The year 1976 was a mixed year for Frank Searle. First he had seen the publication of his book "Nessie: Seven Years in search of the Monster". This was a small but certainly not a modest work packed with photographs claiming to be the best ever taken of the creature. While he was basking in the publicity of that book, a bomb dropped on it, transforming into a work that no one now takes seriously.
It was no coincidence that the expose by the Scottish Sunday Mail happened just weeks after his book was published, designed to cause maximum mayhem in the unique world of Frank Searle. There was no comeback and even Searle's attempts to dismiss its claims were doomed when the two images below performed the slam-dunk. The image on the right was a postcard of the time showing a brontosaurus or similar dinosaur. The left hand image was taken by Frank just five months before his book's publication. No doubt this was a piece of great timing to boost those book sales.
Despite all this, Frank tried to get an updated version of his book published three years later in 1979. However, the threat of litigation by those he panned in the book was enough to kill off that particular project and after this Frank Searle began to fade into obscurity with him finally leaving the loch to go treasure hunting across Britain in about 1984. But before that, we had the last hurrah of Frank's final "Nessie" photograph.
You can see it at the top of this article. It was said to be taken in August 1976, which was too late for his first book and too late to be taken seriously by any potential buyers. Frank relates the event of August 22nd in his unpublished work:
Among my visitors the previous evening had been school teacher Maureen Butler from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and her friend Sara Hanson from Harpenden. They had a small car and were spending a couple of weeks camping around Scotland. After looking at my display and putting the usual questions, they asked where they might camp for the night. I directed them to a spot with easy access to the beach near Foyers Point.
Next morning I was out on the point with my cameras at first light. About 6.45 a.m., the two ladies came walking alone the beach, saw me there and stopped for a chat. And got a sighting. Just like that! The beast broke the surface about 400 yards away. What looked like a double "hump", but was probably the back and part of the neck. The light wasn't too good, but the picture I obtained distinctly shows the two "humps" and the far bank in the background. And it was in colour. Maureen and Sara both had small cameras, but they thought about using them as much as they thought about swimming out after the beast. They were far too excited.
And once more, that element of luck. This was my first sighting since February 26th, and I'd put in about a thousand hours of watching since them. The two ladies had been in the area since the previous evening and had actually been with me on the beach for about five minutes. In fact, if I had not directed them to that camping place, they wouldn't have been there at all.
I don't think any real assessment of this account is required as it did not happen the way it was told. Frank names two women as co-eyewitnesses and even gives their towns of residence and names one as a school teacher. I suspect this was a tactic used in order to give any photographs greater credibility. Either that or they were really there. In that regard, I wrote an earlier article on Frank's 1972 pictures that got him the widest publicity (link here). There he also had a female school teacher as a co-eyewitness, but this one was from Australia.
A look around the Internet revealed nothing about any of these three women, now or back then. That does not conclusively prove he made up some bit players for his stories, it may be more subtle than that. However, I don't accept that they didn't follow his example and employ their own cameras. Moreover, I would expect it to be more likely than not that a local newspaper in Hemel Hempstead or Harpenden would eventually carry the extraordinary story of these two ladies.
A zoom in of the object makes one wonder how the deed was done. Perhaps a dark overlay like the infamous brontosaurus postcard or perhaps some simple item planted in the water? We may never know and as I have said before, if Frank really did put in that thousand hours of watching and more every year, he should have seen something. But as we know, anything genuine has now been long lost in the deafening noise of the fakes.
Was this indeed Frank's last photo? Maybe it wasn't, but it is the last one mentioned in his unpublished work. Between October 1972 and February 1976, Frank claimed to have photographed the creature on at least six occasions. That is on average one event every seven months. Then the period of over three years between February 1976 and the end of 1979 produced this one single photograph. The reason for this seems clear enough. Once the newspaper exposed his works as fraudulent in the Summer of 1976, no one was going to buy his pictures, so why should he go to the bother of making any more?
I would speculate that this double hump picture was a previous "stock photo" which Frank pulled out of his portfolio and he dated it to just after the newspaper expose as an act of defiance as if to say "I am still getting those Nessie pictures!". A brief mention should be made of another alleged photo Frank took around this time when it was claimed in a documentary that Searle had offered a newspaper a photograph of Nessie but with a flying saucer in the same picture! I haven't seen this item and needless to say, the newspaper editor declined the offer.
In closing, I wondered if those fake witnesses were just random names or was there a rationale to their selection? Why pick Maureen Butler, Sara Hanson or Carole Kennard? I even thought they might be anagrams for something like "Monster hoax by Frank S." in true "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" fashion! I will leave that one for the puzzle lovers amongst us.
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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
