Nessie and the Fort Augustus Abbey boys

A Happy New Year to all readers, both believers and sceptics alike!

We'll kick off 2012 with an experience from 51 years ago. I was in communication with a former pupil of the school at Fort Augustus Abbey named Sean O' Donovan who lived as a boy at Easter Balnaban which is outside Drumnadrochit and up the hillside.

He places the sighting at perhaps August 1962 and in his own words:

"I certainly saw a 'something', although I was too far away (about 500 ft up a mountainside and perhaps half a mile as the crow flies) for any minute detail, moving out from beneath Urquhart Castle across the Loch. Whatever it was appeared to be the size of a decent sized rowing boat and left a wake. It vanished mid-way across the Loch. The monster?"

I put together a rough map of where this object perhaps first appeared and disappeared (but it may have moved further into Urquhart Bay than centre loch).

Having looked out that window many a time, we are sure than Mr. Donovan was familiar with the normal items that made their way across the centre of Loch Ness. I asked for more details:

"I happened to be gazing out across the loch when I saw a 'shape' (no more definition than that and no different in colour from the water) move out from the bank at perhaps 6 knots? It left a clear wake, as would a small boat and my first assumption was that it was indeed a boat in shadow but when it reached the midway point of the loch it vanished."

Do boats normally vanish as they ply their voyage? Obviously not, but then again perhaps a boat did indeed sink but we doubt that. A decent sized rowing boat can be up to fifteen feet in length and four feet across. Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in its single hump aspect are often compared to the dimensions of a rowing boat.

Sean also has a theory about the Loch Ness Monster promoted by another Abbey boy called George Campbell in his book "The First and Lost Iona":

"I have since read an explanation for my 'sighting' and others. Basically it has to do with the structure of the Loch and the existence in it of two distinct layers of water. Around 600AD ( I think) there was a ship-burial of a Norse chieftain and the waterlogged keel of the ship would still exist as there is little oxygen in the depths to rot it.

Currents in the loch still bring this keel to the surface temporarily and the dragon's head with which such boats were often decorated would account for those who have seen a 'head' with the length of the keel accounting for those that see a 'hump'. Make of that what you will but it fits with what I saw."

George Campbell himself expands upon this theory in his book (from link):

The King’s Drakar re-surfaces

Looking out from the shore, the interested spectator will have seen an animal head with a long neck emerge from the water and travel through the waves for a few yards before sinking from sight again leaving, in many cases, an impression of a long curved back or hump before disappearing completely from view. Remind you of anything?

This is the only explanation for a Loch Ness Monster which fits the vast majority of sightings (the dinosaur-like creature crossing the main road at dead of night with a sheep in its mouth being a notable exception). There is unlikely to be more than one Drakar keel down there so whether one sees on the surface a long curved back or a shorter more pronounced hump will depend on whether the keel has any forward motion when it inverts.

He also think St. Columba encountered a bear rather than a water monster:

On Columba and the Loch Ness Monster

The Ness has always been a great river for salmon but man is not alone among their predators. It shares a similar latitude, a couple of degrees below the 60th parallel, with Kodiak Island in Alaska, a place that gave its name to a member of the best known species of salmon fishing animal in the world, the brown bear. In Columba’s time the bear had been extinct in Ireland for centuries so it is not an animal with which he and his fellow Irishmen would have been in any way familiar.

But although it would not vanish from Scotland for a few generations yet, it was by this time, in the latter part of the sixth century, a rarity. With so much impenetrable woodland for cover, it would have been perfectly at home on the banks of the Ness and, like its North American cousins, would seek its favourite food where the water is shallow, the flow narrow and the passing salmon most easily caught. Rising in the water from all fours onto its two hind legs, it would certainly give the appearance of a beast rising from beneath the waves, all the more so if viewed indistinctly through a screen of greenery.

More than capable of killing a man if surprised, or interrupted whilst feeding, a brown bear would generally seek to avoid contact with humans, thus its readiness to flee at the sound of Columba’s voice. Taken with Adomnan’s reference to the dead man having been mauled and the beast’s emitting of a roar, all the evidence points in only one direction and that is not towards a loch-dwelling monster. This was not the first recorded sighting in Scotland of a monster but the last recorded sighting of a bear.

I would presume a boat of these proportions would have been found with sonar by now. But then again, perhaps Loch Ness has more than one secret in those dark depths. But I am also afraid I disagree with Mr. Campbell's assessment of Nessie sightings and St. Columba's memorable encounter!

Another story but less serious from that period came from one of the old school boys and relates as follows:

"I always thought that the incident of Fr. John Baptist taking his boat 'The Goose' out on a fishing trip supposedly returning by 4pm, not returning until the next morning with a large hole in the bow. He claimed that his boat was damaged by a 'sea creature', in the middle of the night, This was in '54 just before tourist season when the fund raising was in progress for the church. When I asked him why he did not come back at 4pm when he was due he said I was too smart and not to mention that to anyone. After all a priest seeing the 'Sea Creature' would never be questioned."

Nessie Sighting from 2002

A fellow Nessie researcher drew my attention to this sighting from 2002 which I thought deserved a rerun and was worthy of a wider distribution in the cause of demonstrating that Nessie continues to be alive and well.

The witness is Tim Richardson and one of the reasons I like this sighting is because Tim is one of those people I would class as competent due to his long interest in angling. He has been a naturalist and big fish angler for 30 years with the emphasis on big fish such as catfish and carp. So, we would expect Tim to be familiar with most types of aquatic wildlife and not so easily fooled into thinking for some reason that they are Nessie. Tim takes up the story himself.

I myself experienced the creature's presence while standing by the freezing cold flat calm Loch on a bright sunny morning in February 2002.

The day was calm and sunny but temperatures were cold following a hard frost that morning. Standing on the jetty by the castle in Urquhart bay I felt an unprecedented irrational fear sweep over me and I backed off the jetty fast. I walked up the grassy slope feeling foolish not having felt such a feeling ever before strong enough to move me from standing over the cold peaty red - black water.

Now as a very serious fisherman I have spent 30 years intensively spending a great proportion of this time on the banks and shores of hundreds of lakes, lochs, rivers, seas, ponds, and stretches of water, most often all night long. But I've never experienced such a unique feeling of fear before even at 'haunted' locations or in fierce lightning storms or on the darkest of nights miles from civilisation.

I know fish behaviour pretty well and felt something was very 'wrong' when just then I observed trout leaping high out of the water. This was only 200 metres away from my position over far deeper water and these fish were in such a highly excited state, darting about everywhere as if looking to escape something unseen below them. I quickly felt in my bag for my binoculars when I realised I did not need them...

I am more than scientific when it comes to the 'unknown,' requiring measurement and evidence and past records to verify anything unusual. I preferably would experience things 'first hand' before analysing and concluding anything substantial. I did not really think the mythical 'Loch Ness monster' existed except in the minds of fantasists or locals benefiting from the tourist trade in the area.

The major 2 reasons for this was that the entire loch had been under ice during the last ice age, so most likely preventing anything from remaining from previous times. Not only this, but detailed surveys show 'insufficient' fish stocks present in the loch which would appear to not be able to support a population of large animals for sustenance.

Please picture this now, because this is what I observed next: As a fish turns its flank over and rolls just under the surface of the water, it raises the water above it. I have observed this hundreds of times over the years being a big fish angler (mainly of giant catfish and big carp) of 30 years experience. The width, depth and length of the fish is indicated by the dimensions of this water movement discerned by the experienced eye. What this indicated was a massive creature.

For example an average sized large 30 pound carp may move a significant oval shaped area of water at the surface of perhaps to 3 feet. Such a fish would be about 3 feet long and between a foot and a foot and a quarter deep. The surface water movement I observed was about 15 feet long by 10 feet across... I never saw what caused it but I've fished right next to large seals, seen deer swimming in a lake, know very well the depth of sturgeon and dolphins compared to carp and whatever caused this phenomenal water movement was none of these possibilities. This was no killer whale or known cetacean either if that's what you are thinking...

There was a weird fact about my camera which is not uncommon at this loch. It has never failed me in thousands of photographs taken on thousands of bright days or dark even misty nights or on the hottest to the coldest of winter night temperatures. I am very careful to keep the battery at least new or at least 'half full.' On attempting to photograph the water anomaly, the camera failed completely despite calmly retrying. Filming under pressure of speed is not at all new to me with this camera. No photo was achieved.

Once all was calm, as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the completely calm surface of the thousands of feet deep bay without even a ripple present, I tried the camera again. This time it worked; in the 5 years since then, it has never failed either. There is definitely far more to this place than is yet known and not merely electrical anomalies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/700232

I emailed Tim to get his permission to reprint and he expanded on his views. He is very much in the line of the famous Nessie hunter, Ted Holiday, in believing that the "thing" in Loch Ness is more than mere flesh and blood and has its origins in the paranormal. He also takes from the works of people like Paul Devereux who believe strange things occur along fault lines (such as Loch Ness) due to piezoelectric effects.

The one thing that intrigued me was how the creature managed to stay just below the surface and this made me immediately think of the recent Jon Rowe photograph and my speculation that something was just visible below the surface too and pushing up a thin layer of water (see link).

The failing camera is also classic Ted Holiday, he himself saw significance in such mechanical failures, as well as sightings which were just beyond the reach of LNIB cameras. Of course, we would also point out that, statistically, most photographs will be beyond "evidence range" purely by reason of the loch's vast size. If Nessie surfaces at the centre line of the loch, then it is already 800 to 1200 metres away from shore based witnesses!

Two recent cultural references to Nessie

People may not wholeheartedly believe in a large creature in Loch Ness, but the image of a prehistoric beast continues to pervade cultural imagery. Two items came up recently to demonstrate this. The first is the poster for the next Highlands Comic Convention in March 2012 showing Tank Girl, Judge Dredd, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher riding on a less than willing Nessie. (Note to US readers, Britain has its own version of Dennis the Menace). Full story at BBC website.

It is a source of confusion to me why Nessie is so often portrayed in green in cultural references when she is actually uniformly reported as various shades of grey. The artist has also dispensed with the long neck approach here.

The second is from the series of TV adverts created by the makers of "Scotland's other National Drink" - Irn-Bru. This drink is sometimes recommended as a hangover cure after imbibing Scotland's main national drink (i.e. whisky). The advert linked to YouTube below is a rerun based on the successful cartoon from the 1980s. Look out for Nessie swimming below around 30 seconds in!

Since the advert wishes everyone season's greetings, I will now take the same opportunity to wish readers a Happy Christmas and I will post again once the effects of the turkey, pudding and alcohol has finally dissipated!

Alex Harvey Presents The Loch Ness Monster

Alex Harvey and his The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a string of hits in the 1970s but one album he produced in 1977 took an entirely different tack altogether. Entitled Alex Harvey Presents The Loch Ness Monster, his interest in Nessie is evident to see in this collection of eyewitness accounts.

Where this item acquires high status in Loch Ness Research is in its recordings of the actual witnesses recounting their experiences. Clearly there is an advantage to be gained here from listening to the actual people who claimed to see what they saw as opposed to reading it on a more dispassionate page. The following witnesses were interviewed:

Father Gregory Brusey
Frank Armstrong
A. Hewson
Sam Job
Alex Campbell
Mrs. Margaret Grant of Invermoriston
Frank Searle
Sandy Smart
Sgt. Nicholson
Mrs. Kathrine Robertson
Ian Dunn
Billy Kennedy

Some accounts such as Frank Searle will no doubt be viewed with disdain. Alex Campbell's account of something he earlier said was cormorants is controversial. The rest are people largely removed from the Loch Ness investigation scene and were just ordinary people going about their lives before being stopped by something regarded as extraordinary.

The album is available to listen to on YouTube in three parts via these embedded links:

Final Thoughts on the Jon Rowe Photograph

Back in September, a new photograph of Nessie hit the headlines as fish farm worker, Jon Rowe, took a snap of something unusual out in the water beyond the pier of the farm. I have previously discussed this event in two previous posts (here and here).

Now being a website which believes in an exotic species of creature living at the bottom of the loch, nevertheless, we try and avoid being a "Never Nessie no matter what!" or an "Always Nessie no matter what!" kind of website. So we have something here for both skeptics and believers alike.

Living relatively near Loch Ness, I headed up there back in October and visited the said fish farm just south of the village of Dores. I parked my car just outside the entrance and walked down the pathway to the locked gate (though it was an open site). Despite there being cars parked at the entrance, I could not find anyone there. I could hear a loud humming noise of machinery behind the trees but could get no one's attention.

That was a pity as I had hoped to enquire after the whereabouts of Jon. At the end of the path, I could not proceed further due to health and safety regulations avoiding contamination of the site without wearing the right equipment or receiving the correct treatment (they don't like the salmon getting infected!). Nevertheless, there was plenty to see as my first photograph below shows.

To compare this against the Nessie photograph shows we are in the same place as claimed by the witness.

As I panned over to the main area of the fish farm, I noticed and photographed something that skeptics will no doubt make much of.

The pier you can see is most likely where Jon took his photograph from but what is the small object floating just beyond the pier? It's a buoy, of course, and skeptics will suggest that this (and presumably another buoy) were the objects actually photographed. Clearly, the thought did cross my mind, so I did a bit of analysis. Here is a close up of the buoy and a close up of the "bumps" Jon photographed.

Do the objects in the Rowe photograph look like the buoy in the upper photograph? Well, they don't to me but perhaps some skeptic can put up a convincing argument. I don't think they do, but in the interest of open debate, I put these pictures up for discussion. Comparing various pictures I took, I also thought the buoy was bigger than the two objects.

But I said I had something for both sceptic and believer alike today. I have two further observations to make about the "bumps" photographed in September. Take another look at the uppermost "bump". You will have noted that there are various black dots on the surface of the two objects. However, it appears that from the centre dot (or perhaps orifice?) that there is some kind of fluid being ejected. I have annotated the ejecta line in the picture below.

Make of that what you will. Some won't see it, some will. What it means if it is really there (and not an artifact of the image) is another matter. Some may think this revives the discredited "synchronising birds" explanation. Do birds pee upside-down? I would not have thought so (these systems have evolved to be gravity assisted!).

However, on my second thought, two bumps suggest bilateral symmetry which suggests a lifeform. Another suggestion of something looking bilateral if visible further down the photograph.

If you look at the bottom centre to right of the picture there is a curious oval-like structure which to me is not suggestive of wave interference but something ridge like and barely below the surface. The water around looks slightly raised as if pushed up by something underneath. The nearest analogy I could think of to demonstrate what I was seeing was something like the back of a crocodile (below).

The perpendicular lines to the left of the item are the water waves rising and curving over this interesting piece of symmetry. Is it the back of the Loch Ness Monster? Judge for yourselves. But I better stop there as I am getting a bit cross eyed looking at the pixels of this picture!

The Recantation of John MacDonald

Who is John MacDonald, you may ask?

Back on May 12th 1933, ten days after the first Loch Ness Monster article was printed in the Inverness Courier, the editor evidently favoured a second opinion in the form of Captain John MacDonald who had commanded several ships which had steamed their way up and down Loch Ness for nearly 50 years. Who better to ask about what sights may been seen on the loch surface, they may have thought.

The Captain proceeded to solemnly declare that the Mackays were the victims of their stirred imaginations and had probably seen salmon at play in the waters. After all, he had embarked on nearly 20,000 trips on the loch and he had never seen a thing and he knew what he was talking about.

He also dismissed any talk about a legendary creature being known about in the loch. Why is that? Because no one had ever told him about it! As it turns out, the tradition of a Water Horse in Loch Ness was well established.

Ronald Binns in his sceptical book, reprints the entirety of the captain's letter and holds it up as an authoritative example of how to answer the "myth" that was to develop.

As it transpired, this all turned out to be irrelevant as I was studying the archives and diaries of Cyril Dieckhoff in Edinburgh recently. Our erstwhile monk and monster hunter had kept various newspaper clippings and an undated one from the Daily Mail (probably after January 1934) proved most illuminating.

The reporter had tracked down Captain MacDonald again and asked his opinion over six months on from his letter to the Inverness Courier. This is what he said:

If so many reputable people say they have seen 'the beast' one inclines to the belief that there is something in it.

The article also relates how his own daughter, Christina, claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster.

So Captain MacDonald came to realise his 20,000 trips on Loch Ness counted for nothing in the grand scheme of things. The truth is that you can spend your entire life on the loch and never see the monster or you can see it within minutes of arriving for your first visit. When you have a creature that spends almost its entire life in the silt at the bottom and sides of the loch, it is surprising that it puts in an appearance for anyone.

But it does and the mystery depends on those who have seen it and not those who have not!

Webcam Photo of Nessie?

For some years now, webcams have been trained on various locations at Loch Ness enabling people from all over the world to indulge in some monster hunting.

Adam Bird, a regular reader of this blog, sent me something he snapped last year as he was scanning the loch surface on the webcam run by Mikko Takala. which was trained on Urquhart Bay looking north. The incident happened on September 18th 2010 at about 12:20pm and in Adam's own words:

I happened upon the Nessie Cam by accident and had been watching it for about 20 minutes when I saw the object you see on the photograph. I quickly took a snapshot and copy and pasted it. It is hard to make out much detail, I do admit. I am not saying that there is anything 'monstrous' about the thing in the water but about an hour later a boat came and passed by and I took a shot of that too to compare it to the shape in the water.


The picture is shown below accompanied by the boat image (you can click on the images for a bigger view).

Here is Adam's zoom in of the object.



Grabbing the image of the boat an hour later is an important help as it gives an indication of how large the object is. Typical cruiser boats on Loch Ness are about 30 feet long, 12 feet wide and 8 feet high. My estimate is that the object is smaller but not significantly. As you can see, the webcam is trained on an area quite far out which though enhancing the chances of seeing something is countered by the large distance to the object which must be at least 1000 metres.

Comparing the two pictures, we note that it was a misty day and was a bit mistier at object time rather than boat time. There is also a ripple line going across the centre of the picture which I presume is the right arm of a wake from a boat that passed previously. There is however, no indication that the two are connected in any way.

The zoom in reveals something almost dome shaped in appearance and a grey area behind it that is suggestive of water disturbance, but I may be over-speculating.

The other interesting point made by Adam is that though the webcam refreshes every few seconds, the object was there and then it was not there. So where did it go? If it was a rowing boat or dinghy then it would surely have been in view for a long time given the wide vista of the image (for a dinghy type analysis go here). As Adam said to me:

The webcam only displays still images that updated every few seconds, so it went from being nothing in the water, then as it refreshed the object was there. On the next image the thing was gone. So I cannot say how it appeared and disappeared.

So, though the object is too far away for a conclusive identification, the mystery is how it literally popped in and out of the webcam?

Finally, Adam, had an even better webcam experience some years before:

I did see an object on a similar webcam about thirteen years ago, in Urquhart Bay, and I can say for sure that it was something out of the ordinary. It was the classic upturned boat shape and my estimate compared to nearby boats would put the length at around 15 to 20 foot long.

It was dark in colour and moved around the water in a horseshoe shape. I tried to get a still of it but unfortunately could not get one. It is something I have regretted ever since. I am 100% sure that it was some sort of odd object which could not be explained by any rational explanation such as a seal, deer, elk, otter, wave nor log. Unfortunately I have no proof of this sighting except my word.

ADVICE TO WEBCAMMERS

Webcams overlooking Loch Ness seem to have come and gone over the years. There has even been an underwater one. If anyone knows of any others then post a comment below this article or send me an email (lochnesskelpie@gmail.com). The point being that what is available should be valued and put to use.

Whilst watching whatever webcam, if something appears then employ the snapshot facility to capture as many images as possible. If the object disappears then take some more snapshots as their timestamp will prove the object did not simply drift out of view like a normal boat.

If there is another webcam trained on the same area, see if the object is there too and then snapshot from that (in the past this was certainly possible around Urquhart Bay). Obviously, it helps to have both webcam sites already running ready to go.

Finally, like Adam, wait for one of the regular white cruiser boats to pass near the spot to provide a size and shape comparison. It is better to do this nearer to the time of the object's appearance. It can be done on a different day so long as it is near the same time and weather conditions are similar.

Who knows, with persistence, perhaps you will capture the elusive head, neck and humps of the Loch Ness Monster itself.

UPDATE: Dick Raynor has some webcams running on Urquhart Bay, so perfect for a bit of triangulation! Go to this link.