Tuesday 4 August 2015

Nessie Books, Talks and Interviews

It is August now and one may think that the roster of Loch Ness Monster books would be near completion for 2015. That may not appear to be the case, but first a look at what has been out so far this year.




The first book is one of those small, downloadable, Kindle formats that one sees more and more these days. Written by Elgin Cook, it is a 35 page introduction to the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. It is good for those who want the basic facts, though more seasoned researchers may find it too familiar.

The second book is of an order of magnitude better and is entitled "Loch Ness: From Out of the Depths" by Patrick Gallacher. It is a compilation of many newspaper reports concerning the Loch Ness Monster from May 1933 to December 1934. 



At 386 pages, it is certainly one of the biggest books on the Loch Ness Monster, though it has to be realised that this is an edited compilation of pre-existing material. Now, all of these old newspaper reports can be accessed on such online resources as the British Newspaper Archive, but I like the idea that they are now available in digital and paper format. I like it is digital because it is now on my Kindle reader and is readily searchable. Of course, the original online resources are searchable too, but I find this format more comfortable.

I will also order the paperback version just so I have a paper backup of these old and valuable newspaper reports. One will also find that this is not just a monotone recounting of Nessie reports. It contains contemporary opinions and debate as to the monster's identity as well as folklore, other lake monsters and sea serpent tales. All in all, a good book for the cryptozoological shelf.

AND STILL TO COME

But 2015 has still not yet seen the last of books on the Loch Ness Monster. The next book that is expected is Malcolm Robinson's "The Monsters of Loch Ness". This is due for imminent publication and I hope to review it as soon as it comes out.

Malcolm is a well known researcher and author in UFO and paranormal circles, but, as a fellow Scot, his great love is the Loch Ness Monster. As he says on his own facebook page:

Update on my upcoming book, 'The Monsters of Loch Ness' (The history and the mystery) A chap presented me with some photographs that he took of "Nessie" back in 2011 and a drawing of "Nessie's" head. This along with his testimony, will now be going into my book as an extra. My new publisher has said that he is happy to use this and we are still looking to get this book published later this year. As I stated before, this book to me, is far more important than my other three books on UFOs and ghosts, that's not to say that I am disrespecting my previous three books, far from it. What I am saying is Loch Ness to me holds such a big part of my heart and life, and my research there over the years and going down in the Loch Ness submarine back in 1994 all combined to a book being written on a subject so dear to me, "Nessie". More news when I have it.

I look forward to reading Malcolm's book. 

Also anticipated this year is Karl Shuker's "Here's Nessie!" being subtitled "A Monstrous Compendium From Loch Ness". I don't know much about this book apart from knowing that it will mainly consist of Karl's previous writings on Nessie. So, this book may be familiar to you depending on how much you follow Karl.

Lastly, we still await Paul Harrison's book on notorious monster hunter, Frank Searle. It may come out this year, it may not. Either way, I expect this to be a highly anticipated and readable book as Paul recounts the life of this Loch Ness character and the interviews Paul had with Frank at his Lancashire home many years after he left the loch.

OTHER ITEMS

I recently gave an interview on the Loch Ness Monster to the Bruce Collins radio show. You can hear that interview podcast here. It lasts about 30 minutes and covers the basics of the mystery. 

And as a final heads up, I will talking on our favourite cryptid at the 2016 Scottish UFO and Paranormal Conference in Glasgow next June. More details to follow!


 


Thursday 30 July 2015

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Before I went on holiday, somebody posted on Facebook an excerpt from Peter Costello's book "In Search of Lake Monsters". I reproduce that piece below.


Now it is not a new thing that deer have been suggested as misidentified Nessies, but that is not the problem. Every "believer" accepts people misidentify objects for the Loch Ness Monster, but not to the ridiculous proportions demanded by sceptics. The problem lies in this particular treatment of three reports.

Peter Costello stated that reports of monsters with horns could actually be deer because younger stag had short unbranched antlers in August and that was when these three horned monster sightings were reported. Maurice Burton, in his book, The Elusive Monster, echoes this theory by printing a photograph of the proposed type of deer.



With this in mind, I decided to update the list of horned reports forty years on. The list is shown below, beginning with the original three.

1. Mr. A.H. Palmer 10th August 1933
2. Peter Grant 12th August 1934
3. Mrs Greta Finlay 20th August 1952
4. Kenneth A Key 11th September 1952
5. Pupil from Fort Augustus School November 1960
6. Helen McNaughton 8th September 1965
7. Farmer and wife May 1982   
8. Jan Erik Beckjord 6th August 1983

There are some horned sightings which I have excluded. The first is the legendary MacRae film which cites horns, but we have no proof that this eyewitness event even took place (if it did, it may have been in July).

The second is the (in)famous 1975 Rines underwater photograph which alleges to show a horned head. Since deer don't tend to travel 40 feet under the surface of Loch Ness, it's not a valid report for this type of discussion.

Finally, Maurice Burton mentions account number five. It was a sighting involving multiple schoolboys but not all describe horns. I include it nonetheless, because if one starts stripping out sightings based on various objections, one assessor may keep all them and another may reject the lot.

So the monthly distribution is now:

August - 4
September - 2
November - 1
May - 1

Looking at the cases in general, the most famous horned case is number three - Greta Finlay. You can read more about that report in my previous articles here and here.

Case number one may also be familiar to readers as it is a curious affair involving what seems to be no more than a head. Maurice Burton tried to present this as another deer event as the following scan from his book demonstrates. However, this time a hornless deer is invoked rather than a horned one (which rather begs the question as to why Peter Costello used it in his August Antler theory).



Maurice Burton also discusses the second case in his book involving a Mr. Peter Grant. I went to the closest source for this particular case, which was printed in the Northern Chronicle of 15th August 1934 and is reproduced below.




No sketch accompanied this account, so Maurice Burton sent the report to some artists he knew and asked them to draw what they thought was being described. These drawings are again reproduced below, though one must be aware that there will always be a degree of subjectivity when one is attempting to draw an animal which one has not personally seen or is not under the supervision of the one who did. The variation in the drawings exemplifies this.




So what are the problems with Peter Costello's analysis? The first is the chart below which shows the monthly distribution of monster reports. The peak month is August which coincides with the peak month for horned monster reports. The explanation behind this chart is simple, more people are watching the loch in the Summer months right up to a peak in August which then tails off into Autumn as the tourists leave, the locals stay indoors more and daylight hours decrease.



So to treat this theory properly, the data has to be weighted to take into account the increased number of observers in the Summer months. So, for example, we note that there almost twice as many reports in August as there are in September. It is also noted that the number of horned reports is again twice as much in August as it is in September. In other words, the proportions are similar which suggests the variation is not down to deer with velvet horns in August, but the number of observers in each month.

Having said that, I won't attempt a reweighting as we come to the second problem.The issue here is the size of the dataset and its useful in finding statistically significant results. Eight reports of horns over eighty years is really not a lot and one wonders if anything statistically useful can be done with it. Overall, this eight constitutes only about 0.6% of the entire sightings record.

This inadequate dataset is demonstrated by the fact that there are no horn reports for the next busiest months of June and July. That signifies an inadequacy in the dataset and hence making observations about August reports is not a valid approach.

Thirdly and finally, I question whether deer horns in August is in fact a viable theory at all. When you read Peter Costello's statement again, you may be led to think that August was the only month in which deer display monster-significant antlers.

So, we are told that these short antlers are covered in velvet in August and this somehow makes the deer more monster-like. But what about June, July, September and October? Of course, the antlers will be growing throughout gaining and then losing this velvet covering, but I fail to see how deer in these other four months are significantly less deceptive. 

The table of antler growth below charts the development of deer antler. I note that the deer sheds its first set of antlers in April/May of its second year of life and the new set grows to full size by August. This suggests that antlers that are so-called "monster-significant" should be present in July and perhaps even June. The absence of horn reports in these months suggests it has nothing to do with deer antler but other non-deer factors.



CONCLUSION

I don't doubt some people have been fooled by deer, but my own conviction is that these are more likely for sightings seen at further distances or hampered by other factors such as brevity of time or poor observational conditions. In the case of reports such as Greta Finlay where the creature was 20 yards away, we can reject deer explanations as forced and naive.

What we can see is that horns are not a significant part of the Loch Ness Mystery. This may be in part due to the fact that most sightings are not amenable to seeing such a small feature. Other close sightings (such as John MacLean) do not mention any such antennae.

In fact, the idea of horns on the monster only really became popular with the 1975 underwater "gargoyle" picture which in turn inspired the "Courtship in Loch Ness" painting by Sir Peter Scott. From thereon in, they occasionally appear in the cultural representations of Nessie, such as the recent Water Horse film.


But since I accept that sightings such as those by Greta Finlay are genuine, then I accept the concept of "horns" whatever they may be. And there lies the horns of a dilemma, what exactly are we seeing here? One suggestion is that these are snorkels to take in air and are even retractable (which would seem to be their default position).

Since I believe the monster is a water breather, I don't see them as snorkels, though retractability is acceptable. More likely to me is the idea that they may be sensory organs akin to barbels which are useful for sensing the dark environment of the loch waters.

Of course, one's interpretation depends on how one views the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon; be you fish, plesiosaur, salamander or sceptic oriented. But then again, perhaps the sceptic at the top of the page had no business submitting this argument?

It seems that some of that ilk have declared that you can't trust witnesses or the newspapers that report them not to embellish their stories with lies. So, the big question is, how does a sceptic know that horns were not added by the witness or reporter for dramatic effect? They don't, so they have no business giving an opinion on any eyewitness testimony.

But, five years on and still going strong, this blog will continue to give its views on what eyewitnesses have seen and will continue to expose sceptical arguments for what they are.

See you next article!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com













Monday 27 July 2015

Interesting eBay item owned by Constance Whyte




Seasoned Loch Ness researchers will know about Constance Whyte. She was the author of the 1957 book, "More than a Legend" and was an influence on later Loch Ness Monster researchers. This we certainly know of Tim Dinsdale who states that her book was a major influence on him before he headed up to Loch Ness for the first time.

In fact, she was one of the few people who was a link between the beginning of the Nessie phenomenon in the 1930s and the later activities and research around the loch in the 1960s. I believe she died around 1980.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to find this painting on eBay which was created by herself. I did not realise she had other talents. The work depicts the town of Inverness and, though it has no explicit Loch Ness Monster reference, it may be of interest to some readers.

The link to the auction is here and the auction ends in nine hours at the time of writing.

ANOTHER MORE MYSTERIOUS PAINTING

While I am here on the subject of paintings, I came across this item from the Dundee Courier dated the 20th of September 1934. It refers to a painting for sale depicting the Loch Ness Monster.



From the text, it appears to suggest that an artist, based on the River Ness, had seen the monster and executed a painting "on the spot" which rather suggests he was in the process of painting Loch Ness when something broke the surface.

I know nothing about any such painting and suggestions are invited as to what this could be. I would be confident that said painting is still in existence, but 81 years on, it would seem an impossible task to track it down.


Monday 20 July 2015

Catfish and Nessie

Steve Feltham has created a bit of a stir in the media by suggesting that the Loch Ness Monster could be a Wels Catfish. Some newspapers were suggesting that Steve would now bow out of monster hunting, as if the mystery had finally been solved.

That won't happen and as Steve suggested, the theory is fluid and could be ditched by him the next day. Steve has toyed with this idea for years now and this is not the first time he has been (mis)quoted on this theory.

Some have suggested the idea of a Wels catfish going back ten years or more, but the idea goes back before any such people were born and is parallel with the start of the Nessie story in 1933-1934. Rupert T. Gould mentions catfish in his 1934 book, "The Loch Ness Monster and Others", ascribing it to Dr. A. Van Veldhuizen, Professor of Theology at Groningen, who was no doubt familiar with the Silurus Glanis of the Danube River.

Gould's comment is stark when he says this is "another example of a theory entirely divorced from the evidence". It seems with this theory, the skeptics have relaxed their demands on physical evidence. As it turns out, there is as much evidence for catfish in Loch Ness as there is for plesiosauri in Loch Ness.

By a strange coincidence, I visited the aquarium in Copehagen as the catfish theory was circulating the media websites. Their Wels Catfish was sharing a tank with that other Nessie candidate, the Atlantic Sturgeon. I captured this photograph of them both together, though the light level was low and the catfish was decidedly inanimate. The smaller sturgeon is swimming above the catfish.



Now either the aquarium administrators were fleet of foot on new news or they had their own view on Nessie as the display beside the fish said:

The Wels Catfish is one of the world's largest fresh water fish. It can be up to 5 metres in length and weigh up to 300 kg. Due to its size, it has been identified as the Loch Ness Monster.

Every fish has its day, but for me, this is not the Loch Ness Monster.


While I am on Nessie related stuff at this aquarium, I noted they were selling clockwork submarines. I was tempted to buy one and recreate a famous Nessie photograph. The box says "Good Clean Fun". Try telling that to the Loch Ness Monster community!



The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com


Tuesday 30 June 2015

Thoughts on John MacLean, Lachlan Stuart and the An Seileag




First off, I wrote an article on the famous John MacLean sighting a while back. The item was linked by James Jeffrey Paul a few days back which led to a comment by well known Nessie sceptic, Tony Harmsworth. He "explained" to James that it was a combination of a cormorant and waves. Shall we now go home? Not likely.

So what gets on my pectorals more than anything else in this subject? It's sceptics dissing and dumbing down Nessie witnesses without exception. It can be summed up in that most unusual of sceptical dogmas:

No Loch Ness Monster eyewitness has ever accurately described what they claimed to see.

That applies to all 1500 or so reports that we know about. Yes, it does sound counter-intuitive, doesn't it? But the only way they get away with this outlandish axiom is because the alternative is seen as even more counter-intuitive by the general public; that a monster inhabits Loch Ness. Sorry, but one implausibility should not rely on another for its justification.

But John MacLean was a local man who fished Loch Ness, I think he would have had some experience of the wildlife around Loch Ness. How much experience do you need around the loch to recognise a cormorant?

He was only about sixty feet from this animal, how close do you have to be to recognise a cormorant?

He observed this creature for six minutes, how long do you need to tell a cormorant from a monster?

Clearly none of this is relevant to the sceptic.


LACHLAN STUART

Thirteen years later, Lachlan Stuart claimed to have seen and photographed the Loch Ness Monster on the other side of the loch. Tony Harmsworth also has a hook into this story in his 1985 booklet, The Mysterious Monsters of Loch Ness. In this short work, he states that Richard Frere approached him and told him that he had witnessed Lachlan Stuart and Taylor Hay set up hay bales and tarpaulin to photograph a hoax.

This was at variance with later accounts which had Stuart merely confessing the deed to Frere. Tony stood by his version until he stated "I got it wrong" at the Nessie at 80 conference. Given the 28 year gap between booklet and recantation, I put it to you the recall of the 1985 Tony would be more reliable than the 2013 Tony.

But my main point here was I always wondered what a hay bale from that time would have looked like. Eventually I found a 1950s picture of Inchnacardoch Bay with hay bales in the distance. Judge for yourselves whether these types of objects are up to the task. I would say the job is not so clear cut as some make out, but no doubt one or two sceptics will come up with creative answers.



As a comparison, here is a photograph of hay bales in an Irish field.



THE AN SEILEAG

Moving on to more folkloric times, I recently found this story from The Celtic Review of 1905. It is set in the Isle of Lewis and Harris amongst the small lochs of that island. 

Many years have passed since my old grandmother told me the tale; and she said that it was a very old story then. In the lochs there dwelt a huge monster, a water-horse. He was very dangerous. He used to swell the loch, so that any one that happened to be in the neighbourhood was swept into it, and afterwards devoured. This monster had a liking for women and children, whom he enticed to his dwellings under the loch, there to eat them up. The grass round the loch also served him for food. Not very long ago there was a seileig in a loch over the way of Leurbost.

A seileig is not the same as the each-uisge. It is like an enormous eel, and is supposed to come from the sea. Several people saw a part of this seileig rise like an island in the middle of the loch. They got a big hook and fastened it to a long chain. On the hook they hung the carcass of a sheep, and threw it into the loch. Next day they pulled out the chain. The sheep was gone, and the great hook had been pulled straight.

There was a burn running from the loch to the sea, and some time after, when it was in spate, the people saw traces along the sides of the burn as if some slimy monster had been making its way from the loch to the sea. It must have been the seileig for nothing more was seen of it in the loch. 

Giant eels form part of the tapestry of Scottish monsters. For example, one could argue that we can read an eel into the etymology of Loch Shiel (gaelic sealg or seileig).

AND KELPIES

Finally, a poem about the feared Kelpie taken from the The Mataura Ensign newspaper dated 6th May 1892.



Tuesday 16 June 2015

The F. C. Adams Photograph




Here is a photograph that has been on the periphery of the Loch Ness literature for decades, yet for Loch Ness Monster researchers, it has remained an ambiguous image. I would rank it as one of the "classic pictures" in the Loch Ness panoply, being one of those seminal black and white pictures taken between 1933 and 1960 that so often formed the backbone of many a Nessie book. However, one may be forgiven for getting the impression that this one was made the "runt of the litter".

Opinions have been varied as to what it shows. Dr. Roy Mackal declared it as "positive evidence" of the creature in his 1976 book, "The Monsters of Loch Ness". He mused that the object is akin to a flipper or fin comparable to the [1972] underwater photograph of an appendage”.

Likewise, Peter Costello found in its favour in his 1974 work, "In Search of Lake Monsters", where he reflects the opinion of A. C. Oudemans in saying the head is turned away from us” in the manner of forced perspective. This was offered in explanation of why the presumed neck looked so foreshortened.

But others pro-monster authors have barely given it a mention, neither declaring it monster, misidentification or hoax. Of such, we find that Holiday, Dinsdale and Whyte act as if the photograph never existed.

Perhaps Nicholas Witchell best summed it up in his 1974 book, "The Loch Ness Story". He reproduced the picture, but adds the simple description: "An unidentified object in Loch Ness". One suspects the problem lay in the fact that the object on view did not fit into the normal plesiosaur mould. But then again, it didn't have to.

Sceptical authors, of course, will have a different opinion on the object's identity. Maurice Burton, ever keen to promote his vegetable mat theory in the 1961 work, "The Elusive Monster", tells us that the picture is like a trunk or a branch brought up from the depths by some underwater explosion.

Finally, Tony Harmsworth, in his recent work, "Loch Ness Understood", plumps for the dorsal fin of a species such as the dolphin.

So much for the variety of opinions, but what more can we learn of this picture? The picture itself came to light in the form of two press articles. The first was published by the Daily Mail on the 25th August 1934. In this regard, good old fashioned research trumped over online and digital as I paid for a photocopy of it from the British Library and reproduce it below for your interest.




The short text under the picture runs thusly:

This exclusive and latest photograph of the Loch Ness Monster (which has been in retirement for some time) was taken recently by a reader of "The Daily Mail" on holiday at Fort Augustus. The picture has been enlarged, but not retouched. On the right we reproduce, for the purposes of comparison, the picture of the monster published in "The Daily Mail" last April. It was a photograph taken by R. K. Wilson, a surgeon, of Queen Anne Street W., at a distance of 200 yards.

The picture was again printed in the 1st September issue of the Illustrated London News (picture at the top of this article). Its even briefer text says:

The latest photograph of the Loch Ness "Monster", after an interval during which it had not been seen for some considerable time: an enlargement of a picture taken recently by a visitor on holiday at Fort Augustus.

As an aside, I would point out that the monster had not been in retirement or been unseen for a considerable time. July and August of 1934 proved to be the most monster intensive period in the history of the phenomenon. After that, apart from Maurice Burton dismissing it in 1961, the picture sunk without trace until Peter Costello included it in his aforementioned work forty years later.


MISTER F. C. ADAMS

Thanks to Peter Costello, the authorship of the picture seems to have landed by default at the feet of a Mr. F. C. Adams. If we look back at the press clippings of the time, there is indeed an F. C. Adams who claimed to have seen and photographed the creature. The account below is from the 3rd August 1934 edition of the Inverness Courier, three weeks before the picture appeared in the national newspapers.




Mr. Adams was in the tower of Urquhart Castle when he took his picture. A recent picture of my own from that vantage point shows the vista that formed the back drop of his picture. I would imagine that the creature he photographed would have occupied the top centre of the waters. An attempt to pinpoint the creature's location based on the account is reproduced further down.





Now since the object is stated to be mid loch and in a line with Whitefield, this would suggest the object was at a distance of  over one mile away from Mr. Adams. This leads me to question whether the photograph under consideration was indeed taken by him. I say that because the clarity of the object is not consistent with a photograph of an object over one mile away. Mr. Adams himself was quoted as being sceptical of anything coming out on film at that distance and I do not doubt his word on that matter.

Moreover, the two newspaper articles suggest that the incident may have actually happened closer to Fort Augustus, over ten miles away. I would also add that the photograph was taken side on whereas the object described by Adams should be heading away from him.

In that light, I do not agree with Peter Costello's assessment that Adams is the photographer. I suspect Peter took this line because the Adams story was the one closest to the Daily Mail article that mentions a photograph being taken. That is a logical deduction, but the internal evidence suggests we need to look elsewhere.

I did make an attempt to find the true Adams picture during the course of this investigation with no success. Given the distance of the object involved, I am of the view that the potential prize is not worth the effort (apart from the historical aspect of the story). Mr. Adams lived in Clapham, London and the wartime census of the 29th September 1939 still placed him at Granville Mews (or Granville Mansions). That census actually names him as "C. F. Adams" but the census administrator (despite my payment to submit a query) would not give me any further details unless I could prove he was deceased. A chicken and egg situation ensued as I needed his full name to confirm his demise! 


DOCTOR JAMES LEE

So I moved on. Going back to the original articles, the first clue I had was that the picture may have been taken at Fort Augustus. The second was a comment in Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story". Though he makes no commitment as to what the object is, he does attribute the picture to not F. C. Adams but to a Dr. James Lee.

So we have Fort Augustus and Dr. James Lee. What could be found out about this doctor? A search of the online British Newspaper Archive website turned up only one Dr. James Lee from that period. He was the senior surgeon at the Buchanan Hospital at Hastings, Kent.  Here is one clipping regarding him and a dispute over an unpaid bill from the Hastings and St. Leonards Observer for June 13th 1936.




However, further searches of the various archives proved unfruitful in connecting him in any way with this photograph or even Loch Ness. However, I am certain that he is the man who took this picture and how ironic that we have a second "Surgeon's Photograph" taken only four months after its more famous predecessor!

How Nicholas Witchell came by the name is not certain. My own guess is that he got it from Loch Ness researcher, Constance Whyte, author of More Than A Legend. He had consulted her for his book and since she was old enough to have been researching the monster in 1934, I suspect she had asked the Daily Mail (or perhaps Rupert Gould) for the name of the person behind the picture.

But could I find a descendant of James Lee to find further information? By a fortuitous sequence of searches which linked Dr. lee to nobility and the peerage, I managed to find the grandson of James Lee, who still resides in that general area of England. I must say that it is normally a bit of a trial trying to find existing descendants of Loch Ness characters, so I was glad to make his acquaintance via email.

As it turns out, Dr. Lee was born James Carrell Lee in Quebec, 7th March 1888 which means he was 46 years old when he took this picture of the Loch Ness Monster. He lived at St Leonard-on-Sea and was married to Ethel. Unfortunately, his grandson had no knowledge of the photograph or whether he had visited Loch Ness. In his own words:

 "I'm afraid I have no idea whether or not my grandfather ever visited Loch Ness ... I have one old photo album, but there are no pictures of anywhere looking like Loch Ness.

However, I have left it to his grandson to discover any further information, be it by accident or design. Admittedly, I could not tell you what my own grandfather was doing in the 1930s, so I cannot expect other people to have ready answers. It is the kind of scenario that either requires the living descendant to have been explicitly told about it or some tangible item such as the photograph being preserved.

Let me say that the main thrust of this kind of investigation is to uncover specific information. In this particular case, the most important item of information is the uncropped photograph. What we have seen in books and newspapers is again the bane of research, the blown up photograph which excludes all other detail which can aid the researcher. But let us move on.


OTHER WITNESSES

But the investigation into this photo may yet produce another witness. According to the newspapers, the taker of the photograph was on holiday at Fort Augustus. However, a search of newspaper reports prior to the publication of the picture in the Daily Mail turns up nothing in that area. That scenario changed when I looked out beyond the publication of the picture in the Daily Mail. This clipping from The Scotsman of 1st September 1934 proved illuminating.




So here we have a nobleman with family and guests spending a holiday at Fort Augustus who saw something resembling a fin careering up Loch Ness. Could this be the very same fin that appeared in the Daily Mail taken by someone the paper says was "on holiday at Fort Augustus"? The story does not date the incident, rather using the vague term, "the other evening", and so could have occurred a week or so before. The account also states the object was creating a wash comparable to a speed boat to which I suggest the Mail photo also gives a hint of water turbulence to the right of the object.

But who could this "well-known Scots Baronet" have been? There are over a hundred such people in Scotland, but the clues led me to conclude it was Sir Alistair Gordon-Cumming, 5th Baronet of the Altyre Estate near Forres, Morayshire (only 60 miles on the road to Loch Ness). He was born in 1893 and died in 1939 and so fits our timeframe. Here he is pictured below with his family from the Aberdeen Press and Journal dated March 28th 1933. As you can see, he was married and was the father of two daughters, which fits in with the description of our Scots Baronet from The Scotsman account.



Moreover, Sir Alistair was a keen naturalist and I'll wager was also a follower of the stories coming out of Loch Ness. By way of example, a story concerning him was found in The Scotsman for the 22nd May 1934. Here we read how he drove twice from his estate to Findhorn Bay to investigate a "sea serpent" like creature which turned out to be a ribbon fish. So, it seems from this story that accounts of sea serpent like animals in Loch Ness would doubtless also encourage some visits to that nearby loch!




Finding the grandson of Sir Alastair Gordon-Cumming was always going to be an easier affair as he is now the 7th Baronet and still based in Forres. But, an email to him did not elicit the desired response when asked about this story: 

Never heard this one! Sorry, Alastair


CONNECTIONS

But can James Lee and Sir Alistair Gordon-Cummings be linked? Was James Lee a guest of Sir Alistair on that day, and did he take that famous alternative "Surgeon's Photograph" while Sir Alistair examined the object through a spyglass? As you can see, answers from descendants have not taken us further. However, when I asked Dr. Lee's grandson about the Cumming connection, he did say that although he was not aware of any connection to his grandfather, there was one snippet of information.

By strange coincidence, when I looked up the Cumming baronetcy, I found a member of the extended Cumming family living in the house where I spent 12 years of my childhood, 1946 to 1958.

So were the two families indeed linked? This does not prove who was present on that August evening in 1934, but it provides enough incentive to continue to pursue the matter. In fact, putting this information into the public domain may yet elicit further information as people search for related facts about Dr. Lee or Sir Alistair.


THE PHOTOGRAPH ITSELF

Whatever the connections with this photograph, I am sure Sir Alistair would have taken an interest in the picture under discussion. What can we glean from the picture as we have it? First, the idea that it was a branch being forced to the surface by gases should be discounted. I have a hard time conceiving of that dark, smooth object as being part of a tree.

But when I first began to delve further, I had the hypothesis, like Costello, that this was the head and neck of the creature. Unlike the other researchers, I take the view that the neck is non-skeletal and can shorten and retract. However, even allowing for a theoretical retraction and extension of this part of the anatomy, I concluded the way the object extended into the water was not indicative of such a feature. So, could it be another appendage such as a fin or flipper? Again, a flipper did not look likely which left us with a fin.

This leads us to the prevalent sceptical position that this is no more than the dorsal fin of a species of dolphin or whale.  Let us compare this object to the dorsal fin of a generic Bottlenose Dolphin by overlaying it against this image taken from Wikipedia.




The problem here is not whether it is a fin, but what kind of fin? Note that the Lee fin when overlaid upon our dolphin is more blunted at the top and narrower as it extends downwards. This is a pattern I have discerned with various other fins I have compared it against.







Now, I am told that dolphin dorsal fins are a bit like human noses and come in all manner of shapes and sizes. I may also be accused of merely picking the dorsal fin images that suit my case. In fact, if it was merely the dorsal fin of a local dolphin photographed off the Scottish coast, it should not be a problem looking for a match. To avoid the charge of selection bias, I point readers to a photo catalogue of dolphin dorsal fins compiled by the universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews between 1990-2012.  These dolphins inhabit the coastlines of Scotland and so are an appropriate group.

All in, there are just under 200 separate images of dolphins. As far as I can see, none of them are a good match for the object in the Lee photograph. They are either more pointed or broader than our object. I show a small montage of 24 of these fins with the Cumming-Lee fin as a comparison, the rest are pretty much the same.




One could try and present a dolphin at an angle in an attempt to flatten its fin, but that does not work either. In fact, the object in the picture is evidently being photographed side on as my white line suggests along the waterline.




So, it is not likely to be a Bottlenose Dolphin. However, I did find one image that was a reasonable fit and that was Rossi's Dolphin. I found this image and overlaid it. This candidate still has two problems. Firstly, the fin has that "sharp" end to it, unlike the blunted Loch Ness object. Secondly, the overlay suggests we should see more of the upper body, and I do not think that is convincingly seen in the Loch Ness photo (one also wonders how hydrodynamic (streamline) is the Loch Ness object compared to other fins?).




I would point out that the majority of dorsal fins from this species were not a good fit. Indeed, I did not find this image using the search phrase "dolphin scotland" or "dolphin dorsal fin scotland" but rather had to focus on narrower terms. Now, in terms of selection bias, one has to be careful. The fact that I found a reasonably fitting image is not the whole story. The use of Google Images can be an abused tool despite its apparently logical use.

The problem is statistical and can be summed in the phrase "The harder the image is to find, the less likely it is to be the solution". That is a generalisation and one may argue for specific cases, but a rare image can be taken to mean a rare circumstance in terms of time, location and object. If that is the case, one may present it as a plausibility, but the probability is harder to argue.


SOME FIN OF INTEREST?

With that in mind, suppose we do find that elusive uncropped photograph and we confirm the picture was taken at Loch Ness? I would suggest that dolphin candidates should immediately be discounted. This blog has talked previously about an alleged sighting of porpoises in Loch Ness in 1914, but even some sceptics are not convinced that such creatures could negotiate the various obstacles to get into Loch Ness. 

In that case, a dorsal fin in Loch Ness is not likely to be a known animal, but the problem is that most Nessie researchers do not believe the Loch Ness Monster has such a dorsal fin.  It seems we have a sighting which is a square peg to round holes. We are told plesiosaurs do not have such fins, nor giant eels, sturgeons, long necked seals or super sized invertebrates.

This is no wonder since witnesses explicitly describing fins can probably be counted on all your fingers with some left over. But there is one curious and potentially open door to Loch Ness Monster dorsal fins. I am referring to eyewitness reports that describe triangular "humps". Are these objects in fact fins seen side on, giving the impression they are bulkier than they really are? 


CONCLUSION

So, it cannot be deduced from a blow up whether the picture was taken at Loch Ness. There is only the merest hint of a distant shore on the picture, but certainly not enough to say it is at Loch Ness. This is the sine qua non of this case and without which the subject settles into abeyance.

This is a supposed boon to sceptical researchers who can merely turn around and say "there is no evidence this was taken at Loch Ness" without having to exert themselves any further. In fact, the photo cannot be proven to have been taken anywhere, let alone Loch Ness. The drawing below traces out a suggested route for the creature seen by Alistair Gordon Cumming and James Lee.




If this route approximates to the truth and the photographer was located in the general vicinity marked by the circle, then it is a fair bet that the familiar backdrop of Loch Ness and its hills will be in the uncropped picture.

I have searched high and wide for this uncropped picture. I have enquired of the Daily Mail and Illustrated London News archive departments, the online British Newspaper Archive, descendants of witnesses, private archives and reverse image Internet searches. As an example of private archive research, I found some of Alastair Gordon-Cumming's personal letters at the National Library of Scotland. As it turned out, they were of no consequence, but who knows what that line of enquiry may yet reveal?

A few avenues are still open, but the options are rapidly running out. Nevertheless, it is great that we live in an age where a vast library of literature can be analysed and searched so easily via online and digital websites. So, a final verdict on the matters covered here escapes us and the search for the uncropped picture continues.











Wednesday 10 June 2015

UFOs over Loch Ness?




The Daily Mail is running this picture asking if tourists have snapped UFOs flying over Loch Ness. Meteorological explanations are now invited. As for Nessie and Aliens, this blog covered that in a previous post! I am also still waiting to see that nearly infamous photo that Frank Searle took of a UFO and Nessie in the same shot.

Tourists holidaying next to Loch Ness have captured an extraordinary photo which they claim shows a mysterious creature flying over the lake - and it's not Nessie.

Alan Betts, 48, was on holiday with his wife, Anna, and her parents when his mother-in-law Tatiana captured this extraordinary image of two mysterious disc-shaped objects flying over the famous loch in the Scottish Highlands.

The family from York were staying at a holiday cottage near Urquhart Castle when the unusual shot was taken. But they did not realise quite how unusual the picture was until Mr Betts and his wife returned home and started looking through their holiday pictures.

The couple were bewildered when they spotted the strange, glowing, white shapes hovering over the loch. Mr Betts, the director of a refrigeration company based in Bradford, said he was usually 'very sceptical' about UFOs - but he cannot find a rational explanation for the strange picture.

He said: 'Our Akita dog, Yuka, was strangely unsettled that night. He never barks but I remember we were laughing at the time saying that he'd seen Nessie because he was looking outside from the cottage window and barking at the sky. 

We couldn't see anything at that time though. We had been very lucky with the weather and were stunned with the view we had, it was almost constant sunshine but then when we got back to the cottage after a day of sightseeing, the weather suddenly changed.

We'd not seen it change that quickly before, which is why my mother-in-law went outside to take a general landscape picture.

'After the holiday we were looking through the pictures on our PC, as they were taken on a digital camera. On the PC screen the resolution was better and it was only then we saw the objects and when we zoomed in we were shocked. I can't offer any logical explanation, I am probably one of the most sceptical people you could find about things like this but I just can't explain what it is.

'I know what it looks like though. We showed the pictures to Anna's parents who were as shocked as us and her dad is probably more sceptical than me.'