Dinsdale, Dashcams and Paint Trays

If was off to Loch Ness again as the tent and equipment were packed for four nights by the shores of the famous loch. Being August and a good Summer, I expected things to be a lot busier around the loch than they were compared to our last visit in April. That was certainly true as we headed north on the A9 to join the bustle of tourist traffic making its way to the splendid vistas of the Highlands. Don't you just hate being stuck behind a slow caravan on a road which is mainly single carriageway? Fortunately, such holdups were tolerably rare and mobile home vehicles are faster than they used to be.

This time round, I decided to book with the new campsite that had been opened at the village of Foyers on the south side of the loch. It is an area with its fair share of general and monster history though the main reason I was there was its close proximity to the loch shore.

This is the area where the famous Dinsdale film was shot as well as the first ever picture of the monster taken by Hugh Gray in November 1933. So, even here, there were things to pursue. 

The campsite is run by Donald Forbes who is the son of the late Jock Forbes who has an interesting sighting to his name. I would be asking him and others a few relevant questions over the next few days. On arrival, I set up the tent with as good a view as possible so that the loch was readily seen from the comfort of the tent (as the picture below shows).

From there, I could scan my own little portion of Loch Ness with my pair of 10x50mm binoculars, camera and camcorder at hand. Nice, I think I will be coming back here! 

TIM DINSDALE

I mentioned Tim Dinsdale in the post title and I was already aware that this field played a part in the Dinsdale story.

According to Tim's book, "Loch Ness Monster", after he had shot his famous film, he stopped and tore down the hill to the site of this present day campsite in the hope of getting more valuable footage. He describes driving downhill like a man demented and going round a circle of house before stopping on a nearby field. When he rushed to the shore with binoculars he scanned the loch and saw nothing - not even a boat. This panoramic shot I took of the area highlights a few things (click to enlarge).

The place marked "A" is the circular road of houses that Tim went around. He then drove over to some point near the area marked "B" (though I could not be dogmatic on the exact spot). As you can see, there is a line of mature trees blocking the view to the loch but they would not have been as high in 1960 as they are now. However, the area marked by "E" to the right is still quite open as you would have seen from my previous tent picture (which was pitched at point "C").

Now I scanned part of the opposite shoreline with my binoculars and I would have had no trouble picking out any boats. Sceptics of Tim Dinsdale's film say the opposite - that the alleged boat would have simply melted into the background of the opposite shore when Tim got to roughly eye level with the loch. Sorry, I don't buy that explanation based upon my own on the spot observations. Any competent observer with binoculars (or even the naked eye) would have spotted a boat.

I know that some will retort that Tim had poor eyesight and had inferior binoculars. I believe he had 2.5x25mm glasses similar to the ones below. If anyone thinks different, post a comment or email.

Could Tim have failed to have spotted a boat from the opposite shore with binoculars that magnified 2.5 times? I ask the same question about how he could have failed to have spotted a boat before filming. I am not convinced by the sceptical arguments but you can see the opposite shoreline in question in the picture. By the time Tim was out his car and scanning the far shore, the object would have been somewhere to the top left of the picture. Reader, form your own opinion on that matter.

Moving on, I got talking to the campsite proprietor and his wife about the monster of the loch. Donald was sceptical but kept an open mind whilst his wife believed there was something strange in the loch. 

There was one question regarding Tim Dinsdale that I had to ask Donald. Now I would note here that Donald had not heard of Tim Dinsdale but that was not relevant to my question. Sceptic Maurice Burton had claimed in a 1969 article that Jock Forbes was in the habit of motoring his boat across the loch at the day and time with cargo and that Tim had filmed his object. The implication being that he had filmed Jock's boat. Donald's response was forthright - his father had never owned a boat and, moreover, he was not the type of person who would be on the loch. As it turns out, it was another local and not Jock Forbes himself that Burton claimed as the source. I will be writing on the matter of Maurice Burton in a future article.

STORIES

Donald's family had farmed the land for generations but for economics reasons, he had now turned to the tourism side of loch business. Foyers is place that is contracting. I was told there was a time within recent decades when there was a more thriving community which expressed itself in the presence of three churches and three pubs. There used to be a butcher's shop and the other amenities you associate with small communities. 

That is all gone now as buildings were closed or turned into tourist accommodation. Meanwhile, who needs a local shop when the Tesco delivery van can come straight to your door from Inverness? In fact, why need such a delivery service when you can just move to Inverness itself? Perhaps dying is a better word than contracting, sad though it may be.

As it turned out, Donald had personally known Hugh Gray, who took the 1933 Nessie picture. I asked if he was the kind of man who would pull off the leg pulling stunt that sceptics claimed he did. The answer was a straight "No". That was not the type of person he had known. Sceptics would of course retort that he would say that anyway. You can't win with that type of poor critical thinking.

On the previous picture of the field, the spot Hugh Gray took his picture is traditionally placed to the left of the spot marked "D" on a ledge about 50 feet high. I accept that but I know of at least one suggestion that it could be around the area marked "E". I reject that as a misreading of the key texts. A it turned out, that spot is a beach putting any witness at loch level and much more convenient for photographing hypothetical labrador dogs. Nuff said!

I asked about his father Jock's  land sighting of Nessie between the war years. For those who do not recall this, Nicholas Witchell's book "The Loch Ness Story" recounts the tale of how Jock Forbes and his father were returning home late one night when their horse reared up and stopped as something large and dark crossed the road in front of them followed by a splash.

Donald was of the opinion that his father did not see anything - which is true as the form before them was not readily discernible and he offered the suggestion that they had actually seen a bull which had escaped from the market. An interesting suggestion, though one I would not accept myself!

Meanwhile, his wife told me the story years back of a local man, Alastair Roebuck. This man had been a vocal critic of the idea that any monster could inhabit Loch Ness until the day he was chopping wood at Inverfarigaig. When that long head and neck broke the surface near him, he was no longer a critic!

I could not get any more information on this sighting and it seems Mr. Roebuck is no longer around. I do not think this story is on the "record" and I cannot comment more as I have no further information, so I will leave it at that.

Later on I visited Steve Feltham at his home on Dores Bay. The place was milling with tourists and Steve was there working away at his Nessie models. I was invited in for a chat and we indulged in monster talk for a good while occasionally interrupted by a tourist wishing to buy a Nessie.

On the subject of stories, I had mentioned something I saw in the woods which led to a story about the late "Dave the Cave". Some years back, Dave was making his way to the loch side when an extraordinary sight came upon him. It was not a monster but a big, black cat the size of an Alsatian sitting on a rock looking at him. Now big cats have been reported all over Britain for decades, it seems Dave had come across one.

I remember how a puma had been caught in the area in 1980 and made the front pages. I also remember how I stumbled upon a depression in the ground that looked quite cat like on the shores of Loch Quoich during a monster loch tour in the mid 1980s. That was about 4 inches across. I took a picture with my comb alongside for comparison. Note what are presumably deer tracks below the "cat" print. If it is a track, it must have been more recent as the deer spoor look more dried out. Opinions are welcome, I have no strong view myself, though I thought them cat like at the time.

Various strange stories are associated with Loch Ness which seem to have no link with the monster. I don't think half the story has been told about them.

I also talked with Mr. Hargreaves from Foyers who had a head-neck sighting back in June 2011. He recounted the tale and he said that other locals had also seen things but they never get into the papers. A great pity.

EXPERIMENTS

Moving on from stories, I hit the loch road for the next few days doing various things. One experiment I indulged in was to do with an old paint tray. The question before me was whether anyone from the shore can see things under the water. That may seem a no-brainer, why wouldn't you? Jon Rowe, who took a recent picture at Loch Ness, said he saw a dark form moving just below the water and, going further back, witnesses such as Ted Holiday testified to the same thing.

Nevertheless, one Nessie sceptic says you cannot and I agree and I disagree with that assessment. It all depends on context. So I had packed a paint tray and a pair of wellies to wade out and try out a few things. Here are some pictures of the paint tray. 

One side is a kind of dirty bluish white while the other side is a mixture of dirty silver and brown (i.e. rust). Would I be able to see this from the loch shore if placed in about two feet of water? I waded out in my shorts and wellies, placed the tray on the loch bottom, retreated and took some pictures.

First up was the tray blue-white side up. This was easily visible to the naked eye and is the white streak in the centre of the picture. A zoom in is also shown. Note the camera position was an elevation of about 3 metres and the distance to the object was about 18 metres. This gives an angle of viewing of about 10 degrees.

I then placed the darker side of the tray in the water with these results. Clearly, the object would be less visible, but to the naked eye, it was still clear enough to make out. Indeed, the pictures here do not do proper justice to what the superior human eye could see. To me, both objects were  visible and were only obscured when a wave passed over them.

How would a black to grey object do? Not as well, but better if it was even closer to the surface (e.g. a foot below). If I can find such an object which would not be ruined in the water, I'll do that next time. But I don't doubt the human eye would be able to make something out, especially if it was large and easier to follow.

Of course, once the object descended deeper, it would be lost to view. But that is not my point. This is all about the top one or two feet of the surface. As I see it, peat particles that flow into the loch are of different sizes. The heavier ones sink deeper before they achieve buoyancy but the lighter ones will suspend closer to the surface. However, because they are smaller, they will let more light pass between them. In other words, the opacity of the loch is proportionally less at the top surface compared to below and hence objects can be seen better.

Anyway, I shall consider these results provisional until I get some better materials for next time.

OTHER VENTURES

I also visited some sites gathering data for future articles, so I will leave those for later. I also brought out the night vision binoculars again. As stated before, it is my opinion that Nessie is more a nocturnal creature and surfaces more at night time. That is an opportunity but it also presents the problem of seeing the loch at night. 

I took the equipment out about 11pm to the shore beyond the tent view I showed above. At this area is a small beach where the locals keep their boats. It was a good place to put down the tripod. So, I  ran the output from the binoculars to a recording application on a laptop. One interesting clip that came out of this is shown below.

As I panned around the loch, a long object protruding out of the water came into view. I focused my attention on it for a time wondering what it could be. Looking out onto the loch with the naked eye was futile as it was too dark to make out anything.

After some minutes, it had not moved in any way which began to arouse my suspicions. So, I panned away to record other parts of the loch but would occasionally pan back to see this object in the same position.

By now, it was clear it was not likely to be a living creature, so it was a matter of eventually packing up and resolving to check the area in broad daylight. When I went back to the beach the next morning, the picture below shows you how the matter was resolved. There was a branch sticking one or two feet out of the water at the same place.

Of course, if I had published a short 10 second clip of the night object without further explanation, it could have generated a lot more interest .. but we're not into hoaxes at this blog! The upshot is that if this had been a 20 foot creature with hump and long neck at the same distance, I reckon the night vision equipment would be up to the job. But like daylight recordings, it's all about distance.

DASHCAMS

It was during this trip that I introduced a new piece of equipment to the hunt - the dashcam. Put simply, a dashcam is a video recording device that attaches to your windscreen and essentially records what you see as you drive. This gadget first grabbed my attention when a large meteor passed over Russia back in June. Many Russians who fitted dashcams to their cameras caught the passage of the fireball across various locations.

Of course, they did not fit these devices onto their cars to record natural events but rather car accidents in which they could use the video footage in their defence. My intent was to use it in the pursuit of the Loch Ness Monster. To that end, I purchased a Livue LB100 video recorder from eBay for less than a hundred quid. It's a 2 megapixel camera which can record at high definition 30fps to a micro SD card (in my case 8Gb capacity). It got good reviews on the web, so went with it.

Tests at my home in Edinburgh went well. The only gripe I had was its "event" detection trigger which basically is used to auto-record a clip if the car is hit by another motorist. Unfortunately, this also triggered on rough bumps at about 40mph or more. However, this was a minor inconvenience. 

In terms of Loch Ness, the obvious lottery win for me is this device capturing the Loch Ness Monster in a "Spicer" type event as it crossed the road in front of you. What a diamond of a video that would be. However, just like a lottery win, the likelihood of achieving this is remote. But, if the device is not attached, you certainly won't record anything!

The device had to be road tested in situ, so I ran the camera through the entire trip recording the various sights around the loch. One sample video clip is included below. This was taken down "Monster Alley" as I call it. This is the quieter road on the south side of the loch which runs from Foyers to Dores. Along here have been reported a disproportionately higher incidences of reported land sightings. This is mainly due to the fact that the loch shore is closer to the road along this stretch hence facilitating monster excursions ashore (sceptics will suggest it also facilitates deer reaching the shore to drink but there is an argument against that which is for another place and time).

The original video is better as I think YouTube reduces the resolution, but you get the sense of the usefulness of the device.

THE DEAD OF NIGHT

Picture the scene. You believe there is one or more large creatures in Loch Ness. You also believe they occasionally come ashore. You further hold to the view they are more likely to come ashore at night along a stretch of road between Foyers and Dores. Would you drive along that same road in the middle of the night? Yes, we did.

I wanted to see how the dashcam performed in night conditions but also to see what was out there. So, my son and I arose at one o clock in the morning and began the round trip from Foyers to Dores and back again.

Though a chance encounter with a 30 foot beast on a dark Scottish road looked unlikely, I must admit there was a certain buzz which prompted various reactions. What exactly should I do if something large loomed ahead of  me in the darkness? I had half jokingly told Steve Feltham before this that I would run it over if it meant solving the mystery. Would I actually do that if the opportunity arose? Would you?

The video clip below shows a segment of that journey which lasted from 1am to 2am. I would probably gone out later about 3am to 4am but perhaps next time. Go full screen, turn off your lights and join me in a late night drive down Loch Ness!

That sense that "something" may loom out of the darkness ahead was always there, but would it record? I had to drive with headlights on full beam to maximise the area of video coverage as there was next to no light anywhere else and we never encountered another vehicle driving ahead or behind us (though there were a surprising number of vehicles parked for the night all along the road). That was the way I liked it and some things did happen. I encountered two badgers, one rabbit, one frog and a deer. No animals were harmed in the production of that film.

Now this was the second time we saw deer on this stretch of road. The previous encounter was between Foyers and Boleskine. This night encounter was somewhere north of Inverfarigaig. The disappointing thing was that the dashcam had not captured it when I reviewed the clips later. The reason was the difference in performance between the human eye and a digital video recorder.

To my eye I saw a shadowy but familiar outline of a deer half obscured by bushes. It two eyes gleamed back at me as they reflected the car headlights. However, the deer was just beyond the main beam and so just registered as darkness in the video. Did I jump out of my seat when this form appeared? Not quite, but the alertness levels jumped as I slowed down and assessed what was before me. Yup, you got it, I didn't floor it and claim my carcass as previously threatened!

ASSESSMENT

Was the dashcam any good? Well, yes and no. The night drive made me realise that anything of interest would have to be quite close to record. Even with the naked eye, the monster could have lumbered a 100 yards in front of me and I would be none the wiser. I ran YouTube's enhancement tools through it and got this clip. A bit better but not what I want. Of course, I could mount a searchlight on the bonnet! Any credible suggestions to increase night range are solicited from readers.

The other thing you may have noticed on the daytime clip was how the video seems to darken and then brighten again. Certainly, on a sunny August afternoon, the car was constantly moving in and out of shade and this actually caused me to miss the recording of the other deer crossing because they were in shade. The device did not adjust to this and the area was too dark again!

Perhaps there is a configuration option on the device's firmware to compensate for this. So mixed results for the dashcam, though I may be expecting too much but I will certainly continue to run it on future road trips around the loch.

OBSERVATIONS RELEVANT TO LAND SIGHTINGS

As it turned out, we were driving along the same road as the Spicers' famous 1933 land sighting and we were there at around the same time. They were there in late July and we were there mid August. We also had periods of bright sunshine as they did. This was ideal to compare and contrast what sceptics have said about this case.

The first point concerns deer. It was clear that deer are a common sight in this area at this time of year. I saw a deer and its fawn crossing the road in daylight and there was the one which I saw at night.

Some claim that the Spicers saw a huddle of deer crossing the road. My question is what constitutes a huddle? I only saw one or two at a time and the surprising thing was that they were quite nonchalant about my car approaching. They just basically trotted at a slow rate across. The impression I always got from sceptical arguments was a group of four of five deer dashing across the road so as to not be easily identified. I did not see any huddles and I did not see any dashing across.

Well, perhaps I will in future and the dashcam may catch it. For now, I am not too convinced about these dashing huddles.

The second point concerns the idea that the Spicers saw some animals like otter or deer under heat haze conditions. In other words, the open road is heated by the sun to produce a temperature inversion. In reality, I found that driving along this road was often shaded by the high and heavy Summer growth of the roadside bushes and trees. Not a condition suitable for mirages I thought.

So here's a not so simple question. Was the object the Spicers witnessed in shade or light? I suspect that answer depends on one's state of bias regarding this case.

CONCLUSION

And so the journey ended and it was back to Edinburgh to work and school. I hope to go back around Easter to finish off some things, perhaps get that dashcam in a better configuration and talk to more people. In the meantime, there is enough material to finish off a few articles. So watch this space!

The Latest Video of Nessie?

After the anti-climax of the hump which turned out to be a rock which was not even at Loch Ness, we have a video of something on Loch Ness which requires more thought. The Daily Mail has printed one picture and a video of something low in the water which at first sight looks intriguing.

Three stills below from the video show the object's progression from left to right as it slowly dies away. The witness' own testimony is below but is it just a wave of water? I ran the video clip quite a few times to get a sense of what was going on and examine its progress and context.

The first thing to note is the orientation of the object, it runs from right to left but general boat traffic would move between top and bottom. The picture below shows no boat up loch which could have been a source but we cannot tell what may have passed in other directions. 

To give the context, there is an inlet to the left of the photograph called Inchnacardoch Bay at which various boats are moored. To the right is the former Fort Augustus Abbey which I believe has a small harbour. The aerial picture below shows this and our witness would likely have been at the head of the tongue of land between the River Ness and the Caledonian Canal (marked "A"). However, for a boat to cross from right to left is a bit risky as the Summer volume of traffic heading north-south is high. I am not sure if such a manoeuvre is forbidden by the local authorities. 

The other issue is that I cannot see the other arm of a proposed bow wave. There are ripples visible at the foreground of the video but they look unconnected to this phenomenon. So I do not get the overwhelming impression that this is connected to a boat now out of view (and the witness said no boats were near).

A freak wave as someone suggested or something just below the surface disturbing the water?

An amateur photographer has captured an eerie photo from the shore of Loch Ness which could encourage those who believe in tales of a monster living beneath the surface of the lake.

The image was taken by David Elder at Fort Augustus, at the south-west end of the 23-mile-long body of water in northern Scotland.

It shows a long bow wave apparently caused by some sort of disturbance on the surface of the loch.

The 50-year-old photography enthusiast insists the only thing that could have caused it is 'a solid black object under the water'.

Mr Elder, from East Kilbride in Lanarkshire, was able to take still photos as well as filming a video of the mysterious scene.

'We were at the pier head at Fort Augustus and I was taking a picture of a swan at the time,' he said.

'Out of the corner of my right eye I caught site of a black area of water about 15ft long which developed into a kind of bow wave.

'I'm convinced this was caused by a solid black object under the water. The water was very still at the time and there were no ripples coming off the wave and no other activity on the water.

'Water was definitely going over something solid and making the wave. It looks like the sort of wave perhaps created by a windsurfing board but there was nobody on the loch at the time, no boats, nothing.

'The disturbance in the water began moving up the Loch sideways. It is something I just can't explain.'

The extraordinary picture will doubtless fuel the imaginations of anyone who believes the story that there is a sea creature living in the lake, which is Britain's largest due to its 230m depth.

However, sceptics will ascribe the wave to a freak gust of wind or other natural phenomenon.

The story of the Loch Ness Monster goes back as far as the medieval period, but it first came to widespread public attention in 1933.

That year a couple named the Spicers claimed to have seen a creature with a large body and long neck jumped in to the loch, causing a national sensation.

The next year, the iconic 'surgeon's photograph' was published, purporting to show the creature swimming in Loch Ness with its head out of the water.

Although that image has been debunked as a hoax, the search for Nessie has continued, with true believers undeterred by the failure of repeated attempts by scientists to find the creature.

Nessie, Ogopogo and John Kirk

I recently tuned into Ken Gerhard's radio interview with cryptozoologist John Kirk to hear his views on the Loch Ness Monster as well as other freshwater cryptids. Imagine my surprise then when he came straight out and said there was no cryptid in Loch Ness and it was all a matter of misidentification and hoaxes. In the few minutes he spent on Nessie, he basically focused on the Surgeon's Photo and that was about it.

Disappointed with that assessment from someone who actually believes that large unknown creatures inhabit lakes, I consulted his chapter on Loch Ness in his 1998 book, "In the Domain of the Lake Monsters". It was a chapter which was inconclusive on Nessie and again spent large amounts of space on the recent research by Alastair Boyd and David Martin on the Wilson photograph. Overall, he wrote that he did not find the photographic or eyewitness evidence credible.

Okay, he is entitled to his opinion, as I am entitled to now respond as someone who is more familiar in the matter of the Loch Ness Monster (as he is undoubtedly more familiar with the Lake Okanagan Monster).

So, firstly in the matter of photographic evidence. I went to the website of his own British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club (of which he is a co-founder) and examined their page on Ogopogo. In the light of what John said about the quality of the Loch Ness Monster evidence, I was expecting to see images of a superior quality. Go to the page and judge the three images for yourself. If this was the banner page for Ogopogo, I would have expected something better.

John Kirk himself has claimed to have seen Ogopogo eleven times in total. A look across the net via Google did not seem to yield any photographs or videos taken by him on those occasions. I am not doubting his claims, but where can I see the images he recorded? In fact, a general search of the web for Ogopogo pictures, brings up a sequence of images that I would not consider superior to Loch Ness Monster images. Moreover, I could not find one image purporting to be the head and neck of the creature. Can somebody point me to some website? Either, these images do not exist or they are very well hidden.

John's dismissal of Loch Ness sightings as misidentifications needs to carefully said. The reason being the explanations he gives against a Loch Ness cryptid must of necessity be equally applied to all claimed Ogopogo sightings. In his book, John claimed there are more recorded Ogopogo sightings than Nessie ones. As I recall, Henry Bauer listed about 600 sightings in his 1988 book, "The Enigma of Loch Ness". A recent database update puts the figure over 1,000 while others claim more.

Are there more than 1,000 Ogopogo sightings on the record? I am not suggesting every Loch Ness Monster report is a bone fide monster, but I am pretty sure that assumption can be also applied to the list of Ogopogo sightings.

It should not surprise John that the Ogopogo sceptics apply the same arguments to his creature as he does to the Loch Ness Monster and come to the same conclusion about Ogopogo as he does about Nessie. Is this consistent?

Let me then sum up my opinion on the matter. John says he has seen Ogopogo eleven times and on those experiences he firmly grounds his convictions. But people at Loch Ness claim to have seen the Loch Ness Monster and sometimes in better circumstances than him. Should their conviction be any less than John Kirk's? I would say not.

I accept the idea of a cryptid in Lake Okanagan and I accept it on the same grounds I would for a creature in Loch Ness. I think John should accept the same for a creature in Loch Ness on the same grounds he would for a creature in Lake Okanagan.

As an aside, John also talked about his expeditions to Africa in search of the Mokele Mbembe cryptid. In the light of talk about close up sightings but no photos, may I make a suggestion? On the next expedition, leave the various tribes with digital cameras and a good supply of batteries. Come back in a year or two and see what they have come up with. Better still, leave your email or phone number and they can send the pictures by Internet without anyone needing to step on a plane.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me!

Cool Picture From Loch Ness

Not all interesting pictures from the loch have to involve the monster. I took this from outside the Urquhart Castle Cafe a few days ago.

So I have returned from a few busy days at the loch and will write up a report once I have processed various files.

POSTSCRIPT

Artist Jack Rumney was painting the castle around the same time, so here's his tasteful rendition of the castle from the opposite side.

Man, Monsters and Mysteries (Disney Film)

I added this video as an afterthought to the recent post on a new Tim Dinsdale book but I add it again in case anyone missed it. I originally posted my own version three years ago but removed it because of copyright reasons. Someone else has now posted it on YouTube, so the copyright issue now belongs to them.

The documentary was a bonus feature to the VHS version of the 1977 film "Pete's Dragon". It also appeared on DVD but seems to have dropped out of the feature list on later releases. However, the documentary pre-dates "Pete's Dragon" and was actually released on US educational TV around 1972 and appeared in British cinemas in 1974 (presumably as a second feature to a main Disney film).

This is a review of the film (original link) for the 2001 DVD release but it appears to have gone from the 2009 release.

"Man, Monsters, and Mysteries" is a fairly fascinating 25-minute piece which again analyses fantastical mysteries and myths on animals. The majority of the program focuses on the 'elusive' Loch Ness monster, who appears in animated form, voiced by Disney veteran Sterling Holloway (the original Winnie the Pooh among others). The interaction between Holloway and Winnie the Pooh narrator Sebastian Cabot is a lot of fun, as the monster explains individuals who have been trying to track him and how he's teased those in search of him by allowing a mystery to prevail. Pristine live action sequences contain comments from folks who claim to have seen Nessie. While this isn't directly related to the movie, other than in theme, it's an awesome and quite entertaining inclusion.

To this I can add that you will see various personalities from the search for Nessie such as Tim Dinsdale, members of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, Roy Mackal and so on. You can also read about the visit of the producer, Ken Peterson, to Loch Ness in 1969 in "Project Water Horse" by Tim Dinsdale.

Tim tells us Ken arrived with his wife Harriet with a film crew in August 1969 for a two week stint. It seems their arrival drew practically all those involved in the hunt to offer their services. Well, apart from one. Frank Searle had arrived just eight weeks previously to start his 15 year watch of the loch.

Not surprisingly, there was footage shot which did not make it into the final release. I would have been particularly fascinated to see the footage of the monster hunters resorting to their watering hole at the "Lodge" for a bit of R&R. 

Overall, the film rightly takes its place in the history of the Loch Ness Mystery.

Some Stories from Readers

I love to hear from people who have stories to tell of things they have experienced on Loch Ness. These are tales that have not reached the normal public channels and may well have lain dormant forever unless blogs like this picked up on them.

As some of you may recall, it is my belief that most eyewitness reports go unreported and indeed that trend is confirmed to stay and perhaps even escalate as modern day sceptics who have the public microphone re-assure people that they have only seen logs, birds, seals and so on. However, those who have seen strange things may not be so convinced that they were fooled by a passing boat wake and store these things in their mind.

A reader from Seattle posted anonymously to me two weeks ago while I was on holiday with this account:

Hello there, I came across this blog surfing the net for LNM info and would like to share with you my experience at Loch Ness back in May 2009. It was while visiting my relatives in Fort William ( I am from Seattle ) that myself, two brothers, my aunt, and her good friend had seen something large in the water from the banks of Loch Ness. This was closer to Fort Augustus from the North shore. It was late afternoon and calm weather at the time of our sighting.

We saw for what we guessed would be at least for one minute what appeared to be one large greyish hump at first idle in the water from about 80 yards. This was approximately 10 maybe 12 feet long and perhaps 3 feet above the water. It began to head towards the opposite shore and submerged rapidly. We were quite amazed to say the least. I rarely discuss this with people because they simply do not believe it. My aunts friend was first to spot it and not a word was said while we watched what looked simply like the back of a large grey animal cross the loch. It left quite a large wake after it's dive under the surface. 

Sorry that I cannot provide more detail. One moment this thing was there and the next it had submerged. At the very least I was not alone and have fellow witnesses to this brief spectacle. 

The next story came in a month ago from a Mr. Candlish (and like our other witness, if you're reading, please get back to me at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com). His account goes as follows:

Many years ago, while I was based in Aberdeen, my wife, son and myself rented a boat and spent 10 days traveling the lock system from Abdereen to the Atlantic and back. We also spent four days on Loch Ness, sleeping on the boat and exploring the area by foot. Great people!!

We decided to drop anchor in a small cove just a mile or so from the castle (I can't remember its name, but it's in one of the most famous pictures of, "Nessie". We dropped anchor close to the shore and an overhanging branch. However, we kept moving away from the shorline. I could feel the anchor moving along the bottom and, when we had moved away around 150', we stopped moving. I tried, several times, to return to the orginal spot I wished to anchor, with the same result. The last time I tried to position us, I looked into the water and there was an obvious eye looking directly at me.

As I moved left to right, the eye moved with me; the boat had stopped moving. I stood there for at least fifteen minutes watching it watching me. Later, I tried to think of what it could have been other than what it obviously was. It also blinked several times. I have never told anyone about this, but have thought about it for many, many years. I don't know what it was, but it was certainly alive and, in my opinion, was moving the boat away from the original area. There is no doubt in my mind that the "eye" I was looking at was definately some type of eye of some type of living creature. Thanks for listening. 

The first story has much of the classic single hump scenario to it. Note the object was at first stationary which speaks against the oft suggested standing wave. At 10 to 12 feet long, it was not likely to be a seal or similar. Sceptics will at this point default to the "liar" theory whilst asking why no one had a camera.

The second story is curious indeed and almost unique in its genre ... a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster's eye? The only similar story I can think of was the apocryphal tale from Nicholas Witchell's book of the diver who was brought up terrified from the loch with a tale of red, mysterious eyes looking at him from the murky depths.

Did he just see his own reflection? I would doubt anyone would fail to figure that out after fifteen minutes. Can a seal impede a boat's movement to that extent? That does not sound like a seal's behaviour to me (if it even had the strength). Sceptics may nevertheless gravitate towards a seal.

Once again, let everyone make their own judgement. Loch Ness Monsters or something else?

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!