Saturday 3 October 2020

Some good evidence coming up?

 


Steve Feltham posted this yesterday on his Nessie Facebook group:

So much driftwood,
So many boatwakes,
So many false alarms and out and out fakes.

For so long now we have been searching for that definitive, game changing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Decades can pass between one great piece of evidence and the next.
People ask me if I ever lose heart?
I have been constantly excited by the unpredictability of this mystery, there has always been something coming over the horizon, the next game changing twist in the pursuit of an explanation.
Strap yourselves in!
The next game changing piece of evidence has breached the horizon!
...and its the best I've seen in decades.

Can't say any more yet.


Naturally, this has got a lot of people excited and I await with some degree of anticipation what is about to be revealed myself. Is it a series of still images or a video or perhaps a sonar trace? Perhaps it is none of these. Steve says it is the best evidence he has seen in decades. Is that the best since the Dinsdale film or Rines body photo or Johnston photos? Well, I cannot be sure since my idea of best evidence in decades is not the same as another monster hunter's best. But it is described as "the next game changer" which is a phrase carrying a burden of expectation with it.


So, if it is such evidence, that means whatever media outlet will publish it also had to pay up. The better the images, the higher the fee. When such items come on the market, they are not just published with minimal checking such as the obvious bobbing log recently filmed at Dores Beach. No, one would expect that they are sent to people who try and test the claims to destruction. In the past, people such as Adrian Shine or others have been called in to assess images and testimony to provide an "expert opinion". Sometimes that opinion is not so expert but sceptics will never accept any images as proof of the Loch Ness Monster.


That's why the media can always rely on them to provide reasons why images should be treated with suspicion. These opinions may even move a media outlet to drop the items and the image owner moves onto the next newspaper. Anyway, once both sides of the fence have had space to investigate and contracts are signed, the images are published. At the end of the day, I hope this evidence is of such a rugged nature that even the sceptics are scrambling for excuses.


Steve, I've strapped myself in.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com