Men in Black at Loch Ness?

Nick Redfern in his Mania blog comments recently on the potential link between the infamous men in black of UFOlore and cryptozoological creatures. This link is here.

This reminded me of the only alleged MiB encountered at Loch Ness and it is no surprise that it came from Ted Holiday, the paranormalist pursuer of Nessie who died in 1979. I mentioned Ted Holiday in my series of occasional blogs examining what people think the Loch Ness Monster is and Holiday was the definite champion of the paranormal creature theory (see link).

It is a strange story not just for the weirdness factor but because of some inconsistencies. The encounter apparently happened only days after the Reverend Donald Omand had conducted his famous exorcism of Loch Ness in June 1973. Holiday had heard of a report that a flying saucer and occupants had been spotted on the ground near Foyers by a Jan Ove Sundberg previously in 1971. He wished to track down the site but first visited local psychic Winifred Cary who advised him against visiting the site because she felt it presented a danger. At this point Holiday writes:

"At that precise moment, there was a tremendous rushing sound like a tornado outside the window, and the garden seemed to be filled with indefinable frantic movement. A series of violent thuds sounded as if from a heavy object striking either the wall or the sun-lounge door. Through the window behind Mrs. Cary, I suddenly saw what looked like a pyramid-shaped column of blackish smoke about 8 feet high, revolving in a frenzy. Part of it was involved in a rosebush which looked as if it had been ripped from the ground. Mrs. Cary shrieked and turned her face towards the window. The episode lasted 10 or 15 seconds and then was instantly finished."


He did not visit the site but instead found himself in the local village of Foyers the next day and saw a peculiar figure entirely dressed in black looking at him from about 30 yards away:

"He was about 6 feet tall and appeared to be dressed in black leather or plastic. He wore a helmet and gloves, and was masked, even to the nose, mouth and chin."

He walked towards the figure but turned his head to look at the loch for a couple of seconds, heard a whispering or whistling sound and turned to see the person had gone. Nothing more came of it until a year later when he came back to Loch Ness but suffered a mild heart attack. As he was taken to the ambulance, the medics passed over the spot where he had first seen the man in black.

What do we make of such a story and what has it to do with creatures in Loch Ness? The problem lies with the Sundberg sighting. The impression is given that the incident revolves around avoiding this alleged UFO site. However, in 1981, a Stuart Campbell, writing for the March issue of Flying Saucer Review, found the site based on the photograph Sundberg had taken and discovered the forest was too dense to allow any clearing for the 30 foot craft and three occupants claimed. The sighting was then dismissed as a hoax or hallucination.

(I believe this is Steuart Campbell, who wrote the sceptical book on Nessie, "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence"). Now allowing even for 10 years of extra tree growth, that would seem to discredit the whole thing. Jan Sundberg now runs the monster hunting organisation GUST where the focus is on aquatic monsters and not flying saucers.

If the UFO sighting did not happen, then what would be the point in an alleged MiB giving a typically dark warning about it? Holiday would have known about men in black from John Keel whom he corresponded with. John Keel popularised this aspect of UFOlogy some time before in his book "Operation Trojan Horse". What we are to make of this incident and the Biblical like pillar of cloud is bewildering. Did Holiday merely encounter some kook? No doubt Loch Ness is a magnet for people who are one sandwich short of a picnic. Was it just a trendy motorcyclist kitted up from head to foot? A fuller description would have helped.

And what about the whirlwind? Was it nothing more than that - a cyclone stirred up by aerodynamics that allows the topology of Loch Ness to funnel air currents and whip up squalls and other gusts of wind?

The problem with Holiday was that he was not always consistent in what he reported. One case was the infamous MacRae film. In his Great Orm book, Holday claims that a Mr. Dallas filmed the Loch Ness Monster in 1936. When Nessie researcher, Mike Dash, investigated this claim years later, Mr. Dallas denied he had shot any film of the creature he claimed to have seen.

In other areas, his research lacks follow up as when he claimed in the Orm book that his aforementioned friend, John Keel, had read an 1896 article on the Loch Ness Monster when researching archives in America. The claim is true but the article has yet to be found.

We can only guess as to what Holiday thought he witnessed. He is gone as I suspect are the other witnesses of that day. However, we finish on the eerie note that all these things occured just down the road from the infamous house of Aleister Crowley. A place which Crowley thought was a mystical energy portal!

The Loch Ness Society

Back in the 1990s I was kind of putting Nessie in the background. I was getting married, kids were born and you know the rest of the script. So it was no surprise that some Loch Ness Monster things went under my radar only to surface to my own view years later.

One of those was the Loch Ness Society formed in 1996 by Ian Kelloway, Richard Carter and Ian Martin. It was well intentioned in that it produced a regular newsletter to keep Nessie-philes informed and get them together now and again for a hunt and a pint. All perfectly admirable but by the time I was back on Nessie things, they had gone. The first two pages of their first newsletter is reproduced below to jog any memories. I say "jog" because I would ask anyone that knows about this society to let me know how it progressed and finally disbanded. Also, where is co-founder Richard Carter who was actively involved in the hunt in the 1990s but has now seemingly dropped out? Unanswered questions ... drop a comment if you have further info or even access to more of these newsletters.

Video on Nessie Hunting "Basics" III

Back to my short series on monster hunting. I actually have not posted for months on this series so must make them more frequent. This is part III and part II can be found here. This goes back to my last "expedition" in July 2010. I hope to be back up this summer but plan to approach the whole monster hunting from a new angle which I have not heard from anyone else before. Well, perhaps they did do it but it was a complete failure and it wasn't worth mentioning to anyone else ...

Note in the video my brief sighting of a boat. Now going by the google map below, I estimate it was about 1,500 yards away or pretty similar to the distance that Tim Dinsdale saw his hump at. Even though I thought it was a boat with the naked eye, I applied the binoculars and this was confirmed. Once again, I don't think Tim would have been so easily fooled either. The only difference was that I was at loch level and he was about 300 feet up. Make up your own mind whether that makes a whit of difference at such a distance - I don't.

Classic Sightings - Alec Muir

Date: 1930s

Time: Spring day

Location: Narrow road just south of Dores
Witnesses: Alec Muir and Alastair Mackintosh
Type of sighting: Land

Land sightings of Nessie are fascinating and no doubt to some are the biggest challenge to forming a theory of the Loch Ness Monster. We have already covered the Spicer land sighting in previous posts but here is one from the same period in the 1930s and an unusual one in some respects.

It was taken from the autobiography of Captain Alastair Mackintosh entitled "No Alibi" which was published in 1961 and came to my attention in F. W. Holiday's book "The Great Orm of Loch Ness". Without further ado, we reproduce the account below.

Loch Ness was so much a part of my boyhood and youth. Its beauty and splendour apart, there has always been—for me—a belief in the existence of its monster. Loch Ness remains one of the great geological mysteries. Since the waters receded from the earth it has put on minor atomic displays without any assistance from scientists. The monster is usually observed in the summer. It was many years later that I missed seeing this monster—always supposing it to exist—by a matter of minutes. Oddly the occasion was linked with the British Aluminium Company since it was Alec Muir, the estate carpenter at the works, who had allowed his ‘T’ Ford to block the narrow road just beyond Dores. Bubbles were to be observed on the loch water. As I greeted Alec warmly, I thought he looked distinctly peculiar.

The way a person is said to appear after seeing a ghost. ‘What’s the matter, Alec? What are you stopping for, eh?’ He regarded me with his round, blue eyes and said portentously: ‘I've just seen the Loch Ness monster, Mr Alastair. It crossed the road in front of me not a wee while back. It came as high as the top of the bonnet of the car and was so long it took ten minutes to pass. I went round to the front of the Ford. Sure enough, there was the track of the monster where it had entered the loch. Alec alighted and we followed the marks on the other side of the road and into a wood of birch trees. It was spring.

Our feet sank softly into a carpet of moss and primroses.We had gone hardly a hundred yards when we came upon a clearing in the trees. Showing in the moss was an immense depression, where the monster obviously had lain down to rest. Augustus monks professed to have seen the monster actually swimming in the loch. Could it all be a matter of hallucination? I doubt it! Too many have had similar experiences.

Thus ends the account leaving perhaps more questions than it answers. For a start, practically nothing is said about the appearance of the monster itself. It is said to have reached as high as the bonnet of a model T Ford which I estimate to be about four feet seven inches.

It left a trail leading to the loch by which means broken and depressed flora. The immense depression suggests that the beast had some girth - I would assume it was at least as wide as it was tall - nearly five feet - but this "immense" depression suggests more.

The bubbles on the loch surface is also interesting. Does this imply the monster is an air breather or that is discharges air for some reason after a land excursion (e.g. decreasing buoyancy)?

The most extraordinary feature is that the creature took ten minutes to cross the road! From this we infer that Alec Muir had one of the clearest views of the monster in the annals of Nessie sightings - yet we have practically no details. If we assume the road was seven feet wide (it was a narrow road) and the creature was just appearing onto the road as Muir saw it until it's 30ft bulk was clean across, then it was travelling at an average speed of 0.04 mph. From this ridiculously slow speed we suspect that the creature had actually stopped in the middle of the road for some period of time.

Why would the Loch Ness Monster simply stop on the road? If it did this today, we would have a carcass on our hands and the mystery would be solved. One can only guess that something had captured the beast's attention just over the loch side of the road. It also seems it nonchalantly continued on and stopped again near the shore leaving this "immense" depression before finally entering the loch.

All in all, the monster seemed rather blase about what was going on around it and saw no threat from Mr. Muir and his model T Ford. A curious case for which one wish there was more detail!

What is the Loch Ness Monster? (part 2)

In a previous post I began to explore the various possible explanations to account for sightings of Nessie. That first post rather mundanely looked at misidentification of tree debris which though inadequate as a sole theory does explain some claimed sightings.

One might gently move onto deer, birds and otters in the loch, but for this post we go as far as one could possibly go in another explanation of Nessie. This is a theory which came into vogue in the early 1970s and it is the paranormal interpretation of the Loch Ness Monster.

The first proponent of this theory was Ted Holiday in his book "The Dragon and the Disc" which attempted to incorporate Nessie into the increasingly popular idea that most unexplained phenomena were paranormal in nature. This "Theory of Everything" approach had begun when some UFO researchers speculated that flying saucers were not the nuts and bolts spacecraft that many had presumed but may have more surreal origins.

Though Holiday still held to the invertebate theory of his first book ("The Great Orm of Loch Ness") he made a clean break prior to his death in 1979 with a radical theory which was expounded in his third and posthumous book "The Goblin Universe". This theory essentially borrowed from the obscure work of a Professor Harold Burr in positing that Nessie was a three dimensional form which could be formed and held by something Burr called Life Fields which were electrical in nature and had some organic organising properties.

Burr proposed this as a biological principle but Holiday took it further in suggesting that a mind could control the process and cause unexpected forms to materialise. Indeed, he proposed a universal mind akin to God as the controller of these phenomemon though the discussion also included the human mind and the collective subconciousness of the entire human race. How these three "minds" interacted if at all was not clear to me and there is no evidence to support such a theory. In some sense it is a hypothesis looking for data.

Why would Holiday abandon more reasonable flesh and blood theories for something that is speculative in the extreme? The answer is that Holiday believed the old superstitions surrounding dragons and water horses had a large grain of truth to them - these creatures were indeed magical in some way.

He also thought that a lot of the strange coincidences he witnessed during his time at the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau and as a private Nessie hunter went beyond coincidence. Things such as cameras malfunctioning, the monster appearing out of LNI camera shot, plus what he thought was a general malevolent atmosphere about the place. Add some unusual paranormal encounters around Loch Ness including a meeting with what we would call a MIB (Man In Black) in Foyers and you can understand where he is coming from even if you do not accept his views.

Do any other Loch Ness Monster hunters advocate this hypothesis to some degree? One was Anthony Shiels who took the (in)famous photos of Nessie near Urquhart Castle in 1977. He believed in a psychic aspect to these sightings but his discussion on this in his book "Monstrum!" is unclear as he also adhered to an invertebrate interpretation of the creature.

There is also a suggestion that Tim Dinsdale believed in a paranormal aspect to the Loch Ness phenomemon but this is less clear cut. I will mention that in a later blog posting.

So, all in all, this is the most exotic theory concerning the monster. Yes, it explains a lot of things about the beast but at the same time a major shift in one's perception of reality is required. Of course, if someone is already inclined to believe in supernatural events then perhaps the leap is not too great. In fact, I dabbled myself with this theory in the 1980s, but took a step back to let outwardly simpler theories have priority.

Indeed, the fact that such a theory should gain some prominence does point to the realization that no one theory seems to explain everything about witness sightings (and that includes the the log/deer/wave/birds/hoax theory of sceptics). One may suggest some identity for the creature but it falls short in explaining some aspect of behaviour or morphology.

For this paranormal theory, there is a solution is available but at the expense of some big assumptions.

Sighting of Loch Ness Monster from 1990

I sometimes wonder how many sightings of the Loch Ness Monster go unreported? There is the strange account of the seagulls I found on an Internet comment board (see link). I also spoke to someone originally from Inverness recently who claimed a friend saw something strange in the loch some years back. We only get the slightest details or they never fully surface. However, Chris Sharratt while working at Loch Ness in 1990 had a strange experience which he posted on his flickr account and which I reproduce here:

Ok, I will try to keep it short, but I will tell you the facts surrounding my sighting of what might have been the Loch Ness Monster!

The idyllic 3 years I told you about in my last post, looking after a new salmon farm on my own in the wilds, came to an abrupt end when we discovered the loch we had the fish cages in (not Loch Ness itself) had zillions of small water flea type organisms that were passing on a parasitic disease to the young salmon.

So all the fish were moved out, and I moved companies and became site manager on a similar juvenile-salmon farm which actually was (and still is) on Loch Ness itself, near the tiny shoreside village of Dores.

For a year or two I was still caretaker of the other site, even though all the fish had long gone.
This meant that occasionally I made the journey from the Dores farm at the start of Loch Ness, right along the road that follows the south side of the loch to the small inland loch near Whitebridge that once was my daily office.

Anyway, it was one such day while I was on my way to inspect the old site that I saw the Loch Ness Monster!

It was a crystal clear sunny day and Loch Ness was the calmest I'd ever seen. Like a mirror with steep green forested mountain sides reflecting above the dark depths below.
I was about half way down the side of the 37km loch and the car was climbing up from the loch side road where it meets the hill at Inverfarigaig. As I looked down admiring the calmness of the loch, something looking very alive, dark, solid and large broke through the glistening surface rose up for a second, then was gone!
I had stopped the car and watched with disbelief as the rings from the wake crept out not so slowly from the centre of the loch and spread far, reaching each side of the 3km wide loch within only a minute or two!

Now I have never believed in Nessie, but what I saw that day was bigger than any other creature that could possibly be there! Seals occasionally make it up the River Ness and can be seen where the river runs through the city of Inverness, but that is close to the sea! Where I was when I saw what I did was 25km from salt water, and anyway it was larger than any Seal!

So there is my story which is factual. The only question is ... what was it I saw??????

I asked Chris for more details and he essentially said it was a "single lump" which sounds reminiscent of the most common type of sighting which is one hump breaking the surface. What could surface and then submerge again so quickly? Some sceptics suggest some sightings can be logs floating to the surface from gas eruptions below. However, Adrian Shine's work at the Loch Ness Centre proves that very little gas deposits are produced from the sediments at the bottom of the loch. There is an area in Urquhart Bay which produce some gas from decaying material deposits but the sighting did not occur there. Besides, one would only anticipate small objects such as branches, etc being driven up and that from shallow areas.

In other words, it looks like Nessie had surfaced again in one of her fleeting appearances.

Owning the Loch Ness Monster

An old story from 2009 caught my attention recently and made me ask the question: "If Nessie was captured, who would own her?". The story was an article on how bookmakers William Hill and the Natural History Museum had an agreement where the museum would provide expert advice on verifying the existence of the creature but also in return having the option of displaying the beast.

The story is here.

The article seemed to imply that William Hill would somehow have property rights on the carcass or live animal else how could the museum gain access to it? One doubts that such an event was likely or even legal. If a carcass was found by myself or anyone then the same procedure that applies for finding treasure trove should apply. Since Loch Ness is in Scotland then common scots law would apply (unless superceded by EU Law which we assume not here).

In such a case, if the item is regarded as precious or of national importance then the Crown of Scotland would have first claim on it. A panel from the Crown Office will ejudicate the matter and normally offer the trove to the appropriate museum or institution. Since the Crown Office will normally allow a reward to be paid to the finder, it is then up to the museum to raise the funds to purchase the items at "market value".

What is the "market value" of a live or dead Nessie? I doubt the Scottish Parliament would allow such an iconic item to leave the nation and hence outside bids would be disallowed unless they agreed to leave the body on show in Scotland.

I would suspect given William Hill's offer of £1 million in 2007 for positive proof of Nessie, that such a figure would be the starting bid!