I suspect most of us were not around in May 1962. Back then, Tim Dinsdale had taken his famous film, the Loch Ness Investigation Phenomena Bureau was ramping up and the story of the Loch Ness Monster was being taken up anew by the Press. Two books had been published by then from both sides of the debate. Those were Dinsdale's "Loch Ness Monster" and Maurice Burton's "The Elusive Monster".
Burton was a believer in a large unknown creature in the loch right up to the late 1950s, but turned about the time of Dinsdale's film and produced this first sceptical work on the subject. In fact, Burton became a bit of a bogeyman to Nessie people across that decade as he regularly wrote against any notion of plesiosaurs or anything else exotic in the loch.
Alex Campbell was no different in that regard. Alex was a bit of a spokesman for the creature throughout that time, though he rarely wrote on the subject and confined his talking to encouraging other monster hunters, writing for the local Inverness Courier and giving interviews to the media when they turned up at the loch (which was no surprise as he was always at the loch while other well-known hunters tended to only be there for weeks at a time).
After Burton's book came out, Campbell wrote an article for The Scots Magazine in May 1962 carrying the same title as this short blog posting. The scans I took of the image are below for readers to look over and I will only add a few comments after the passage of 62 years. Campbell devotes some words to Burton's theory about decaying vegetables mats propelled by gases of putrefaction.
Alex has certainly been vindicated to this day in his opposition to this theory as even sceptics have disowned this theory which sounds fine when expressed in words but is found wanting in the real world of verification. Likewise, Burton's idea of large otters at the loch receives short shrift from Campbell.
Alex recounts sightings from the 19th century from people he knew and trusted, demonstrating this was more than a product of 1930s hysteria. Indeed, these accounts made their way into Loch Ness literature for a perpetual preservation of Victorian Nessies. You will doubtless see comments after this article where some discount Campbell as a lying Nessie promoter. You can safely ignore them, mainly because they can produce no evidence to back up their opinions.
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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
