Loch Ness Monster Symposium April 2013

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first sighting of the modern age of the Loch Ness Monster and to mark this milestone a symposium is to be held in the city of Edinburgh on the 6th of April 2013. A variety of speakers have been lined up to talk on various aspects of this enduring story ending with a panel discussion on what the Loch Ness Monster is and is not. The speaker roster is below and the official website is here and if this is not yet up and running try the website of co-organise Gordon Rutter at this link.

Adrian Shine - The biology of Loch Ness and an overview of geography.

Roland Watson - The pre-1933 history of Loch Ness Monster and its folklore.

Paul Harrison - Loch Ness Monster History 1933-1971.

Tony Harmsworth - Loch Ness 1972 to present.

David Martin-Jones - Nessie on Film.

Charles Paxton - Statistical analysis of eyewitness reports.

Gordon Rutter - Photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster.

Panel Discussion - Hypotheses for the Loch Ness monster: different explanations for the Loch Ness monster as both a non-monstrous and monstrous phenomena: (panel includes Adrian Shine, Paul Harrison, Steuart Campbell and Roland Watson).

The event will be sponsored by Kraken Rum and will be run under the umbrella of the Edinburgh International Science Festival which runs from the 23rd March to the 7th April. The venue will be The Counting House and further details of the event can be found again at the aforementioned websites.

Ticket purchase is essential to attend. To buy tickets, send a paypal transfer to co-organiser Charles Paxton (cgp2@st-andrews.ac.uk) for £20 – no physical tickets will be issued but the printed Paypal receipt on the day we be matched to the attendee list.

While we are on the subject of Loch Ness Monster symposiums, I would say this is the fourth event to bear that title.  The word "symposium" itself comes from the Greek word for a drinking party which seems appropriate considering the event is sponsored by a rum manufacturer and some form of alcohol will no doubt flow later. These ancient events would be held to debate, recite or celebrate events or works. I guess the drink lubricated the smooth running of the event and the "symposiarch" would decide on the strength of the drink served up depending on the type of event. Who will have that task in April is uncertain!

As far as Nessie is concerned the most famous symposium was the one that never happened in 1975. The word was out that Robert Rines and his team had got close up head, neck and body pictures of the creatures and various people from scientific and academic backgrounds were to be invited to a symposium in Edinburgh under the chairmanship of Sir Peter Scott and the sponsorship of the Royal Society to discuss these images.

Unfortunately, the media interest began to move into hyperdrive and it was felt it was not possible to conduct such a gathering in the midst of such clamour and it was cancelled. The pictures were finally shown to the world at a meeting in the Houses of Parliament to a varied audience. I remember it well and the press description of the body and long neck as looking like "bagpipes in a snowstorm"!

Personally, I like the look of the body-neck picture as evidence but the gargoyle head never struck me as being in accord with eyewitness descriptions of a small head that was almost a continuation of the neck.

After that, the first real and best symposium was held at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh on July 25th 1987 which was organised by the Society for the History of Natural History and the International Society for Cryptozoology. The proceedings of the meeting were published in two parts in the centenary edition of the Scottish Naturalist and contained contributions from various leading lights of the Loch Ness mystery including Tim Dinsdale, Henry Bauer, Adrian Shine, Roy Mackal and Robert Rines.

But it was not for another twelve years that the next symposium was held at Loch Ness itself. This was held on the 10th July 1999 at the Drumnadrochit Hotel and was hosted by Gary Campbell of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club. the speakers over that weekend were Gary Campbell, Loren Coleman, Henry Bauer, Gordon Rutter (who is co-organising this latest event) and Ian Cameron (witness to a famous sighting in 1965). An article from the BBC news website of the time is at the end of this article (original link).

Unlike the other symposiums, this one has a distinct local flavour as all the speakers reside within Scotland. However, no such restriction applies to the audience, so all are welcome in April if they can make it - and get one of those limited tickets!

I will be speaking on the pre-Nessie era of the Loch Ness Monster (prior to 1933) and will be drawing on the research that produced my book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness", but expect some new material as well!
 


Nessie hosts hunters
 

The shores of Loch Ness play host this weekend to a major gathering of monster hunters from around the world. 

Delegates from as far afield as Japan are flying to Scotland for Saturday's first formal gathering of Nessie hunters. 

One of the most controversial debates will be on the famous - or infamous - Nessie photograph that became known as The Surgeon's Picture.

This classic image taken in 1934, showing what appeared to be a long serpent-like neck and head coming out of the water, was later proved to be a hoax.

But respected US cryptozoology researcher Richard Smith will argue that the evidence used to prove the alleged hoax may be flawed. 

Gary Campbell, President of the Inverness-based Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club said: "It should lead to a lively discussion. 

"Richard's findings don't agree with the analysis carried out in 1994 so it might be that the surgeon's photo was real all along." They are complemented by Edinburgh based zoologist Gordon Rutter and retired Highland detective Ian Cameron, who witnessed the longest Nessie sighting on record. 

 The conference, "Loch Ness 1999, an International Cryptozoology Symposium", aims to find a new way forward in the search for creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. 

Mr Campbell added: "I am delighted at the numbers coming for the conference. We have delegates attending from all over the world as well as a good turn out of local people as well." 

Delegates will hear from top US Bigfoot author Loren Coleman and Professor Henry Bauer or Virginia State University.

The Lachlan Stuart Photograph (Part Four)

On the 15th July 1951, readers of the British newspaper, the Sunday Express, were greeted with the sensational headline below. Coming to this final part of the Lachlan Stuart case reminds me to look back at what has been written on this blog. The first two parts introduced the story from 1951 and went into the allegations made against Stuart by Richard Frere. This evidence against the photograph was rejected on the grounds that it was inconsistent and contradictory.

The third post examined the claim that the sun was visible in the photograph and was hence taken in the evening rather than the morning as claimed. This was dismissed as unlikely based on the position of the alleged sun in the picture being inconsistent with the date the picture was taken.

In fact, I have been asked why I am critiquing the critics' arguments instead of positively discussing the arguments for a Loch Ness Monster in the picture. In my opinion, that is not a valid point. If I think someone's arguments against a picture are weak or simply wrong, then I will point them out. Now it is acknowledged that such dismantling does not prove the object in the picture is our legendary monster but there are two points to be made.

Firstly, such arguments against this or any other evidence weakens it in the eyes of those who read it but do not have the resources or inclination to dig deeper. The counter-arguments presented on this blog will inform readers more and allow them to make a better judgement.

Secondly, moving a photograph out of the "proven hoax" category into the "inconclusive" category is good enough for me. After all, how am I or anyone meant to prove that the object in the picture is a plesiosaur, giant salamander, outsized eel or paranormal tulpa? Again, I leave readers to form their own opinion.

So putting aside the claims about Richard Frere and an evening sunset, we are left with only one final objection, which is the issue of the shallowness of the waters around Whitefield and the corollary that such conditions are amenable to a hoax (such as our oft mentioned hay bales). That parts of the shore are shallow has been on the record for over a century and Constance Whyte, who was at the scene of the photo within days, acknowledged this in her book "More Than A Legend" in 1961 (p.12):

Mr. Stuart thought too from its movements and ability to manoeuvre in comparatively shallow waters that the creature must be propelled by limbs as well as a powerful tail.

However, despite her examination of the location and the witnesses, she did not come to the conclusion that the shallowness of the water was a problem and stated (p.10 of 3rd edition):

I could not put forward this photograph with more confidence if I had taken it myself.

Likewise, after blazing the photograph across their front page on the 15th of July, the Sunday Express sent two journalists up to Loch Ness days later to conduct their own investigation. Their names were Brendan Kemmet and John Quigley and the fruit of their labours was a follow up article in the next edition of the 22nd of July (banner headline below with picture of the Stuart family).

Whyte, Kemmet and Quigley were on the shore examining the area and assessing the story against what they saw. It is to be noted that none of them saw the alleged hay bales that Richard Frere claimed to have seen behind some shoreline bushes less than two weeks later. If they had, we can be sure Stuart's story would not have appeared in Whyte's book and the Express would have quietly dropped the story whilst asking for their money back.

The journalists cross-examined Taylor Hay and Lachlan Stuart and could not shake the men's testimonies. Stuart himself said he was prepared to swear on oath what he had told them and at the end the two journalists headed back to London to prepare their article of vindication.

Steuart Campbell, in his book "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence" suggests Taylor Hay may not be as real a person as made out when he cleverly points out that "Taylor Hay" sounds similar to the phrase "Tale Of Hay" but the fact that Hay spoke to Kemmet and Quigley suggests he is a real person.

The leading Loch Ness spokesman of that time, Maurice Burton, states in his book "The Elusive Monster" that he spoke to Lachlan Stuart the following September and tells us he visited the site to take some comparison photographs for what he describes as "the most important" photograph. He comments:

I have made a number of comparisons, both on the lochside below Whitefield and with photographs taken during my visit to Loch Ness, of objects of known size and known distance from the shore, and I see no reason to modify the estimates of size made by Mr. Stuart.

However, it is unlikely that Burton met Stuart at Loch Ness. Witchell's "Loch Ness Story" tells us that both men were guests on a BBC television panel program on the Loch Ness Monster which was broadcast on the 26th September 1951. So it is more likely that Burton met and talked with Lachlan Stuart in London and his visit to the Whitefield site was nine years later when he visited the loch in 1960 to gather material for his forthcoming book.

Burton's own conclusion is that the photograph belongs to the "phenomenon associated with the term Loch Ness Monster" and says "we have to  look elsewhere than among the prehistoric animals to account for it". I take that to mean Burton thinks there is a perfectly normal and rational explanation for the photograph but had not made his mind up as to which one was most appropriate!

A SHALLOW ARGUMENT

So much for the initial investigations of the time. But going back to the shallowness of the waters of Whitefield, these depths were surveyed in 1903 by Sir John Murray as part of their general survey of Scottish lochs. Their survey map for Whitefield is shown below.

If we look at the depth of the loch at the point where the path up to Lachlan Stuart's croft meets the main road, then the depth is 68ft (~21m) at 175ft (~54m) from the shore. The actual profile of the loch sides underwater is a gradually descending "lip" which then steeply drops to the loch bottom at some distance out. What that depth may be at varying locations up to that distance can only be known by going in and testing the waters.

In that light, a recent set of photographs was taken by Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor. You can see his results at this link (it might be an idea to keep a separate window open on that page as it is discussed here). The bottom line of Dick's article is that the Lachlan Stuart photograph is technically not difficult to reproduce using hay bales.

Now to employ a phrase Dick once used on another website (below), I have to be the harshest critic of the evidence presented against this photograph.

That is my position exactly. I am open to the possibility [of things waiting to be discovered - Ed.], but I have to be the harshest critic of the evidence presented to avoid being lumped in with the absentee gullible bloggers. 

Looking at Dick's analysis raises one obvious question to me - why didn't he reproduce the original photograph?

By that I mean, why he didn't line up the two bales of hay with two of the original humps and (for lack of a third bale) have his colleague stand in the position of the third hump? The closer to the original picture, the greater the visual impact. Dick would know that as a photographic expert.

But instead we have a picture of a man with two small hay bales either side of him occupying less than half the area occupied by the three Stuart humps. Though Dick says the aim of the experiment was not to reproduce the original photograph, I say "Why not?". It is unclear from Dick's statement whether it was a case of his team "would not" or "could not" reproduce the original photograph. It is further unclear whether an attempt to move the haybales further to the right would result in them disappearing under deeper water and render the whole experiment questionable.

Dick says his experiment proves that Lachlan Stuart's ducks or humps do not metaphorically line up. Unfortunately, neither do his humps.

Perhaps a better photograph will turn up. But even then it should not be assumed that this was the spot where the photograph was taken. In fact, no one knows where the exact spot is and guesswork would be involved depending on one's initial assumptions (e.g. did Stuart hoax the picture or not). When I was there last October, I took a series of photographs over a length of about 60 metres which could also equally be spots where the picture could have been snapped. This series could have been extended for a lot further as progress is made southwards down the shore.

But the problem with the pictures I present above is that each successive hump would be further out from the shore and more difficult to keep at a "hump-like" height above water. I present my own two overlays here and wonder if hay bales could stay high enough in those locations? Note the second photo is panned further out from shore to show the overlaid humps further out.

The other issue is the distance of the objects. I asked Dick how far the bales were from the shore and he gave a range of 7 to 12 metres. However, Steuart Campbell, who also has some skill in photography has this to say in his book "The Loch Ness Monster - The Evidence" (p.32 of 2002 edition):

Making certain assumptions about the camera, it can be shown that if the objects are in the water they are about 21m away and about 6m long overall. From the fact that the camera was aimed at Urquhart Castle we know that it was pointed at about 45 degrees to the shore; this puts the nearest object to the shore still 11m from it. At that distance the water is too deep for it to be a rock.

This however puts the rightmost hump even further out. I emailed Steuart and asked him how he came by these results and he kindly sent me his original calculations. These put the rightmost hump at just over 15m from the shore. In summary, at an estimated distance of 21 metres, this is potentially three times as far away as the low end of Dick's estimate.

If  Steuart Campbell's calculations are correct, Dick Raynor's humps are too close and probably in the wrong place. Moreover, if the objects are 21 metres away, his haybales would appear smaller at that distance and smaller than Stuart's humps. It's all about assumptions and I suspect you pick the ones which suit your case. Once again, let the reader make his own mind up.

Elsewhere in the article, Dick continues to advocate Richard Frere's "confession". We have dealt with this elsewhere.

EVENING OR MORNING?

His final point is the persistence with claiming the photograph was taken in the evening. Again, we dealt with the alleged evening sun in the picture, but Dick doesn't mention this as he takes another tack. First, he states that his evening photograph (in which you can see the sun) is similar in shadows to the Stuart picture and claims this is proof that the Stuart picture is an evening picture. My first reply to this is that the Stuart picture is actually brighter than his reconstruction shot and for some reason the Stuart picture he uses is a bit darker than the one I have below which is taken from Constance Whyte's book. It all depends which version you use from what book/website/etc.

Secondly, Dick can prove his is an evening shot because the sun is visible. In Stuart's picture, no evening sun is visible. Along these lines, Dick Raynor takes the commercial photographer to task who developed the Lachlan Stuart film for advocating a morning time for the snap. You can read Dick's argument at his website.

Not having expertise in photography but at the same time not being satisfied that Dick's explanation about orthochromatic film was the only (let alone the best) explanation, I sought opinion and advice from those who also have some skill in this area. That indirectly includes the man who developed the Stuart photograph, John MacPherson via both Express articles. He says:

The film appeared to be perfectly normal  in every way. Mr Stuart said he took the snap at 6:30am and the picture of the monster was dull enough to have been taken at that time. The negative development took nearly twice the normal time owing to the light conditions at the time of the exposure.

Unlike the rest of us who debate this subject sixty years later, Mr. MacPherson had access to the negatives and the best prints and he gives his opinion on the poor clarity of the hills in the second Express article:

I know something about times and lights, and I also know the locality where the picture was taken. I would say that the film was perfectly consistent with a 6:30am snapshot. It was not a very good picture. These little box cameras have limited performance. In this case the camera seems to have been moved.

You can disagree with MacPherson if you wish, but you cannot deny he was closer to the subject material. The phrase "limited performance" offers a clue to a simpler reason for the poor light levels in the photograph. Consumer cameras at that time were indeed limited in their performance. A look around the Internet for 1950s cameras gives an entry level camera that would be simple in the extreme. Indeed some would offer only one setting for aperture and shutter speed that reminds me of those disposable cameras you pick up for your kids these days. Others might have two or more settings which elicits two speculations.

It is to be noted that Lachlan Stuart had limited knowledge of photography as he states that the camera had a spool winding problem which had to be corrected by his wife after each exposure. According to the second Express article, there were five previous exposures on the film and these were family snaps. If we assume these were taken in typical summer afternoon light conditions, then it is possible that when Lachlan Stuart ran down the hill in haste to take his picture, the shutter speed was set for sunny afternoon conditions rather than the early morning. This would, of course, result in an underexposed picture lacking the desired details of the remote hills.

Speculation number two kicks in for a camera with only one setting for aperture and shutter speed. You bring that into an early morning situation and again the picture could be underexposed. So the issue here is not low light levels due to a late evening shooting but low light levels due to an inadequate combination of aperture size and shutter speed.

But, as pointed out by those I emailed, underexposed film can be compensated for at the development stage (but I am told with an increase in contrast and graininess). Fair enough, let us assume that was done - though I wonder how this increase in contrast and graininess contributes to a lack of detail in the picture. One other opinion raised was that the film may be fogged due to the camera being inadequate. In that light, I requote MacPherson:

It was not a very good picture. These little box cameras have limited performance.

In other words, the lack of details could easily be not down to dark conditions, but it being a rubbish camera. This is further exacerbated by two facts from the Express articles. Firstly, Lachlan Stuart states that the winding mechanism on the camera was faulty (confirmed by Quigley). Secondly, he said it was bought for him "many years ago" by his wife. Could it be this already old and decrepit camera was further bashed in some way which damaged the winding mechanism but also affected the exposure mechanism in a way that would always render pictures less than they should be? In the light of these observations, I don't think one is compelled to consider an evening setting for this photograph.

WOODEN POSTS

There was one more minor mystery concerning this location which is of more historical interest. When the Loch Ness and Loch Morar Project had a look at this photograph and its location around the early 1980s, they mentioned seeing fence posts in the water indicating the shallowness of the shoreline. When I was there I saw no fence posts and assumed they had long gone (though admittedly I only looked along a few hundred metres of shoreline).

However, a look at ordnance survey maps from various years reveals no piers at Whitefield. What could these wooden posts have been? An answer was perhaps forthcoming in a 6 inch to the mile map from 1862 which reveals a potential boathouse in that vicinity long ago. The boathouse is the grey rectangular box on the shore above the big letter "C". It is also located opposite where the small forestry road from Stuart's croft would have met the main road.

There is a further confirmation of this by the presence of old stone steps at the very same location which I photographed (below). Clearly, if you have a boat house, you will need ease of access via a path and steps from the main road.

What this boathouse looked like exactly we may never know but there are old boat houses still around the loch such as this one at Knockie near the Horseshoe crag (© Copyright John Allan and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence - original link here).

And these ones ... (original link).

The boat house posts were gone when I visited in 2012. They were still visible thirty years earlier but what was their condition in 1951 when Lachlan Stuart took his picture? Were they higher and did they extend further out? This raises one final question since Dick seems to have taken his picture around the same location. If he had been transported back to 1951 and taken the picture from the same spot, would boathouse posts have appeared in it - unlike Lachlan Stuart's picture?

CONCLUSIONS

I have probably written more words on the Lachlan Stuart photograph than all the Nessie books on this picture put together. Whether that amounts to a hill of beans or not is down not to me or any other presumed "expert" on this subject. It's down to what you (plural) think of it.

The mystery and, perhaps to some extent, the reality of the monster is not driven by "experts" but by the collective attention of the public who have held it in their consciousness for decades. Therefore, the veracity of the Loch Ness Monster does not depend on whether the Lachlan Stuart photograph is a genuine mystery or not. As far as I am concerned, the creature continues to make its way through the murky bottom silt and hopefully this blog will make its way to the next subject in this most fascinating of mysteries.

Seal Seen 50 Miles Inland

In a previous article on the monster spotted several times on the Beauly Firth (which the River Ness connects with Loch Ness), we wondered about how easy a creature could get up the River Ness to our famous loch.

Now only a couple of weeks later we hear of a seal in England which has forged 50 miles inland to a local lake. The YouTube clip is below.

Note how it tackles a river bank against the water flow. If a seal can do it, what about a Nessie? Mind you, the seal seems to have needed the river to be in spate. The BBC report is below (original link here).

Seal seen at Drayton Lakes Reserve - 50 miles from sea

 

A seal is thought to have swum more than 50 miles (80km) along a flooded river to an RSPB nature reserve, where it was filmed "hopping" into a lake.

The marine mammal was filmed in a YouTube clip, published on Sunday, in a lake at Fen Drayton Lakes Reserve, in Swavesey, Cambridgeshire.

Graham Elliott of the RSPB said it was a "surprising" but not unique sighting.

"You occasionally get seals in the River Ouse near St Ives but I've never known of one here before," he said.

"The surprising thing was to see it leaving the river and hopping over the bank, entering the gravel pits area."

Thought by experts to be a common seal, the footage shows the seal battling to cross a barrier to get into a lake on the RSPB site.

The 29-year-old man who captured the footage said he initially thought he had seen a dog when he approached the area while on a walk with a friend at about 13:45 GMT on Sunday.

The designer, who wanted to be known as Robjn, said: "At first sight, I thought it was a dog in trouble but as it came up for air I could see it was a seal. 

"It was swimming up a ditch that links to the Great Ouse. In the video, it is swimming from the ditch up into the flooded field.

"It had a few tries at different points of climbing the bank but in the film was the successful attempt. After that point we didn't see it again."

Water levels have remained high following recent heavy rain in the area, leading to the river flooding nearby fields.

Mr Elliott said the creature could prove to be a "great visitor attraction", although it has not been seen since the footage was taken.

"If anybody does see it, we'd love to hear the news," he said.

"It was probably just exploring new views."

Mr Elliott said the RSPB would monitor the situation and there was no apparent cause for concern.

"It's perfectly happy in the lake with plenty of food to sustain it. It's not a threat to any other wildlife and hopefully it will find its way out the same way it came in," he said.

"If it can't, we'll then consult with the RSPCA to make a decision on what will happen next."

Another Car Accident at Loch Ness

I sometimes wonder if drivers are indulging in more Nessie watching that road watching as the road to the Castle is not exactly difficult to navigate. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. From the Inverness Courier 31st December:

FIVE people had a miraculous escape when the car they were travelling in went off the road and plunged 100 feet into Loch Ness.

The single vehicle accident happened shortly after 9.30 this morning when the cer was travelling on the A82 between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston.

The stretch of road where the accident occurred has some of the highest points above the loch with almost vertical drops in places.

Emergency services including police and ambulance attended but amazingly all five occupants of the car escaped relatively unscathed despite the 100 foot drop from the road to Loch Ness.

They were all taken to Raigmore Hospital where they were treated for minor injuries. Their names have not been released.

The A82 was closed for a short while around 1.00pm while the car was recovered from the water and winched back on to trhe road and taken away on a breakdown truck.

Nessie Review of 2012

I hope you all had a good Christmas. I feel slightly heavier for it and it's not over yet. Cryptozoologically, I had one experience of an out-of-place animal. The turkey I ordered was one size too big - it shouldn't have been there. That's an official bona fide sighting.

Anyway, it is nearly the end of the year and a good time to look back at what has made Loch Ness Monster news nationally and internationally as well as a personal view of the perennial mystery of Loch Ness.

The first thing to say is how quiet things have been at Loch Ness in 2012 compared to the previous year. In 2011, we had the Rowe and Jobes photos, the Atkinson sonar contact and various sightings such as the Hargreaves/MacGruer head-neck sighting. In fact, perhaps because it was quiet, the Atkinson sonar story was rerun again in 2012!

But this year only one story hit the media headlines both nationally and internationally and that was the George Edwards photograph. The fact that this picture turned out to be a fake leaves us with a fairly echoing void as far as the media is concerned. As a result, any alleged Loch Ness reports have to come in under the radar of "normal" reporting.

The first report came via Gary Campbell and was covered on this blog here. The witness reported a strange whirlpool in the area just south of Urquhart Castle on April 4th. Despite the witness saying there was no boat traffic in the area, one Loch Ness researcher suggested it was just one of the cruise boats doing a circular turn. A while later when I was at Loch Ness I watched one of these craft doing a turn. The water disturbance created died down pretty quickly and the boat did not get out of sight quickly enough to fool me or anyone.

Strangely enough, another potential witness of the webcam variety emailed me with his sequence of webcam shots taken the next day. That event was reported in this blog article. Now, normally such images are inconclusive at best but this one had the advantage of being animatable plus the object in the sequence appears to change shape (see below). I speculated whether this was due to the changing front portion submerging and resurfacing or some trick of the light. It was suggested by the same Loch Ness researcher that this was due to this being a two-tone boat. However, the snapshots do not really suggest this and the sun at the time was to the right and mostly behind the observer and object. Once again, make your own judgement.

The third alleged sighting once again came via non-conventional routes. This time it was the comments section of the online Inverness Courier in August and I discuss it for the first time on this blog. The comment ran thusly:

I know of two ladies who have recently seen the same sort of thing as Mr Edwards in the Loch, quite near Dores Inn but no way would they ever go to the press with the news for fear of attracting the ridicule that we see on this page today. 

I emailed the author of the comment for further details. His reply was:

No, I am very sorry but I cannot breach their confidence in any way. Neither had ever believed in the “Monster” but like many others, myself included, let folk get on with the matter.

What he could tell me was this:

They are retired ladies but have been close friends since childhood and meet up from time to time to take a walk. They had parked at Dores Pub and gone down the path in the direction of  Aldourie Castle. It was on their way back that they saw this object maybe 200 yds from shore but then it just submerged ... there is no way that this pair want any publicity.

I also have a new sighting report from 2010 but again getting details, let alone anyone to name themselves, is not easy at all. This blog will respect people's anonymity 100 percent but I can't force people in these situations.  The thread running through these these reports is anonymity. The current trend of demythologising Loch Ness Monster reports into logs, dogs, boats and goats creates a negative feedback loop where witnesses feel foolish going public with something they think is out of the ordinary but fear getting a far from sympathetic hearing. The negative feedback circle completes when the absence of such reports is taken to be proof that people are now more properly educated and not as easily fooled by such everyday objects. Far from it, I would suggest.

That brings me to the one big story of 2012 and that was George Edwards. That event was covered in my two posts here and here. However, you won't see it listed in my recent sightings page as it is most certainly a hoax. Long time monster hunter, Steve Feltham was alerted to this when a local told him that the hump in the photo looked like the one used in a Nessie documentary a few years back.

This fibreglass prop was traced and the expose was complete as Steve went public with the prop. George to this day denies it is a hoax but the fact that he is also accused of another hoax photograph years before plus it was his boat that hosted the fibreglass hump documentary does not help his case at all.

 
On top of these lochside stories, we had some interesting "offsite" ones like some people claiming that Nessie disproves evolution. Well, I thought about that at the time, but it would help to identify Nessie first before jumping to conclusions! The Olympic Torch also crossed it way up Loch Ness prior to a very successful Games in London and the TV camera typically went offline, just in case Nessie appeared. Also, the most famous painting of Nessie came to light and sold for £4,750.

From a personal point of view, I made several trips to the loch in 2012 conducting various hunts and following up on monster cases both old and new. One such trip report can be found here. Visits to such famous locations as the Lachlan Stuart and Hugh Gray photographs were made as well as using trap cameras and night vision equipment in the more modern hunt for the Loch Ness Monster.

This blog has also gone from strength to strength thanks to your visits. To gauge how much the message of the real mystery of the Loch Ness Monster is getting out there, I normally do a search for the phrase "Loch Ness Monster" on Google's search engine. Currently, this blog tends to sit around midway on the first page of hits which is great and this means that the sceptical sites are not getting it all their own way when people look for Nessie information on the Internet.

In regards to the Edwards photo, the blog even got at least as high as third spot in August as people looked for more information on this outwardly intriguing picture. Whether this was a good thing or not is arguable. They say all publicity is good publicity but in this case I am not so sure.

Looking ahead to 2013, we enter the 80th year of the phenomenon known as the Loch Ness Monster (though it was seen and known centuries before under other names). We cannot say what will turn up in terms of sightings, photographs or films. I can only hope for the umpteenth time that next year will bring forth that final, conclusive evidence but you may not be surprised that my optimism is very much tempered by past experience. However, with such CGI clips as this recent fake eagle trying to kidnap a toddler, one wonders how often the mantra "That's CGI, that's CGI, that's CGI, ..." will be chanted from now on when a half decent Nessie footage appears next?




 
I am hoping that Paul Harrison will publish his new book on Frank Searle in 2013, based on interviews with Frank in Fleetwood about ten years ago. There is also one other event coming up, but more on that later.

As far as this blog is concerned for next year, I have a growing list of subject titles for articles and that number is sixty just now. Since this does not include articles on as yet unforeseen events or whatever else may spring into my mind over the next twelve months, I would like to think the blog is well stocked for material in 2013 and beyond. Expect analysis and opinion on a wide range of subjects both old and new.

So I thank readers - be they sceptical, believing or undecided - for their custom and wish you all a prosperous and happy 2013.

Another forthcoming Nessie Lecture

On the back of my own lecture in January sea serpent researcher, Charles Paxton, will be giving a talk about the Loch Ness Monster on April the 9th, 2013 at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in the harbour town of Anstruther, near St.Andrews in Fife, Scotland.

The promotion webpage says:

The talk will explore what science says about the biology of the loch, about what people see and the probability of an unknown species in the loch.

You can find more details here.

Nessletter No.159 now published

Rip Hepple, veteran Loch Ness Monster expert, has published the latest issue of his long running Loch Ness newsletter, "Nessletter" (dated November 2012). As usual, it is a good read, but if you want to find out for yourself, his address at:

Subscription rates are: £3 (UK) or $10 (USA) for 12 issues (published intermittently, not monthly)

R.R.Hepple
7 Huntshieldford
St John's Chapel
Weardale
Co Durham
DL13 1RQ
United Kingdom

 

I would point out that an archive of Rip's older newsletters can be found here. This is half complete, but I have now scanned the remaining newsletters and uploaded them to Google Drive. All that remains is to add these as links to the aforementioned archive link.

Rip's newsletter will enter its 39th year next month and has been a valuable source of information and analysis throughout those years. Here's to another year!

The Beast of the Beauly Firth

Whilst looking through some archives, I came across some items of interest on a creature reported in the Beauly Firth. This stretch of coastal water outside Inverness is about six miles long by two miles wide and has some significance to our interest in Loch Ness as the mouth of the River Ness meets the Beauly Firth at its exit into the Moray Firth (see map below).

The first report was found in a couple of far flung newspapers and the clipping below is taken from the Schenectady Gazette of the 1st March, 1955 (a newspaper from Schenectady county in New York state).

The next account is sixteen years later and is taken from the Inverness Courier for the 30th July 1971.

"Was there a monster in the Beauly Firth on Monday afternoon? Twenty boys of the Newcastle Cathedral Choir, who returned home yesterday after spending a nine day holiday in Inverness are convinced that they saw such an object some miles west of Inverness in the Beauly Firth. The boys were returning to Inverness by train on Monday afternoon after a day outing to Skye, when one of the party, Peter Harrison, noticed a trail of foam in the middle of the Firth. He shouted to his pals, and the three leaders of the party - Mr. G. East, Mr. R.? and Mr. G. Bolton - to look out of the window of the train.

After two minutes there was a splash and a large, black slimy object appeared. It moved eastwards for 40 seconds, at a speed of 25 miles per hour before producing another splash, again creating a trail of foam. The boys, who said the object had one hump and was too large and too fast to be a porpoise, managed to obtain a clear sighting of the object, and each was able to draw a sketch of what they saw.

Only last week, a family from Cupar, Fife, walking along the shore at the Longman, claimed they saw a 'monster' in the Beauly Firth."

I don't have any more on this second sighting despite checking back in the Courier archive. The reporter takes a somewhat sceptical stance and suggests his own explanation for the sighting:

"Porpoises are frequently seen in the Beauly and Moray Firths, swimming in schools, while seals are occasional visitors, and there have even been bottle-nosed whales. There may therefore be a simple natural explanation of these sightings, especially as the foam disturbance may have been caused by porpoises in battle with salmon or other fish which can be an awe inspring sight."

The famous Nessie witness Alex Campbell was a correspondent for the Courier at this time, but it is not known if he was the author of this report.

What are we to make of these reports? Apart from simplistic explanations about porpoises which are regularly seen in those parts and are easily recognised by their dorsal fin, could this alleged beast possibly be our own Loch Ness Monster out of its regular "chez mois"?

Now reports of strange creatures have been reported from adjoining Loch Dochfour, the River Ness and now the Beauly Firth. No doubt more could be dug up with further investigation. But should we seriously say that these were not the Loch Ness Monster but the Loch Dochfour Monster, the River Ness Monster and the Beauly Firth Monster?

Probably not. That the monster could get to these parts is not impossible and has been discussed since the days of Rupert T. Gould in 1934. His motivation for this topic was obvious enough having authored the book "The Case for the Sea Serpent" not long before in 1930. Gould believed the Loch Ness Monster could be a stray sea serpent and hence an access route from the sea which did not prove too difficult was uppermost in his mind as he traced the route from Loch Ness to the Moray Firth in his book "The Loch Ness Monster and Others".

A passage up and through the River Ness looked the most obvious while the other journey through the Caledonian Canal looked rather more daunting to a sea serpent considering the number of locks that have to be negotiated.

The other option not taken up by Gould is the famous or infamous subterranean passage running beneath the Highlands and out to some unknown outlet in the sea. Going by the sightings mentioned here, perhaps subterranean advocates should concentrate their efforts to find this fabled tunnel in the Beauly Firth area. Whether such a tunnel actually exists is another matter...

Forthcoming Nessie Lecture

I will be giving a talk on the Loch Ness Monster to the Edinburgh Fortean Society on Tuesday January 8th 2013. The title will be "Recent Events From Loch Ness" and reviews the various Nessie related events that have been going on at the loch in 2012 and also a look at 2011. 

It will look at events covered by the media such as the Edwards photo, the Atkinson sonar contact, the Jobes and Rowe photos as well as other sightings. Not all these items will be genuine sightings but then again, neither are they all hoaxes or misinterpretations!

There will also be a personal view from the grassroots as one who has been to the loch multiple times over that period armed with various monster hunting devices and visiting monster sites and monster witnesses.

The event will be rounded off with a Q&A session.

The talk will be held at The Counting House at 7:30pm and you can also check out the Society's webpage. If you can make it, that would be great.

Loch Ness Book Free Online

Tony Harmsworth, long time Loch Ness researcher, is putting his book "Loch Ness Understood" online for free viewing. The book also goes by the former title "Loch Ness, Nessie and Me". I reviewed this book last year but now you can read it for yourself at Tony's link.

Tony says the project has not quite finished, so check back for updates.

A Good Old Fashioned Nessie Documentary

I came across this old documentary from 1976 called "Mysterious Monsters" which was narrated by the well known American actor, Peter Graves, of "Mission Impossible" fame. Funnily enough, it was another actor from that program, Leonard Nimoy, who also narrated the similarly themed "In Search Of ..." series.

Actually, the documentary itself concentrates mainly on Bigfoot, but there is a nine minute clip near the start of the hour and a half film that talks about the Loch Ness Monster. It starts about 8 minutes and 50 seconds in but click on this link to go direct to the Loch Ness part.

In it you will see clips of Tim Dinsdale, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, Roberts Rines and his team at work and that perennial eyewitness, Father Gregory Brussey, from Fort Augustus Abbey talking about his long necked sighting. The snapshot of Dinsdale above shows him with his model monster which I have seen in films and books multiple times. I wonder if it survives to this day?

Good fun although a bit dated. The documentary itself typifies a more dynamic, mysterious and romantic age for these things. I remember as a kid in the late 1970s regularly going into one of the main bookshops in Glasgow to be confronted with row upon row of books on mysticism, monsters, ghosts and UFOs. This filtered through to TV, newspaper and magazine articles which abounded. I have some to this day including the 150 plus issues of the very popular "The Unexplained" magazine which I religiously bought from my newsagent every week. In some sense, it was exciting times, something to distract oneself from the troubles of that turbulent decade.

It was a generation of people exploring the weird and wacky but go into a bookshop today and you behold a different scene. Those books are gone but they are now replaced with a similar acreage of tomes on popular science and scepticism. You are not likely to easily find a book on the Loch Ness Monster. Such is the shift in culture after a span of thirty years. I wonder what the popular titles will be to excite the imaginations of men another generation from now?

Das Ungeheuer von Loch Ness

The fame of the Loch Ness Monster spreads far in place and time and Germany is no different as a country that loves a good mystery. The title is how I think the Germans label Nessie, I may be wrong (I did French at school). However, there is one little episode that caught my eye as I perused the newspapers of old some time back. I came across this article below from the the Courier-Mail of Queensland dated the 3rd of April 1934.

The headline reads thusly:

THE LOCH NESS

MONSTER

German April 1 Hoax

BERLIN, April 1.

"Captured at last; Loch Ness monster brought to Edinburgh." 

These headlines appear In "Berliner, Illustrierte Zeitung," a weekly magazine, devoted to the more stolid type of pictures, science, and exploration. Under the headlines a photograph shows a monster, 100ft long, with a 20ft tail weighing 30 tons, being caught in a huge steel net on the shores Loch Ness, with two tugboats waiting to head the monster back in case it escaped.

Another picture depicts a vast crowd viewing the monster at Edinburgh, the caption stating that an American circus proprietor's offer of £500,000 was likely to be refused owing to scientific reasons. This and other equally wild pictures are the only justification found.

Now hoaxes are not unheard of concerning the Loch Ness Monster, but one from Nazi Germany adds a little bit more grist to the mill. That date of April 1st 1934 has already been suggested as the actual date the Surgeon's Photograph was taken, but certainly the editor of the Berliner got there first. 

By a stroke of luck, I managed to find one of the hoax photographs that the Berliner had concocted. I found it in an old issue of The Scots Magazine and it is here below. I would love to see the other pictures that are mentioned in the article, but nothing as yet has turned up.

As far as Nazi Germany was concerned, not much more is mentioned in the literature. That may be partly due to the language barrier as the vast majority of Loch Ness researchers speak English (the one notable exception here is Ulrich Magin who has made some good contributions to the Loch Ness story - great if you could email me at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com). 

Indeed, as wartime austerity and fuel rationing set in, Highland tourism dropped and so did Loch Ness Monster reports. Add to this the demand for column inches on the war effort and we have little from any country on Nessie. In 1940, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, wrote a double page piece for the Hamburger Illustrierte which espoused that the Loch Ness Monster was the invention of the tourist trade and that a nation which believed in such nonsense was so monstrously stupid that they could not win the war.

Looks like he was wrong on both counts. I guess he was just jealous because Germany had no lake monsters. Scotland must have more lake monsters per head of population than any other country, but I wouldn't swear to that as Ireland might have a claim.

A year later Mussolini's paper Popolo D'ltalia claimed that bombing of Britain had been so  successful that the Loch Ness Monster had been killed by a direct hit. An Italian bomber pilot had apparently seen the body of the stricken creature. Subsequent post-war reports of the creature proved he must have mistaken an otter in a heat haze or a flock of mersanger birds for the great beast!

For indeed, in 1943, Commander Russell Flint was in command of a motor launch as it made its way south towards Fort Augustus at 25 knots when:

"there was the most terrific jolt. Everybody was knocked back. And then we looked for'ard. And there it was. There was a very large animal form disappeared in a flurry of water. It was definitely a living creature - certainly not debris or anything like that."

Flint sent this message to the Admiralty:

"Regret to inform your Lordships, damage to starboard bow following collision with Loch Ness Monster. Proceeding at reduced speed to Fort Augustus."

For which he received a "bit of a blast" when he got back to HQ. Cynics may reply Flint was just covering up some botched navigation. I won't pretend to have all the answers and just class it as an interesting story from those dark, war torn years.

 

The Marks of Honesty and Deceit

While the final part of the series of the Lachlan Stuart photograph was in progress, a thought occurred to me as I was considering this oft vilified forester.

Lachlan Stuart and other authors of classic Nessie pictures have been branded as hoaxers by mainstream Nessie analysts today. For example, it has been suggested that Hugh Gray knowingly photographed a dog, Kenneth Wilson was in on a plot hatched by Marmaduke Wetherell to fool the Daily Mail. Likewise, Lachlan Stuart is accused of setting up some hay bales in the water whilst Peter MacNab deviously photographed nothing more than a boat wake and then touched it up in his photographic dark room.

Of course, there are others such as Frank Searle and Tony "Doc" Shiels, and the list of the accused is long and wide. 

Now, I reject the contemporary statements that all the classic Nessie pictures have been explained away. I have critiqued that assertion on this blog before and found it wanting. However, it was a series of similar statements from debunkers that got me thinking.

Whenever a photograph was discussed, such critics would, of course, reject it but they would sometimes add a statement to the effect that the hoax got out of hand or what started out as a simple joke blew out of all proportion when the media got their hands on it.

The implication of such a statement being that the hoaxer underestimated the public reaction to their photographs. This led me to ask a question. If the so called hoaxer was taken aback by such a media reaction, what then should his reaction be? One might retort that the answer depends on the personality of the hoaxer. That is true but tells us nothing. But if we look at the reactions of known hoaxes, we may get a better picture.

As it turns out, only one photograph (as far as I know) had a public confession and that was the Surgeon's Photograph. The confessor was Christian Spurling who admitted to modelling the now iconic image. However, the man who was the focus of attention was Dr. Kenneth Wilson and his reaction to the limelight was markedly different. As Alastair Boyd and David Martin point out in their expose book, Wilson did not confess but was very evasive in his answers to Loch Ness researchers, even to the point of obliquely suggesting all was not as they thought with the photograph.

But was not Wilson a great practical joker who loved a laugh? I wouldn't wish to dispute that, but when a practical joke such as this becomes a media monster of international dimensions, even a hoaxer knows when to stand back and say no more. 

Wilson, of course, did the right thing, the hoax had produced the desired effect at the time but there was no need to prolong it or succour it any more and he henceforth minimised his involvement with the affair. Pushing it any more would be counter productive, intrusive and possibly detrimental if it ever was exposed in his lifetime.

I would put it to you that Kenneth Wilson is the model one-off hoaxer and provides a template as to how other hoaxers would proceed once the initial, desired effect has been achieved - they tend to retreat and shut up. In that light, how have other alleged hoaxers reacted to the spotlight being trained on them?

In the case of Hugh Gray, after the initial flurry his photo caused, he did not batten down the hatches but continued to retell his story with deliberate conviction. So, we find that he met up with Constance Whyte 22 years later in 1955 to openly discuss his photograph. Five years later, Tim Dinsdale met up with the man he described as a gentleman and courteous in 1960 and they walked to the spot where it all happened. I suspect Hugh Gray was aged about 70 by the time he met Tim, so the record of his persistence in being public about his story probably did no extend much further.

In the case of Lachlan Stuart, there was the initial publicity as reporters from the Sunday Express plus Constance Whyte and Maurice Burton who engaged Stuart during their investigations. However, again, this Loch Ness Monster photographer did not shirk the limelight thereafter as he appeared seven years later on the BBC TV documentary "Legend of the Loch" in 1958 to be interviewed for national broadcast. Details of that interview can be found here.

When Peter MacNab's photograph hit the headlines in 1958, it became a classic, possibly only outdone by the Surgeon's Photo. Did MacNab do a Wilson and duck the attention of the media once the initial hubbub was over? Not a chance. In the decades ahead, he would readily correspond and help out various Loch Ness researchers such as Mackal, Raynor and Boyd. In fact, nearly 25 years later, he would take part in the making of the "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" episode on the Loch Ness Monster which was televised in 1980.

So we see nothing in the way of distancing themselves from the supposed hoax or any attempt to offer subtle suggestions that what they photographed was perhaps not a Nessie. The psychology of these so called hoaxers is running counter to the one test case we have.

But what about Frank Searle and Anthony Shiels you may ask? Did they not hoax photographs but continue to defend them to the hilt? Does this not nullify any argument here about hoaxers distancing themselves from their work?

I would suggest the answer to that is "No". The difference between Searle and Shiels and the other grouping is that these two were serial hoaxers whilst the other alleged hoaxers were "one shot" perpetrators.

If you are a serial hoaxer, you do not cast doubt upon your own work because after one picture is out in the public domain, the seed for the next one is already planted. If you distance yourself from one, you have to distance yourself from the rest and this is counter-productive to your lifestyle. This group has to be treated differently to the others in terms of modus operandi.

(As an aside, I presume the charge of hoaxing against Shiels is sustainable. He produced at least four monster photographs which put him in the serial hoaxer class. The main charge against him is a taped interview of him discussing how to fake a monster picture. I have not yet critiqued this accusation and even then may find nothing to dispute the hoax label. So until then, I side with the current view on him.)

In summary, the scenario of the "single hit" hoaxer based on Kenneth Wilson suggests an underestimation of the media attention and an attempt to walk away from the story without confessing outright. The high such a hoaxer gets from this adventure is short lived and further intrusions into normal life tend to be unwelcome as one is obliged to repeat at length a lie. Gray, Stuart and MacNab displayed no such behaviour which suggests they may have actually been telling the truth.

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