Blog Comments Section to End

Just a quick announcement saying that the comments section of each article will end after this piece. As some of you may know, there has been a mirroring of the blog articles on Facebook along with any other posts of interest that are not included here. This started back in February 2022 with a post about the sale of Winifred Cary's house overlooking the loch. 

Almost a year on I think the Facebook group can now stand on its own two feet with 266 members and whoever else visits the page. Various people who comment here are now seen on the Facebook group in what is an easy transition. Being a mirror site, people are not allowed to post their own stuff unless it is of genuine interest or to publicise ongoing work at the loch. Details are at the bottom of this post.

Over the last 12 years of blogging, many a person has commented on this site from the the most gullible believer to the most ardent sceptic. Some have been a pleasure to talk with and others have been a complete pain in the arse. Such is the nature of blog commenting and not a few have assumed anonymous identities to say whatever they want without anyone knowing who they are (or that is what they thought).

The nature of commenting in relation to the blog or the article at hand varied quite a bit. Some would engage with the subject matter in a thoughtful and questioning manner, others asked questions but only to score points while others would joke and post a comment which had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the article. Others had underlying agendas such as pushing the plesiosaur theory as an argument against evolution while others were plain deceptive (as I will explain in another article).

Then there was the small matter of censorship. In other words, I decide what goes in the comments section and some people did not like that. Inane and wind up comments were regularly deleted. Comments designed to start a flame war were deleted. Comments which asked the same old questions despite being answered in the previous article were deleted. Everyone is innocent in their own eyes and no doubt egos were pricked. I don't particularly care about that to be perfectly honest.

Then there were the trolls. Like every cave in mythology housed a troll, so they inhabit every comment section in the virtual world. But again, no matter, you just delete every comment they post and they will pop up again under another false identity. That is less likely to happen on Facebook, but their comments and presence can still be banished from the group.

If Facebook is not where you want to be and you would rather remain anonymous then that is your choice but my choice is to move on. I will however leave one place for comments to be placed if people do not wish to contact me by email or Facebook and it will be this comment section of this article and a link to it will be left at the end of every article.

I'll see you over on Facebook at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog group which can be accessed at this link.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Loch Ness Centre Exhibition undergoes changes

A few days back, Steve Feltham announced some impending and exciting news from Loch Ness. I think most of us thought this meant a new sonar contact, photograph or video of the Loch Ness Monster was about to be published and hung on for the breaking news. As it turned out, it was not about the Loch Ness Monster, but then again, maybe it was.

The news came a day later as Continuum Attractions announced they were taking over the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition on a long term lease and revamping  the exhibition for a new tourist experience costing £1.5 million. Continuum Attractions have years of experience managing other tourists experiences in Edinburgh, York, Oxford, Manchester and Portsmouth. Their own website gives more details on their plans for the site, but the focus for me was what they planned to do with the exhibition section and not the retail outlets. I quote some pertinent statements from Continuum, mainly from their CEO Juliana Delaney:

At the end we’re going to ask people to decide – is it real? Is it a possibility? Or is it nonsense? And we’re going to let the visitors decide. But the one thing I want people to do is to leave here and still keep looking out of their car or coach window when they go alongside the loch.

There are sightings every other day which are being recorded by people, there are television crews turning up filming on a regular basis. The Nessie myth and the story of the water of Loch Ness never fade from the public consciousness.

We are award-winning, authentic storytellers, and what a story we have to tell here. The transformation will engage, entertain and inform guests, focusing on telling the globally renowned story behind the legend of Loch Ness, exploring the myths, alongside the scientific research, that has turned Nessie into one of Scotland’s most famous icons.

Continuum tells the real stories in real places about real people – the search for Nessie encapsulates all three.

The exhibition has gone through various changes since its formation in 1980 by businessman Ronnie Bremner and curator Tony Harmsworth which I visited a year or two later. I wrote on the various incarnations the exhibition went through in a previous article, but basically it started off as a pro-monster exhibition with the emphasis on the dominant plesiosaur theory. As we entered the sceptical age of the 1990s onwards, any notion of monsters was removed and replaced by the history of monster hunters as well as the science of the loch from thermoclines to plankton and a final room offering the fig leaf of a sturgeon fish. 

The exhibition had gone from one extreme to another. I don't know if this "denessiefication" led to a proportionate decline in first time or repeat visitors but eventually a balancing section was added which included recordings of eyewitness accounts from the likes of Alastair Boyd and Willie Cameron, if I recall correctly. The question is whether Continuum Attractions are going to further redress the balance back towards the Loch Ness Monster? 

The statements above offer hope that this will be the case, though the phrase "the Nessie myth" does not sound encouraging. However, I think that 2023 is Visit Scotland's themed "Year of the Story" and that means local and folklore tales and so may be a hat tip to Visit Scotland and their support. Steve Feltham assured followers on his Facebook group that:

I'm excited by this news because it will bring a fresh positive view to the subject. Maybe even put back some of the romance of the possibilities. I think it will enhance the visitors experience greatly. I believe it could not be entrusted into safer hands to create a high class 21st century visitor experience either. If you know the Yorvic Viking centre in York, or Mary King's Close in Edinburgh then that will give you an idea of Continuum standards, they are probably the best in the country at what they do. I expect to see a lot more visitors believing in the possibilities relating to Loch Ness this summer. Very exciting.

Continuum Attractions replied to Steve saying:

We feel honoured that we get to be guardians of such a special story. We look forward to working with you and making the destination even more appealing to visitors from across the globe!

I presume from this that Steve will be employed by them in some capacity and I have asked Steve for confirmation of this. If so, it is important that someone who believes there is some mysterious large creature in Loch Ness has some kind of influence in the concepts behind the exhibition. Will current curator Adrian Shine be involved in any capacity? I have also asked him, but for now will speculate that he will step back but be retained as a consultant to some degree as Continuum set about doing things their way.

CGI concept mock ups of some of the exhibition rooms are interesting. The first room appears to be one which is tongue in cheek and does not take itself too seriously. In it I can recognise some newspaper headlines from that worst of media newspapers, the Weekly World News, which is infamous for producing such headlines as "Loch Ness Monster has a Baby!", "Loch Ness Monster is Dead!" and "Loch Ness Monster is Captured!". The seminal eyewitness from 1933, Aldie Mackay is pictured in the centre sitting at  a bar surrounded by persons unknown. A reference to the Arthur Grant land sighting of 1934 is worded on the ceiling and Adrian Shine adorns a portrait to the right.

The purpose of the room seems to be an overview of the media reporting of Nessie over the years. I hope they finally choose examples of newspaper coverage that actually reflect historic reality. A second room called the first Prologue room looks like it introduces customers to the history of the site and some references to the monster itself. I am intrigued to know why there is a blunderbuss propped against some cases to the left. Perhaps Victorian stag baggers taking time off to hunt for those strange water horses (this actually happened - monster hunting goes back nearly two hundred years)?

One can only form opinions based on what is in front of them, the answers will unfold when concept is turned into reality in the months ahead. One thing is for sure, we are not going back to the days when the exhibition was constructed in order to address the statement "Why you should believe in the Loch Ness Monster". It ended up addressing the statement "Why you should not believe in the Loch Ness Monster" but will it now move away from these to the centre ground addressing the statement "We're not going to tell you what to think, experience the story and make your own mind up"?

That is certainly my hope but ask a dozen Nessie believers how the exhibition should shift to that position and you may get a dozen different answers. Most would probably agree on including good eyewitness accounts, maybe a well produced video interview of the witness beside the location where they saw the mystery object. The latest and best sonar contacts would bring things right up to date, though understanding what a sonar image is portraying needs a bit of orientation.

What about alleged photographs of the monster? Now there is a contentious subject but customers visiting and expecting an argument for and against the monster will expect to see them, after all, surely some decent pictures have been taken in the last ninety years? As I argued elsewhere, no monster photos means no monster and I think that will be the way many tourists will approach the debate. How you present such images is also a matter of debate. Do you display some classic photographs only to debunk them in the accompanying visual aid? That is not a neutral approach but listing all the pros and cons on a small area of text would not be easy either.

You can expect one photograph to be on display and that is the Surgeon's Photograph, but that will be there for different reasons. Firstly, It is the iconic image in the public eye and it has its own story to tell, probably deserving of a separate area. And ultimately whatever sceptical and believing people may advise, it is the customer that comes first for private companies such as Continuum and also the customers as they corporately manifest themselves in the ratings of Tripadvisor and so on. The exhibition currently comes in at 3.5 out of 5 from nearly 2,500 reviews on Tripadvisor. Part of that downgrade will be due in part to reviewer comments such as this:

Travelled miles, part of our tour, looking forward to a factual but magical experience. My grandkids were excited to see pics ( so pleased we didn’t bring them) what is the point of us all buying into the legend (and buying your merchandise) to have it destroyed by the visitor centre!

It looks like Continuum Attractions will seek to attract such people back. Continuum plans to spend the next twelve weeks on the transformation which comes on top of the site having required major repairs after flooding damaged properties. So I expect they will open for the Easter Holidays in early April. I normally visit the loch around that time, so I will time that trip to visit the new exhibition and post my review here and on Facebook shortly after.

Comments can also be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Nessie Review of 2022

The year 2022 has come and gone, so let's go straight into the eyewitness reports for the last twelve months. As ever a visit to Gary Campbell's Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register is required to see what he has logged. When you go to his 2022 page, we find six claimed sightings ranging from March to October. The first was on the 30th March by documentary maker, Jamie Huntley as he was in a car driven by Warren Speed. What he claimed to have seen was a dark dome shaped object which briefly was in sight towards the Foyers Bay area, measuring 15 feet across and 7 feet high. Warren Speed stopped and reversed only to see concentric ripples on the loch surface. which was photographed.

Driving down road past Boleskine cemetery myself as passenger in vehicle, I looked towards cemetery and then large object/creature in the loch caught my eye at first I thought was a big boulder or something as first time to the area I don't know the layout I said to my friend driving, "what's that it's huge!" I could see movement and the water breaking against it so told friend to stop the car where the car stopped trees obscured the view so he reversed and the object/creature was fully gone I had phone out and took pictures of the ripple in water expanding from point the object/creature disappeared down.

The object/creature was reflecting the water so looked wet, almost like a whale skin crossed with a fish skin it was dark in colour darker than the water surrounding it, there were dark grey's, black, browns in colour, it almost looked like how a whale hump might look breaking the surface minus the fin, there was a definite movement but didn't see too much of the movement before trees obscured it, it was a very big size at least 15 foot long, maybe bigger, around the middle of the loch.

There was a small speedboat that came up the loch after my sighting but wasn't anywhere near the spot I seen the object/creature but wouldn't be surprised if they had seen it too in the distance as they started circling around the area, using their speedboat as a reference it was much larger than the boat, as an estimate I'd say the object was around 7 foot height out of the water.

The two men were actually there to film footage for a documentary on the monster. In such a situation, we like nothing better than professional film makers with professional equipment being in the right place at the right time to capture the monster. None of that happened and so it was a case of what might have been if they had passed a minute earlier. The area of disturbed water and the eyewitness sketch are shown below.

The spot was at the cemetery opposite Boleskine House and one can get a good line up with Google maps. I would guess going by the foliage to the left of their photo that the water ripples were just off centre to the right in the google image.

So the object looks mid loch but this can be estimated by noting the flatness of the ellipse that the concentric ripples form to gives an angle of viewing of about 8 degrees. A look at an ordnance survey map places the  cemetery at a height of about 77 meters once we deduct loch level from sea level. This gives the distance between eyewitness and object as about 550 metres which places the object about 400 metres from the shore.

The curious thing was the speedboat they said came to the point of submergence and started circling the area as if they had also seen the object from the pier further south. Perhaps so, but no one has come forward in what would have been a valuable exercise in corroboration. But this seems to have provided a frame of reference to estimate a dome shaped object 15 feet across at the surface and 7 feet high. 

What is described is basically akin to a sphere of radius seven feet half floating in the water. Looking at the historical record of sightings, very few reports describe the object they are seeing as dome-like, perhaps a handful over the decades. So this type of description is rare and this is to be expected if we presume the main body of the creature to be more of an oblate spheroid in shape.

With that in mind it is possible that the eyewitness was looking at the back of the beast along the axis of its spine (if it has such a thing). This would present a degree of foreshortening giving the impression of a hemisphere. Whether the estimated angle of view can facilitate this perspective is unclear. That aside, the dimensions given would indicate a massive creature. If we assume it is a fifteen foot girth then the body alone could be forty feet long. Add in a neck and tail typically believed to be at least as long as the body when their lengths are combined, then this is getting to be a giant. 

So perhaps the torso underwater flattens out to give a smaller size or the size has simply been overestimated given that this was a heavily wooded area and in a moving car, it would have been visible for only seconds. The only way to progress this case would be to find the alleged boat that visited the area within minutes and get their side of the story. 

Looking at the five other reports, back in May we examined a video clip of a wake taken near the castle on the 25th April. That article can be found here and the point of interest was what looked like a double object near the head of the wake (below). At over 400 metres away, it was difficult to evaluate what was being seen in the video. This was somewhat hampered by what may have been a downscaled video for web page use and there were still images taken, but it was not clear if any of those have been published. These may have helped the evaluation and so the whole affair remains inconclusive.

A sighting I was quite impressed with was a couple of weeks before up at the north end of the loch by a local man, Glenn Blevins on the 15th April. Having worked and fished around the loch for the past thirty years without a sight of its famous denizen, he finally got a sight of the mysterious:

I was near Aldourie Castle on Friday 15th April working on the banks of the loch when I saw a large animate object in the water between both banks of the loch at approx 9.30am. It was dark in colour and stayed there for around 20 seconds before sinking into the water. I watched it with binoculars that I’d taken with me in the hope of seeing ospreys that had recently returned to the area. It was difficult to estimate the size but it was definitely larger than a seal and given the angle, there may have been two, one behind the other.

There is no photo, video or even sketch but I would place an account by a local who knows the loch like the back of their hand over and above many a sighting by anyone else. Another wake video was taken on the 27th August at Lochend of which a still is shown below. The video lasted seven minutes but I have had no opportunity to see it and form a better opinion.

Finally, on October 11th, a mother and her daughter took a snap of a distant object:

200 yards off the bank we noticed a long break in the water which was otherwise still and calm. As we watched a black lump appeared out of the water and sat for approximately 30 seconds before disappearing once again under the water. After another 30 seconds the black lump resurfaced for a shorter amount of time before disappearing under the water again. The lump appeared to be boxy in shape and about the size of a football. It did not appear to swim about, rather it just bobbed and then disappeared under the water before resurfacing to do the same a second time.

The photograph is pretty disappointing and makes me wonder if it was really only 200 yards away? It looks further away than that or mobile phone cameras really are that bad at taking decent pictures in these scenarios. So ended the roster of five surface reports and there is one sonar contact to be added from Tom Ingram on the 4th April.

It was on the Spirit of Loch Ness cruise boat which was remembered for its sonar contact by Ronald Mackenzie back in September 2020. This new image was not quite to the same standard as that one and both are reproduced below by way of comparison (Ingram first). Nevertheless, it asks the question as to what we are looking at. It looked like it happened at roughly the same spot as we note the similar depths and speeds for each image. There is a question over calibration here for this and the original image. In other words, what does the strength of the signal signify in terms of possible candidates? 

This allows for a better quantitative analysis of the data. What that means is passing down one or more objects of known size and density to a series of appropriate depths and use what appears on the sonar screen as a series of benchmark measurements. This would normally be a sphere which is either solid or hollow containing gas or liquid. The choice of material such as metal, plastic or glass can also be important. What controls have to be adjusted on the sonar equipment would be a matter for the sonar technician. These are required to advance the assessment of such contacts.

That ended Gary Campbell's register for 2022 and what you may have noticed was absent were any webcam shots. Back at the end of August, the Visit Inverness and Loch Ness tourism website added four webcams which allowed anyone in the world to scan the loch surface by day or night at five locations. I looked at them at the time at this link. This was a big improvement on the solitary webcam stationed above the area of the castle in terms of proximity to the loch, night time infrared capability and the multiple locations.

These should be a valuable resource for monster hunters, but as we know from the annual number of reports, the creature is not an easy beast to pin down and so perseverance will be required on the part of any hunters watching these cameras. However, various claims have been made that evidence has been recorded on these new webcams. None of them are convincing and generally consist of water disturbances and low lying areas of darkness which cannot be distinguished from the usual windrows, shadows and video artefacts. The latter category applies to the camera stationed at Shoreland Lodges which can suffer from these video effects due to what looks like brighter reflections and it is no surprise most of the claims have come from this camera.

That was probably the most important event in terms of facilitating the hunt for the monster worldwide. Not far behind was the formation of the Loch Ness Exploration group or LNE for short set up by Alan McKenna early this year as he mounted the first of a series of monthly watching briefs at the loch with varying numbers of like minded volunteers. I met up with Alan at one of his watches, though the watch turned into a meet up as I introduced him to Adrian Shine for a long chat. I had not long met with Adrian to see some of the old LNI surveillance films.

I wrote up on both of these meetings here and it was appropriate that a discussion on the old LNI group dovetailed into the new LNE. We wish Alan success as he looks to expand operations into 2023 and beyond. On a personal level, I was at the loch several times this year but circumstances did not allow me to spend as much time there as I wanted, though the trail cameras were in operation. The year began with the publication of an e-book entitled "How to Investigate a Loch Ness Monster Sighting" which covered the notable sighting by Richard Jenkyns in 1973.

This was followed in June by the publication of an article on the Hugh Gray photograph in the Journal of Scientific Exploration which expands on the original articles I wrote over the years. I have been asked to contribute to another article for them in 2023 of which I will speak nearer the time. As for the rest of the year in the blog, the subjects included Arthur Grant and his 1934 land sighting, making contact with George Spicer's grandson - Nigel Spicer, examining Frank Searle's most famous photograph, beginning a statistical analysis of monster sightings and the James Gray photographs.

Having said all that, I noticed that I had written only 26 articles this year, the lowest ever at one every two weeks. I plotted the annual numbers since I started in 2010 and got the graph below. Now the number of annual articles actually peaked at 104 back in 2012 and has been declining ever since, apart from an uptick in 2016. 

At this rate, there will be zero articles by 2026! The reasons for the downslope are various. The blog started with a rich seam of material to mine in 2010. All those classic photographs, films and reports from the past seven decades to examine and defend. The rich array of monster hunters, sceptics and others to look back on as well as tales of ancient kelpies and water horses. A lot of that material has been covered but it is not exhausted and there is always the odd new discovery.

There was also the pandemic which slowed down matters and well, I have been busy with other projects unrelated to the Loch Ness Monster. There is as ever a backlog of subjects to write on, though not as long as other years. So, eight hundred and ten articles on, the Loch Ness Mystery blog enters its 14th year. One wonders every January whether the next year will bring that piece of evidence that reproduces the events of 1960 when a young Tim Dinsdale captured a mysterious object ploughing across the loch and triggered more than a decade of investigation.

Nobody knows, though most will bet on the answer being "No". Whatever, I wish all readers a Happy and Prosperous 2023.

Comments can also be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Believing Sceptic

Today, the debate about the Loch Ness Monster is to be found scattered across various websites and forums, but particularly on the various discussion groups set up on Facebook over recent years. Gone are the days when books from recognised experts or occasional updates from newsletters plus some headlines on TV or newspapers shaped the debate. I use the word "shaped" as there would not have been much in the way of open debate unless newsletters published readers' letters several months later - a bit slow by any measure.

Who shapes or controls the debate is important as that can influence sufficient followers of the mystery down one path or the other. Back in the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s, the plesiosaur believing cadre more or less held sway with the odd side path down to invertebrates, the paranormal and scepticism. The number of believers swelled as the plesiosaur meme took hold in society and even the unconvinced thought it at least bore further study.

Then came the sceptical times and the narrative shifted the other way as those who did not think there were any exotic beasts in Loch Ness took control of the debate. I would symbolically place the start of this era with Tim Dinsdale's final edition of "Loch Ness Monster" and Ronald Binns' "The Loch Ness Mystery Solved" about 1982-83. This was kept going by the publications of people like Adrian Shine, Steuart Campbell, Tony Harmsworth and Boyd/Martin. By the turn of the century and the coming of social media, the debate became democratic as anyone could enter and have their say, thus both sides lost control.

The ensuing melee led to a certain degree of uncertainty when the difference between speculation, deduction and empirical facts could become blurred, depending on who you are reading. The well defined channels of control warp as more heat than light can be generated, the inane and ridiculous enter, repetition is indulged and anonymous trollers seek to disrupt and deceive. In the midst of all this, reasonable people ask reasonable questions and may get reasonable answers, but the innate bias in all of us to push our own agendas is never far away.

Having watched the debates ebb and flow over the years in various Facebook groups, and participated in not a few of them, there was one underlying theme which was evident to me, perhaps to others as well and it regarded the matter of purported photographs of the Loch Ness Monster. If you're going to have a debate, then you need a subject. If you wish to offer speculations and opinions, you need the raw data and nothing adds grist to the mill like a digital or silver nitrate image showing something unusual somewhere on Loch Ness.

Which brings me to the tentative title of this piece. The classic photographs of the monster turn up frequently in group discussions. In fact, they tend to turn up too frequently sometimes. One thread of debate finishes and before you know it another turns up a few weeks later asking the same questions, perhaps an FAQ archive of appropriate discussions would be appropriate. That is mainly down to the way discussions can quickly disappear from the top page and scroll out of sight once the last comment is made. Another reason is multiple groups not knowing what the other is doing. 

But whatever the reason, I wondered how the modern brand of monster believer differed from the ones that frequented the scene in the 1930s or the 1970s? One main difference for me is the fact that they have been exposed to a level of sceptical rhetoric not seen by the two previously mentioned generations. They have seen the writings of Shine, Campbell and Binns plus the various websites of other sceptics which dot the digital landscape. The general sceptical arguments and the specific arguments against cryptids are posted, read and processed on the forums, they have an effect, seen and unseen. But that is the way of it, multiple opinions on all sides are read and we all process, filter and file them in our own particular ways.

Let me get to the centre of the argument here and I am concentrating on the photographs here. Imagine for a moment that there are no cine films, videos, sonar or whatever else - only still images. This genre gets panned regularly by the sceptics on the forums, but also by various people who believe in the Loch Ness Monster. Well, that is okay you might say, we're not going to be the gullible believers of the 1930s and 1970s, we are going to be enquiring and critical believers who don't jump at the latest evidence without having a good look at it.

Now, I do not have trouble with people assessing the latest item of evidence and putting it through some stress tests (though some of the stress tests need stress testing themselves). After all, there is some rubbish out there passing for evidence of the Loch Ness Monster.  However, it is the approach to retro-analysis of evidence going all the way back to 1933 that bears thinking here. Some people are digging themselves into a hole they will not get out of.

What do I mean by that? In such debates, it is usually the case that a sceptic will turn up with their prepared arguments about why this photograph and that photograph should be rejected as evidence. Their motive here is not to apply the fine sieve of logic in the search for the best evidence. Their motive is to trash all and every piece of evidence by fair means or foul. People say we need sceptics to keep us on our toes and grounded in some kind of reality. I can see the reasoning there but I do not think they think they are there to keep you on your toes. Since day one, they have been there for one reason only and that is to turn you into one of them.

Maybe you think you are nimble enough to outwit them with a bit of ducking and diving? Perhaps like those crowds on the Pamplona bull runs of Spain, you think running alongside will sharpen your reactions and fitness - until they stick their horns in you and you become an ex-runner. But let me now list most of the photographs presented as evidence for the Loch Ness Monster since the media story began.

N. Dundas, Hugh Gray - 1933

Kenneth Wilson, Alistair Cummings, Anonymous (Daily Express), Mountain Expedition - 1934

Gordon Powell - 1936

John King (?) - 1938

Lachlan Stuart - 1951

Peter MacNab - 1955

Herman Cockrell - 1958

R. Lowrie, Peter O'Connor - 1960

Peter Hodge - 1964

Frank Searle - 1972 to 1976

Tony Shiels - 1977

Jennifer Bruce - 1982

Alex Crosbie - 1987

Anonymous (Daily Mail) - 1992

Helen Cowers, Andrew Wallace - 1993

Richard White - 1997

Alex Crosbie - 2000

James Gray - 2001

Roy Johnson - 2002

William Jobes - 2010

John Rowe, Jonathan Bright - 2011

Kate Powell - 2016

This is not a complete list of still photographs as some are not known to me such as those only seen in physical newspapers which were too late for the pro-Nessie books of the 1970s and too early for the Internet of the 2000s. Others are the masses of mobile phone pictures of distant objects which are not even worth marking as inconclusive. To be clear, I am not suggesting every photo listed here genuinely shows one of these creatures. I am saying this is the entire list as I can best create it totaling at least twenty nine pictures over eighty three years.

So, the best known of these pictures have been dismissed with various explanations. Dogs, swans, dolphins, windrows, hay bales, boat wakes, sticks, hoax models, birds and debris. Looking over the Internet discussions on such pictures over the years, it became apparent that some people who believed in the Loch Ness Monster were accepting these sceptical explanations. The appropriate description may be the oxymoronic tag of sceptical believers, a tension between two positions. Are some on the road to becoming believing sceptics?

You may have noticed I did not include the underwater photographs of 1972 and 1975 produced by the AAS team of Robert Rines in the list above. The reason for that was because I am only considering surface photographs here which leads me to the main statement here. If you do not believe any of the above photographs you know about portray the Loch Ness Monster, then you have implicitly admitted there is no Loch Ness Monster. You may well be a dead man walking, going through the motions and the hole you have dug for yourself will become a grave as you finally move into full blown scepticism.

Are these harsh words, exaggerated sentiments or something closer to the truth? This brings us to the central question. Statistically speaking, how many surface photographs would you expect to have been  taken of the Loch Ness Monster since 1933? The answer is of course not calculable since we are not in full possession of all the required facts. There are over 1000 eyewitness reports of which we can say certain things:

1. A proportion are misidentification or hoax.
2. A proportion have witnesses with a camera to hand.
3. A proportion use it and take some snaps.
4. A proportion do not come out due to distance or malfunction.
5. A proportion do not publish them.

You can play around with these numbers and come out with a varying number of photographs, but what proportions do you use to arrive at zero? Perhaps you decide 50% of these 1000 reports are real, 30% had a camera, 50% used them, 70% turned out and 80% published. That gives you forty two pictures over eighty three years. Or maybe you turn the screws and decide only 10% of sightings are viable, 20% had a camera, 50% were used, 30% turned out and 90% published. That gives you about three pictures. However, the more one turns the screws on the accounts to justify their position that no still photos have ever been taken, the more they diminish their own reasons to believe in the monster.

But then you may name the Taylor, Dinsdale, Raynor, Smith or Holmes films as your particular favourite piece of evidence. But how can that position be justified? If you think all of the pictures ever presented are inadmissible as evidence, how can you expect zero photos but any number of films? Since still cameras have been more abundant that cine cameras over this period, statistically we should expect more photographs that film or video footage. 

Finally, you may retreat to the underwater photos, the various sonar contacts or maybe just the best of the verbal eyewitness accounts which had no recording device. But again, it does not matter how good these are since the way eyewitnesses describe what they see on the surface demands that such scenes are photographable. You cannot escape the conclusion - if you cannot in good faith name some good photographs from nearly ninety years as positive evidence, you have implicitly said there is no monster.

I do not know who is or is not on the edge of this as I do not know anyone who would confess that none of those twenty nine photos are of the Loch Ness Monster - apart from sceptics of course. I know my position on that list and it is at least sixteen out of the twenty nine. Where do you stand? Shoulder to shoulder with every sceptical attempt to erase such history or on the side of the testimony of the cameras as well as the eyewitnesses?

Comments can also be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Loch Ness Mystery

 

Back in 2012 when I first started compiling a list of books about the Loch Ness Monster, there was one book which continued to prove elusive and that was "Loch Ness Mystery" authored by Captain Donald Munro in 1938 and the fifth book published on the monster chronologically. You can find the book list at this link and a profile of Donald Munro at this link.

This is a follow up to the Donald Munro article which mentioned that he had published this booklet on the Loch Ness Monster, explaining his views on the creature and more importantly, proposing plans and costs for up to three camera stations placed at strategic points around the loch in the attempt to obtain conclusive photographs or cine film footage of these mysteries of the loch. The aforementioned book list had a blank image for Munro's booklet with the explanation: 

Why no image? I can't find a copy of this book for love nor money! Not even the mighty National Library of Scotland or British Library have it.

As you can see by the image at the top of the article, I have found that booklet after looking for it on and off for ten years. I would say it did not require any love or money to find it. Anyway, it is a humble affair, consisting of a mere six pages of text, not including the above cover. You can read the pages yourself below where I reproduce them and make some further remarks.

First is the confession that Donald Munro was brought up in the Fort Augustus area of Loch Ness fifty years before. He says that reports of a strange creature in the loch began about that time in the 1880s. I wish he had said more about this statement as he admits that as a kid back then, he didn't know about it. He was born in 1865, so would have been aged between fifteen and twenty five during the 1880s. 

A Times newspaper article from 14th June 1938 says he joined the navy in 1880, so it looks like he missed all the fun, nevertheless he sounds a bit sceptical of Nessie putting in an appearance back then as he insists that John Murray's bathymetric survey of the loch would have surely seen the creature. I don't agree with that assessment myself, having the benefit of hindsight of another eighty four years,  the monster is more elusive than that.

Munro speculates on various aspects of the possible identity and behaviour of the creature and perhaps wisely stands back from nominating a direct candidate having observed various reported features in a diversity of animals that Munro had had close contact with himself on his various naval journeys. For instance, the sensitivity of the creature to noise was something Munro noted in large marine creatures across the oceans.

Another debate concerning whether the creature could lay close to the surface of the loch, largely unobserved unless one is in close proximity to it, was also something Donald notes in his observations of other aquatic creatures. Food supply is then discussed and then the manner in which the best observational conditions could be achieved and what needs to be primarily observed.

At this point, Munro's experience as a maritime man who knew observation was an important skill when all around you was water, brings in his suggestion of observation posts around the loch. The concept itself is pretty simple and had already been done to varying degrees from individual observers up to the twenty men of the Edward Mountain expedition of July 1934. It is noted that the Mountain group was also organised on the ground by another military man, Captain James Fraser.

Munro attempted to define carefully a working setup, down to equipment and men required and how they would be employed plus the final costs. Those costs were to be raised from a shares subscription under a limited liability company of a cost of one shilling per share with an initial total capital of £1500 to be raised - or a total of 30,000 shares (20 shillings to the pound in old pre-decimal money).

It seems that the endeavour only managed to raise a mere £90, despite the prestigious London Times publicising it and other respectable newspapers. In today's money, the target £1,500 would be about £80,000 and if 1938 was 2022, he would have been more likely to seek crowd funding for such a venture. But events were against Donald Munro's project.

The country was still recovering from a major economic depression and so money was short plus the dark clouds of war were already diverting the attention of the public to more serious matters. Three months before, Nazi Germany had occupied Austria and would occupy the Sudetenland four months later. Europe would be plunged into war 15 months after Munro published his proposals and that was the end of any venture that was regarded as not necessary to the war effort.

As it happened, even if the funds were raised, Loch Ness would become an area under military restrictions and you needed a good reason to be there. Back in 2010, this blog began and acquired the web address lochnessmystery,blogspot.com. It wasn't a direct tribute to Donald Munro, the address lochnessmonster.blogspot.com had already been taken (and looks long abandoned by its owner). However, I cannot recall why I choose that name. Perhaps there was a subconscious recall of Captain Donald Munro's long forgotten booklet?

So have a look at the writings of a man whose ideas preceded those of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau by a quarter of a century. I use the google chrome browser and to enlarge each booklet page, I click on an image below, right click and select "Open image in new tab" and then click on that to zoom in.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Did James Gray photograph a car bumper?

 

Whenever close up pictures purporting to be of the Loch Ness Monster appear, the "too good to be true" tag is almost without exception immediately applied. That goes with the territory and of course some are too good to be true. The photographs taken  by James Gray on the 9th May 2001 are no exception. I covered this story in my book on Loch Ness Monster photographs, but I wanted to add something here which was not fully covered in the book.

A recent Facebook post has revived the idea that this was a picture of a car bumper slowly descending into the water. To be specific, a Morris Minor bumper. As it turns out, James Gray, who has now passed away, was indeed a classic car enthusiast and was a member of Morris Minor fan forum. You can see his car here and what a Morris Minor car bumper looks like.

The car bumper theory goes back to the beginning of this particular story and was first posited by Dick Raynor to Rip Hepple. However, it appears to be a semi-serious suggestion as Rip discounted it and Dick Raynor does not propose it as an explanation on his own website where he analyzes the photographs. This view of the pictures slips from view until Colin Veacock, a member of Steve Feltham's Facebook group, recently revived it (see link).

I don't think this theory holds and the object is not a Morris Minor bumper used as a hoax prop. One may argue it is another car bumper and given there are hundreds to choose from, you may feel confident that you will come across a perfect match. The reason I do not think that will work either involves Dick Raynor and some extrapolations.

In the aforementioned analysis by Dick, he attempts an estimate of the length of the object based upon some principles of photographic trigonometry using the camera angle, height above the water, the distance to the horizon and so on. James Gray had also supplied the specifications of the camera at the time of shooting which led Dick to estimate the vertical height of the object as 1.72 metres or 5 foot 8 inches - which was very close to Gray's estimate of 6 feet.

Assuming all of this to be accurate, some further calculations can be made. Since the object is inclined at an angle to the calculated vertical, a right angle triangle is roughly drawn below. A ruler is then employed to estimate the length of the horizontal line as 1.05 metres. A simple trig calculation gives a hypotenuse length of 2.01 metres. The object is yet even longer than that number as it is arcing. I could do a further calculation where the neck/arc forms part of a wider circle, the radius is estimated and hence the circumference. But I will leave that as an exercise for anyone so minded.

The next step is to assume this is a car bumper and the curious double "notch" visible about two thirds of the way down the object is the midpoint of the bumper. That being the case, this would imply another quarter of the bumper is underwater. Adding the missing quarter gives a total "bumper" length of 2.68 metres or just under 8 feet 10 inches. Now let us compare some bumper sizes.

In such a case, it is sufficient just to know the width of the vehicles and maybe add ten or twenty percent for the bumper ends. A Morris Minor is about five feet wide. A Volvo Estate is just over six feet wide and a DAF truck cab is about seven and a half feet. These example demonstrate sizes rather than whether such bumpers are suitable for such a supposed hoax.

The conclusion would be that if this was a bumper, it would have to be of an excessive length and certainly not one belonging to a car. Based on these numbers, any idea of a bumper should be excluded. In fact, no one I am aware of has offered an explanation as to what this was. Dick Raynor in his analysis could not find fault with the photograph and in fact had to resort to guilt by association because Gray knew Roy Johnston, who took another series of photographs a year later. James Gray explained to me before he died what that was all about.

But when you have decided a photograph is too good to be true, you are then obliged to look for solutions that remove the problem.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Whatever Happened to Jeoff Watson?

Monster hunters come and monster hunters go. Some you know about and outlast the years they spent at the loch, others may spend as much time at the loch but go out as quietly as they came in, known only to a few. Of course, we know about Tim Dinsdale, Nicholas Witchell, Ted Holiday, David James, Rupert Gould and so on and so on. Today there are people continuing the work such as Steve Feltham, Gordon Holmes, Alan McKenna, myself and so on again. 

A name came up by chance in recent correspondence with Paul Cropper, a cryptid researcher from Australia, who had sent me some material gathered by Tony Healey, a mutual acquaintance. Amongst some creature reports was one by a Jeoff Watson from 1978 in which he had taken some photos of a V-wake formation at Loch Ness. The pictures were inconclusive when analyzed by the Loch Ness and Morar Project. What is also inconclusive is what happened to Jeoff Watson.

He shared the same surname as me, but he was no family relative. The relation came through the monster fraternity for he was a dedicated cryptid hunter from the moment he took those pictures. I knew of him only through his trip updates to Rip Hepple who regularly informed Nessie hunters of each other's activities through his Nessletter newsletter.

Jeoff was a sociology student from London, aged about 21 years when he took those pictures - according to newspaper clippings included in the material sent by Paul Cropper. Jeoff was a man determined to solve the mystery of not only the Loch Ness Monster, but other aquatic cryptids across the United Kingdom. His trip reports tell of repeat expeditions to Loch Ness, Loch Morar, Loch Shiel, Bala Lake in Wales, Falmouth Bay in Cornwall and Barmouth Bay on the west coast of Wales. In 1980 alone, he had planned nine separate trips to all these locations.

Regular articles in local newspapers, contributions to the popular Fortean Times and the formation of his own Association of Loch Ness Explorers suggested that this was a man who would continue the work done at Loch Ness and beyond. Now the fact that I had completely forgotten about Jeoff until that recent email made me ask what had happened to this guy?

I went through the various editions of Rip's nessletters to follow Jeoff's activities. These began in October 1978 as I traced the timeline. He visited Rip in 1979 and Rip tells us he was a person very keen, earnest and anxious to get something done at Loch Ness such as a group surface watch. Rip further mentions Jeoff visited him at his caravan while on holiday at the loch in July 1982. I was also stated as visiting him there during that stay. So I may have missed the only opportunity of meeting Jeoff at the loch!

Rip writes of another visit by Jeoff to his Durham home in December 1983 and adds that Jeoff was seriously considering moving to Loch Ness. However, he ends that report on a worrying note:

Jeoff is a very intense young man, very keen on the whole water monster scene. But I am concerned about him, during his short stay it was obvious that he is living with a great deal of nervous strain. This I feel, could lead to problems with his health, both physical and mental. 

After that, there were no more trip reports from Jeoff in the Nessletters. He simply disappeared as if he had never existed. So whatever happened to Jeoff Watson? A cursory google search does not reveal anything of note, though I must admit it was not an intensive search. His is not a name I have seen since I started this blog in 2010. Rip also mentioned that Jeoff was looking to start up a music project to give him income to spend more time monster hunting. That project only allowed him one monster trip in 1982.

So what happened to this fellow who promised much in terms of monster hunting? Did the rock music project completely take over his waking hours, as aquatic cryptids had done? Did Rip's concerns about mental and physical health bear undesirable fruit? Perhaps he read Ronald Binns' 1983 hatchet job book on Nessie and "deconverted"? People do just drift away from the monster scene, though this looks more like a cliff edge drop than a drifting away. Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to his current status?

Whatever the end story may have been, are there lessons to be learnt here for us? I guess the first lesson is to cut your cloth according to the material you have. Did Jeoff throw himself at the subject so much that it became apparent to Rip Hepple that he was over extending? Perhaps it had become an obsession which interfered with his sociology studies. Obsession and the Monster can become strange bedfellows, especially if you have had a sighting of the beast. I have always wondered what would happen if I did have a good sight of the creature. Would it trigger a psychological response that one could even term an obsessive compulsion disorder?

Jeoff had his V-wake sighting as well as perhaps something seen in Falmouth Bay. Such things can drive you on in a good way or a bad way. It really depends on the personality of the individual. I have always been a bit of a lazy sod, so I suspect the monster rearing up in front of me would not stop me doing the other things I like to do ... maybe. When I graduated around the same time as Jeoff disappeared, I also did my own disappearing act as I focused on my career and did not visit the loch for over ten years and even let my Nessletter subscription lapse. However, the old monster hunting verve revived again in 2010 and I am up there several times a year.

With all that in mind, I wish perseverance, persistence and preservation to all today's monster hunters. May we last the course and collectively have a story to tell that outlasts the years.

UPDATE: Sadly the answer has come to me from Adrian Shine. Jeoff Watson died in 1984 amidst tragic circumstances. What these were I do not really care to know and we are left wondering what this young man could have achieved. Well, it is a belated RIP to Jeoff from a fellow monster hunter.

Comments can also be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com