Frank Searle Items for Sale

I was contacted by Kris from the USA who was looking to sell some Frank Searle items she had accumulated during her time as a pen pal with Frank. The list of items is mentioned in the first photograph on the top left and includes twenty handwritten letters from Frank to her. Also included are various photographs and newsletters. If you wish to make her an offer, contact me at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com and I will give you her email address.

The photo at the top is the "Frank Searle Loch Ness Information Centre" which I visited shortly before its demise. I had not seen a photograph of it before, so thanks for that, Kris.

New Book on Nessie

We are expecting quite a few books on Nessie this year. With titles from Malcolm Robinson, Karl Shuker, Nick Redfern and Paul Harrison, it could be a bumper year. Having said that, I was expecting most of these titles to come out in 2015, but better luck this year! However, from left of field this April comes another book from Patrick J. Gallagher by the title of "Loch Ness: Back Into The Depths".

This title is a follow up to his previous "From Out of the Depths" which republished newspaper stories on the Loch Ness Monster between 1933 and 1934. I reviewed that back in 2015 and found it a useful resource. I own that particular title in paperback but also kindle mainly because I like to have a paper copy to hand (the Internet isn't everything) plus the Kindle edition can be taken anywhere in the palm of your hand and is more searchable than paper.

This time the period covered is from 1935 to 1955 and it is no surprise that the years covered are longer than the first book, mainly because media coverage of the beast dropped through the war years and took time to lift off again (though it never hit the heights of the manic years of 1933-34).

However, I would point out that if you are expecting to see mention made of the famous 1950s photographs of Lachlan Stuart, Peter MacNab and Hugh Cockrell, you will be disappointed. The reason for that is because the papers that ran the exclusives on these stories are not readily available on the Internet. The Sunday Express which ran the Stuart picture is behind a paywall, but I don't think it even goes back to 1951. Indeed, for my own articles on this photo, I had to purchase photocopies from the British Library.

Likewise, the MacNab and Cockrell stories were published by the now defunct Weekly Scotsman and I had to go to the National Library of Scotland to get photocopies. As you can see, not all research can be Internet based.

Again, I note that the stories in the book are available through the Internet (sometimes through a paywall), but I like to see them collated and concentrated into one book for research purposes. You can find out more on the book here (UK) and here (USA).

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Aleister Crowley Lecture

Anyone with an interest in the mystery of Loch Ness will have no doubt heard of Aleister Crowley. There will be a talk next week in Edinburgh on this infamous person (yes, he is even more infamous than Frank Searle). The talk will be at 7:30pm next Tuesday (14th June) at the Beehive Inn, Grassmarket. Further details can be found here.

Doubtless, some of his time spent near Nessie will be covered, though his complete separation from the inscrutable Highlanders more or less guaranteed he would be none the wiser about the Loch Ness Monster until he read it in the London newspapers years later.

Readers may recall that his house at Loch Ness, Boleskine House, suffered serious damage in a fire back in December 2015. Six months on, the fate of the house is unclear since it will require a substantial amount of money to restore it. Will someone step forward to foot the bill (insurance company or Crowley fan) or will most of the house be demolished? The images below were taken more recently and you can see more at this link.

By coincidence, I watched an old film recently, "The Devil Rides Out", which starred Christopher Lee in his favourite role as the Duc de Richleau. Apparently, the author of the book, Dennis Wheatley, based the evil character, Mocata, on Crowley. You learn something every day.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Latest "Nessie" Video

Let me just get this one out of the way before moving onto the next thing. It was filmed on the 1st of June by tourist, Tony Bligh, and can be viewed on YouTube (as embedded here). The story can be read here. I agree with Adrian Shine that this is no more than a boat wake.

When a report mentions four or five humps in a row, that normally makes me suspicious. Unless there are reasons to think otherwise, it is probably a boat wake. In fact, this is a phenomenon that has been around since the early days of Nessie. I posted an article from 1934 recently which showed the very same thing from the 1934 Mountain Expedition and I reproduce that picture below.

That theme continued into the heady 1960s with the Jessica Tait photograph which even merited a cover on a Nessie publication of the time (below). The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau advised against this being presented as a photo of the Loch Ness Monster, knowing what it was.

Now, circumstances alter cases. When an eight hump sighting is reported, I would be intially sceptical. For example, Mr. U. W. Goodbody on the 30th December 1933, about two miles east of Fort Augustus. Rupert T. Gould interviewed him for his 1934 book and the sketches below are from that book.

We have our excessively long line of humps, but then something unusual happens, they go off on a turn. Most unlike a boat wake. Well, there is something to think about.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The other "Serpent Stone" of Loch Ness

I omitted this little episode from the "From the Shoreline" series of last week as it merited a post of its own. I was made aware of this stone a while back by Nessie enthusiast, Doug. He had been over at Loch Ness some time ago and came upon this piece of rock quite by accident by the shores of Loch Ness. Last week, I finally got round to tracking down this stone and taking a look for myself. I took the picture shown below.

The slab of rock you see is over two feet long in length and would be a major effort for one person to lift. On first inspection, it just looked to me as if somebody has scratched a childish, serpentine figure onto the rock, perhaps with another smaller but sharper rock. That was my initial impression when I first saw Doug's own picture and put it down to somebody indulging in a form of Nessie graffiti.

However, on closer inspection, it was not clear to me that this image had been laid down in such a simple manner. I considered how an artist may have abrasively added the image; or maybe it was a fossil? In fact, it looked as if it was part of the rock itself and more crystalline in form than the surrounding rock. A close up of the rock shows that this may be more of a question for those trained in the discipline of geology than art.

It seemed improbable that nature could have laid down a regular form such as this. Indeed, if it had, it most likely was embedded in the rock as the whole rock gave the impression of being split open. So, opinions are invited as to how this serpentine image at Loch Ness came about and whether one can assign any meaning or motivation to it.

As for this being called the "other serpent stone", I will get round to what that means in a future article!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Article Published in Fortean Times

The latest issue of Fortean Times has some items on the Loch Ness Monster, including an article by myself on the F.C. Adams photograph of 1934. Now, regular readers will recall I wrote on this very subject last year. Well, it is essentially the same article but going out to a wider readership who may not visit this blog much or at all.

Actually, I offered the article to Fortean Times first before I put it on my blog. However, after no reply for ages, I just published here. Then, out of the blue, the editor replied recently saying he would like to publish! I was happy to oblige. The issue is the June edition, number 421. I checked out the paper edition in my local Tesco store today and it looks good.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

From The Shoreliine - Epilogue

I am back in my home town after another hot day at Loch Ness. In fact, when I woke that final Sunday morning, the inside of the test was quite sweltering. Looking back, when I walked along the Foyers beach on Thursday evening, I was alone. Come Saturday night, the camp site was full and the same walk at the same time encountered various groups involved in various activities. 

Some were burning driftwood at beach fires, one was tying up his canoe for the night while another was teaching his young son to fish. The school holidays are still a month away, but the tourist season seems to be well into its swing. One wonders if some people have exchanged the beaches of Tunisia and Egypt for those at Loch Ness? Those around the loch who do and do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster will be rubbing their hands in anticipation of a good season. 

One such person may be Marcus Atkinson, who I caught up with at Fort Augustus. Business was doing well  and they are commissioning a new boat for the season. They run a big cruiser boat as well as some faster rib boats out to the loch. You may recall Marcus recorded a strange sonar reading a while back which hit the headlines. To this day, he says he does not know what it was and despite repeated visits to the same spot, it has never appeared again. However, he had no new Nessie news for me and things seem pretty quiet just now on the monster front. 

One other thing that happened on the final day was the heat haze I saw on the road between Foyers and Dores. Going back to land based sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, a sceptical theory suggests the Spicers saw otters in a heat haze. Now I had the opportunity to assess one. It was visible about one hundred metres ahead of me. I was higher that the heat haze but my dashcam was not on to record it. I reversed and turned the cam on, but the sun had gone behind a cloud and the effect was gone. I will mention that particular phenomenon in a later article.

Meantime, the game camera I had strapped to a tree on early April had taken over 10,000 pictures! This is a new model I am trying, so clearly the configuration needs some tweaking. I decided against leaving a camera at the loch over the tourist months. After all, it will take me that long to get through those images! I will be planning on deploying a lot more cameras around the loch come September.

Finally, I was asked about camping around Loch Ness. I know of at least three camping sites by the loch. There is the one I use at Foyers run by the Forbes. You can read about it here. I like it because it is right beside the loch (you can heat up beans whilst watching the loch), is new and clean and is on the quieter side of the loch (which I prefer).

I have also used the Cumberland's Campsite which is just outside Fort Augustus. The River Tarff runs past it and it is a short walk to Borlum Bay from there. It's a bit further from the loch for me and not on the south side of the loch. I am not sure what else is available in terms of pitching a tent, others may wish to "pitch" in.

In terms of wild camping, I have seen various tents dotted around the lochside. One place I invariably see tents is alongside the River Foyers a couple of miles away from the loch. I have also seen them along the beach at Port Clair and along the Dores-Foyers road. To be frank, a lot of tents could be there, but you just won't see them from the road. My own tent is a six person tent that would not even fit onto the tight shorelines. Wild camping may be a better option for smaller tents.

That's it, back to normal blogging!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com