A Strange Sight in Loch Duich

Whilst perusing some old copies of the popular Scots Magazine, I came across this in the Letters page of the November 1959 issue.

Dear Sir,

I was interested to read the article about Killer Whales (September issue). In July 1953, when at Letterfearn, I took a photograph of a strange creature in Loch Duich. I saw the dorsal fin several times as it travelled - quite fast - first up the loch (to the right of the picture) and then down.

I would estimate the distance from the shore at about thirty yards, and the height of the fin at two feet or more. Since reading J. L. Campbell's article I have wondered whether it was not a Killer Whale that I photographed. I would say it had most of the characteristics ascribed to the Killer Whale. The whole aspect of the animal and its movements were belligerent beyond doubt, and had I been in a small boat in its path my first reaction would have been to get as far away from it as possible.

Its movements in Loch Duich recalled these of an otter in a river pool - to seek and kill on sight. Unfortunately, it did not surface sufficiently to allow the skin markings to be seen. It came up only when it had to, and went straight back to the job on hand which seemed to absorb it completely.

Yours faithfully.

W. H. Findlay.

The pictures above are what Mr. Findlay took that day. Admittedly, if he had not stated what he saw in detail, we would be left with a photograph that would be described as a serpentine head and neck by some. However, the blunted top of the appendage plus Mr. Findlay's own account of its motion does indeed suggest it is a killer whale of some description. In fact, some of the blighters were shot (with a camera) in hot pursuit of dolphins only a week ago further up the Scottish coast. See article and photograph here.

Of course, killer whales have never frequented Loch Ness at any time, so we do not include them as an explanation of Nessie sightings.

A Story of Loch Ness Eels

I came across this multi part story while searching on the Internet a few days back. The reason I had not seen it before was because the stories had only been posted in the last two weeks. My comments below contain spoilers, so feel free to read the originals first. Note this is a fictional work. I initially thought it might have a grain of truth, but as the author has posted instalments and the plot has developed, it is just as well it is just a story!

Part One can be found here.

Part Two can be found here.

Part Three can be found here.

Part Four can be found here.

Part Five can be found here.

UPDATE: The author has removed these chapters but hopes to put them back in at a future time.

The story concerns a man who was a keen angler who had received a call for help to go up to Loch Ness to help a friend who had bought a hotel in or around Foyers. While up at the loch, he was regaled with a few interesting tales by the local fishermen such as the Fort William boy who was trapped in a coil by a giant eel and the submersible under Castle Urquhart that fled from eels bigger than itself. Suitably sceptical, he decided to try out his fishing rod in the loch at Foyers but only pulled up a dog like rib cage. Walking over the Foyers river later he noticed a line of eighteen inch eels foraging their way up the river. The systematic way they did this was unusual but he did not think much more of it.

On a return visit to the Loch, he brought his fifty pounder line to have a go at the Loch Ness pike he had been told about. His first venture back with two lines at night ended with a trout head being reeled in after something big grabbed it and ran the line out. The second heavier line with a piece of mackerel on it was reeled in but then with a jolt began to run deep. It turned out to be a seal but a local incident elsewhere with a dead seal later made him think it was his hook that injured the seal but the vet told him the seal had died from a bite from something else in the loch which had led to an infection.

The story develops until finally our angling author hooks a huge eel which leads to a fish expert joining the hunt and we enter a world of cannibal eels which attack anything in their path yet flee from a humble torch when it lights on their strange pale eyes.

It's a fascinating read whether it is true or not. If it was true, I agree with the author's sentiment that he would never swim in Loch Ness again, let alone canoe (well, I was already of that opinion!). However, the creatures portrayed in the story are to say the least vicious and come across as the Loch Ness version of piranhas.

From a purely Loch Ness Monster Theory point of view, I found some parts of the story interesting.

• The pale eyes of the eels suggesting a nocturnal creature.
• The slime marks on a bank near a landed creature which suggested some terrestrial mobility,
• The ability to expand their bodies with gas which spoke of high buoyancy (the author suggested eels do this as a decompression guard against the bends).
• The cannibalistic nature of the animals which spoke to the food supply issues.

So enjoy the story. I suspect there will be further instalments which may see these creatures and the truth of the matter develop with the storyline.The only remaining question is who wrote this story? Perhaps someone already known to the Nessie community?

Nessie On Land: The Overview

What is the largest land animal on this planet? The answer is the Loch Ness Monster when it comes out of the water to make its rare excursions onto terra firma. In making such a statement, we enter a twilight world of strange and misshapen giants seen by incredulous and terrified witnesses reclining on pebble shores, dashing across roads and slithering back into murky depths. They are derided as ludicrous by sceptics and hailed as important by believers. The genre stretches back to the ancient days of the demonic Water Horse waiting on land for its next victim and it continues right up to the present day.

These are the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in Loch Ness cryptozoology, such is the fascination they hold with people including myself. Back in 1933, it was a land sighting that catapulted the creature to national and international fame and there has been a steady stream of tales of lumbering leviathans that has intensified the mystery as to what this beast could possibly be.

Against this backdrop, I gave a talk on land sightings to the Edinburgh Fortean Society back in January. At the end of it, I had a pile of Powerpoint slides which I had presented as well as some I did not have time to show plus various items of research which never made it to Powerpoint. So, in that light, it seemed sensible to put the material out to a wider audience and begin this series of articles. It is a subject this blog is not unfamiliar with. If you check our steadily growing section on Classic Sightings you will find articles referencing two such incidents involving the Spicers and Alec Muir. However, the list of land sighting stories I have currently stands at 35. There is clearly more to relate concerning this aspect of Nessie lore.

The picture above exemplifies the mystery. It is a reproduction of what George Spicer and his wife claimed to have seen back in August 1933. Using Google Maps and Street View, an approximation to the witnesses' location is made. A modern car is in place about 200 metres from our "creature" to give an idea of scale and the superimposed picture of the beast is taken from Alan Jones' painting which is itself based on the drawing the Spicers sent to Constance Whyte for her 1957 book "More Than A Legend". You can click on the image to enlarge it.

In the months ahead we will showcase various stories and ideas but for now we give the overview of cases. The tight textual columns of blogging does not lend itself to detailed tables so the spreadsheet of land sightings I have is supplied as an image which you should click on for a readable view. Credit is given to Fortean researcher Mike Dash who supplied the initial table to which I added further data. By data we mean all the incidents claimed over the years. Undoubtedly, some of them will be hoaxes or misidentification. The Grant, Hughes and Dallas cases are certainly claimed as hoaxes (I pass no comment at this point) but it is our contention that misidentification is far less likely in these cases than water based sightings.

The key facts from this table can be summarised as follow:

• These sightings occured over a 130 year period.
• This works out at one case every 4 years on average.
• Land sightings are at least 30 times rarer than water sightings.
• There were seven sightings before the "Nessie" era.
• Fifteen sightings occured during the 1930s "flap".
• Thirteen sightings are noted from the 1960s.
• There are "silent" periods from 1937-1959 and 1980-1993.
• Many cases are close up  (less than 100 metres).

Note also that the cases will vary in degree of "strangeness". For example, three cases are based on discoveries of depressions while others are just a bit too strange (I think of the Fordyce case). The close proximity of many sightings underlines the lesser margin for error. Of the 17 cases where a distance is mentioned, 11 (65%) are stated to be at 100 yards or less. On the negative side, 26% occur at night time which makes observation of detail less likely. However, estimation of overall size is easier when the creature is seen against various frames of reference such as roads, trees, rivers, etc.

Morphology is also an interesting factor but we will leave that for another day.

The distribution of sightings as best as I can figure are plotted on the map below. One place of interest is what I jokingly call "Monster Alley". It is part of the road on the south side which runs between the villages of Foyers and Whitefield. This six mile stretch of the B852 has 32% of all the reports yet consititues only 12% of loch side road. It also carries less traffic than the other side of the loch and hence less potential witnesses. At a guess we would suggests a third less over the 130 year period (even less during the modern era). This gives an expected ratio of only 4% of total sightings - yet it carries 32%.

Why would this be the case? It is to be noted that the loch is much closer to the shore and road than it is elsewhere. By this we mean there are no sheer drops but it is also to be noted that other stretches such as beyond Inchnacardoch Bay to Invermoriston have similar topography but zero incidents. So why is this stretch of road more significant to sightings?

Perhaps the underwater shelf of Loch Ness is shallower along this stretch allowing easier water to land progression for such creatures? Again, a look at a 2003 Kongsberg sonar map I have shows no advantage in this area. In fact, the shallower areas tend to be at the river outlets (Oich, Moristion, Enrick, Foyers and Ness rivers) and the top end of the loch. Until a better explanation is forthcoming, this remains a statistical anomaly.

However, there are also higher "spot" concentrations of incidents in the Fort Augustus and Urquhart Bay areas. One may argue this is because these are higher population centres but then again Invermoriston and Foyers do not seem well represented in that case.

Finally, what about deer population versus monster incidents? How often do deer go near the loch side for food and water? The answer is nobody knows for sure but since some sceptics claim these witnesses are seeing only these normal but largish animals it is worth a further look.

One avenue of research is deer roadkill incidents. It is a reasonable assumption to say that incidences of deer road kill is proportional to the presence of deer on or near the shoreline. I emailed the National Deer Vehicle Collisions Project for data along Loch Ness roads and was supplied with a map from which I have created the following map. Deer kill recoveries are in white while Monster incidents are in red. I would note first that the DVC data covers reported recovery of deer carcasses from 2003-2010. Secondly, it is to be noted that since car traffic is less on the south side then there has to be some weighting factor to account for this. What that factor is has proven to be somewhat difficult since we have to take into account car traffic volume, car speed, blind spots and deer population compared to the busier north side. In the end, I went for a weighting factor of 3:1.

The main thing to note is the lack of correlation between deer incidents and monster incidents. If people were mistaking deer for monsters we would expect more red on white but this is not the case. This does not preclude a few making that mistake but certainly this should not be considered a major explanation of claimed land sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. The other point to make is why these land sightings only occur once every four years if they are purely down to deer, etc misidentification.

In terms of chronology, of those reports where we reasonably know the time of day, 53% occured in daylight but 26% occured at night which is yet another interesting statistic considering how far fewer people are out and about at night. This would suggest the creature is far more likely to come ashore when it is dark. If we assume a 10:1 weighting of people out at day:night, the nighttime percentage should be more like 10% than 26%.

In terms of dates, it turns out that February was the most frequent month taking in 25% of all reports where the month is known. This compares to the statistical average of 8%.

So from these it seems that the best way to see the Loch Ness Monster on land is on the stretch of road between Foyers and Whitefield at night time in February. I would suggest your chances go up 130 fold (32/4 * 26/10 * 25/8) which means you have an 11 day wait instead of 4 years. Doesn't statistics make everything sound so optimistic? Good luck with those freezing 3am February watches north of Foyers!

So the game is afoot as we pursue the monster (in digital form anyway). I will finish this introduction with two contrasting quotes. The first is from Loch Ness researcher and sceptic, Tony Harmsworth, who has this to say about land sightings at his website:

"I must say, here, that I find it quite incredible that anyone can believe any of these ridiculous land sighting reports. Surely they do nothing but confuse the whole subject?"

But we leave the last word to a land sighting witness from 1994 (as quoted from "The Encyclopaedia of the Loch Ness Monster" by Paul Harrison):

"I saw what I saw. It was the monster of the Loch all right ... The scientists at the Loch have got it all wrong, I'm telling you."

Who should you believe the most? The sceptic or the witness? Let everyone be persuaded in their own minds.

Loch Ness Monster Audio Interview

A few weeks back I was interviewed by Tim Binnall who runs the paranormal website "Binnall of America". The subject was, of course, the Loch Ness Monster. The interview ranged far and wide and we covered a lot of ground and it will hopefully inform people more about the creature. 

The interview can be found here for your listening consideration. I was discussing the subject "ex tempore" so any facts or figures you think are inaccurate we can correct here.

Frank Searle and Baby Nessies

I spotted an article by a Malcolm Robinson who writes on mysterious and paranormal subjects. This part looks at the Loch Ness Monster and although much of what he says is not new, he does include the transcript of an interview he did with Frank Searle some time in the 1970s or early 1980s.

You can read it at this link and I make a few observation here. 

Firstly, Frank claimed 38 sightings of the monster which of course will be subject to some dispute by Nessie cryptozoologists. This is more than double the total claimed by such Nessie personalities as Alex Campbell and Winifred Cary. How many of these might have been genuine, I have no idea.

Half he claimed to have a co-witness with him but Lieve Petin whom we mentioned previously said she never saw anything (as far as I can tell). If anyone did co-witness a sighting with Frank Searle, send me an email!

The other interesting piece (which was also in his book) was the claimed sighting of some "young" Nessies in a river measuring about four feet long. Now one may scoff at this report but the general theme holds - if there is a breeding population (as opposed to a visiting creature or something paranormal) then there will be smaller, juvenile creatures.

Here's one particularly cute version (credit to artist Tom Barnfield at www.runninghead.com):

Another more plesiosaur like one is here, though I cannot be sure who painted it.

Clearly, these smaller versions of Nessie have proven to be even more elusive than their adult counterparts as very few reports mention creatures of that size. However, this is to be expected for several reasons.

The first is because of their small size and this means they are just harder to spot. Compare it to how rarely otters are seen at Loch Ness and then extrapolate that to an animal that rarely surfaces (Searle himself saw the creatures as water-breathers with surfacings being purely accidental as they pursued fish, etc).

Secondly, apart from being difficult to spot because of their size, they are also less likely to break the surface.

Thirdly, since we have no idea of the life-cycle of a Nessie, who knows whether they spend the first part of their lives remaining in the depths, out of the way of potential predators.

Just my rambling thoughts ....

Update to Rip Hepple Nessletter Archive

I am glad to tell you that the earliest issues of Rip's Nessletter have now been added to the archive. Copies of the issues were supplied by Rip himself when I realised the copies could not be obtained from the National Library of Scotland. The added issues are listed below with their Google Docs links. I notice there is no issue 13 so need to check if that is an omission or Rip being superstitious!

I am now in the process of copying the other issues up to number 120 (in 1995) and these will appear once I have the time to complete the upload process.

No.1 January 1974 - link

No.2 March 1974 - link

No.3 May 1974 - link

No.4 July 1974- link

No.5 October 1974 - link

No.6 December 1974 - link

No.7 February 1975 - link

No.12 December 1975 - link

No.14 February 1976 - link

No.16 June 1976 - link

No.17 August 1976 - link

No.20 February 1977 - link

No.21 April 1977 - link

No.24 November 1977 - link

No.66 October 1984 - link

Hugh Gray: The Man and His Monster

Last year I published an article bolstering the case for the first ever photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. I attempted to show that the picture taken by Hugh Gray did not show the blurred image of a Labrador dog and indeed showed the perplexing image of a fish like head (look right and down on this webpage). That the head is there is undoubted in my opinion as it casts a shadow on the water below it. What it means to the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster is a continuing matter of conjecture. You can view all the relevant articles here. However, I wanted to address some loose ends and add some new information in this article. 

The first is the man himself, Hugh Gray. I managed to find a couple of photographs of him which help humanise the story a bit more and bring the history of the case up to date. The first was found on the South Loch Ness Heritage website where old photographs of the people and places of that part of Loch Ness are displayed. As I was browsing the content of this interesting website, I noticed a picture of a tug-of-war team taken in 1933. One of the team members was named "H. Gray" at which point the penny dropped!

The picture below was taken by Duncan MacDonald and is reproduced with the permission of the site's maintainer, Frank Ellam. Hugh Gray is sitting at the front in the tweed jacket, second from our right (Interestingly, the man sitting at Hugh Gray's left hand side is Jock Forbes who claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster cross the road in front of his father's horse and cart in 1919). The picture was probably taken a few months before his famous photograph. The picture can be seen with further information at this website link. Indeed, if you scroll further down at that website, you will see a 1912 photograph of another tug-of-war team featuring a younger Hugh Gray. 

As it happened, I later found another picture of Hugh Gray in the London Daily Sketch for the 8th December 1933 which I don't think flatters him much (below). As you can see, the main banner  headline conveys the sensation the Loch Ness Monster created at the time.

Now, the debunking of the photograph has proceeded with varying degrees of credibility but one attempt can definitely be put at the bottom of the credible list and that is a piece that appears in Ronald Binns' "The Loch Ness Mystery Solved". In it, Ronald Binns quotes the 30th May 1933 Inverness Courier which describes a failed attempt by an "A. Gray" to capture the Loch Ness Monster using wire, hooks, a barrel and bait. Portraying this episode as a leg-pulling event, Binns speculates openly whether this is the same Mr. Gray and therefore should this joker be trusted. However, apart from being a Mr. A. Gray instead of a Mr. H. Gray, the matter can be laid to rest. For some reason, Ronald Binns failed to mention a key fact from the article that Mr. A. Gray was a bus driver whereas our Mr. H. Gray was a fitter at the Foyers Aluminium Works.

A more intelligent critique comes from Dick Raynor, who is an expert in photographic analysis. He suggests that the shadow of the object is not consistent with the time the photograph was allegedly taken. The position of the shadow indicates the object is somewhere between the sun and the photographer and he further suggests such a configuration is not possible given the stated facts of the case (the implication being that there is deception involved). So, for example, if Hugh Gray had been looking at the object across to the other side of the loch, then he would be facing nearer west which would place the sun in a sunset position. It is this objection to the photograph's authenticity that I wish to address for the remainder of the article.

But first, why would I wish to address something as mundane as the position of a shadow? Because this is symptomatic of the way critics treat such evidence. I call it the "Poison Speck" technique and it comes straight out of the lawyers' handbook. For you see, such pictures are not normally exposed by a big one-off event such as a hoaxer's confession or a model nessie found at the scene of "the crime". Rather, the normal procedure is to plant a "reasonable doubt" in the mind of the reader via small arguments (our poison specks). In the same manner that a lawyer will chip away at the evidence of the prosecution/defence, so the sceptic chips away until he thinks the audience has reached the point of "reasonable doubt". It may only take one or two chips but in this generally sceptical age, this carries extra leverage. When you preach to the converted, proof is not so vehemently demanded. 

So, by way of analogy, if I present a tasty and appealing pizza to you but point out that a tiny speck of something vile has been added, would you eat it? It doesn't matter if the offending particle takes up less than one thousandth of the meal, most will politely decline. Such is the tale of the tactic used and there is nothing illegal or immoral about that (I use it myself but for the opposite reasons).

Going back to the picture, we need to know three things. The position of the sun, the object and the photographer. The position of Hugh Gray can be determined with reasonable accuracy as being on the point indicated on Google Maps below. Tim Dinsdale in his book "Loch Ness Monster" visited Hugh Gray in 1960 and was taken to the spot by him. Dinsdale describes a half mile walk "along the shore" which I take to be starting from the Foyers estuary and hence use to estimate the location more accurately.

 

The position of the sun can be calculated from the date and time of the sighting. The date was November 12th 1933 but what was the time? My original article stated noon but there is some confusion here as other authors suggest the morning. Faced with this, I attempted to guesstimate the time. The account states he visited the local church first and then walked to the point on the shore afterwards. So he allegedly enters the church intent on keeping the fourth commandment, but leaves intent on breaking the ninth. How long was that interval? A church service would start at 1100 and took typically 1 hour 20 minutes (according to a current local minister).

He then would have conversed with fellow worshippers, walked from the church to the estuary of the Foyers river and then a further half a mile along the wooded shoreline to the sighting point. The overall distance can be seen from the postcard photograph again kindly provided by Frank Ellam's website (original link here). In the foreground is the church and he would have likely walked to the estuary along the riverside and then turned left along the shoreline trees (top left photo). Note that hypothetical Labrador dogs would not have been allowed in church - unless Mr. Gray was a registered blind person. :)

That would take us to about one o' clock which by a strange coincidence is the time he gave to the Daily Sketch reporter in our aforementioned newspaper article. Applying an azimuth calculator we get the sun's position as 194 degrees East of True North and at an altitude of about 14.2 degrees. Note that the stated time of 1300 is outside of BST (British Summer Time) which was introduced to Britain in 1912 and hence does not need compensating for.

On a Google Maps view of Foyers we can now begin to draw some lines between Hugh Gray, the sun and object (Google uses Grid North which is essentially the same as True North). But what about the position of the object? It is stated as being about 200 yards from the observer but what is not stated is the orientation between the two. Was the object due West of Mr. Gray, South West, North West or something else? No one knows and the various accounts given do not give a hint.

In that light, the remaining question is whether the object can be oriented to produce a suitable shadow given the known positions of sun and observer. The answer is that it can by placing it along a line of observation towards the sun to produce the desired shadow effect and see how that pans out with respect to the observer. The resulting map is shown below but how would we know how such an object in such an orientation could appear to Hugh Gray at his vantage point?

At this point, it's time to introduce you to "Shuggy" our stand-in Loch Ness Monster ("Shuggy" is the name for "Hugh" in the Glasgow vernacular). Since it will be a bit impractical to float a forty foot reproduction of the monster at 1pm on the 12th November 2012 about 200 yards from a ledge near Foyers, we went for the next best thing.

Since there is only a need to roughly reproduce a similar shadow, this plasticine model will suffice. It's not an exact representation of what is in the photograph, but it's good enough! I would also point out that this is not a complete representation either, since we do not know what was beneath the water's surface, so it's a part-Nessie.

So in my back garden, I placed the model roughly perpendicular to a south-north axis at 2pm (add one hour for BST). I then placed myself as the observer at a 35 degree angle from the sun line and photographed the model. The resulting photograph shows a similar shadow to the Gray photograph. The model is oriented to face side on to the viewer.

There are one or two issues such as the altitude of the sun would be slightly different compared to November and my own crouching down to simulate the height of the observer was an estimate as well. However, I hope I have proved that the shadow argument is no longer relevant as there is a sun-creature-witness orientation that is within the parameters of the case. 

One final objection may be that such an orientation would include some shoreline. The problem with this argument is two-fold. Firstly, we do not have the complete negative and what has passed down to us is an enlargement. So any talk of shoreline on the original is open to debate.  

Secondly, I visited the site of the Hugh Gray photograph in July last year and took some photos and video which I hope to put in a follow up post. Suffice to say, it was simple to photograph a spot 200 metres from me looking in that general direction which did not include any shoreline (though I appreciate my digital camera and Gray's box camera had different parameters).

As I said, a follow up post will be written in due course.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com