taken part in some curious experiments, such as piping Beethoven's Sixth Symphony out on an underwater speaker into the  depths of the loch. However, elation and frustration arrived on the 6th September, because after ten years of watching, he had finally caught a second sighting of the Loch Ness Monster as a four to six foot long neck popped out of the waters 200 yards from him by Foyers.

Despite having a bank of five cameras pointing from the boat onto the loch, Tim succumbed to symptoms of what I call the "shock and awe" syndrome. Despite years of searching, all he could do was stare in a "spellbound" state at this mysterious creature. To my mind, you are fighting your own brain to stop going into this instinctive survival mode as you lock into assessing the potential threat before you.

He concluded in the 1972 edition of his "Loch Ness Monster" book that "a close-range sighting was so dramatic, so mesmeric in effect, that it would inhibit any camera drill which tended to obscure one's vision". More frustration was to follow in October as he was patrolling again in his boat, but in the south of the loch. The sun was low in the sky but shining brightly from the direction of Glendoe, making the glare difficult to see the loch towards Borlum Bay. 

He saw a tall man and another man walking down to the Fort Augustus Abbey jetty and was close enough to hear one man say there was movement in the water but Tim was blinded by the sun, Later he learned to his chagrin that the men were Father Gregory Brusey and friend who were about to witness a long pole-like neck in what has become one of the famous Loch Ness Monster sightings. What is not so well-known was that Tim was in a potentially great position to get a shot, but he had neglected to do his routine of getting the sun behind him and his cameras,

Tim writes that this failure to do the simple thing "was very hard to bear" and was "a blow below the belt". Nevertheless, he blamed himself for failing to do the right thing rather than any "hoodoo".

The Animated Chie Kelly Photos

 

Raynor Bubble Video 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tmysl5On4Y

Video 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD38ysGGCKQ

Arthur Grant Revisited

 

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The image below was taken by the Milestone Society and is described at this link. The three sided design would have indicated the distance to Fort William (56 miles), Fort Augustus (24) and Inverness (10).

Thoughts on the Torquil MacLeod Land Sighting

I have not really blogged on this well known sighting from 1960 by Torquil MacLeod. I covered it in my land sightings book, but an email question from a longtime blog member and student of the LNM phenomenon led me to update the subject. The story is familiar to fans of the beast and was first published anonymously in Tim Dinsdale's book "Loch Ness Monster". Around 3:30pm on February 28th 1960, Torquil stopped his car south of  Invermoriston to check out an object on the opposite shore on the Horseshoe Scree.

Upon turning my glasses on the moving object, I saw a large grey black mass (I am inclined to think the skin was wet and dry in patches) and at the front there was what looked like an outsize in elephant’s trunks. Paddles were visible on both sides, but only at what I presumed was the rear end, and it was this end (remote from the "trunk"), which tapered off into the water. The animal was on a steep slope, and taking its backbone as an approximate straight line, was inclined about 15-20 degrees out of my line of sight: the "trunk" being at the top and to the left, and the tail at the bottom, in the water, to the right....

For about 8 or 9 minutes the animal remained quite still, but for its "trunk" (I assume neck, although I could not recognize a head as such) which occasionally moved from side to side with a slight up and down motion—just like a snake about to strike; but quite slowly. It was, to my mind, obviously scanning the shores of the loch in each direction. In the end it made a sort of half jump - half lurch to the left, its "trunk" coming right round until it was facing me, then it flopped into the water and apparently went straight down; so it must be very deep close inshore at that point. As it turned I saw distinctly a large squarish ended flipper forward of the big rear paddles—or flippers: call them what you will, but not legs. I did not see the end of the tail at any time, but the animal looked something like this ...

One of the sketches which appeared in the same book is shown at the top of this article. It looks like a binocular's eye view with the lens graticulates visible as well. Now I agree with others who have pointed out that a creature of that size at that distance of one mile would not fill so much of the binocular field of view. However, I do not think this is something suspicious or incriminating for we see this same use of "artistic license" elsewhere in Dinsdale's book as seen in the "binocular" view of his own sighting which led to his famous film a few weeks later.

Dinsdale spotted his creature at a similar distance away as Torquil and it certainly would not have filled the view of his binoculars either. I also suspect the angle of incidence in this sketch is too large. My theory is that someone on the publisher's editorial team was taking liberties with how binocular sketches were framed. The error is repeated over ten years later when Nicholas Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story" has a similar illustration. Here the artist also decides to reduce the number of graticulates from five to three. Now I am no expert on how many graticulates the various makes and models of binoculars came with, but I am sure it didn't vary with the same item.

But moving on, my esteemed colleague had emailed asking me what part of the Horseshoe Scree the monster had been seen by Torquil. Not knowing the answer myself, I read the original account again and came to the conclusion that Torquil MacLeod's monster had not been on the Horseshoe Scree at all, but somewhere else. I quote further from Torquil MacLeod's account:

I was able to pinpoint both my own and the animal's position on the 1 inch ordnance map (1 inch to the mile), the distance being approximately 1,700 yards - to within 50 yards. The animal was near a burn marked on the map, and I was only yards away from a house which was also marked - hence the accurate pinpoint.

That struck me as a curious statement. Here below is a beautiful view of the scree (or craig) from the opposite shoreline that my fellow Nessie fan pointed me to. It is one of the most distinctive natural features around the loch - yet MacLeod uses an unnamed stream as his frame of reference to pinpoint the creature's location and not the clear and unmistakable contours of the horseshoe.

Credit: geograph.org.uk

In fact, in his letter to Tim (reproduced in Dinsdale's book) and another letter he wrote to Constance Whyte quoted in Witchell's book, Torquil makes no reference to the Horseshoe Craig in either. So where exactly did MacLeod see this massive beast? Looking at my ordnance survey map of the southern part of the loch, no stream is marked on the Horseshoe, but somewhere is a stream that Torquil explicitly references.

Clearly, Nessie was not doing whatever Nessies do on the scree. I brought up Google Maps to show the streams nearest  to the scree. The burn called "Stream 1" is about 340 metres from the southernmost part of the scree, while "Stream 2" is about 750 metres away. The "Stream 3" is the furthest at 1600 metres north of the scree. Since MacLeod states he was 2.5 miles out of Invermoriston when he saw his monster, I have also measured out that distance using Google's "Directions" feature.

But how do we determine which of these three streams the creature was near? I noted that Tim Dinsdale in his book reproduced a survey map to accompany his week of watching around the loch between the 18th and 23rd of April 1960. His diary mentioned him hearing of a man who had seen the monster partly out of the water "near a place called the 'horse shoe' ...". On his map Tim marks the location of some notable land sightings without naming them. There is one dot beside the annotation "Horse Shoe" which could only be that of Torquil Macleod but since the map is about six miles to the inch, it lacks the required accuracy to pinpoint the location.

In fact, I am not sure Tim knew the exact location himself if he relied solely on Torquil's letter, who would become seriously ill with cancer and sadly died just before the book was published in May 1961. Thus more detailed information on the subject may have passed away with him. So we must return to MacLeod's direct testimony and some number crunching where he stated:

I was able to pinpoint both my own and the animal's position on the 1 inch ordnance map (1 inch to the mile), the distance being approximately 1,700 yards - to within 50 yards. The animal was near a burn marked on the map, and I was only yards away from a house which was also marked - hence the accurate pinpoint.

Torquil on his map had the house near him marked as well as the stream beside the creature. Given that, it is no surprise that he confidently states a distance with an accuracy of less than 3% and that should be our main guidance in this matter. A distance of 1700 +/- 50 yards equates to 1554 +/- 46 metres. If we take the end of the 2.5 miles distance as our location for Torquil, which of the three streams is the closest to his estimated distance?

So "Stream 3" is closest at 1620 metres followed by "Stream 1" at 1720 metres and "Stream 2" at 2120 metres. Of course, it partly depends on how accurate the 2.5 miles statement is. I double checked the numbers using a good old fashioned inches ruler on a 1.25 miles to the inch paper ordnance survey map. Curiously, that gave me 1600, 1770 and 2170 metres respectively, which I think I would trust more than Google. 

The only way to make this work for the stream nearest to the Horseshoe (stream 1) is to draw out 1700 yards onto the nearest point on Torquil's road and measure that distance to Invermoriston. That comes to 2.8 miles instead of 2.5 miles. If MacLeod knew exactly where he was, I would think he figured out the miles from Invermoriston. Now the Google Street View places us about 180m south of the entrance to the Loch Ness Highland Cottages. The view of the loch is quite good here especially if one also expects less foliage in February 1960.

The other point to note is that the angle of viewing for our favoured stream is as good as the other streams. If viewing directly opposite is an angle of zero degrees and ninety degrees is basically looking down the same shoreline then our stream is just over 40 degrees as is stream 1 but stream 2 is 55 degrees, so it is at no disadvantage there. So what does the area around this stream look like? Over to Google's Loch Ness boat view.

The stream is just slightly left of centre here and with a steep slope and paucity of foliage, it fits with MacLeod's description of the creature lying on the slope. You could pick left or right of the stream, but the left of the stream looks a barer patch to me for a monster to lie on. Of course, who knows what it looked like in 1960. But does this conclusion change anything else about the story? Various people including myself have written previously on this and made our deductions and speculations.

For myself as I looked over the relevant chapter in my book "When Monsters come Ashore", I saw some minor errors but nothing substantial. Others such as Ronald Binns and Dick Raynor had expressed their opinions on what MacLeod saw. Binns' "man in a boat" theory did not seem affected but I was uncertain about Raynor's "herd of feral goats" theory.

He postulated that a group of such animals had congregated up the side of the slope to form a clump looking Nessie-like from a mile away. Aside from existing counter-arguments, it seemed to me that this new proposed location was set on a less steep slope than the Horseshoe. I reckoned the Horseshoe had a gradient of up to 60 degrees while the new location was more like 40 degrees. This would flatten the appearance of a clump of goats to an observer on the other side - assuming goats are ever seen there.

There are some unanswered questions such as what map Torquil used as I do not see the proposed stream on some contemporary OS maps. When I am next at the loch, I will conduct a further investigation at the location. To finish, I overlaid Torquil's monster onto the location with a guesstimate of relative size!

Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

 

Marmaduke Wetherell's Monster Tracks

 

It was before Christmas 1933, that big game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, announced through his sponsors, the Daily Mail, that he had found tracks of a large animal on the shores of Loch Ness. By the first week of January 1934, the Natural History Museum declared them to belong to a hippopotamus and the whole expedition suffered some reputational damage, shall we say.

Years later, Alastair Boyd tracked the origins of the tracks to a hippo foot ashtray now in the possession of Wetherell's grandson. The only question remaining of real interest was where this hoax had been perpetrated? The answer would seem to be anywhere on the south side of the loch, but there are some indicators which can help locate the spot.

Various newspaper reports of the time talk about a spot "between Dores and Foyers" (Highland News, 23rd December 1933) but others are more specific in placing it in the "vicinity of Foyers" (Scotsman, same date). While one outlier states it was found on a "beach near Glen Doe" (Northern Chronicle, 8th August 1934). Prior to "finding" the tracks, Wetherell had spent three days on the road by car and then patrolling the shores by boat in pursuit of monster evidence. The Aberdeen Press and Journal for 26th December 1933 clipping below summarized events leading up to the tracks.

Now having considered the various contemporary accounts, I would conclude the term "between Dores and Foyers" refers to the main search area and references to Foyers are the location of the spoors. But that is not enough to identify the precise location. For that we need photographs and we start with the one published at the time and show at the top of this article. Here we see Wetherell right of centre examining one of the spoors. 

The scene actually looks reminiscent of the rocky and sloped surface of the Horseshoe Scree, which is only accessible by boat and would be consistent with the one newspaper which mentioned Glendoe as the location. However, the beach below him looks too wide to me for that location. But if we consider the area below Foyers, one would conclude that Wetherell wanted a location away from human activity which would preclude the area near the now former Aluminium Works adjacent to the current modern hydro-electric power station.

However, the aforementioned Aberdeen Press and Journal furnishes further evidence by printing a photo of the shoreline where the tracks occurred. It carries the title "The beach of Loch Ness near Foyers where the spoor of the 'monster' is alleged to have been found". 

Now is this enough to locate the beach today? I would say "probably" and would start by saying that some of the largest boulders in this picture likely haven't moved an inch in the last ninety-two years. The lone, bare Winter tree is likely a massive item now and the contours of the shore line may have altered, but not significantly, though the rising and falling of the loch levels throughout the year needs to be taken into account.

Potential candidates, based on my own walks around that area could be the shoreline immediately below the Loch Ness Shores campsite, although the slope from there down to the beach is less pronounced than that seen in the picture at the top. The better candidate may be the beach further south, on the other side of the cemetery backing the camp site. It has a high gradient slope to it and has a big rocky beach. 

It would also not be accessible from the road, hence being consistent with being found on the latter day from a boat. I would add that I have held the opinion for some time now that Wetherell took the Surgeon's Photograph near that spot. That article can be found here. So, does the criminal return to the scene of the crime? In this case, it would seem so!

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Diver and the Unseen Eyes

It was a story that had always stuck in my mind back in the 1970s when I read it as a kid in Nicholas Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story". At the end of chapter five, it is briefly stated that:

Beppo, a famous circus clown went for a dive in the loch and was dragged out delirious, mumbling about "unseen eyes" looking at him from slimy black depths ...

Without further information, I jokingly assumed that this person had jumped into the loch for some clownish publicity, getting some good propulsion from those long clown shoes only to see something which was far from humorous looking straight back at him before he scrambled back to the surface. It turned out to be more complex than that as I attempt to do it more justice today.

Witchell had been summing up the hunt for the Monster up to the end of the 1950s, when this incident occurred. It was an in-between decade as wartime austerity drew to a close by 1954 and prosperity and hence tourism grew into 1959. The first book for twenty three years on the subject was published in 1957 by Constance Whyte which stoked new interest in the creature. The following year, the BBC came to the loch to produce the first serious documentary on the subject and a Herman Cockrell took some pictures of the beast during a kayak expedition. This prompted a Peter MacNab to come forward with his own mysterious photo from 1955.

Participation was on the rise again which leads us to August 1959 when the famous Bertram Mills circus came to Inverness. After a week of performances there, it was decided to mount a diving operation to look for the monster. The Inverness Courier from the 18th August 1959 sets the scene for the events of Friday the 14th:

John Newbold, a 31-year-old circus clown from Staffordshire, had a narrow escape from death when wearing a frogman's suit and aqua-lungs, he dived into Loch Ness on Friday morning to see if he could find some evidence of the existence of the famous Monster. Newbold, known professionally as Beppo, had been appearing at the Bertram Mills Circus at Inverness last week, and on Friday he went with Mr Bernard Mills on the latter's 35-ton motor yacht Centaurus, to Dores Bay. An experienced high-diver and swimmer, he had made several practice dives in the previous few days before Friday's attempt. As a precaution, the skipper of the yacht, Mr John Bruce (48), of Campbeltown. took up position in a motor boat, not far from the place where Newbold made his dive, and a member of the crew, Mr George Nicholson (34), of Southampton. was nearby in a rowing boat.

The picture at the top shows Newbold in his frogman equipment prior to the dive. This was printed in the Aberdeen Press and Journal on the 15th August, which relates what happened next:

Johnnie ... had plunged into the eerie, dark waters of the "hoodoo" loch in his frogman's outfit. When he surfaced, he collapsed unconscious. He is detained in the Royal Northern Infirmary, Inverness, for observation after having received a sedative. His condition last night was "satisfactory". It was a chance in a thousand that saved Johnnie's life. As he went unconscious after making a desperate attempt to grab the side of a small rescue boat, he was caught by the little finger as his limp body was slipping back into the water.

The Press and Journal photographer who accompanied the dive took this picture as Newbold attempted to get out of the water. The Courier article added its own words as shown below.

Newbold, whose breathing apparatus permitted a 13 minute dive, was submerged for about ten minutes, and when he surfaced Bruce saw that something had gone wrong. He brought his boat to Newbold, and managed to get a hold of him. Nicholson moved over, but their attempts to bring Newbold aboard were hampered by the aqua-lung equipment. Eventually a rope was put round him, and he was brought aboard the yacht. He was semi-conscious and delirious, and the yacht put about, and went back to Dochgarroch Pier. Newbold was rushed by car to the Royal Northern Infirmary, where he received treatment and was detained overnight, leaving hospital on Saturday afternoon.

The drama of the situation was further captured as Newbold lay on the deck and was heard to mutter the words "The water, the water. I'll make it. I'll make it" amongst other incoherent words. As the crew watched, the Journal states that he then "threw out his arms as if trying to get to his feet". As he "shivered violently" he was wrapped in blankets and put in the bunk as they raced to shore.

So what had happened down below in the murky depths? Months later, in late March 1960, the popular Australian magazine "Weekend" published an article entitled "He Fought the Horror of Loch Ness" accompanied by a dramatic illustration of Newbold tackling a tentacled beast in something reminiscent of a giant octopus attack from "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas". I have not seen the illustration, but if anyone can find it, I will include it with thanks!

The Press and Journal article did not go down that path as it related how the men on the surface tracked the air bubbles, counting the minutes towards the thirteen minute limit. It was not until about the eleventh or twelfth minute that Newbold "shot to the surface". The newspaper speculated that he dived too deep, for too long and had ascended too quickly. Given the seriousness of the situation, light-hearted speculation about monsters would seem out of place.

On his discharge from hospital, the Inverness Courier correspondent got some information from a now more lucid Newbold:

Newbold stated on Saturday that he had had a frightening experience. He had dived to a depth of about 30 feet, and then went down a further 30 or 40 feet. It was very dark below, but he noticed something which appeared to be a thick ribbon of white-coloured slime, and he went to investigate it. It was very eerie and forbidding, he said, and looking up he could see no light at all. He had the impression that eyes were watching him, and he went straight to the surface, and remembered nothing more until he recovered consciousness in hospital. Newbold added that he doubted if he would ever again make another attempt to dive into Loch Ness, and he certainly would not do it alone. 

At a depth of about seventy feet, one is pretty much surrounded by darkness. In fact, disorientation may set in without a frame of reference such as the touch of the bed or sides of the loch. Quite what made him think he was being watched may be the paradoxical psychology of utter blackness - who can see who in darkness? Having said that, one presumes John had some kind of torch with him, though it is not stated as far as I know. Finally, a newspaper local to Newbold, the Staffordshire Sentinel, spoke to him for its 17th August edition:

He went down to 30ft., levelled out, and then plunged another 30ft. to look for his prey. Suddenly he noticed the water all around him was black and the only thing he could distinguish in the gloom was a patch of whitish coloured slime ahead of him. He swam towards it, and as he was about to start investigating it he suddenly had "a queer and most frightening feeling." He looked up, but could see no shadow on the water. That decided him to get out of the water quickly, and experts now believe that his state of semi-collapse was brought about by surfacing too quickly. 

But what about that lurid Australian article? It was discussed in "The People" newspaper for 28th March 1960 which quoted this account from down under:

He suddenly realised there was a certain slimy something between himself and the surface. When he pushed against it the object turned with the motion of a fish. The magazine went on:

"It was then that something like the tentacle of an octopus gripped his right leg. The object was long and slimy and about the circumference of a man's leg. The armlike object was twisted twice around his leg and the leg was growing dead from lack of circulation. Newbold could not move it, and terror began to grip him as he felt himself being taken into deep water."

The article goes on to describe how, eventually, Newbold, gasping for breath as his air supply failed, managed to free himself from the monster's grip and shoot to the surface. It also describes how doctors who examined Newbold's right leg found "a vicious red circle from the ankle to just below the knee."

And how he was given treatment in a decompression chamber to prevent an attack of "bends", the dangerous condition suffered by divers when they surface too rapidly. 

Douglas Jack, the author of The People article, tracked down John Newbold in Stafford, who told him:

I don't know where the Australians got their story from. Apart from the fact that I saw dense layers of slime about 70 feet below the surface, nothing else happened. There was no tentacle around my leg and no injury. The only struggle I had was getting myself to the surface before my last gasp came. As I may one day go on tour in Australia, I can only hope that people who have read this nonsense about my dive won't think that I am the hoaxer.

Jack confesses that he does not know how that version of the story reached Australia. No one seemed to know, either in Australia where the article was inspired, or in London. So ends the story of John Newbold and what do I personally make of this account? It is perfectly reasonable to see how the foreboding darkness and diminishing supply of oxygen is enough to explain what happened that day. If there was a large creature lurking nearby, we and he are none the wiser.

But the one objective thing that requires an explanation is what is called "slime" floating seventy foot down in the darkness. The various accounts describe it as "a thick ribbon of white-coloured slime", "a patch of whitish coloured slime" and "dense layers of slime". What we normally understand by slime is the mucus that coats animals such as eels, frogs and snails which offers various advantages in locomotion, protection and so on.

That outer layer of slime, like the skin underneath can be shed by certain animals at certain times. How that relates to John Newbold's account is not certain as the size and extent of the slime is not described. Bigger animals leave bigger slime trails or sheddings but there should not be much floating around in that dark area of water seventy feet near the thermocline. Small amounts of detritus from small fish may float around but ribbons of slime is a different matter and dense layers of slime sounds off the scale. Moreover, fish tend not to shed slime unless in a stressful situation.

So this is perhaps a bit of a puzzler in and of itself unless it is not slime but looked like it from a distance. Was it entanglements of decaying vegetable or organic material, fecal matter or some garbage dumped from a boat? Explanations such as masses of algae bloom do not count in such an oligotrophic lake. We weren't there and so if John Newbold said it was slime, I'll accept that. There was some news a while back of some whitish organic material found in the loch, but I could not find details. If anyone has information on that, I will add it here.

Tentacles may not have gripped our terrified diver but Newbold saw something which still needs explaining.

Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

 

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