Visiting Rip Hepple

I was driving back to Scotland last month up the M6 and had arranged to meet up with long time Nessie researcher, Rip Hepple, who lives in the north Pennines. It was a meeting that was long overdue as I had previously met Rip by the shores of Loch Ness over thirty years ago when I was a student! Back then, he used to take his caravan and family up to the loch and park it down a little slip road to a pier near Abriachan (as a reminder of those times, Rip showed me a large nut and bolt from that spot). 

It was a different setting this time as we met at his home about 30 miles south west of Newcastle but very much set amongst the high hills of Northern England. I had considered talking to Rip by way of an interview for this blog, but we spent two hours in a good old fashioned talk about monsters and men. As you can see from the photo above, he is looking well for a man approaching eighty. He looked a lot younger to me.

Rip was one of the main men who played their part in the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau which ran operations from 1962 to 1972. Rip talked about the ups and downs of those days culminating in the demise of the organisation due to the need to move from their Achnahannet site but with no fixed abode to turn to.

Actually, it could have turned out better, Rip explained, but due to circumstances the venture came to an end. Did any good come out of this? Well, we got Rip Hepple's newsletter, still going after forty years. Rip handed me my latest copy and you can subscribe by following the details at the end of this article.

But, to me, the demise of the LNIB seemed all too premature. After all, the Loch Ness Monster was about to enter one of its most manic periods in the 1970s due to the 1972 and 1975 underwater photos. In that climate, there was surely room for the continued existence of a focal point for the mystery. I say this in the light of the fact that the two main exhibition centres in Drumnadrochit had not yet been set up.

Perhaps it was the lack of conclusive evidence from surface watches that precipitated this or the notion that people like the Academy of Applied Sciences were going to solve this mystery once and for all. Whatever the reasons, that lack of evidence between 1962 and 1972 was an odd period to me since nothing great came out of that period from anyone!

Think about it, we had the classic photos from 1933 to 1960 and then it all dries up for at least a decade. No photo resembling a Gray, Wilson, Cockrell or O'Connor is to be seen. Surely the so called hoaxers had even more incentive to crank up the fakes during this time of increased monster awareness? Had the so called fakers forgotten how to fake or are there other reasons for this famine of photos? 

When the conversation turned to the old girl herself, Rip was still of the mind that there was something big and mysterious under those dark, brooding waters. In fact, the giant eel theory was his favourite and I can see where he is coming from with that one. Obviously, it has its problems like all other theories (and that includes sceptical ones), but it is one of the more popular solutions to this enduring mystery. I was glad Rip still took this view as one sees old LNIB people going over to the other side of the debate. 

Rip no longers goes to Loch Ness and perhaps his chance to see the creature is now gone. It is now down to the next generation of monster hunters to take up the cause of Rip and others and continue the search for the Loch Ness Monster. 

Issue number 165 of Rip's Loch Ness newsletter has just been published. It can be obtained by writing to the address below with a subscription payment of £5 for twelve issues published at irregular intervals. A large portion of Rip's newsletters have been archived online and you can find further details here.

R.R.Hepple
7 Huntshieldford
St John's Chapel
Weardale
Co Durham
DL13 1RQ
United Kingdom

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

 

Some Recent Webcam Photographs

Joaquin is one of this blog's regulars, but he also likes to keep an eye on the loch via the webcam run by Mikko Takala at this link. I have had a few pictures sent to me by such users over the years and some have certainly looked interesting. More often than not, it is a case of selecting from a range of objects that are not necessarily monster. That is mainly down to the fact that the webcam must be at least 200 metres from the loch and too far for game changing pictures.

So, Joaquin has two snapshots he sent me. The first he took on January the 5th this year. The object did not appear on the next snapshot which would have been about 15 seconds later. The task is to identify the crescent like object just right of centre. Joaquin added some geometry based on a later picture of a Caley Cruiser to estimate the size of the object which he thinks is about 1.7m long and 0.5m high. I have not attempted to verify these estimates.

The second picture was taken about a week ago and shows a more blunted type of object protruding from the water just above the bottom right of the picture. It's doesn't look like a wave and not a log as it again disappeared on the next webcam refresh. Using another snap of a passing boat, Joachin estimates the object is half a metre wide and high.

I must admit it looked like a dorsal fin on first appearances, but we covered that argument in the recent F.C.Adams photo article. Readers are invited to suggest explanations and they don't have to be Nessies!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Good Searle, Bad Searle

As part of this mini series on Frank Searle, there is one final question. Is there any side to the story of Frank Searle that is redeemable? If you felt his fist, were on the receiving end of his tongue, were duped by his fake photos or witnessed daubed castle walls and petrol soaked beaches, then it is unlikely that your mindset is going to be graciously inclined towards him in any way. 

What we know of him in writing is mainly from 1976 onward and by then the battle lines had been drawn between him and his perceived enemies. By then, the man Frank Searle was increasingly consumed by persons and events on the other side of the loch and became a man who spoke and acted through those red tinted glasses.

But when and how did it go wrong? Even those who hate him or hold him in contempt, will admit that the Frank Searle who turned up at Loch Ness on the 16th June 1969 was at best a different person or at worst had a different attitude. Indeed, Frank Searle goes further back than that as his autobiography tells us he annually took camping holidays from 1958 onward after being inspired by Constance Whyte's "More Than A Legend". Indeed, his first claimed sighting was of a single hump during such a trip in June 1965.

I, myself, find it unlikely that this Frank Searle arrived at Dores Bay with the intention of punching other researchers or churning out a series of fake photographs. Like Tim Dinsdale and Ted Holiday before him, it is likely his intention was to watch the loch and get that photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that would convince the world there was a case to answer.

Searle got his first published photo on June 27th 1972 (though he claimed to have got his first photo on November 10th 1971). That is shown below on this contemporary newspaper article. Assuming this is as fake as his other pictures, we could say this marks the beginning of the hoaxing period for Frank Searle. But what had happened in the previous three years?

Of course, one may conclude nothing happened for three years, much to Frank Searle's frustration and his eventual decision to "create" his own evidence. However, if you believe there is one or more large creatures in Loch Ness and you have a man initially and sincerely watching the loch for long hours for at least three years, there is a good chance he saw something.

What that could be is difficult to tell and perhaps Paul Harrison's upcoming book will reveal a more conciliatory Frank Searle who owns up but also tells us what he really saw out on the loch over 13 years. One thing is for sure, the seventeen sightings claimed by Frank Searle over three years in the article above is somewhat excessive, shall we say.

Finally, one point of debate concerns Frank's first photo shown above. This was originally pointed out by Jay Cooney on his Bizarre Zoology blog in 2013. It concerns an article on the Loch Ness Monster from the Illustrated London News of 13th January 1934. That article was a compilation of drawings made by an artist of various Nessie sightings up to that time.

The one of interest was seen by a Nora Simpson which I have scanned from my own copy of the magazine for a comparison with Searle's first photograph. There is more than a passing resemblance between the photo and illustration which raises several speculations. In both cases, we have the two humps, the suggestion of a tail at the right and at the front something smaller.

The first speculation would be a sceptical interpretation that Searle copied the drawing for his photo. That is, of course, possible, though Searle would have been nine or ten years old when the 1934 article was published. A search of the various books and magazines I have published up to 1972 do not reproduce this drawing for an adult Frank Searle to see. That does not mean that the article was never republished, time will tell.

The other option is that it is just coincidence, the other is that both drawing and photo represent a living creature in Loch Ness. I am taking no position on that particular point of conversation and merely throw it out as a conversational item.

By the way, the Illustrated London News has a very nice painting of the B.A.Russell sighting from 1933, worth framing if you can get a hi-res copy.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Gavin Maxwell's Loch Ness Sighting

A reader of this blog passed this clipping onto me which recounts the story of naturalist Gavin Maxwell's sighting of something strange in Loch Ness about 70 years ago. As you may know, Gavin Maxwell was the author of the acclaimed book, "Ring of Bright Water".

This was lifted from the Gavin Maxwell Facebook page, which had this to say:

During the late 1960's, a wave of sightings and press reportings began to take hold of the British public's imagination, on the existence of a possible monster in Loch Ness. I distinctly remember that Summer of 1969, as a boy of 11 years old travelling down with my family from Inverness to Arisaig and witnessing the hysteria of tourists jamming every layby down the A82. This wasn't helped by the various TV cameras set-up on timber custom-build platforms every 5 miles down the lochside hoping to bring 'live' sightings of 'Nessie'. An article in The Scotsman newspaper dated 2nd August 1969 confirms that even Gavin Maxwell was a believer in this mystery. This article was published just five weeks before Gavin Maxwell died on the 7th September, about the same time that Gavin realised he had cancer according to Richard Frere. This article was/is possibly the last published writings of Gavin Maxwell.

Gavin's account is known to Loch Ness researchers, but this account adds more detail. The earliest I know about it was a BBC television programme entitled "Your Witness" which debated the existence of the Loch Ness Monster in July 1968. The program sounds like a Who's Who of Nessie personalities from the time and even today would doubtless be well worth a watch. Those called as "witnesses for the defence" included Gavin Maxwell, and this is the account as reproduced in Peter Costello's "In Search of Lake Monsters":

It was in September 1945. I was driving from Inverness to Mallaig. The weather was dull, drizzle, flat calm, and about five or six miles on the Inverness side of Invermoriston I stopped to relieve myself. There was a knoll about 80 feet above the loch. While walking round the broom bushes on this knoll, I noticed what appeared to be a line of stones, a submerged wall stretching out from the shore, perhaps 20 to 30 feet in all, shining wet. Perhaps two minutes later I returned. The “stones” were not there: there was only a slight disturbance in the water which subsided very quickly. I waited half an hour and saw nothing more.

I must admit I like Maxwell's almost prophetic reply to the skepticism of today when he classes himself as no fool as regards the accuracy of what he saw and would probably not take kindly to someone taking him by the hand to "help" him in what "he really saw". Given his stated two years of sea observation and a lot more years as a naturalist who observed the moods of the Scottish landscape on land and water, I would class him as a seasoned and experienced witness.

Having said that, what did Gavin Maxwell see? He said he had driven south to a point four miles out of Invermoriston, that places us somewhere just north of the Alltsigh burn that runs into Loch Ness and is the location of the famous John McLean sighting about eight years before as well as the curious land sighting of Alfred Cruickshank in 1923.

I scouted this area last year in connection with the McLean and Cruickshank cases and one likely spot for Maxwell's story is shown below. This is the shingle beach that runs past the back of the Youth Hostel and I walked it from Alltsigh Burn northwards until it ran out.

The object was described as looking like a row of partially submerged stones commonly seen on drystone walls. Not being exactly sure how that would look, I did an search for some similar images and came up with the following pictures of submerged walls below, though I do not claim that they are an accurate representation of what Maxwell saw.

The suggestion is therefore that the appearance of the object is somewhat narrower compared to normal hump like reports. Did Gavin Maxwell observe the uppermost part of the creature's back as it lay still just under the water near the shore? 

Or was it a line of stones just as the description suggests? After all, the account says it ran perpendicular to and close to the shore line. For what it is worth, I walked along this area right up to Alltsigh Burn and I certainly do not recall a line of "stones" similar to that described by Maxwell (albeit 70 years later).

The main point, though is that the objects were not there when Maxwell returned from relieving himself a couple of minutes later. If they were still there, we would never have heard this story. His mention of drizzle allows for the idea of the loch level rising from previous rainfall. However, given that he returned only two minutes later, it is unlikely the loch level would have risen that quickly and certainly other stones round about would have given that explanation away.

In conclusion, Gavin Maxwell's experience is not one that is going to make it into the classic sightings list. The fact we know about it is more to do with the man rather than the story. Nevertheless, it has taken its place in Loch Ness Monster history and people will form whatever opinion on it.

POSTSCRIPT:

Doug, a regular reader and Nessie enthusiast, adds these observations about Maxwell and Loch Ness:

The Maxwell family connection to Nessie was probably the strongest via his brother Eustace. He had a boat on the loch in the early days of the search and was very active there up until his death. Ted Holiday mentions him directly in ‘The Dragon and the Disc’: ‘In 1969…Major Eustace Maxwell chartered a trawler and a crew of professional fishermen. Bringing these into Loch Ness, he trawled the bottom but brought up only leaves and some plastic bags. 

Hundreds of large hooks, baited with herring, were lowered to the loch-bed by cable but nothing relating to the mystery was captured’ (pp31-32). In a later chapter, Holiday also mentions that Eustace Maxwell had told him of a Nessie-type sighting of his own in Loch Fyne: ‘Major Eustace Maxwell told me how he once saw a huge hump projecting out of Loch Fyne which he took to be a sandbank. As the car moved behind some trees, he knew it couldn’t possibly be a sandbank. When the car was at once reversed to the original spot, the object had gone’ (p184).

I also recall reading in Douglas Botting's biography of Gavin Maxwell, ‘The Saga of Ring of Bright Water; The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell’ that when one of his otters (Edal) savaged a visitor (Margaret Pope), Maxwell was so frightened of the potential for bad publicity that he asked her to put the story about that she had actually been bitten by something while paddling in Loch Ness! Not sure if this story ever did fully do the rounds, but it's quite interesting grist for the LNM mill nonetheless.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

New Analysis of Nessie and Sea Serpent Reports

Charles Paxton has written on the statistics of aquatic cryptids before and has had a new paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration (Volume 30, Number 1). You have to become a paid up member of the Society for Scientific Exploration to access the article or wait two years for it to become free. I did get a copy from Charles having helped him on this article, so can make a few points.

The article is entitled Consistency in Eyewitness Reports of Aquatic “Monsters” and is co-authored with Adrian Shine. With Charles' permission, I include the abstract for the article below:

Little work has been undertaken on the consistency/repeatability of reports of natural historical  anomalies. Such information is useful in understanding the reporting process associated with such accounts and distinguishing any underlying biological signal. Here we used intraclass correlation as a measure of consistency in descriptions of a variety of quantitative features from a large collection of firsthand accounts of apparently unknown aquatic animals (hereafter “monsters”) in each of two different cases. In the first case, same observer, same encounter (sose), the correlation was estimated from two different accounts of the same event from the same witness. In the second case, the correlation was between two different observers of the same event (dose). Overall, levels of consistency were surprisingly high, with length of monster, distance of monster to the witness, and duration of encounter varying between 0.63 and 1. Interestingly, there was no evidence that sose accounts generally had higher consistency than dose accounts.

If you don't read the article, the one thing to take away from the abstract is the consistency between estimates of distance and size between multiple witnesses and multiple witness accounts. That, of course, does not equate to accuracy, but neither does it exclude it. Though there will be caveats, this can be taken as a positive for witness integrity rather than a negative. I say this because a low precision would not be consistent with high accuracy.

Charles' study used a dataset which was a combination of sea and lake monster reports. It would be interesting to see further results for the single case of the Loch Ness Monster. Note that this does not address the other issue of witness descriptions of what they see, which is a more complex affair than estimating a simple number.

On the cryptozoological theme, I note the same issue carries a review of a new by Karl Shuker entitled: "A Manifestation of Monsters: Examining the (Un)usual Suspects" and it is reviewed by a man well known to Nessie researchers, Henry Bauer.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

You Can't Keep A Good Monster Down

After trying to ignore the Loch Ness Monster for years and diverting potential tourists to other attractions around the area, the tourist agency, VisitBritain, has decided to recruit the monster into their services with a promotion drive in France, Holland and the USA. The ad campaign cleverly uses some themes of monster hunting as a route into promoting other aspects of Highland tourism.

Back in  2008, a bid to make the Loch Ness area a UNESCO world heritage site carefully ensured no mention of the monster was made. One would have also thought the repeated attempts of sceptics to reduce the mysterious creature to logs, waves, birds and liars would have had its effect. Evidently not, people still like monsters while bow waves and cormorants don't cut the mustard.

From my own point of view, I am ambivalent about increased tourism around the loch. The increased traffic noise on the loch is, in my opinion, a deterrent to the creatures surfacing. That doesn't mean they never surface near boats, it just means that as the noise coverage over the loch increases, open water sightings proportionally decrease.

For me, it also makes it more difficult to find secluded spots for trap cameras as tourists like to clamber along the shore lines.  On the other hand, more tourists means more potential videos and photographs - assuming this is not cancelled by the increased noise. Oh well, maybe I should only come up in the winter.

 

Frank Searle's Newsletters

This blog has brought you Rip Hepple's Nessletters and Tim Dinsdale's Operations newsletters. Now it is the turn of Frank Searle.

Back in 1969, Frank Searle arrived at Loch Ness with nothing more than a camera, a tent and a lot of hope. Seven years and several alleged monster photos later, he was elevated to the status of famous monster hunter which led to the publication of his book and the start of a quarterly newsletter sent out to a crowd of subscribers.

I haven't read all the newsletters, but they tend to start with Frank's own investigations as well as stories of other sightings from those who came to his camp. As the years pass by, the tone changes as he begins to criticise the activities of the media, commercial operations and other investigators. The last newsletter is dated December 1983 as he announces his impending departure from the loch. This final newsletter was published between the "petrol bomb" attack on Adrian Shine's boats and the fire at the Loch Ness exhibition that Frank Searle so hated.

The newsletter roster is incomplete as it lacks the issues for December 1981, all of 1982 and March 1983. The issue for 1976 is undated, so I am uncertain what may be missing for 1976 or whether the presumed missing dates elsewhere were actually published. If readers have any missing issues, feel free to send me scanned copies for inclusion.

The archive can be explored at this link.