The Classic Authors on the Classic Pictures

In the light of recent sceptical remarks about gullible and naive Loch Ness Monster proponents, I wondered what the classic books actually said on these well known pictures. So, I dug out what books I had on the pictures and drew up a matrix of opinion.

The authors I was interested in were Rupert Gould, Constance Whyte, Tim Dinsdale, Ted Holiday, Nicholas Witchell and Roy Mackal. What did they make of the Gray, Wilson, Adams, Stuart, MacNab, Cockerell, O'Connor, Dinsdale, Rines and Shiels photos? The answer was not uniform as one would expect.

The books examined were:

Gould, The Loch Ness Monster and Others (1934)

Whyte, More Than a Legend (1957)

Dinsdale, Loch Ness Monster (1961 and 1982 editions)

Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness (1968)

Holiday, The Dragon and the Disc (1973)

Witchell, The Loch Ness Story (1974 and 1989 editions)

Mackal, The Monsters of Loch Ness (1976)

The photographs in question are:

Hugh Gray (1933)

Kenneth Wilson (1934)

F.C. Adams (1934)

Lachlan Stuart (1951)

Peter MacNab (1955)

Hugh Cockerell (1958)

Tim Dinsdale (1960)

Peter O'Connor (1960)

Robert Rines Flipper (1972) ("RINES 72")

Rober Rines Body (1975) ("RINES 75 B")

Rober Rines Head (1975) ("RINES 75 H")

Anthony Shiels (1977)

Some pictures and films are not included but it always strikes me how thin photographs and film are on the ground. No photographs between 1935 and 1950 and very little between 1961 and 1971 despite the LNI's attempts. Put it another way, where were all the so called hoaxers? One simple rule should apply, the number of hoaxed Nessie pictures should be proportional to media interest. I don't actually see proof of that statement in the overall record.

I added the author's judgement on each photo/film designated by:

Y (green) = Accept

N (red) = Reject

I (orange) = Neutral

NA (yellow) = Not Applicable

NC (blue) = No Comment (photo not mentioned)

The "NA" applies to photographs published after the book in question. Sometimes the author's opinion seems ambiguous in that they offer a sceptical or proponent interpretation in which case the inconclusive or neutral category is assigned. The table is produced below and you should click on it to enlarge it for closer detail. There may be some mistakes in the table, point out any you think are there. These are judgements based on the written evidence, authors may well have altered their opinions later, confirmation with sources would be appreciated.

The results are not too unexpected, though some things should be highlighted. Firstly, the F.C.Adams picture is not so much rejected as ignored. Only Mackal accepts it while Witchell merely calls it an unidentified object in Loch Ness which to me is a neutral statement. The rest say nothing which may mean nothing but I suspect silence suggests the preconception of a very long neck is being mapped onto this picture and hence leading to a quite passing on.

Holiday is the most non-committal author in his two books as only four out of the nine he could comment on actually get a mention. I wondered if omission is as good as rejection here? The Adams and Rines flipper pictures would not have fitted in with his Tulliomonstrum invertebrate! I suspect where the "NC" appears elsewhere, there could well have been more personal bias than just no room to mention it in the given book, but that is very much for each reader's opinion.

Nobody backs the O'Connor picture, even Dinsdale drops it in later editions after giving it the nod in his first edition. Holiday gives it no mention although looking quite Tullimonstrum like! The Dinsdale film is the only one to get 100% green positives.

Comparisons between first and later editions tells us something about the given author's journey. Dinsdale grew cold on the Gray, Wilson and O'Connor pictures but "promotes" the Stuart picture along the way. Interestingly, Dinsdale only explicitly rejects the 1975 "gargoyle" head picture. One wonders where Dinsdale would have stood if he was alive today? The sceptics would doubtless have him over in their camp, but I would not be so quick to judge the man. I don't doubt he would have dropped the support for the Shiels pictures. What he would have done with Frere's pronouncement on the Stuart picture, I don't know.

Witchell between 1974 and 1989 has definitely grown more negative about the evidence. Three pictures are downgraded and the 1975 Rines pictures are rejected. Though these were not mentioned in the 1974 book, they were promoted as positive evidence in the 1975 edition. Witchell seems to have completed his journey over to the "other side" in later years.

Roy Mackal is still with us and I would like to know how he would assess his 1976 list today. The one person that interests me most would be Ted Holiday. Since he believed in a paranormal Loch Ness Monster, how would that have influenced his assessment? He and Dinsdale had about seven sightings between them and that has an effect on assessment. If you do not think there is a large creature in Loch Ness, then the whole line is red. But I don't think that Holiday and Dinsdale would run the red line right through.

One thing seems for sure, I doubt many pictures would be promoted as opposed to downgraded today.

Abominable Science! and the Loch Ness Monster

(This review also appears on the Amazon website)

A book has been recently written by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero that seems to have to caused a bit of a stir amongst the skeptics. That book is called "Abominable Science!" and one reviewer has gone so far as to describe it as a "groundbreaking new book on the subject of cryptozoology". Groundbreaking? Does that mean it breaks new ground on the subject of my favourite cryptid, Nessie? Only one way to find out and that was to buy it (at the cheapest possible price, of course).

Being numbered at 411 pages, it certainly carried weight gravitationally. Would it carry weight in the matter of cryptid critique? Now, I am only reviewing the specific chapter on the Loch Ness Monster as well as the general chapters on the science and culture of cryptozoology. The latter two would give an idea of the authors' generic approach to the Loch Ness Monster.

I will not presume to judge them on the Sasquatch, Yeti, Sea Serpents or Mokele-Mbembe sections. The simple reason being I would not be able to tell how weighty their specific arguments would be. I may find these chapters entertaining, prosaical and historically informative, but that is not the main point ... how accurate are the arguments against the cryptid in question?

But onto the Loch Ness Monster which occupies about 67 pages including notes. Now I have been interested in the Loch Ness Monster for nearly forty years and continue to believe there is a mystery to be solved in the loch. 

The question for me is where this mystery finds its true place between the overly simplistic view of excited tourists seeing boat wakes and the fantastical view of a resident colony of dinosaurs? Would this book prove to be ground breaking and offer new insights? The answer is a definite no.

Loxton and Prothero play it safe by taking refuge in the over hyped theory of misidentification and hoax. Is there anything that could be called original and new in this chapter? Somewhat, but I will come back to that. 

But let us get over with the formalities first. Yes, we know there have been hoaxes. Yes, we know people can mistake everyday objects for monsters. And, yes, we know, no one has yet produced a specimen, dead or alive. Does that kill the story? Of course not.

Indeed, it would have been better if they just stuck to their empirical mantra "show us the body", moved on and left the rest of us to get on with it. The problem here is that they won't and we end up with an inadequate explanation for what over a thousand people have claimed to have seen in the last 80 years and beyond.

So, we know about the fake Surgeon's Photograph, Marmaduke Wetherell's Hippo tracks, the 1975 underwater tree stump  and the other spurious inventions of men. These aside, the authors began to dig a hole for themselves in terms of accuracy.

They first attempt to prove that any timeline of evidence before Nessie appeared in 1933 is fabrication. The matter of the dreaded water horse is rejected as irrelevant to Loch Ness and "none of them is indigenous to Loch Ness" anyway. This is just plain wrong. The imagery and folklore attached to those creatures is as much a cultural expression compared to the present day when we see all manner of strange representations of Nessie in film and other media. Do we doubt people claim to see things in Loch Ness just because a horror film depicts a green, seventy foot, man eating Nessie? Neither should it be the case with the Kelpie cultural representations two hundred years before.

The authors' claim that no water horse was "indigenous to Loch Ness" is also wrong. There are multiple references to such a beast in the old literature. In fact, there is even a reference to such a story from 1852 a mere two pages on in their own chapter! An epic fail on the proof reading front?

Furthermore, a monster hoax is mentioned from 1868, but it doesn't seem to occur to the author that a monster hoax in 1868 may presuppose a monster tradition in the loch pre-dating 1868. A major omission is also made at this point as this old article says that a "huge fish" attested to by only the "most credulous natives" was occasionally seen in the loch. What was this "huge fish" and why do the authors omit this reference? Note if it was only a sturgeon, I doubt anyone would be dismissing these dumb natives! I find this omission strange to say the least.

The author makes a further error when he quotes Rupert T. Gould's 1934 book "The Loch Ness Monster and others". Gould refers to a letter from the Duke of Portland talking about stories of a "horrible great beast" back in 1895. The authors make mileage out of Gould when they quote him as saying these "stories are of no great value as evidence". Evidently, this is meant to demonstrate the irrelevance of these old reports. Yet, in an astonishing act of omission, Loxton and Prothero do not quote what Gould then says:

"But the same cannot be said of a statement which I recently received from Mr. F. Fraser"

Gould then goes on to describe Mr. Fraser's sighting from 1904 and others from before 1933 also gain Gould's attention. It was clear to me that Gould's disinterest was towards second hand accounts as opposed to those with which he could interview the witness face to face. Basically, Gould has been misquoted in this tactic of promoting the weak evidence and ignoring the strong.

And then we come to the story of St. Columba and his monster encounter. Keen to get rid of this most ancient of Loch Ness tales,  the author basically rubbishes it as religious propaganda. I don't doubt the story is embellished, but Loxton and Prothero completely fail to explain why the story happened in of all places, Loch Ness. Coincidence? Some people may jump here and say it didn't happen in Loch Ness but in the River Ness. That's okay. Adamnan calls Loch Ness "the Lake of the River Ness". It was all the same river complex as far as he was concerned.

Moving into the Nessie "era", it came as no surprise that old Alex Campbell comes in for a bit of a bashing. Campbell reported the first Nessie story involving the Mackays around March 1933. He is accused of hyping the story to further his monster agenda. Furthermore, the authors try to palm the whole thing off as two seals. I address these weak arguments in this article.

Campbell is further accused of embellishing a reported sighting from 1930 involving three fishermen. However, Campbell is again vindicated by Gould who interviewed the witnesses who spoke of two or three shallow humps which were not seals! But since the authors footnote Gould's book, surely they would have known this?

Is there anything novel in this chapter? There is one thing. It is the suggestion that the famous Spicers land sighting was a rehash of a scene from King Kong involving a Diplodocus chasing some men. Loxton and Prothero are somewhat ambiguous in deciding whether George Spicer lied about the whole thing or in some strange way "filtered" the scene through a view of an ordinary animal. How exactly does one do that (and how did he convince his wife to lie?).

Loxton begins this King Kong theory with a very unscientific "I believe .." which suggests the evidence for his stance is not going to be strong and this is the case. Firstly, he selects a still from the Diplodocus scene that most resembles the Spicer drawing and redraws it accordingly. This makes one wonder what is wrong with the other stills? The answer is they do not support his theory.





Loxton then attempts to tick off a comparison checklist:

Both had long neck? Check.
Both had no feet visible? Check.
Both had tail curved round side of body? Check.
Both had victim in mouth? Check.

On closer examination, only a sycophantic skeptic would swallow this argument whole. The Spicer neck writhes and undulates, the Diplodocus one is rather stiff. Yes, both feet are not visible, but why is this "a striking detail"? And where exactly does a Diplodocus' feet begin?

The tail is plainly seen not to curve elsewhere in the film and George Spicer cannot ultimately decide whether there was anything in a mouth or not. A bit of a mixed bag and not very convincing.

Both Spicer and Gould had seen the Kong film, and various Nessie sceptics have flagged this film as an important influence in the perception of the Loch Ness Monster. Though one can understand how the dinosaurs in "King Kong" would make people think of the Loch Ness Monster, it is not clear how that translates to people allegedly mistaking birds for plesiosaurs on Loch Ness.

Indeed, a look at the newspapers of the time does not exactly strongly link the two in the minds of the local, Scottish and British public. For starters, the only Kong you will see mentioned at the Highland newspapers archive is Hong Kong!

Widening out, the nationally read Scotsman newspaper only mentions the film nine times to the end of 1934 but a review of the film in October 1933 does say the monsters of Loch Ness would feel quite a home on Skull Island!

The more widely read London Times only mentions "King Kong" eight times in the same period and makes no linkage at all with the Loch Ness Monster. Not exactly compelling evidence.

Exception must also be taken to a loose piece of logic when this quote appears:

"Before Spicer's land sighting there were no long neck reports at all and it was the long neck that was so crucial."

The problem here is a statistical one. There were in fact only two other reported sightings in 1933 before Spicer which were correctly stated as involving no long neck. But only about 10%-20% of sightings are known to involve a long neck which means our two sightings are not statistically significant. You would perhaps need at least 10 sightings on the record before you could attach any meaning to the long neck of the Spicers (note to myself - Ulrich Magin list claims 3 more reports - but not on my photocopies - double check).

Going back to the photographic evidence, the authors seem to be selective in what they say about the first picture of the monster taken by a Hugh Gray in November 1933. The book says there is nothing to see in this picture but omit to mention the fish like head that can be seen to the right. They must surely have known about this as a google for "hugh gray loch ness" reveals an article at the top of page one which discusses this very thing. Or perhaps they only got their Nessie data from books published up to the 1970s? Again, it is what is not said rather than said that is significant here.

Like Alex Campbell, the indirect approach of character assassination is chosen. Gray claimed six sightings and in a piece of flimsy guilt-by-association, Hugh Gray is lumped in with arch-hoaxer Frank Searle. Why? Because Searle also claimed multiple sightings!

So, how often is someone allowed to see Nessie before they are branded a liar? Two, three, four? However, Loxton has not done his homework here. Consulting Dinsdale's book "Loch Ness Monster", it turns out these other sightings were only low grade wakes and bow waves. So, ermm,  why didn't our liar Hugh jazz up his sightings a bit with humps and lomg necks?

You can't win with skeptics. Gray is taken to task for holding onto the film for nearly three weeks. Yet if someone like Lachlan Stuart in 1951 has his picture processed the very same day, they also object with the accusation of fast profiteering.

Speaking of Lachlan Stuart, this three hump photo was always an easy target for skeptics because the creature was in shallow waters. An easy spot to dump some hay bales according to a Richard Frere. Frere alleged that Stuart had owned up everything to him. However, the written record of what Frere said is contradictory and would not make it into a court of law as evidence. As it turns out, critics of the Stuart picture are quite accommodating to this contradiction ... a lot more than they would be to any flaw in an eyewitness account of a creature in Loch Ness!

Regarding the Dinsdale film, the authors repeat the ongoing controversy about whether he only filmed a boat, but conclude the film's mysterious blob cannot tell us for sure whether it was a monster. Rather, Tim's observational skills are called into question because he had two false alarms before then but it is a fact that his own self-judgement rejected them! On this basis, a head-neck sighting by Tim 11 years later is also called into question. But surely after eleven years of subsequent loch observation, Dinsdale would have been one of the most experienced observers of the loch and conversant with almost every deceptive appearance the loch presents?

Furthermore, the ad hominem implication that Dinsdale was not a fit witness because he believed in the supernatural/paranormal does the authors no credit at all. Finally, the alleged issue of the Dinsdale family not publishing the film in order to allegedly hide the "truth" is also now a non-issue. They put the whole film on the web this year.

The authors also look at other ventures such as expeditions and sonar. The 1972 flipper is correctly shown to be "over-enhanced" but I must admit that having seen that picture, I can still see a similar flipper shape in the unenhanced picture! Pareidolia or something else?

Surface watch expeditions such as the LNI from 1962-1972 are discussed and the authors compute that quality evidence should have been obtained. Unfortunately, they again indulge in selective quoting when they quote Roy Mackal in his book "Monsters of Loch Ness" where he says there are about 3,000 recorded sightings in a 30 year period since 1933. However, they then completely ignore what Mackal says on the next page of his book when he reduces that number to 10 valid sightings per year (a number I agree with but for different reasons). Why did they not use this number instead? Because 100 sightings per year bolsters their argument better than 10!

The sonar evidence is dismissed on the basis that false positives from reflection and refraction can mislead. Which leads me to ask whether the authors consider sonar a viable instrument given these limitations? Sadly, the three mysterious sonar hits from Operation Deepscan in 1987 are dismissed as "wobbly scratches". On the other hand, Loch Ness researcher, Adrian Shine, says he cannot explain them (though that does not mean he admits they are monsters).

Misqouting is also evident when the authors state that work by Adrian Shine found only 22 tonnes of fish in the loch. This is not true either, his sonar work only refers to the open pelagic area of the loch which omits the littoral and abyssal regions. That would exclude the bulk of shore hugging fish such as migratory salmon and trout and the deeper fish such as eels.

So the authors plump for the misidentification of everyday objects and hoaxes as the reason we have the Loch Ness Monster. What can we say about this? The first thing that came to mind was the author's own plea for scientific testability in chapter one. When you bring anecdotal evidence to this theory, how is it testable? Or to be more accurate, how is this theory falsifiable? What theoretical eyewitness case would falsify this theory? None it would appear because the theory is a classic example of circular reasoning. To wit, "if it is not misidentification it is a hoax" and "if it is not a hoax it is misidentification". This theory would appear to be about as useful as a chocolate teapot in evaluating eyewitness testimony.

The diversity of descriptions of the creature is not a game changer either. It is readily admitted that a proportion of stories are hoaxes and misidentifications. This is inevitably going to corrupt any attempt to form a picture of what any creature may look like.

Faulty perception and memory are also said to play a big part in what people claim to see in Loch Ness. That is a pretty generalised statement. It would be more accurate to say the reliability of a sighting is proportional to the experience of the observer, the distance to the object, the time spent observing it, the clarity of the scene and the time elapsed since the event in relating it. But this book seems intent on whitewashing every witness with the same brush. We have witnesses who have claimed to have seen the creature close up and we have witnesses experienced with the loch's conditions. But you know why these are not a problem? Because we just shunt them in a non-falsifiable way into the "hoax" section!

The discussion on memory distortion is over-stated and like real-time misperception, is not very well cross-referenced in the book's footnotes (i.e. next to no research has been done to prove any of this in a cryptid context). In fact, shall we say that much of the evidence is ... anecdotal!

Many sightings are recorded within days by the newspapers or by on site investigators.  If you are talking about years and begin to ask detailed questions about time of day or weather conditions then you will get some degree of error. But put it this way, if you saw a ten foot hump rear itself out of the water only 200 metres from you, how burnt into the memory would that be? It is a well established fact that traumatic events are more easily imprinted on the memory. That fact does not seem to be factored into our authors' thinking.

So where does this all leave us? A lot of misquotes, faulty reasoning and weak assumptions.

Do the authors offer anything valid in their defence. They do.

The lack of a live or dead specimen is the strongest argument. I don't necessarily accept their argument about finding bones. If the Loch Ness Monster was a fish like animal, its cartilaginous bones would dissolve in the waters quicker. That is why advocates of the Sturgeon theory are less likely to find a dead specimen at the bottom of the loch. The bottom of the loch is also about 12 square miles in extent and barely explored. Furthermore, the bottom is in a continual state of silting up which perhaps progresses at about a rate of one millimetre per year.

The loch's chemical nature also ensures decomposition progresses at a slower rate allowing scavengers (and other Nessies?) to strip a body before it bloats and becomes buoyant. Nevertheless, it is the strongest argument against large creatures in Loch Ness.

The point about the infrequency of sightings is also explained if the creature is not the plesiosaur type that is so often set up as a straw man argument, but a primary water breather. What that might be is a matter of speculation.

Finally, the matter is raised about Nessie-type fossils or rather the lack of them in the surrounding region. I confess I could not point you to one, primarily because I do not know what species the creature belongs to. If I had an idea of that, I would begin to look at the fossil record. Until then, I do not have the information to make an informed opinion. But the question has started a train of thought.

So, going back to the beginning. Something that lies between boat wakes and a colony of dinosaurs. Like the dark abyss of Loch Ness that lies between surface and bottom, no one seems to want to explore that region much!

The Man Who Filmed Nessie (Review)

Twenty six years after his untimely death, a biography on the greatest hunter of the Loch Ness Monster has finally arrived. The author is that hunter's own youngest son, Angus Dinsdale, who was born the night the BBC televised Tim Dinsdale's famous footage on their Panorama programme.

Perhaps that juxtaposition of Loch Ness Monster and family life sums up the man who devoted twenty seven years to the hunt for that most elusive of quarries. It was some weeks earlier that he had shot a minute of film showing a dark object crossing Loch Ness. The author of the book is in no doubt as to what he filmed. He was the man who filmed Nessie.

Angus' book fill in the gaps left by his own father's works. Tim had written of his times at Loch Ness in his books "Loch Ness Monster" and "Project Water Horse".  However, not much is known of the child, youth and man prior to 1960 or the man in his twilight years. This book reveals more of the man who began life in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1924.

Tim's life continued in the Far East where his father worked and in those Depression years, we learn something of his formative years which took in the normality of school life but also the tale of pirates hijacking the ship which was taking him back to school for a new term.

Needless to say, he survived to tell the tale and the story continues into the war years as Tim joined the Royal Air Force and afterwards as he pursued a career in avionics. Add to this his marriage to Wendy and the arrival of children and you have the formula for a normal, happy life.

Then the Loch Ness Monster came along.

We read how Tim's interest in Fortean phenomena began with a haunted house in Quebec. When he moved back to England, a curious magazine article entitled "The Day I saw the Loch Ness Monster" piqued his curiosity further. Before long, he was off on a week long trip to investigate it for himself and the rest is history.

Did I say happy, normal life? We read that within some years Tim gave up his aeronautical career to pursue Nessie and constantly skirt on the edge of financial insecurity held back by book sales, TV appearances and the lecture circuit.

Once the book enters monster territory, the author draws on Tim's own words from his two main books, but especially from "Project Water Horse" which tracks Tim's activities up to the early 1970s. The man's determination is evident and is bolstered further by two head and neck sightings. But the conclusive proof he sought never comes and the 1970s fade into the 1980s.

I was especially interested to see what Tim got up to in the 1980s but that which comes upon all men as the eye grows dim and the natural force abates came upon Tim Dinsdale. It was evident that health issues and a damaged boat put an end to the long days of drifting by boat along the loch shores and pulling his weight with the LNI and Rines team.

The end came with a heart attack on the 14th December 1987.

I had recently read "Project Water Horse" and so the stories of various personalities, experiments and events around the loch were familiar. So, in some sense I am the wrong person to speak on the book as the impact is somewhat lessened by this familiarity. I am sure others will not be so "disadvantaged" as they read it.

Angus also tells the story from a child's point of view since he was a school boy throughout these times. We have tales of family ventures, injuries, frivolity and the time his Dad ruined the washing machine in the name of Nessie research. Angus relates his own volunteer work for the LNI (despite being only ten years old) while one reads with amusement of the "leisure activities" such as the races to empty the latrines in the quickest time.

The human element is very much present in this book but do not expect a long and detailed defence of the Loch Ness Monster. Certain photos, films and sightings will be cited but the ongoing debate about various items is left for others.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie completes the story of the man who summed up the search for the Loch Ness Monster. I am not sure we will see his like again as scepticism rolls over the loch like a Highland mist. Individuals still visit the loch in search of the prized picture of Nessie, but not at the sacrifice and cost we saw exercised by Tim Dinsdale. It may take another better Dinsdale type film to start the circus again. However, I suspect most are convinced that will not happen.

The book is also prefaced with an introduction by Tim's widow, Wendy. Further details can be obtained at this link.

Got my copy of "Abominable Science" today

Just arrived today in the post and I will presently be reading their section on Nessie for review on amazon.com and on this blog. The Nessie section is just under 60 pages, so there is something to get one's critical teeth into.

I see some have posted reviews solely on their Sasquatch section and panned it. The members of the choir the authors are preaching to have not surprisingly acclaimed it. I wonder how many of them have a half decent knowledge of the Loch Ness Monster story to critique it against? You can be sure I will be thorough in how they treat my favourite cryptid.

Autogyro Nessie Hunter Ken Wallis dies

I am sorry to read that Ken Wallis has died at the age of 97. Loch Ness Monster fans will remember him as the man who turned up at Loch Ness in 1970 to help the LNI team with his little autogyro. It was planned to use it to swoop in from the air to photograph any sightings of Nessie. 

Rest in Peace, Sir.

Daily Mail Obituary

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.