More on the Jennifer Bruce Photograph

I would now like to revisit this famous monster photograph in the light of feedback. Not surprisingly, I got a spectrum of responses to my original article ranging from agreement to disagreement. It surprised me that some still insisted it was a seagull (or any bird for that matter) despite the logical arguments I put up against this idea.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I doubt anyone could argue that my analysis on the bird question is an indefensible position. I suspect there may be a degree of resistance to a non-bird argument perhaps because some may see that as an implicit admission that the object in the picture is therefore a "Loch Ness Monster".

That is not a logical consequence. What I am saying is that it is not a bird, so another explanation should be sought. That does not compel one to select "monster", although that is a valid position to take (as I do). A choice of "inconclusive" is also quite acceptable. So it is not a choice between "gulls and gullibility" as one researcher once put it, but rather taking it to the next stage.

In defending the weakened gull argument, one comment suggested the bird may be banking to distort the shape. This I cannot agree with as banking would tend to foreshorten the length of the wing compared to the body. The problem we have with this alleged bird is that the wing length is way out of proportion to the length of the body.

The only way I could see such wing "stretching" taking place is via a mirage or heat haze. However, I see no possibility of such an idea in this picture. Feel free to attempt such a defence and I will reply.

However, one comment I will "focus" on for the rest of this article and that is the blurriness of the object.  Look at the object and you may notice it looks a bit fuzzy. This is offered as proof that it is a bird in flight from left to right. Now apart from the reasons given why this is not a bird, let us look closer at why the image could have this degree of fuziness.

There are several possible reasons for this. The first is that the overall image is slightly out of focus. The second is that there is some form of motion relative to the scene and the observer. This could either mean the camera is moving slightly during exposure or the object is moving relative to the observer. There may be other causes but we concentrate on these two.

So which of these could account for the slight fuzziness? To help answer this question, I employed an image processing software package called "FocusMagic" which has received good reviews for improving images with focus issues due to defocus or motion blur.

The parameters required to execute an image clean up are somewhat heuristic as we don't know the conditions under which the photograph was taken. So the first trial was to employ the package's focus filter which attempts to restore the image due to out of focus issues. I employed a blur width of 2 and an amount of 100% which gave the result below.

The result was actually quite impressive and certainly sharpened up the image. In fact, the main thing I noted after processing was that the entire picture suffered from a degree of defocusing. Note how the buoys to the right and the foreground foliage have also sharpened up as well as the distant trees on the contours of the hills.

This would suggest the fuzziness is due to a general problem with the image rather than the object of our main interest. However, if we assume a bird flying from left to right, then we can proceed to apply the package's motion blur compensation filter. After some playing around with parameter values, I plumped for a blur width of 4 and a direction of zero degrees (left to right). The result is below.

Again, there is an improvement not only in the Nessie object but for the picture overall which again is consistent with the motion being relative to the whole scene rather than just our object. Indeed, if it was only the object that was moving, applying a motion blur filter to the whole image would not be helpful as everything else is relatively stationary. In both filters, the circular ripple I suggested is moving out from the object is also that bit clearer.

However, it is to be noted that the refocus filter produced a better result than the motion blur filter, which again is consistent with the fuzziness problem being camera related rather than scene related. I would also again point out that the "bird" in all images has not resolved itself into a more bird-like image. It is still deformed and inconsistent with bird morphology.

If the object is zoomed in and isolated from the general scene, various motion blur filters were then applied for various angles (below and click to enlarge). As it turned out, none really produced as good a result as the refocus filter.

What does all this prove? It suggests to me that any blurriness on the photograph is a whole image issue rather than one related to the object. That does not mean there cannot be independent movement in the object, but that could be applied to both a monster or bird scenario. Indeed, motion blur is something that is seen on at least one other Nessie photograph - the Hugh Gray picture from 1933.

If this was a Loch Ness Monster and it was briefly in view, then one would expect some motion as it rises and falls back into the depths. What the progress of that motion could be is entirely a matter of conjecture. It could rise and fall vertically or it could be a 45 degrees descent which would have a large component of horizontal motion. The sinusoidal nature of the neck could also contribute additional motion on top of rising/submerging to produce a complex array of motion vectors.

My own conclusion is that we are not seeing individual object motion blur consistent with a left to right movement but rather consistent with camera shake or a slightly out of focus image. That there may yet be some motion inherent in the object is conceded but that is an argument that cannot be hijacked by either side concerning this mystery object photographed by Jennifer Bruce those thirty years ago.

POSTSCRIPT

A comment from a reader below suggested a seagull in the original post bore a resemblance to the Bruce "bird":

"You'll see a small silhouetted gull on the upper right of the photo, below and right of the big gull at the top. That figure almost exactly matches the figure in the 'nessie' photo."

I superimposed the gull in question as before:

Though these is a foreshortening of the top joint of the wing, the net effect is to foreshorten the whole wing length and as you can see, the overlay is not convincing. To see a real overlay of a gull at Loch Ness, refer to Dick Raynor's picture here. I have overlaid the rightmost gull on our "test gull" and as you can see it is a good fit. Clearly, we have a gull in that particular picture!

 

New Book on Tim Dinsdale

I just got a heads up from a reader telling me that a biography on the famous monster hunter, Tim Dinsdale, has just been published. Entitled, "The Man Who Filmed Nessie", it is written by one of his sons, Angus.

The book is published by Hancock House Publishers and further details can be had here. The book's brief synopsis reads:

"The story of the dedicated family man who left his successful career as an aeronautical engineer to search for proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster."

I have just been reading Dinsdale's "Project Water Horse" and his son, Angus, was certainly involved with his dad's work - even as a young lad.  No doubt he will have many interesting things to say about this seminal character in the story of the Loch Ness Monster.

I will review it once my order arrives.

(typing this from a holiday cottage on the Isle of Lewis!)

While I am here, an old favourite has appeared on YouTube ... look out for Tim Dinsdale!

The Gordon Holmes Video

Nessie believer, Bill Appleton, got in touch with me recently to point me to his stabilised images of the 2007 Gordon Holmes video. I have seen these before on the Web elsewhere, but these images should be larger and perhaps more amenable to inspection by some readers.

The non-monster theory proposed is that it is a form of wind turbulence on the loch caused by winds being funnelled down in a certain way on to the loch surface. You can find one exposition of that theory here. The author of that assessment, Dick Raynor,  admits he had not seen such a video footage before in his 40 years of Loch Ness investigation, but plumps for a phenomenon similar to a wind devil.

However, another sceptic by the name of Benjamin Radford, appears to have put little thought into the matter when he dismissively states:

"There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped." 

Dick pointed out to me a cleft in the hills where he thought a wind channel could form. I took the picture below which shows the cleft.

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpu

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

There are many fish and fauna around Loch Ness that could look easily create the image Holmes taped. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/1566-video-loch-ness-monster.html#sthash.c0w3WziX.dpuf

Now, to me, the formation in the water looks too "solid" to be solely the product of the action of moving air on water. Dick says he sees a similar formation near this one, but I see nothing else that is not just ordinary wind slicks on the loch which are extremely common. 

He also says there is no wake which rules out an animal. I disagree with this view as an animal can leave a water trail behind which does not have to be the classic V-pattern as this YouTube video of a swimming alligator shows (especially the last few seconds of the clip).

So is this the Loch Ness Monster? Click on the images below to expand them and form your own opinion. We close with Bill Appleton's own view of the video:

"I believe they display a giant eel side-winding across the lake. The animal is at least 10 feet long, maybe 15 feet.

You can see in some frames the classic "plesiosaur" neck, but this is just the eel moving away from the camera."

P.S. I will be on holiday soon, so responses will be slow over that time, if there at all!

Still Blogging Nessie Three Years On

It was on the 18th July 2010 that I published my first article on this blog. It wasn't much, basically a "Welcome to the Loch Ness Blog" post which flagged my intentions and nothing more. At the time, I had no idea whether it would have any impact on people's perceptions of the Loch Ness Monster and even to this day, I find such a metric hard to quantify.

Be that as it may, the blog has increased in popularity as people seeking old and new information on Nessie make their visits. That first post currently has a modest page hit of 509. The most popular posting to date is Marcus Atkinson's sonar story with over 81,000 hits. Behind that lies one of my favourites - the analysis of the Hugh Gray photograph.

In terms of search engines, a Google search for "loch ness monster" usually finds the blog somewhere on the first page of results which has some relevance as not every Google user goes beyond the first page.

Again, this helps gets the message out as people do not know exactly where to find the material. Nevertheless, what people think of what they read no doubt covers a wide spectrum! One thing is certain, though. If people are not reading it, they are not being affected by it. Those reading it may have ascertained the ethos of the blog. It is to defend the Loch Ness Monster and attack opposition arguments.

That may sound a tad bellicose, but it is an argument rather than a war. It is based on words rather than weapons.  It is a strategy that uses the same tools that sceptical commentators claim to use. Indeed, some sceptics reading this may smirk and assure themselves that they have exclusive access to these tools, but I disagree.

Over these three years, I have gotten used to various remarks ascribed by sceptics to those who believe in the existence of large, unknown animals in Loch Ness. They're now like water off a plesiosaur's back. However, that does not diminish the motivation to state one's own case.

There will be phrases such as "gullible", not "grown up" or indulging in the equivalent of reading entrails. Meanwhile, eyewitness reports are sarcastically demoted to "ancient texts" as if they had as much relevance to life today as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Such is the attitude of some sceptics to those who believe or know there is a monster in Loch Ness. Such is the hardening of scepticism towards opposing views over the last quarter of a century as they began to dominate the game.

Scepticism applies science and critical thinking whilst we seemingly apply the throwing of juju bones. As I have surveyed and analysed the so called application of science and logic by scepticism, I sometimes wonder if the roles are better reversed.

There is no better example than the recent claim by an Italian scientist that Loch Ness Monster sightings are attributable to earthquakes along the Great Glen fault.  It is a ridiculous claim that is easily refuted but since it is a scientist that proclaims it and since some thinking must have been involved, then surely we ought to genuflect before it?

Then there was the claim in 2006 by paleontologist, Neil Clark, that some sightings were attributable to circus elephants swimming in Loch Ness. Not as daft as earthquake bubbles but one that is again not backed up by the evidence. Again, do we swallow this explanation hook, line and sinker because it came from someone who claimed to apply the scientific method?

Going back to the 1960s, we had eminent zoologist, Maurice Burton, extolling the virtues of vegetable mats floating around Loch Ness. No one now believes this has any logical force or evidential compulsion.

So much for scientists you may say, but sceptics sidestep these issues by claiming that these theories are postulated by scientists who may be expert in one field, but not in others relevant to Loch Ness. Which prompts me to ask whether they themselves are qualified in the fields they speak on. What do I mean by that?

Today, Loch Ness Monster sightings are dismissed on the premise that they are ordinary objects seen in out-of-ordinary circumstances. So it is not seismic bubbles, elephants or rotting mats but just a log or a boat wake or a string of birds seen in the wrong place at the wrong time.

By way of example, over on the Loch Ness Monster Debate Facebook page, one researcher told all and sundry that the famous Greta Finlay case was merely a sighting of a deer and a boat wake. When that monstrous explanation surfaced, even fellow sceptics did not accept it:

"I think skeptics claiming what the Finlay's saw was a Deer is a bit of an insult to their intelligence really as I'm sure being resident in the area, they would have seen the odd one every now and again!"

"I find the "deer debunk" a little bit of a stretch myself, anyone with even minimal experience in the outdoors can identify a deer."

I agree with them, it does not make sense and if I was a sceptic it would be more logical just to call it a hoax. But having read the claims of scepticism these last three years, it became evident that there was one theory that was being promoted which to me has about as much kudos as bubbles and pachyderms.

It is the theory that people entering the Loch Ness Zone, come under some psychological change that makes them see monsters instead of deers and other objects. We are not talking about people who make honest mistakes about standing waves half a mile away. This apparently covers even sightings only 20 yards away!

Remember I talked about those not qualified to speak? Well, if you are going to talk about gross misperceptions, I suspect you need to be qualified in matter of neurology as it appertains to the visual, perceptual and memory portions of the brain. I don't think I have met such a person in the field of Loch Ness research yet, but the implication is that there exists a rigorous scientific framework for this. 

I don't see any such books, experiments or peer reviewed scientific papers which compel anyone to accept that Nessie sightings can be explained in this way. There has been experiments with poles bobbing up and down in the water, but nothing conclusive. The theory does not even appear to be falsifiable (i.e. it always comes up with an explanation). If anyone says that all sightings can be explained in such a way (apart from the ones they decide are hoaxes), ask them for scientific proof.

But the "battle" continues apace. I noted this article with the bold title "It’s time to finally give up on the Loch Ness Monster". Really? Tell me why!

For a start we are swiftly directed to a recent blog piece on Scientific American by Darren Naish who has rehashed an analysis of various Nessie photos. Let us see how cutting a piece of critical thinking it is. Well, for a start, it is not Mr. Naish's own critical thinking as most sceptics just regurgitate what others have said. As it turns out, his article has more logical holes in it than the proverbial Swiss cheese.

For a start, he tells us that:

"sightings and photographic and sonar evidence can be satisfactorily explained as mistaken or embellished encounters with known animals (including swimming deer, water birds, seals, and small cetaceans), waves, or optical illusions."

However, and in the light of what I just said, he prefaces that statement with the words "I am of the opinion that ...". In other words, this is no scientific fact that he is presenting, it is just his opinion. Why is that? Because he can't prove it!

He further says:

"The expectation that there’s an unknown animal in Loch Ness almost certainly explains the recent history of sightings."

There's that unproven theory again but now he tells us it is a near certainty it is true without any evidence to conclusively prove it. But crucial to that theory is the absence of monster reports before monster fever struck in 1933:

".. there is no tradition of sightings, nor are their old historical reports or anything like that pre-dating the 1930s"

This is complete nonsense, and I have devoted an entire book to disproving it. But if people were claiming to see Nessie before 1933, his theory about modern monster expectations takes a serious blow.

Naish then proceeds through some well known hoaxes such as the Wilson and Shiels photographs. He then calls fake on the famous picture of Nessie approaching Castle Urquhart by Peter MacNab. He claims it is too big and too dark but claims the real bad news was Roy Mackal's analysis in 1976. That analysis was shown to be irrelevant in my own article on the picture. Darren should have had no problem finding the article, you type "peter macnab loch ness" into Google and it comes up as top match. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Darren's debunking of Peter O' Connor's picture is then executed but again he is almost completely reliant on what others have said (in this case, Maurice Burton). Did Naish critique Burton's analysis? You can bet your ass he didn't and therein lies a problem. Sceptics do not critique sceptics in any meaningful degree. Never mind, that's my job .. .and anyone else that cares to join me.

Then the Rines photos and the recent Edwards picture are shot down and with some reason I have to agree. But what about the other pictures? Has Darren committed a logical non-sequiter by making his readers assume that if these are fakes then so are the rest? Yes, he has.

So, with that, he says, "So that's that! We move on." I wish they would and leave Loch Ness to the rest of us (and Charlie Sheen)!

Three years on, the modus operandi of scepticism has become more familiar to me. In fact, as one reader suggested, it can be perceived as more than a scientific norm, it is a social and cultural norm. In other words, it is fashionable to be a sceptic. Laissez faire principles apply as supply and demand produces more sceptics and we reach saturation point. You can't move for them now on cryptozoological forums! Back in the 60s and 70s, I suspect the situation was the complete opposite - again because it was more fashionable to believe in high strangeness.

But to be fashionable leads to lack of competition, which leads to lack of peer review and leads to obesity in critical thinking which leads to ill thought out arguments which more often than not are proposed rather than proven.

Will scepticism accept any of this? Of course it won't. Will this blog continue to find the flaws in their arguments? All I can say is, here's to another three years!

Classic Sightings: Michael McCullough

Date: November 21st 1972
Time: Noon?
Location: Near Fort Augustus Abbey
Witnesses: Michael McCullough and five others
Type of sighting: multiple humps
Conditions: Not Known

Back in November, a reference to a Nessie report appeared on the cryptozoological website cryptozoo-oscity. It was a brief account from four schoolboys from the local Fort Augustus Abbey school:

A 14-year-old Bo’ness boy claimed that he had come within 15 yards of the Loch Ness Monster. Michael McCullough was walking along the banks of Loch Ness when the giant creature appeared in front of him and his three friends. 

I began to probe around to find more details on this story and eventually bits and pieces came in. The reference to the Linlithgow Gazette was a dead end as local newspapers in Central Scotland are more likely to go through liquidations or mergers than national newspapers. Investigating various candidates at my local library turned up trumps with this clipping from the Livingston Journal and Gazette date 27th November 1972.

Bo'ness boy sights 'Nessie' 

A 14-YEAR-OLD Bo'ness boy claimed on Tuesday that he had been within 15 yards of the Loch Ness monster! Michael McCullough, son of a well-known Bo'ness practioner Dr Michael McCullough of Rosemount, Dean Road, was walking along the shores of Loch Ness with three friends when the legendary "Nessie" appeared. The monster surfaced "not much more than ten yards away" then swam across Borlum Bay before submerging again about three minutes later. Michael and his friends, aged 13, 14 and 15, reported their sighting to their headmaster at Fort Augustus Abbey School. Dr Edward Buchanan. 

CRUISED AWAY 

The boys later told "Nessie" expert Mr Alex. Campbell of Fort Augustus that the monster cruised away at a speed of between five and ten miles an hour leaving a one-foot high wake behind it, they say it was dark slate in colour and very shiny. There were three separate parts to the creature which moved through the water like a caterpillar. They estimated the monster to be about 20 feet long with several flipper-like appendages which it appeared to use as a method of propulsion.


Ten yards is very close indeed for a monster sighting but the account is pretty short on detail for something so close. However, the description appears to be of three humps with propulsion appendages being in view. The mention of moving through the water like a caterpillar is confusing as caterpillars do not move through water! This appears to be one of those metaphors applied to Nessie when one is not sure how to describe what one is looking at. I assume it refers to the vertical undulations that are often associated with the Loch Ness Monster.

Explanations will be offered as to what actually happened. The boys merely saw our ubiquitous standing wave which seems to explain everything multi-hump, no matter how fantastical the description. Another explanation is the safety net of the hoaxer. A comment placed on the aforementioned cryptozoo-oscity site says:

It was a hoax. I was at the school at the time. They were bored and made it up. 

However, the fact that the comment is anonymous and placed there on April Fool's Day does not really engender confidence in its authenticity. Forty one years after that event I tracked down Michael on Facebook and asked him what he remembered about that day:

RW: Can you tell me about the time you saw Nessie when there (at the school)?

MM: There were four of us; memory quite distant but a big dark grey thing in the water which shot off at a fair speed was NOT imagination... it was seen independently by two other people from a different viewpoint at the same time too. I have no idea what it was, but it was certainly big and alive. Like over 8m long. What more can I say?

Evidently, the passing of years has not encouraged Michael to admit to any school prank. He is still adamant about the story and the details do not appear to have diminished (I had not shown him the clipping above).

A schoolboy prank or the real deal? You, the reader, must decide!

The Latest "Nessie" Pictures

These pictures turned up recently on the Nessie Facebook page and are certainly worthy of further consideration. The witness was Daniel Parker and another on the 26th June about 3pm near the village of Inverfarigaig on the south shore.

He was driving along this quieter road when his attention was taken by an object which appeared to be moving against the prevailing water currents.  He estimated it was about 5 to 6 feet in length and about 1 foot out of the water. He quickly took four pictures with his Blackberry phone before it submerged. Two of these pictures are shown here.

Clearly, the two pictures have been taken from different positions as I see no obvious correlation between the foreground branches in the pictures. However, an examination of the object in the pictures shows it has slightly altered its appearance, though again it is not clear whether this is due to the object itself or the water around it.

Could it be a rock? The location is beside a small section of wall opposite Achnahannet. A look at Google StreetView gives a general view of the location. A zoom in to this area in the second photo shows a rock poking out of the foliage to the right but that rock is far closer to the shore than the object in Daniel's picture.

Rocks do appear and disappear with the loch's rising water levels but not this far out. In fact, rocks that far out would be a hazard to shipping! Two pictures I took with my game camera near this spot show how the rising water level can make rocks come and go, but again I emphasise this is more likely right up at the shoreline.

Daniel says he thought he saw something similar the previous day, but that could indeed have been some of the rocks nearer the shore and it was not at the same location. To quote Daniel:

The first picture was from a clearing about fifty yards from the beginning of the scrub, once this thing was out of view, I reversed the car about ten/twenty feet to another clearing, that's your other picture. This thing started to submerge to the right of this picture and as you can see there is more scrub, by this time I reversed the car back to by where the wall is, we sat there a few minutes, seen nothing and drove off.

One other consideration is a log of some shape which is moving against the prevailing wind due to an underwater seiche. This is possible, but the main point here is that the object submerged and did not reappear after the witnesses had waited for a few minutes. Logs do not tend to do this.

So, it could be a living creature and Dan is adamant it was not a seal. If it was indeed showing up to six feet of body out of the water, that limits our options in terms of animals. Perhaps some more information will be forthcoming if the other two pictures become available.

As an aside, I note the good old Loch Ness Hoodoo struck when one of the witnesses told me he had left a "good camera and video cam with great zoom" at their cabin. I doubt that would matter. As soon as Nessie notes they have better equipment, she'll stay underwater! 

But it shows the need for the best equipment one has when at Loch Ness as I don't think most camera-phones are up to the job. The natural assumption is that one is not likely to see anything unusual when visiting and that is true for any given person.

Opinions are invited from readers.

POSTSCRIPT

As it turned out, it was a rock and thanks to Steve Feltham's investigative skills, it was located at Loch Tarff which is a small loch on the south side of Loch Ness. My intiial thoughts based on a location given as near Inverfarigaig are obviously not now applicable. Just as well I didn't commit to a "This is Nessie" statement.

More details are at the Loch Ness Monster facebook where the alleged photographer and others debate the whole episode.

Some Old and New Nessie Books

If you're a Nessie Bibliophile, then it's time again for one of our occasional excursions into the world of books on the Loch Ness Monster. At the last count on our list of Nessie books, the number of titles exclusively or partly devoted to our monstrous subject was fifty seven.

Today, that number swells to a round sixty and we start off with a new title which will not actually be published until the 4th of July. It is called "The Loch Ness Monster: And Other Unexplained Mysteries" by J. F. Derry.

I like the way this book starts with the title "unexplained mysteries". In other words, don't take any dissing of the subject from those who put it all down to over-excited tourists seeing driftwood or bow waves. However, the picture on the cover is most likely no mystery as it was taken by that crafty cockney, Frank Searle in 1974. But I will reserve final judgement on Frank until I have read Paul Harrison's forthcoming book on the subject.

The book is actually a compilation of stories and photographs taken from the well known British newspaper, the Daily Mirror. As the book's abstract at Amazon says:

It's 80 years after the first modern-day sighting of the Loch Ness Monster and yet despite frequent eye witness accounts since then, sonar images and even video footage, still no one knows for sure whether there really is a serpent-like prehistoric behemoth inhabiting the famous Scottish lake.

More amazing is that Nessie is only one of countless extraordinary terrestrial and extraterrestrial life-forms that have been reported worldwide over the course of the last century or so: the Yeti and Bigfoot; British big cats such as The Beasts of Bodmin and Stroud; paranormal manifestations in the form of ghosts, banshees and poltergeists; and visitors from other worlds, aliens and their UFOs.

The list is astonishing and extensive, but the remarkable Daily Mirror archive has accumulated a wealth of articles and pictures from sightings, visitations, apparitions and alien abductions, many of which are now collected together in this otherworldly monster of a book, "Loch Ness Monster and Other Unexplained Mysteries".

Well, I have ordered my copy and will give it a fuller review in due course.

The second title is one already mentioned on this blog and it is the album called "Alex Harvey presents The Loch Ness Monster" published in 1976 as a vinyl record. This is a compilation of sightings from that time and I wrote previously on this item in this article. However, a CD version of the album was published in 2009 which I bought. To my surprise, the item actually arrived as an 18 page booklet with the CD in the inside back cover.

So inside we are treated to various photographs of eyewitnesses and snippets of their stories all framed in the manner of a travelogue by Alex Harvey. You will even see a picture of a young Dick Raynor with a kipper tie and long hair who, according to Alex, agreed to an interview but then changed his mind. I don't know if that knock-back annoyed Alex Harvey because he cheekily refers to Dick Raynor as "Dick Rayner" and "Nick Raynor" in the booklet.

It's a nice little booklet with some good photographs and you can generally pick it up on eBay for a good price. The same cannot be really said for the final item which is entitled "Loch Ness Monster Handbook" by Jim M. MacRae which was published in 1974. 

The front cover promises amazing facts and offers to improve sighting chances and all this against the backdrop of a grinning Loch Ness Monster. I paid over the odds to get this 15 page booklet but such is the life of a Nessie memorabilia collector. This is what I call a "boilerplate" book which is essentially a book which adds nothing to the store of knowledge or thinking about the subject and pretty much has the look and feel of an item aimed at the tourist trade.

I don't know anything about Jim MacRae who appears to have been a local man but the material he uses is pretty standard stuff for the 1970s. We have the plesiosaur theory dominating and the photographs by Lachlan Stuart, Kenneth Wilson and Frank Searle interlaced with some well known sightings such as that by Greta Finlay.

In fact, it is the same Searle photo as the one at the top of this article. One should not underestimate the influence Frank Searle had on Loch Ness Monster publicity in the early 1970s. After the Dinsdale and O' Connor pictures of 1960, there is a gap of over a decade with nothing of a sensational quality. That was ended by Searle's pictures and the Rines flipper picture.

It has always been a bit of mystery to me why despite the heightened publicity of the 1960s with the high profile searches no one thought of continuing the so called line of faked pictures. You had the alleged litany of deception from Lachlan Stuart, Peter MacNab and Peter O' Connor over 9 years but the next 12 produced zilch. I would actually expect more fakes since increased publicity attracts more attention seekers. But it was not the case, which make one wonder how many claimed fakes are actually fakes.

These last two books exemplify the volume of Nessie literature in the 1970s. Though that decade occupied one eighth of the Nessie era, it produced one third of the known titles. It was a crazy decade, no doubt looked back upon with mixed memories by many. But the record now stands at sixty titles and I hope you enjoyed our little trip into the Nessie bookshelf.