Nessie On Land: The Margaret Munro Case

Date: Sunday 3rd June 1934
Time: 0630 for 25 minutes
Location: Kilchumein Lodge just east of Fort Augustus
Witnesses: Margaret Munro
Type of sighting: Land based

It’s back to the series on land sightings of the Loch Ness Monster and the curious case of Margaret Munro. Before I start, recent comments on the cryptid believers on the Internet would suggest I am somehow about to preach a sermon from the book of Genesis. Since these cases are dismissed and treated like ancient texts, this is no surprise. However, this case happened in the lifetime of my own father ... not thousands of years ago and even sceptical Loch Ness researchers admit she saw something. The question is what did she see that summer morning nearly 80 years ago?

Having done battle with the creationists, the sceptics are now turning their sights on cryptid proponents. Let’s see how they have typically applied science and critical thinking to this case. The Munro case is well known to Nessie followers and has its place in the various text books. To get right back to the original sources, the story from the Inverness Courier of June 5^th 1934 is shown below (click on the images to enlarge).

Contemporary to this account is the diary entry of Dom Cyril Dieckhoff, a monk at Fort Augustus Abbey and a keen Loch Ness Monster investigator. His entry is also dated the 5th June and was first printed in Constance Whyte's book "More Than A Legend" in 1957:

The next story was recorded by Dom Cyril Dieckhoff under date 5th June 1934: Margaret Munro, daughter of Dan the Miller and a native of Fort Augustus, was maid to Mr. and Mrs. Pimley, Mr. Pimley being a master on the staff of the Abbey School and living at Kilchumein Lodge, (close to the Abbey turbine house).

The Lodge overlooks Borlum Bay and one Sunday morning Miss Munro was looking out of a window at about 6.30 a.m. On the shore of the Bay she saw, as she put it, the biggest animal she had ever seen in her life. Using binoculars she observed that the creature was almost, but not entirely, clear of the water. It was 300 yards away and she watched it for twenty-five minutes, from 6.30 to 6.55 a.m.

Asked afterwards why she did not wake Mr. and Mrs. Pimley she said that, being new in their service, she did not care to, as it was so early in the morning. Her description runs: 'Giraffe-like neck and absurdly small head out of all proportion to the great dark-grey body—skin like an elephant—two very short fore-legs or flippers clearly seen. The animal kept turning itself in the sunshine and at times arched its back into one or more humps.' Finally, 'it lowered its head, quietly entered the water and disappeared'.

Soon after 9 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Pimley went down to the beach to examine the spot. There was a slight impression on the rather heavy shingle and in the centre a small branch had been pressed into the gravel. Before this experience Miss Munro had not believed in the Monster.

The story quickly gained traction as it appeared in the national Scotsman newspaper the next day and over the summer weeks we see the story being printed in various international newspapers. For example, I have a clipping from the distant Straits Times of Singapore for July 7th. It had to be said also that the story itself has been accurately transmitted across geography and time by the newspapers I have examined.

The provenance of the story is a bit unclear. The master of the house, Mr. Pimley, worked at Fort Augustus Abbey School as a French teacher and it is likely that he would have taken Margaret Munro the short distance to speak to Cyril Dieckhoff. It is to be noted also that Mrs. Pimley had a sighting of the creature back in the previous November.

His diary entry looks much like the Courier report but there are minor differences. Peter Costello in his "In Search of Lake Monsters" lifts his account from Dieckhoff’s diary but erroneously states we would have lost this story if he had not entered it into his diary. As just demonstrated, the story was international news.

I would suspect that the Courier is a collection of statements from various individuals (Munro, the Pimleys and perhaps Dieckhoff's expertise)  and edited into one article. The article was probably composed by Alex Campbell, who lived in Fort Augustus, but I cannot be sure. The fact that Dieckhoff’s diary entry tallies with the newspaper account adds to the accuracy of the story.

The story itself has been examined in different ways by Loch Ness researchers over the years. Most books just recount the story in a narrative way whilst others attempt further interpretation. We have already mentioned Costello and Whyte but Nicholas Witchell’s The Loch Ness Story adds further details in that he carries a sketch of what Margaret Munro allegedly saw as well as a photograph pointing to the probable location of the creature. The location photograph is below while the sketch of the creature is at the top of the article.

The provenance of the sketch is unknown as Nicholas does not state if Margaret Munro was involved in its creation. It seems clear to me that he did not meet her because she is not directly quoted like other witness accounts and so I suspect the drawing was originally obtained by earlier researcher Constance Whyte (the one argument against this is that the sketch does not appear in her own book More Than A Legend).

Naturally, sceptics took a different view. Steuart Campbell is his book The Loch Ness Monster - The Evidence files it under the Otter category (probably because the account mentions a white breast). I know Adrian Shine favours the seal interpretation because he showed a slide at a recent conference expounding that view. Ronald Binns and Tony Harmsworth make no mention of the case but Maurice Burton makes comments which I shall refer to later on.

So with this background in mind, I revisited the location to get a sense of what might have happened. Borlum Bay and its beach are not particularly difficult to access. I parked near the house Margaret Munro worked in and cut across a field to the beach.

Once on the beach, it was easy to see how a large creature could take to land here but also be fairly well hidden from public view. On a general scan of the area, I could only see one other house that could have been party to this event (but on reflection, I doubted they would have seen anything). The local town of Fort Augustus is well out of the way, though I imagined a keen eyed resident at the nearby Abbey with binoculars could in theory have seen something. However, at six in the morning, not many are going to be up and about.

The first thing was to look at the location of the sighting marked in Nicholas Witchell’s book. It was at this point that I ran into a problem. The photograph below demonstrates this issue. My able assistant in the picture is not far short of six feet tall and is standing on the shoreline. Note how his head is almost on a line with the top of the grassy bank. This implies that it would be impossible for Margaret Munro to see where water meets beach as stated in the account. In fact, if the creature was no more that six feet high from flipper to crown of head, I doubt much more than the head and neck would be visible from the house.

That is demonstrated by the two pictures below. I stood and took a picture of the house from the shore and then crouched down to above three feet above the beach and took the second picture. The house disappeared from view which means the creature would largely disappear from view as well from the viewpoint of the house.

My own take on this is that Nicholas Witchell’s book is just making an educated guess as to where the location of the creature was. Dieckhoff’s diary entry states the monster was 300 yards away but the Courier is more accurate in stating it was the bay itself that was 300 yards away.

This location problem is solved by taking a closer look at the original account. The Courier report says that the location was some yards west of Atlan Doer Burn. A burn is a Scottish name for a stream and there is no stream flowing into the bay at the proposed location, but there is one further along by the name of Alt Na Dubhair which is shown below on a contemporary Ordnance Survey map with a white arrow. So it would seem that Altan Doer Burn is a mangled transliteration of Gaelic to English probably lost in the ear of the Courier desk as the story was dictated over the phone.

Since this side of the loch is referred to as the south side, then "some yards west" would put it a little further down the bay towards our witness. How does all this look on Google Maps? The first picture is the Google satellite view of the Pimley's house. The second is where the Witchell location is (A) and my proposed new location (B).

I estimate the new distance to be about 650 metres as opposed to the old one of over 200 metres. But Margaret Munro had the advantage of using prismatic binoculars. Evidently, her employers wisely kept them by the window in case Nessie put in an appearance in Borlum Bay.

What the magnification of the binoculars was is guesswork, but powers of 6x, 7x and 8x were commercially available. Taking the middle value of 7x would make the creature appear as if it was less than 100 metres away to the naked eye. Combining this with the fact that the creature was under observation for twenty five minutes makes this one of the clearest observations of the creature in the sightings database.

Standing outside the house where Margaret Munro sighted the creature, I took the following picture in the general direction of the burn.

Zooming in the fashion of a pair of binoculars with my digital camera expands the detail to the viewer. Note the various visual cues that aid estimation of size. This zoom will be bigger than 7x but I doubt it still conveys what the more accurate human eye plus binoculars can convey to the brain at the scene.

The light conditions were described as "bright sunshine" which agrees with the sunrise time for that location. The sun had risen two hours earlier and by 0630 was coincidentally along the path of the sighting (yellow line on map below). By then the sun was at an elevation of about 12 degrees which was five degrees more than the highest point along Margaret Munro's line of sight. 

So I would say that Miss Munro saw her creature in a degree of shade but in the context of a bright sunny morning, I doubt this hindered observation. Look around your own neighbourhood two hours after sunrise and note the adequate light levels for yourself.

Going back to the observed creature, it turns out the Scotsman report from the 5th June carried a surprise - another drawing of the creature. The article states:

"Describing the animal to our correspondent, who drew a sketch of it from her description ...."

I had not seen this picture before in any publication, so it is possible this is the first time this image has appeared in nearly eighty years! The Witchell sketch is shown again for comparison.

(As an aside to digital researchers, I had viewed this article two years earlier when researching my book but the display had edited out the sketch! In hindsight, I should have used the "full page view" option which did carry the drawing.)

The two images are not too dissimilar. The Scotsman sketch has a slightly larger head and less square forelimbs. But which one is more representative of what Munro saw? We know the Scotsman sketch is not a direct sketch by the witness, but it is unclear whether the reporter and witness were even in the same room when he drew it. I myself tend towards the Witchell sketch as its head agrees best with the witness' statement about the "absurdly small head". 

THE CREATURE

Proponents of the Loch Ness Monster tend to print the account with not much in the way of further thought, but some add further observations. As mentioned above, Witchell attempts to pin down the actual location while Costello in "In Search of Lake Monsters" takes notes of the arching of the back into humps.

It is also to be noted that the creature was not fully on land. The Courier report states that “only a portion lay clear on the water” while Cyril Dieckhoff states it “was almost, but not entirely, clear of the water”. The implication is that the creature was partially sitting in the shallow waters of the bay and did not fully venture onto land during the sighting. I would guess the water depth was about one or two feet reading between the lines in the account.

This accounts for the lack of information on any rear limbs normally associated with the creature as they were still under the water. This all suggests that the creature was partly facing the woods with its back to the loch at some angle.

I find the phrase “the animal kept turning itself in the sunshine” rather curious. What does it mean? Was the creature displaying a trait reported in other land reports where it has been seen to swing its head-neck structure from side to side? Perhaps, or was it actually turning its entire large bulk from side to side as if to capture the sunshine? One could even surmise it was rolling but surely if the entire body was being manoeuvred in these ways, then Margaret Munro would have had more to report about the rear parts of the body as they were hauled into view? In that light, I tend to the view that she is only referring to the neck.

I, myself, would not consider the Loch Ness Monster a sun-bather as the Courier suggests. This is a creature that spends most of its life in darkness. If it had a penchant for seeking the sun, we would see it a lot more often basking in full view of tourists and locals. But why it would be on land at all more likely lies in another reason to do with more basic needs such as food. One wonders if it was actually searching for something in the trees - a tasty goat perhaps?

But how big was the creature? Sadly, the normal estimates are not to be found in this account. All we have is the statement “the biggest animal she had ever seen in her life”. Since the monster and its brood are normally reported in a range of large sizes, this could mean anything up to perhaps forty feet. If Margaret Munro had seen the elephants that visited Inverness the previous summer as part of the Bertram Mills Circus, then she is talking about something bigger than an elephant. However, it should be clear that her statement is not meant to imply a rather less imposing otter or seal!

The Pimleys' visit to the spot afterwards would indeed suggest something large. Creating a depression in heavy shingle is not an easy matter as I tried it myself! The depressed branch at that spot does add some corroboration to Margaret Munro’s story of something larger than the known animals around Loch Ness. As an aside, if I was Arthur Pimley, I would have taken the stick away as a souvenir. I wonder where it is today amongst Mr. Pimley’s descendants?

The lighter underpart of the creature has been reported in other sightings and the dark grey skin is almost canonical. I think Maurice Burton errs on this point when he discusses the case. He relates how he took out his own 8x binoculars to examine a tree in his back garden at a range of 220 yards and said he could not make out the bark detail. He thus reasons that Margaret Munro could not claim to talk about the skin being like that of an elephant. 

I do not think this is relevant as no report I have looked at states that the texture of the skin was like that of an elephant. Rather, they merely state the skin was like that of an elephant in the matter of colour and not texture. That is suggested from the text when it refers to a dark grey colour but not to any texture. As to whether an elephant's skin texture can be discerned from an effective distance of 100 metres, I'll leave that until I come across one in real life!

CHANGING HUMPS

Margaret Munro's mention of the back arching into humps is important from a monster point of view as fluctuating humps are normally dismissed by critics as nothing more than witnesses being fooled by standing waves or similar changing shapes as they wash along the loch. Clearly, that explanation does not apply here.

Transforming humps are one of those features well known to Loch Ness Monster researchers and a point of controversy as to their utility. The question that crossed my mind was whether this story was the first reported instance of such a phenomenon. The answer is "almost". I took the liberty of perusing my clippings collection up to the Munro sighting to see if any mentioned this hump fluctuation and found one report.

The witness was a James MacDonald, a local man who worked for the Forestry Commission who observed the monster seventy hours before Margaret Munro on Thursday 30th May. He observed a hump about 400 yards away surfacing near Cherry Island which then moved off. James was a trained observer with the Lovat Scouts during the Boer War and back then as a forestry patrolman. He was also a salmon fisherman of Loch Ness with forty years experience. Witnesses don't come much better qualified than him. He proceeded to observe the creature through his telescope and noted how:

"Twice it flattened out itself, then, apparently contracting, resolved itself into two humps, each nearly as big as an upturned boat, and several feet of water separating them."

Eventually the object submerged with scarcely a ripple a mile away ... in Borlum Bay. Could this be the same creature that Margaret Munro saw three days later in the same locality exhibiting the same back flexing feature? Sightings of the creature are rare and it is even rarer to have "back to back" (excuse the pun)  instances of metamorphosing humps. In fact, so rare as to suggest this was the same creature.

As an aside, there was a sighting of the creature the day before John MacDonald's experience (Wednesday) by a Miss Fraser and others who saw an almost mirror image of his sighting but without the flexing humps. Their sighting saw the monster appear in Borlum Bay and then trace a route to a point between Cherry Island and the old Railway Pier. Mr. MacDonald saw the reverse route. It was almost as if the creature had submerged in front of Miss Fraser and stayed there until the next morning to resurface in front of James MacDonald. Curiouser and curiouser.

It is tempting to think this was the same creature which opens up various lines of speculation. For example, does this show that the creatures tend to "hang around" certain areas? This would be consistent with a restricted food supply that does not encourage high mobility activities. Or perhaps it indicates territoriality as certain individuals avoid each other? Yes, I know, it's speculation, but that is part of the warp and woof of Loch Ness (on both sides of the debate, I may add).

Mr. MacDonald's sighting was chronologically before Margaret Munro, but the story was not made public until the same day as Munro's story when it was printed in the same edition of the Inverness Courier. So, it can be argued that Munro's story receives corroboration in two areas - the MacDonald story and the beach inspection by the Pimleys.

SEALS

But such arguments will not convince or even sway everyone. One claim is that Margaret Munro merely saw a seal. At the Edinburgh "Nessie at 80" symposium last April, Adrian Shine presented a talk on Loch Ness and the monster. One slide showed our top of the article sketch and below it a similar black and white sketch of a seal drawn in such a way as to strike a similar pose. Though not indigenous to Scotland, the sea lion below exemplifies the suggested pose.

But there are various problems with this interpretation.

Firstly, it could hardly be suggested that a seal was "the biggest animal she had ever seen in her life". Grey and Harbour Seals are found around the Scottish coastline and can grow up to seven and six feet long respectively, though a typical specimen would be at least a foot smaller (I would also respectfully disagree with one website calling the Grey Seal the largest living carnivore in Britain, that would be Nessie!). In that respect, Adrian Shine's seal-monster slide was somewhat disingenuous in presenting his seal as almost as big as the Munro creature.

Could Margaret Munro mistake a seal for a much larger creature even after observing it for 25 minutes at an effective distance of about 100 metres? Could this lady who had spent years in Fort Augustus and must have visited that area countless times be so unfamiliar with the long standing visual cues around the bay which would act as size markers? I don't think so and therefore I think the burden of proof lies with those who suggest a seal.

The second problem is that seals are not indigenous to Loch Ness. They do occasionally visit the loch but it is unlikely that there was a seal in Loch Ness at that time. Why do I say that? Because a seal being found in Loch Ness would have certainly made the newspapers. One reason I say that is because a search of the digital and microfilm archives show various reports of seals being seen in and around Inverness - including the River Ness. They usually ended up getting shot  due to being a threat to the salmon stocks.

For example, I found a report of a seal in the River Ness from the Northern Chronicle of the 6th September 1933. However, I did not find a report of any seal in Loch Ness up to and including 1934. If a seal did get into Loch Ness, it is not going to be there for long before it is spotted by people around the loch and it will most likely again be shot. Indeed, it is debatable whether the seal would get out of Loch Ness.

Monster advocate and water bailiff, Alex Campbell, said he had never heard of a seal in Loch Ness and you would expect him to be the first to know about such a thing. But we have reports of seals n Loch Ness in recent decades, so was Campbell lying? I don't think so and I think it has to do with changing ecology.

It is well known that fish stocks have been dropping for decades. As fish numbers around the Moray Firth drop, so the likelihood that they are pursued by seals into the Ness water system increases. It is my contention that seals hardly ever attempted a loch visit eighty years ago because there was no reason to - there was enough fish in the sea. With dropping fish stocks, we are now seeing hungrier seals taking more risks in chasing fish into Loch Ness.

Thirdly, the sea lion pose above is hardly the standard pose of the seals under discussion. If you observe a sea on land for up to half an hour, then the most likely posture is the one below or reclining on its side.

The raised posture is more associated with movement and our creature not only did not move its bulk but was very un-seal like in its appearance. Long neck, absurdly small head, back arching into humps, so how does one read "seal" into that unless the alternate explanation is unpalatable?

CONCLUSION

I think Margaret Munro had an encounter with the Loch Ness Monster that summer morning in 1934. Talk of seals and smaller creatures such as otters do not stack up. In that case, the sceptics can only fall back on the liar hypothesis. But why would Margaret Munro lie? What were the psychological blocks? One major block was her own statement to the Courier that she had been in the Pimleys' employment for only a short time. Why ruffle the employment waters with this tall tale? Why further wind up her employers by saying she didn't wake them up to see this fantastic sight?

It doesn't add up and the Margaret Munro story goes down as one of the most intriguing Loch Ness Monster tales to grace the eighty year old legend.

Some Nessie Paintings

Some paintings related to the Loch Ness Monster came to my attention recently, so I thought I would post them here.

First up was an item I noticed on eBay by artist Andy Walker entitled "The Last of the Leviathans". This was Andy's description of his reptilian rendition of the Loch Ness Monster:

 

I painted this image to mark the 80th anniversary this year of the beginning of the modern era of sightings of the infamous occupant(s) of Loch Ness. Hugh Gray's photograph of the creature he saw swimming in the loch in November 1933 set the world's media alight with talk of the LOCH NESS MONSTER. My own interest in the creature(s) began in early childhood thanks to stories told to me by my great aunt and uncle who swore they saw a large animal swimming in the loch whilst they were on a touring holiday of Scotland. My main aim was to portray the most commonly observed characteristics of the creature reported by the many eye witnesses over the years!

I asked him for any further details he had on his great aunt's sighting, but he had nothing more to add. You can find more of Andy's artwork here.

Our next artist is regular reader, Bradford Johnson. He continues to work on his portfolio of Marmaduke Wetherell and has added some ideas from that classic Nessie film, "The Secret of the Loch". You can find more of Bradford's work here. 

Finally, one of the more unusual Loch Ness Monster paintings from the Italian magazine Domenica del Corriere of the 19th December 1954. This magazine has produced various cryptozoological pictures over the years. Anyone care to classify this creature? It looks like a crustacean to me!

Loch Ness Monster seen in Moray Firth?

Date: 17th April 2013
Time: 2pm
Location: Findhorn Bay
Witnesses: Celia Hawe
Type of sighting: Head, neck and back in water

I spotted this one on the CFZ blog and thought it worthy of passing on to readers. Strictly, this is a not a Loch Ness Monster event as it did not happen in Loch Ness. The claimed sighting was in Findhorn which is a village further along the Moray Firth coastline (check first map below for circled location with Loch Ness in the bottom left corner).

Nevertheless, I have addressed this subject of Nessie-like creatures being seen around the Moray Firth in a previous article and we can now add this one to that list.  My own opinion was that it seemed unlikely we had several different species of cryptids in the same small locality (Loch Ness and up to the adjoining sea). So Celia could be right in claiming this as a sighting of Nessie. I thought things were a bit quiet at the loch this year, was Nessie away on vacation?!

So, Celia Hawe has put together a video clip of her experience which is a good way of getting her story across. I do not think she is pulling our collective leg and I have no reason to doubt her sincerity - especially as practically all hoaxers are men. The object she saw certainly sounds like a classic Loch Ness Monster with its long neck and single hump.

She also says she regularly watches the wildlife and boats on the waters, so it seems unlikely she was fooled by any of these objects. Of course, it cannot be entirely excluded that some normally recognisable object in an unusual context was involved but the duration and proximity of the sighting would exclude many of the usual "suspects". Until a sensible and alternate explanation is forthcoming, I will leave that aside.

She further puts up a general view of the bay in the video (below) and you can just see her PC cursor pointing to the area where the object was observed which is more or less just above the line of the bushes. The object then disappeared behind the treeline. Unfortunately, Celia did not have a camera to hand during the sighting, though given her comments about being "mesmerised" by the sight, I wonder if she would have remembered to use it!

The position of her bay photograph can be located using Google StreetView. The first StreetView image shows the same tree and distant view of the waters.  It seems the bay was not as busy in April than the StreetView shot taken in warmer months.

A look at the bay on the other side of the trees shows a beach. One wonders if the houses closer to the shoreline were occupied at the time and had seen anything?

The comment by Celia that the head-neck took on a twisted kind of appearance is one I personally find interesting as I have commented before on the extreme flexibility of the Loch Ness Monster's signature profile. I still wonder if it really is the classic neck with bony vertebrae that is normally assumed. I have sent a message to Celia hoping for more details and perhaps a sketch, so watch this space.

So, I will call this an honorary Nessie report. But if this was a genuine sighting, what was the creature doing in this enclosed bay? Why did no one else apparently see this creature? Could it be that this bay conceals the entrance to that infamous tunnel that connects Loch Ness to the sea? 

Am I over-indulging in speculation? Considering such a tunnel would be over thirty miles long, I may well be. But if I had scuba-diving gear, I know where I would be heading for my next session!

POSTSCRIPT

Celia got in touch with me and explained that she tried to draw what she saw but gave up confessing she was useless as an artist.  That's a pity but I am sure that if Celia was making all this up, she would have come up with some kind of picture!

She also added this interesting postscript to her experience which this time involved her husband as they were packing the car for a pre-dawn trip to England:

It was dark still, then we heard this noise, once, it was like nothing we have ever heard before. It was scary but we just had to carry on with what we were doing and get going as it is such a long drive. We of course discussed it later. What it could have been.  We went through everything we could think of. Drowning dog, seal, everything we could think of, But this sound was, and I use this word carefully, unearthly. It was incredibly loud, deep and reverberated over the water. I had no idea at the time at what level the bay water was at, but later checked and at 4.54am it was full tide.

Make of that what you will!

George Edwards Confesses

As reported in the Inverness Courier, George Edwards finally admits he faked his photograph and is proud of it because it generated interest in the Loch Ness Monster and hence the area. This story received worldwide attention in early August 2012 but Steve Feltham broke the news on the 18th August that the object in the picture was most likely a 1.9m fiberglass prop used in a documentary some years back. George also confesses in a Wall Street Journal article (though insists a picture he took in 1986 is not a hoax).

The news has apparently angered Kevin Carlyon, Nessie's self-proclaimed white witch protector, who has promised to send a "psychic torpedo" in Edwards' direction on Halloween!

What prompted Mr. Edwards to confess is not clear and the article does not quote him saying he used the prop, but this must surely be the most likely explanation. George takes "the end justifies the means" approach in not initially admitting to the true nature of the picture. The reaction to that approach has been mixed but as far as I am concerned it would be short term positive gain versus long term negative gain where "gain" here is of the monetary kind.

Now these photographs are normally the bane of Nessie proponents as they can often be difficult to distinguish from a real monster picture. However, there is an important and unexpected slant to this which needs some attention. Dick Raynor is one of the recognised analysts of the Loch Ness phenomenon who has been involved with the mystery for over forty years. His various critiques of monster films and photographs throughout the years have been well received by those sceptical of any large creatures in Loch Ness.

Now since Dick does not generally miss an opportunity to point out what he thinks are problems with my analysis and those of others, I am sure he won't mind his own coming under the spotlight.

The problem here was his initial analysis of the picture which you can find at his website. Before the fibreglass hump revelation, he conducted an experiment with a 25cm plastic bottle at the location he thought was close to the Edwards picture. He placed the bottle in the water and attempted a size comparison by overlaying the Edwards photo and lining up the contours of the background hills. You can see the results half way down his webpage. Based on this, he estimated the object in the water to be 0.6m long or about 23 inches. The conclusion of Dick's analysis was that the object was an un-monster like length of about 20 inches and hence was dubious.

So, as usual, sceptics would congratulate Dick on his analysis, dump the picture and move on to the next target. That was until Steve Feltham turned up.

When the truth about the fibreglass prop came out, a contour comparison with that object showed it to be about 1.2 metres out of the water. This can be seen just below the bottle experiment on Dick's own webpage where he overlays the Edwards' object with a picture of Adrian Shine standing beside the prop. This means Dick was out by 100% in his estimate. The object was twice as large as he estimated and the combined image was an optical illusion, the hump though closer is actually larger and further away (In fact, since the bottle is further away than the overlaid hump, bringing it closer to the spot where the hump is, makes it slightly larger, increasing the error).

This issue is briefly mentioned on his webpage, but in a series of postings to cryptozoology.com, Dick admits his error in more detail and eventually figures out he got his camera height wrong:

"I finally figured out where I had gone wrong - I missed an upright handrail stanchion on the fly bridge of NH4. If that is the object in the bottom left, GE simply snuck a photo under the handrail while the crew were filming."

So what is Dick saying here? Did he figure out how to get the bottle-hump scaling right or something else? It is not clear but the implication of this is that the difference between standing somewhere different on the same boat at the same distance to the same object can result in a doubling of the estimate! Either way, it does not matter, the initial numbers were wrong.

So, the main point is this, if Steve Feltham had not stepped forward, many would have assumed that Dick's analysis was spot on because it involved maths and hard numbers.  The truth was nearer to four feet than 23 inches which is a more monster like length. It does not matter that the picture was proven to be a hoax on other grounds, a picture cannot be proven to be a hoax for the wrong reasons.

This was a possibly unique opportunity to test the practise against the theory since we have the actual object used. Something important has come out of this sorry episode - a demonstration of the difficulty in assessing alleged photographs of the monster and the lack of peer review.

This raises the question of how accurate are other sceptical analyses of monster evidence? For example, Dick and others attempted to reproduce the Lachlan Stuart photograph from 1951 on another webpage. The problem now is whether this is as accurate as made out? Like the bottle and hump overlay, are the Stuart objects actually bigger in size and subsequently further out in the water where it may be too deep to put hay bales? The reproduced overlay may again be an illusion. Indeed, Lachlan Stuart, being on land, could have taken his picture from a far more diverse range of camera heights than on a boat. Does this mean the possibility of error in estimation is significantly more?

In fact, Lachlan Stuart stated that the three humps were 5 feet across at the waterline and 2, 4 and 3 feet high from left to right.  Using the person in Dick's picture as a scale, it would appear that, like the Edwards hump, the superimposed Stuart humps are half the size of the original account. In other words, 100% out again. If the Stuart picture is overlaid and resized to Stuart's dimensions, the overlay no longer works.

One thing seems clear, just lining up the contours of distant hills on each picture is not enough when it comes to making judgements about close up objects.  I pointed this out in my own reply to this "hay bale" reconstruction back in January. Because the distant hill contours hardly change as one moves along the shore, there is an unscientific temptation to just cherry-pick the best spot to bolster one's own theory. This episode with the George Edwards pictures now proves the folly of presenting just one picture at one location.

All scientific experiments where possible carry error ranges. This reflects the fact that making measurements is not a perfect procedure. In this case, it is not enough to assume one camera position, a range is required to highlight the close range uncertainties in the experiment. This, of course, also applies to myself and other proponents of the Loch Ness Monster when we also carry out our pro-Nessie investigations. I am sure I could find similar examples in that regard.

So what is the conclusion of all this? Read the opinions and analyses of both proponents and opponents of the Loch Ness Monster and form your own opinion, readers. None of us are free from errors - no matter what tools we claim to use.

(NOTE: As part of any discussion in the comments section, I may include emails received privately).

From the Inverness Courier:

LOCH Ness cruise boat operator George Edwards has admitted the photo of Nessie he took last year is a fake – and he is proud of it.

Mr Edwards, of Loch Ness Cruises at Drumnadrochit, claimed in August 2012 that he took the picture – which attracted worldwide attention – near Urquhart Castle.

He said at the time: "I did not want to mention my sighting until I was sure that I had not photographed a log or something inanimate in the water in the water. I have friends in the USA who have friends in the military.

"They had my photo analysed and they have no doubt that I photographed an animate object in the water.

"I was really excited as I am sure that some strange creatures are lurking in the depths of Loch Ness."

Mr Edwards has now admitted the picture was a fake and was proud to be following in the tradition of the famous "Surgeon's Photograph" of 1934, supposedly showing the monster's head and neck, which was later proved to be a hoax.

"So as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly valid," he said. "It's just a bit of fun.

"I am quite happy to join the rogues' gallery along with the surgeon who produced the best known picture image of the monster in the world.

"How do you think Loch Ness would have fared over the years without that picture? I have no guilty feelings at all about what I have done."

It is understood Mr Edwards may have used a Nessie fibreglass hump which had previously been used in a National Geographic documentary to create his fake photo.

Yesterday Willie Cameron, of the Clansman Hotel agreed with Mr Edwards that the fake pictures would help boost the Nessie story rather than damage it.

"It brings the story back to the limelight," he said. "It will probably create another wave of interest in Loch Ness which is required to keep the story going.

"It's been running now for about 80 years and I think most people knew George's photos were fake, just like the majority of photographs of the monster."

However, Steve Feltham, who has hunted the monster from Dores beach since 1991, said the admission harmed Mr Edwards' credibility and the Loch Ness Monster brand.

"It does the subject no good and damages his own reputation," he said. "When you read things like this in the papers, people will think it's all just a fairytale.

"But if you read the reports and books you're more likely to think that something is there to be explained. He's supposed to be taking people out on tours but he's nothing more than a faker and a liar."

In 1989, Mr Edwards said he found "Nessie's Lair" after his boat recorded a depth of 812 feet in the loch near Urquhart Castle.

The trench was then named Edwards Deep.

Mr Edwards was criticised last year by the former boss of the Loch Ness centre Tony Harmsworth who said he should not have to resort to "fakery" to keep his customers entertained.

Mr Harmsworth, who lives in Drumnadrochit, subsequently resigned from the Drumnadrochit Chamber of Commerce after fellow members failed to back him.

From the Wall Street Journal:

DRUMNADROCHIT, Scotland—Steve Feltham was surveying the shores of the Loch Ness last summer when his cellphone rang, breaking his concentration. A local reporter was calling to say she had just received a photo of the Loch Ness Monster—its arched hump protruding from the waters—and she wanted to run it by him before sending it to print.

Mr. Feltham, a full-time monster hunter for 22 years, studied the photo.

"It is the best photograph I think I have ever seen," he told the journalist at the Inverness Courier from his home, a van parked on the pebbled shores of Loch Ness.

Many in Drumnadrochit, a village in northern Scotland, and throughout Britain, hailed the photo taken by George Edwards, a tour guide, as one of the most convincing monster pictures ever taken. It is the centerpiece of his tour company which operates out of Nessieland, a Loch Ness tourism center. He sells postcards of his photos to passengers for 50 pence (80 cents) apiece.

Monster hunter Steve Feltham, on Loch Ness, retracted his backing of a photo of Nessie, igniting a controversy.

 

But Mr. Feltham—who says a perfect day involves staring at the loch from dawn to dusk in search of the monster—now says his endorsement was a grave error. He says he soon realized the photo was actually of a 6-foot-long fiberglass hump used as a prop in a documentary filmed on Mr. Edwards's boat in 2011.

Other local experts agreed. Adrian Shine, a Nessie researcher and designer of the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition, and Dick Raynor, another researcher, say the photo is so obviously fake that it's an insult to visitors.

Mr. Edwards's photo has become the centerpiece of a fierce debate ripping through Drumnadrochit. It has exposed a bitter truth: Some key players in the Nessie industry don't believe the Loch Ness Monster exists.

One Monday afternoon recently, Mr. Edwards lashed out at his critics to passengers on his tour boat. Nothing irritates him more than the fact that some of his customers have just walked over from the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition, which sits 300 yards from Nessieland, where they are told the monster may not be real.

Incredulous, Mr. Edwards in May escalated his complaint with the town's fathers. "I carry thousands of tourists on Nessie Hunter every year and I am concerned when passengers tell me that after they have visited the self-proclaimed Official Loch Ness Exhibition and Center they come out feeling disappointed after [being] told that Nessie is a myth or a figment of the imagination." 

Mr. Edwards wrote in a letter to the Drumnadrochit Chamber of Commerce. "In recent years we have seen a decline in tourism across Scotland and maybe it is time for Mr. Shine to put up or shut up," he said in the letter.

Tony Harmsworth, another Nessie tour guide and editor of the chamber's website, in a written response accused Mr. Edwards of treating tourists like gullible fools and sending them away with "their heads full of garbage." Says Mr. Shine: "I would concur with that. That is exactly what he [Mr. Edwards] does and what he now admits of doing. He says people like this."

The Chamber of Commerce demanded Mr. Harmsworth remove his rebuttal to Mr. Edwards from the website, along with any other critical comments about Mr. Edwards. Disgusted members of the Chamber of Commerce, including the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition, have resigned in protest. Robert Cockburn, the Chamber chairman, says the group is officially neutral on Nessie's existence, and he is ambivalent on the Loch Ness Center's resignation.

Mr. Harmsworth argues that monsters cannot possibly live in Loch Ness. "Can anyone trust what the chamber is doing anymore?" he said. "To just feed people fake pictures because that's what you think they want is not really the way forward for tourism in the Highlands of Scotland."

 

Another battle front is the competing tourist centers, Nessieland and the Loch Ness Center. Their tours start similarly, with visitors walking through a dark, tunnellike entrance. But at Nessieland, tourists are regaled with tales of monster sightings and secret passages in the loch where Nessie may be lurking; the Loch Ness Center casts the monster as a myth. When it talks about supposed sightings of the monster since 1933, it plays circus music in the background.

The two tourist centers have a history of not getting along. In June, police cautioned and charged the owner of Nessieland, Donald Skinner, for stealing a sign outside the Loch Ness Center. He said he "took custodianship" of the sign because it was blocking one of his own. 

Mr. Edwards, who was laid off from his job as an oil worker in the 1980s, says his critics are trying to destroy Loch Ness, which depends heavily on tourism. "Can you imagine if Mr. Shine or Mr. Raynor came across to America and walked into Disneyland and told all the children there's no such thing as Mickey Mouse—don't be taken in by all this rubbish. That's what they're doing here." 

Mr. Shine says tourists would rather know the truth than be misled. He says Mr. Edwards asked whether he could run his tours out of the Loch Ness Center last summer, but that the center said no.

The Loch Ness monster has stirred debate for nearly 1,500 years. The first sighting may have occurred in 565 A.D., but interest in Nessie was revived in 1933 when a couple told the local newspaper that while driving, one of them spotted a creature rolling and tumbling in the roughly 23-mile loch. The creature then vanished into the foam. Loch Ness is 800 feet deep at its deepest.

Many were skeptical, but a year later, Col. Robert Wilson, a British surgeon, came forward with a photo he said showed the monster rising from the loch. Sixty years later, Christian Spurling, who made the model used in the photograph confessed that the photo was actually of a toy submarine with a sea-serpent head.

Mr. Edwards says he has no doubt that there are some mysterious creatures in the Loch Ness, including Nessie.

But he also has a confession. Throughout the fracas over his photo, he insisted to the local media it was real. He initially declined to comment to The Wall Street Journal. But he has relented, recently telling a boat full of passengers that he manufactured the shot to win attention for Nessie and prove how easy it is to fake photos.

However, he said another photo he took of Nessie—from summers ago—is for real:

"I've taken photographs over the years. One in particular, on the 6th of June, 1986, is an absolutely genuine photograph."

Henry Bauer on Abominable Science!

Veteran Nessie researcher, Henry Bauer, has entered the fray in critiquing Loxton and Prothero's "Abominable Science!". Last month, I pointed out its deficiencies from a Nessie point of view, but Henry has found even more holes in this Swiss cheese of a chapter.

He hopes to review the whole book in due time, but click on this link to get his critique of their Loch Ness Monster chapter.

An Interesting Photograph from 1938

Back in May of this year, I came across an auction for a picture which was described as a photograph taken at Loch Ness in 1938. The seller was actually not quite sure if it was but thought it the most likely place. The item sold for £26.00 and that was the end of that. However, my curiosity was piqued and I took a closer look at the JPEG image that I grabbed from the eBay website.

The eBay page is above but the actual image is shown below. Now this is the type of Loch Ness picture that would have been unlikely to make it into a newspaper of its time. After the excitement of the Surgeon's photograph four years previously, the bar had been set pretty high.

Nevertheless, was it taken at Loch Ness and what could it be? Using Google's ever useful StreetView, it came as no surprise that the picture had been taken beside Urquhart Castle at the place where the highest proportion of sightings have been recorded. Using the background hill contours as a guide, a rough location was determined.

Superimposing the two pictures confirms the location and increasing the transparency of the 1938 photograph gives an idea of the scale of the object which was photographed.

If you compare the size of the object (or area of water) with the boats to the left, it covers a fairly large distance in the horizontal. Perhaps 200 to 300 feet in extent using the boats as a guide. Of course, the Loch Ness Monster is not 200 feet long, but a large object could cause a similar water disturbance. Or perhaps it is just a plain old wind slick or windrow which is a common sight on the loch?

By way of cross reference, I wondered if there was a reported sighting in the vicinity of Castle Urquhart in 1938. A perusal of the archives brought up one possible candidate which was reported in the Scotsman newspaper for the 7th of September. This is reproduced below.

The photograph fits the article to some degree. This was a two hump sighting which was described as lower in the water than a previous sighting by a tug crew earlier that Summer. Certainly, if there is anything in this photograph, it would be low in the water. Also, the stated distance of three quarters of a mile is agreeable with our superimposed photograph. Unfortunately, such a distance is not commensurate with detailed photography.

However, I am not that convinced that this is a windrow and more that this is a genuine water disturbance. It does not appear to be a boat wake as the other arm of the bow wave is not visible. A higher resolution scan of the picture would help pick out details which are merely hinted at in this low-res image. For example, there does appear to be something like water being thrown up to the far left of the disturbance. 

So, with this in mind, I will ask the original eBay seller to pass this article onto the purchaser in the hope that a higher resolution picture will be available for further examination. Until then, the picture enters the archive of alleged pictures of the Loch Ness Monster after being hidden from view for 77 years!