Quest 2026 Trip Report

Once again, it was off to Loch Ness for the fourth annual surface watch organised by the Loch Ness Centre. Travelling up the main Highland road towards Inverness on the last Friday of May, the first task on arriving at the loch was to collect a couple of trail cameras. This is not a Quest activity in and of itself and was rather my own ongoing private project.

In fact, the extended weekend could be described as the wider Quest project supplemented by other activities by the Loch Ness Exploration (LNE) group and those carried out by individuals such as myself. So, a left turn towards the south side of the loch took me towards the cameras. I had left them there since my last visit around Easter and so it was only about seven weeks since they were placed as opposed to the longer seven months over autumn and winter.

Having checked into my accommodation, I headed over to the Drumnadrochit Hotel to meet up with fellow LNE members. The first thing to catch my attention was not anything Nessie related, but a group of classic cars parked for the night. To be more precise, it was a fleet of Austin Healey cars on a tour of Scotland. Beautiful cars.

Having greeted the team, I was taken by Paul and Chris to see the latest and greatest LNE acquisition - The Explorer. As you can see from the image below, it is a boat bought a few months back and given an LNE makeover with a new coat of paint and some emblems added to it so that people know who this craft belongs to! Thanks to all involved in getting it into Loch Ness shape and I am glad to say it completed its maiden voyage the evening before I arrived.

May God bless her and all who sail in her as they say on these occasions! The hurling of a champagne bottle was not involved in this initiation. We would rather drink it. I didn't get a chance to go in it myself and indeed not at all for the duration, but perhaps next time. For now, the team have the kind permission of the pier owners to berth there whilst it is in use.

Moving on and after a dinner it was on to a staple part of these weekends and that was the midnight watch from Urquhart Bay. This is not quite a Quest event but anyone who has travelled up for that event is welcome to join the LNE team to watch the loch for what we believe is a creature which is mainly nocturnal.

The game plan is usually to lower a camera rig into the water at about 30 foot depth along with the hydrophone to potentially match up image with sound. The most interesting incident related to this search was that of last Halloween which was covered here. Others will contribute to the search with torches scanning the immediate vicinity for signs of activity while others will have night vision equipment trained on the surface.

In attendance was Chris Mitchell who does his own research of strange entities and UFOs in the North of England. We had chatted previously in 2022 when I did a podcast interview for the "TruthProof" website run by Paul Sinclair. The conversation resumed as we compared cryptid notes and Chris had some interesting photographs and videos from his own watches in the rural parts of Yorkshire.

Here at Loch Ness, I took a different approach this year with my theory of continuous scan mode. That simply means one records what is before them without necessarily observing at the same time. The more data that is collected, the higher probability of something being detected. The use I make of multiple trail cameras is one outworking of that idea and this night it was time to employ the FLIR thermal camera to the same end. 

In this case, I pointed the FLIR to a point across the loch with the castle in view and let it run for the duration we were there. No need for me to keep looking into it apart from the occasional panning of the loch if something was pointed out by others. I reckoned based on the SD card file system inserted into the camera, it could record a 4Gb video file over two hours. Since this was my first long record use of the FLIR, lithium batteries as opposed to alkaline were required as I knew that they would not last that long. A snapshot of the video is shown below with the castle in the top right.

Two sessions were recorded over the weekend and will be examined along with the trail camera pictures in due course. Overall, nothing was observed on the surface, though I do not yet know about the results from the underwater camera rig. After finishing at about one in the morning, we headed back as the next day was going to be the busiest day. As an aside, some of the trail cam pictures were taken at night, though I am not sure of their value as they do no see very far past a few feet as shown below.

As you can see, it was stormy on that particular night but it makes for an energetic image. However, if the moon is across the loch (as below) then there is enough light to capture something, which would indeed be quite eerie if the beast (or anything unfamiliar) was swimming under the light of a full moon. Well, if the SD card doesn't fill up and the batteries don't drain, I may carry on with the night snaps. After all, we think Nessie is a nocturnal creature!

It was on to Saturday and the official Quest surface watch. We met in the Drumnadrochit Hotel restaurant as usual where we met Keely, a PhD student from Australia. She is over here in Scotland for over a month to not so much study Nessie, but those who study Nessie. She is doing a thesis on the sociological aspects of community amongst cryptozoologists. We were only too happy to help and took her with us on our varied jaunts around the loch as well as answering her questions on the world of Nessie hunters.

Various observation points were set up around the loch for people to conduct their watches. Dave and I got in my car and headed south from Drumnadrochit to the Altsigh observation point where we met up with Alastair who had his high powered binoculars set up on a tripod on the beach below the backpackers hostel. That was about a hundred yards from the river mouth where angler John McLean had his famous 1938 sighting. At the river we saw a modern day angler in his boat slowly approaching the estuary, so we shouted out a conversation as he stopped to fish.

Had he ever seen the beast of the loch? A question one naturally asks of someone who spends a lot of time on the water. He hadn't and said he fished not just this loch but other bodies of water across Scotland. He said the amount of catch at the loch had gone down significantly in his decades of visiting here. That we would certainly agree with and I have often wondered what the implication would be for an apex predator in the loch.

The conversation continued and then he told us there were currently three seals in the loch. Two were down at Fort Augustus and one at the mouth of the River Moriston. That I regarded as very useful information but not welcome information as seals in Loch Ness just confuse matters. People may mistake them for the real monster and sceptics just fall back on them as an explanation when all else fails. I had not heard of that many in the loch considering only one or two at most. I thought seals got shot to protect the salmon but apparently they don't do that now and so one protected species is gobbling up another!

We walked up to meet Alistair and another angler cruised by and so another conversation ensued with similar questions and answers. However, he said there was a seal seen at Urquhart Bay. I assumed that this seal was one of the three already mentioned. So, we headed down to Fort Augustus in order to see how easy it was to spot one of these seals compared to the trials of seeing a Nessie. We walked towards the Abbey side of the canal and had a coffee at the Boathouse Restaurant and watched the waters out towards Inchnacardoch Bay. 

Seals are very active and typically are diving below for only minutes, although they can stay under for up to 30 minutes. A glimpse of a head or a back arching into the waters would have sufficed but nothing appeared and if one had put in an appearance, how long would it stay up for some photos to be taken? Either they were not there or spotting seals is no easy task either. At that point we changed direction and took a walk behind the old Abbey to see if anything was active at the mouth of the River Tarff.

It was quite a picturesque scene at the river as we made our way up it. The picture above is the view back up towards the loch. There were no seals here either but this spot brought to my mind a land sighting of the monster that is not so well known. It was back in 1975 and I quote from Rip Hepple's invaluable Nessletter from that period:

Early in October Mr.Rudolph Lipinski reported a very unusual sighting. He has been a lay worker at Fort Augustus Abbey for almost 30 years, during which time there have been a number of reported sightings by the monks. He was in the Abbey gardens which adjoin the River Tarff at about 6.30 p.m. when he heard loud splashing coming from the lower pool close to where the river enters Loch Ness. On running to the river bank he found himself only a few yards from a most extraordinary object; a large 'back' well clear of the water twisted around trying to free itself from the gravel bank it had apparently grounded on.

He watched it for two or three minutes before it freed itself and got into deeper water and then made off into the loch leaving a distinct wash. Mr Lipinski was interviewed by the local press, and several experienced monster-hunters. Tim Dinsdale noted with interest that the witness admitted to being reluctant to approach the bank too closely. When asked why, he said he was afraid it might 'attack'. The thing was very large and very much alive! so this was understandable.

Quite an experience and perhaps worthy of its own blog piece. I wonder how we would have reacted if we had encountered this large intimidating back twisting to be free? As you can see from the picture, it was raining and so we gave up on the seals and headed back to base as the Quest evening debate was approaching with myself on the panel as the believer, Dan Light (the sceptical one), Alan McKenna (trying to be as neutral as possible). 

With a good sized audience asking the panel various questions, we thought it was possibly the best debate of the lot since the Quest series began. Dan was new to the panel and did a good job, adding a bit of grist to the mill to liven things up. If you want a good debate, you need a bit of friendly conflict and informed opinions bouncing off each other. Towards the end of the debate, some of the LNE team got up and walked out, but it was for a good purpose as they headed off towards Inverness.

Earlier in the day, we had a discussion with Alistair at Altsigh about the Surgeon's Photograph as he remains unconvinced about the Wetherell Hoax story. I admitted there were some questions that it would be good to find answers to and left it at that. After the debate, the LNE guys turned up with some stuff that Dick Raynor had kindly given them. The two main items are shown below being an original toy submarine as used by Christian Spurling to manufacture his fake Nessie and another done up in that fashion.

The team hope to do some experiments to see how easy it is to use this item according to the Wetherell Hoax story. Of course, these experiments were done in various forms back in the 1990s when the story first broke, but I am sure the guys will come up with some new angle on this. Just don't reproduce the moment when Wetherell submerged the toy with his foot into the loch bed when someone approached! After this, it was back out to the loch for another night watch.

The FLIR was set to continuous record again but the weather was a bit more foreboding this time. Before the rain descended about half past midnight, some of our intrepid team decided to go into the loch for a dip, not something I would readily do but we watched as they went into the loch at about a depth of 70 feet. People say the loch has a constant temperature close to 6°C, but that refers more to the deeper waters. At the surface it can go higher to 15°C but I imagine it was closer to 6°C that night!

I recorded the three swimmers on the FLIR camera as they showed up as a hot "red" signature on the viewer. Only their heads and arms were red as anything under the surface was wiped out by the water layer. Fortunately they did not turn blue as one thought about the dangers of hypothermia! One speculated as to what the Monster would look like through the same device, but with no visual or sonar hits that night, we headed back to our beds for a well earned sleep.

And so I came to my last day at the loch on Sunday. Once I had checked out of my accommodation and headed to the centre, there was a series of exhibition stands at the Loch Ness Centre and one was run by the LNE team. There was a raffle but I did not win either of the two bottles of whisky, just a can of Irn-Bru! However, there was a bonus to come as some of us headed back to Fort Augustus to speak to Shaun Sloggie, who photographed an interesting sonar hit from one of the boats owned by Cruise Loch Ness back in 2024 (see link).

Once we found him, he kindly invited onto the next cruise outing for free. While on board we listened to his discourse on the Loch Ness Monster to the assembled passengers and then he privately invited questions from us about his 2024 encounter. We put to him various questions and I asked in general about the debate concerning what would constitute a good "monster" sonar hit. By that, I meant a sonar image which could not readily be fobbed off with the usual reflection and refraction explanations.

I think the quality of today's sonar should exceed such ambiguities and Shaun's library of images over the years could be a valuable database in finding out what is explicable in order to finally leave that which is inexplicable. For example, I asked about seals and Shaun showed me a saved image of one such animal hit. We were also shown other images which I think require more than just the usual explanations.

While there I asked him about the subject of underwater channels which I had addressed in a recent article. Before that, Shaun suggested there may be a kind of cave entrance further up the loch which bore further investigation. At that point I thought of Craig Wallace who was up at the loch trying out one of those sonar torpedoes that look terribly useful. I have nothing to report on how he got on but I summarized to Shaun what Herman Cockrell had theorized about such channels and I hope to discuss it further with him.

The pictures above are from the wider sonar view that the cruise ship displays. Cockrell speculated that the entrance to his proposed subterranean river was around the centre of the second photograph. However, Shaun thought that the lower resolution on this display was probably not enough to define such a feature on the loch walls. All in all, it was an interesting trip and LNE hope to contact Shaun for further discussions.

With that over, I headed back to base and said my farewells to everyone. Thinking about the PhD that Keely was researching, where were we between the small communities we see in old village fairs or a simple aggregate of individuals? Perhaps we were like that Austin Healey classic car club that stopped by Loch Ness? They have their car and we have our monster. Maybe classic car club members just talk about spark plugs and carburetors? We don't talk about classic Nessie sightings all the time (well, I might).

Whatever the answer, Nessie hunting, like many other activities is a fulfilling venture at multiple layers. But so far this year, we have not had the pleasure of Nessie's company, such as when the trail camera captured that single hump back in June. So life carries on back home ... as I now turn my attention to the next World Cup game!

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

    

Bigfoot and Nessie Hoaxing

There are rumblings in the Bigfoot community as an upcoming documentary claims to present evidence that the most famous piece of evidence for this creature may be a hoax. I am of course referring to the  Patterson–Gimlin of 1967 shot in Northern California. The documentary entitled "Capturing Bigfoot" purports to show a newly discovered "dress rehearsal" film prior to the final filming.

Only a few have seen this documentary but already claim and counter-claim has been made regarding its own authenticity and whether the expose is a hoax itself. Like most I will wait until the documentary is syndicated on Amazon Prime or some similar media outlet before forming an opinion - whenever that may be.  But Nessie fans may remember a similar scenario when the "Surgeon's Photograph" was exposed as a fake in 1994, sixty years after the photograph appeared in the Daily Mail.

The story is familiar enough when big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell was hired in 1933 by the British Daily Mail, to hunt down this new phenomenon called "The Loch Ness Monster" and bring back evidence of it. He failed and the paper was embarrassed by tracks Wetherell found being identified as that of a hippopotamus. The paper dropped him as people supposed the tracks were laid by a local wag. It turned out decades later that Wetherell was the wag and out of some undefined malice he completed the deception with the Surgeon's Photograph being plotted by his own family and some associates, including the surgeon himself, Kenneth Wilson.

If this upcoming documentary has a convincing story to tell, this may be their "Surgeon's Photograph" moment. But then again, maybe not. Either way, the potential loss of something iconic to ones cryptid genre has ramifications. Most may accept it and move on, a sizeable minority will not and find inconsistencies and unanswered questions, as is the case with the "Surgeon's Photograph", even thirty odd years since its expose. There will be such questions and it all depends on the individual as to whether more questions have been answered than not answered.

Before the Surgeon's Photo expose, Loch Ness researchers saw things in the Surgeon's Photograph that they thought further vindicated its genuineness. Tim Dinsdale was sure nearby ripples indicated another creature was just below the surface, another researcher looked at the size of the waves and calculated the neck to be above three foot high, another though he saw a seagull in the photo thus scaling the neck to seven feet and yet another said computer enhancements had revealed "whiskers" on the creature. Yet none of them had any substance in the end because it is a fake.

Overriding all this amid the current controversy brewing in Bigfoot land is the confession of guilt. It is one thing to cite so-called scientific and logical reasons why a film or photograph must be genuine, but what happens when the very authors say it was a fake? Two people stated their involvement with the creation of the Surgeon's Photograph. The first was Ian Wetherell, son of Marmaduke who was quoted in a 1975 article from the Sunday Telegraph saying it was a fake.

We know this because follow up research by Alastair Boyd found another confessor in the form of his sibling, Christian Spurling. Wetherell's confession had been lost in the noise of the upcoming Rines underwater photographs and it seems Wetherell thought final proof was coming and so now was a good time to own up. That didn't quite work out but this "other" Patterson film may provoke a similar response.

When a lead participant confesses (and the Bigfoot community awaits a response from Bob Gimlin), it gets a bit difficult to continue pointing to those scientific experiments and observations as overriding proof. In fact, the only recourse is to find a reason why the person who once said "true" is now saying "false" despite you being convinced it is still "true". That normally distills down to a reason to do with financial gain which itself places the burden of proof upon the accusers.

Having said all that, the number of people confessing that a photograph or film of the Loch Ness Monster was hoaxed by them is next to zero. Only the Surgeon's Photograph seems to have found people willing to own up. Beyond that, everyone knows Frank Searle was a serial hoaxer, but he never owned up and none of the other so called hoaxers such as Lachlan Stuart, Peter MacNab or Peter O'Connor ever confessed. I have spoken to relatives of people connected with various photographs and no one is indicating any such issue.

So, no first hand or second hand confessions from family and friends - except the product of Marmaduke Wetherell and his gang. I am not sure what that tells me. Sceptics continually tell me these things were all a jolly jape with a nudge and wink to those who can transform a knowing smirk into irrefutable proof. If it was all considered that lightweight, then why not more confessions? Coincidentally, it is about sixty years since the Patterson-Gimlin film, as it was for the Surgeon's Photograph expose. That revelation in 1994 did not particularly phase me because there was another reason I suspected why it was always a hoax, but it was time to move onto other Nessie matters and that may be what Bigfoot researchers will have to do, but again I say this having not seen the documentary.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Marmaduke Wetherell's Monster Tracks

 

It was before Christmas 1933, that big game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, announced through his sponsors, the Daily Mail, that he had found tracks of a large animal on the shores of Loch Ness. By the first week of January 1934, the Natural History Museum declared them to belong to a hippopotamus and the whole expedition suffered some reputational damage, shall we say.

Years later, Alastair Boyd tracked the origins of the tracks to a hippo foot ashtray now in the possession of Wetherell's grandson. The only question remaining of real interest was where this hoax had been perpetrated? The answer would seem to be anywhere on the south side of the loch, but there are some indicators which can help locate the spot.

Various newspaper reports of the time talk about a spot "between Dores and Foyers" (Highland News, 23rd December 1933) but others are more specific in placing it in the "vicinity of Foyers" (Scotsman, same date). While one outlier states it was found on a "beach near Glen Doe" (Northern Chronicle, 8th August 1934). Prior to "finding" the tracks, Wetherell had spent three days on the road by car and then patrolling the shores by boat in pursuit of monster evidence. The Aberdeen Press and Journal for 26th December 1933 clipping below summarized events leading up to the tracks.

Now having considered the various contemporary accounts, I would conclude the term "between Dores and Foyers" refers to the main search area and references to Foyers are the location of the spoors. But that is not enough to identify the precise location. For that we need photographs and we start with the one published at the time and show at the top of this article. Here we see Wetherell right of centre examining one of the spoors. 

The scene actually looks reminiscent of the rocky and sloped surface of the Horseshoe Scree, which is only accessible by boat and would be consistent with the one newspaper which mentioned Glendoe as the location. However, the beach below him looks too wide to me for that location. But if we consider the area below Foyers, one would conclude that Wetherell wanted a location away from human activity which would preclude the area near the now former Aluminium Works adjacent to the current modern hydro-electric power station.

However, the aforementioned Aberdeen Press and Journal furnishes further evidence by printing a photo of the shoreline where the tracks occurred. It carries the title "The beach of Loch Ness near Foyers where the spoor of the 'monster' is alleged to have been found". 

Now is this enough to locate the beach today? I would say "probably" and would start by saying that some of the largest boulders in this picture likely haven't moved an inch in the last ninety-two years. The lone, bare Winter tree is likely a massive item now and the contours of the shore line may have altered, but not significantly, though the rising and falling of the loch levels throughout the year needs to be taken into account.

Potential candidates, based on my own walks around that area could be the shoreline immediately below the Loch Ness Shores campsite, although the slope from there down to the beach is less pronounced than that seen in the picture at the top. The better candidate may be the beach further south, on the other side of the cemetery backing the camp site. It has a high gradient slope to it and has a big rocky beach. 

It would also not be accessible from the road, hence being consistent with being found on the latter day from a boat. I would add that I have held the opinion for some time now that Wetherell took the Surgeon's Photograph near that spot. That article can be found here. So, does the criminal return to the scene of the crime? In this case, it would seem so!

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Some Observations on the Arthur Grant Land Sighting

 

It is one of the most famous of all stories regarding the Loch Ness Monster, the tale of a man who almost ran his motorcycle into a large creature on a moonlit winter night. A newspaper account of the time summarized the events of that night (The Scotsman 6th January 1934).

ONE of the most remarkable developments in the Loch Ness mystery occurred early yesterday morning, when an animal presumed to be the monster was seen on land by Mr. Arthur Grant, a veterinary student in Edinburgh, son of Mr. James Grant, the proprietor of  Polmaily, Glenurquhart. He was motor cycling to his home in the glen at 1.30 yesterday morning, when he observed a huge object on the roadway near Abriachan. As he almost struck it, the creature leaped across the road and dashed into the loch.

... "It was," said Mr. Grant, "a bright moonlight night after rain had fallen. When almost forty yards away under the shadow of the hills, a short distance from the part of the reconstructed Glasgow-Inverness road near Abriachan, I observed what appeared to be a large black object on the opposite side of the road. I was almost on it when it turned what I thought was a small head on a long neck, and the creature, apparently taking fright, made two great bounds  across the road and plunged into the loch.

"I had a splendid view of the object; in fact, I almost struck it with my motor cycle. It had a long neck with an eel-like head and large oval-shaped eyes, just on the top of the small head. The body was very hefty, and I distinctly saw two front flippers. There were other two flippers, which seemed to be webbed behind, and there was a tail, which I estimate would be from five to six feet long. The curious thing about the tail was that it did not, so far as I could see, come to a point, but was rounded off. The total length of the animal would be from 15 to 20 feet.

"Knowing something about natural history, I can say that I have never seen anything in my life like the animal I saw. It looked like a hybrid. I jumped off my cycle," said Mr. Grant, "but the animal with great speed had rushed into the loch, splashing the surface violently and making away."

Mr. Grant's story created great interest along Loch Ness side, where there were many motorists moving about in the hope of seeing the monster.

When I was writing my book on land sightings, I looked into where the incident took place as it was normally stated as near the the village of Abriachan. It turned out it was bit further south near Brachla (sometimes written as Brackla) in the area now occupied by the Clansman Hotel. By coincidence, there is a statue of a large monster near there and a stream runs past it down to the beach below.

My speculation was that a stream could be a plausible spot for such a creature to come ashore, but of course, the habits of such creatures are not exactly well documented. At that time, a group of people from Edinburgh led by Mr. A. F. Hay, a fellow of the Zoological Society of Scotland, were already there on a nine day investigation and made their way to examine the site of the encounter. Their investigation with Grant was subsequently reported in the same newspaper on the 22nd January, from which I quote:

We spent the next two days in his company, a part of the time in going over the ground and foreshore where he had seen it, measuring up spoor and hunting for clues as to the identity of the beast ...

We checked the tracks at the point where the creature had gone down the steep bank into the loch and confirmed the fact that there was no “body drag" though without doubt something large had gone down there. The marks of the feet or flippers – as they were scrapes or “skids” in the soft earth, there was no telling the nature of them – were roughly five feet apart ...

Some seventy yards further up the beach from this point (near Abriachan) what appeared to be a set of foot or flipper prints in the shingle measuring some 24 inches long from toe to heel, 38 inches cross from right toe to left, and 30 inches from heel to heel. Nearby was a large crushed down area in the bracken as if an over-sized cow had lain there, though no farm beast could have reached that spot.

When I was up at the loch a week or so ago to pick up some game cameras, I had time to drive over to the area of the Clansman Hotel and have a look from the road down to the loch. I parked the car and crossed what was a busy road to the layby opposite the Loch Ness Lodges where the earthen bank slopes quickly down. Once down at beach level I surveyed the scene. The photo below is looking northwards.

I looked back at the slope I had scrambled down and I could see the opportunity those men 90 years ago had to examine slide tracks in the softer earth. Quite how it looked in January 1934 is not certain though January implies a minimum of vegetation. Furthermore, the path from road to loch was not obstructed by any walls both then and now.

Looking at the beach, it was evident that beyond the embankment, the large shingle provided no opportunity to provide further tracks (photo below). This tallied with Mr. Hay saying nothing more about tracks immediately after the slide down the embankment. 

However, Hay mentioned some tracks being impressed in the shingle "some seventy yards further up the beach" towards Abriachan (i.e. northwards). I walked roughly that distance and came to a smaller area where the shingle was smaller and well capable of leaving a good impression from something like a large animal's forelimbs. I pressed my own considerably lighter feet into this smaller shingle and left a footprint with no problem.

The waters in the foreground of the first photograph below is a stream flowing down from the Clansman Hotel. So the testimony of the gentlemen from 1934 seemed to agree well with what I was observing today. It was stated at the time that a plaster cast of a track was made and sent off for examination. This spoor was not the four toed track of Marmaduke Wetherell, but a three toed one. No further mention is made of this item in any newspaper, magazine or book I have consulted. I do not even know if it could have survived to this day, which is all a great pity.

Readers will also notice in the background of the photograph some gorse bushes. Mr. Hay had further stated that "nearby was a large crushed down area in the bracken" commensurate with a large animal laying down there. Note "bracken" is more usually applicable to fern leaves, but those would have died back to the ground by January and so the plentiful gorse around the loch was more likely in mind.

To the right of the gorse bushes you can see a pile of large, broken rocks. I wondered if these were blast fragments associated with the road building that had been going on nearby over the 1930s. Perhaps they were, though just beyond them was the expanded pier that had been built for the Jacobite Cruises some years back. I am not certain how much rock debris that produced and so cannot exclude that explanation.

Mr. Hay did not give an indication of which direction those tracks were pointing. Did they indicate the creature was going to or coming from the loch? That is not certain and so one possible scenario is that the creature on that moonlit night came ashore on that lighter shingle where I stood and clambered up the stream and then onto the road. As it proceeded to do whatever Nessies do on land, eventually it moved about seventy yards further south before Arthur Grant approached on his motorcycle.

At the moment of closest encounter it crossed back towards the safety of the loch down the embankment and across the rougher shingle into the loch. An ordnance survey map from 1904 shows this to be a quieter place in those days. The likely spot was near Stevenson Cottage, one of the small number of houses represented by black rectangles on the OS map. It is not clear which of those buildings survive to this day as part of the Loch Ness Lodge or Clansman Hotel complex.

The stream previously mentioned is named as "Allt Coire Shalachaidh" which has an uncertain translation from the Gaelic but one suggestion is that it means "Stream of the corrie of (the) willow place". Now having said all this, there is uncertainty due to the fact that Grant's estimate of the location is expressed in miles and an error of say plus or minus 5% puts us out by 80 metres either side. So, we can hold these observations lightly pending any further information coming to light.

Of course, one can dismiss the entire episode out of hand by accusing Grant of fabrication for whatever motives. I covered such objections in my land sightings book, but I quote what Constance Whyte said about Grant in her book "More than a Legend":

Memory of the event is still vivid in Mr. Grant's mind, though for many years he has preferred to say nothing about it on account of the treatment, amounting to persecution, to which he was subject at the time.

I might be going out on a limb here, but I would say that hoaxers prefer not to suffer for their sins and much rather confess them, do their penance and move on in life. Well, unless you're a glutton for punishment.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

MONSTER - The Mystery of Loch Ness

 

I watched the latest Loch Ness Monster documentary which recently televised on the 22nd September. I believe this had previously shown on the new Paramount+ UK subscription channel a while back. That was originally shown as a three part series, but Channel 5 broadcast it as a single show lasting just over two hours, including adverts. I am not aware if anything was cut out from the originals. It was produced and directed by Stephen Finnigan for Two Rivers Media Limited.

I don't always review every documentary that is broadcast and looking back, I note I did not do the History's Greatest Mysteries episode from Sky History last June or the Zachary Quinto double header from January 2020. The last documentary I reviewed was also shown on Channel 5 back in March, so I wondered how this one differed from that as one does like to see a bit of variety in what is presented, although the basic facts of the mystery must needs be laid out for new viewers.

As I have said before, these documentaries are not made for the likes of long term watchers such as myself, they are aimed at the general public but there are some variations on a theme as producers try to put a different spin on the usual boilerplate formats lest increasingly informed audiences lose interest. So we have seen documentaries focused on Frank Searle, the recent eDNA project, Robert Rines, the major hoaxes or specific species candidates. In this case, there was an emphasis on the twelve year period from Tim Dinsdale's film to the Rines Flipper picture.

The players in this documentary known to me were Adrian Shine, Gary Campbell, Dick Raynor, Simon Dinsdale, Darren Naish, Willie Cameron, Malcolm Robinson, Tony Harmsworth and David Martin. As the documentary proceeded upon a timeline narration from 1933 onwards, various people would chip in with appropriate sound bytes as the documentary flipped between general narrator (Dougray Scott) and a given expert, depending on what was being discussed in that slot.

Not so familiar to me was a Stuart McHardy (Scottish Historian), Jenny Johnstone (Scottish Historian), Elsa Panciroli (Paleontologist) and Mara Menzies (Folklorist). These were not Loch Ness Monster experts but I suppose people looking from the outside in with some skill in related areas. Well, maybe, and others will be mentioned later. 

Once upon a time in a far away land, there was a loch and in that loch was a monster. Or so some people supposed but others laughed and thought it foolish.

I think that fairytale like beginning sums up any documentary. It is natural to start a story at the beginning and for most that is the year 1933. So the various participants took us through the proverbial first sighting in water, first reporter, first sighting on land and first photograph. Now through all these narratives, the odd mistake will be made. I make them myself when I appear in such productions if one mis-speaks during an interview. One normally does not ask for a re-take if it is a minor sin of commission or omission.

I will come to the big sin of omission further down. But Aldie Mackay's sight of something black and glistening was presented as was the famous Spicer land sighting. Here we were pleasantly surprised to meet Mark Spicer, a grandson of George Spicer. I even got my first look at Mrs. Spicer in a photograph - though I still do not know her first name. Mark told us that his grandmother would tell them the tale of the monster and she wouldn't have told them if she didn't believe it to be true. 

Alongside these was included the multiple eyewitness account from the Halfway House by the Alltsigh river on the 22nd September 1933. I initially wondered why this was included and then remembered my own write up on this account here and the statement that this was another first - the first sighting of a long neck. Well, I don't think it was, they were beaten by about 20 days, but it is actually a fascinating account as two others claimed to have seen a long neck at other parts of the loch the same day.

It was onto the first photograph taken by Hugh Gray and here was the big sin of omission. With all those experts to advise the production team, how on earth did they end up showing the terrible over-contrasted version of the photograph? When they could have used the Heron-Allen version instead? 

The first version is poor quality, over-contrasted and retouched as was the fashion of newspaper editors in those days. The second is the superior version and has been available for use since the 1980s. I was going to send off a communication to the program's senior researcher asking that question, but why bother? However, in doing this, they missed a trick as it later transpired.

All this combined, as the program said, to light the blue touch paper. One speaker said people like to place their monster in dark places, such as peat-stained waters. That didn't quite explain the Loch Morar Monster which resides in clear waters. Nevertheless, in preparation for the later expose of the Surgeon's Photograph, we followed the adventures of Marmaduke Wetherell, who was described as the first person to come up and conduct a search and investigation of the loch.

I would normally agree with that but then concluded that the first person of note to do that was actually sea serpent expert, Lt. Cdr. Rupert T. Gould, who was up at the loch by November of that year. Wetherell arrived in mid-December. Be that as it may, the story of the fake hippo tracks ensued and we are told Wetherell was sacked from the Daily Mail investigation and left under a cloud with the apparent intent to give the Mail their monster photograph.

Once again, I am not sure Wetherell was actually sacked. He had conducted this investigation for a full month and then claimed he had seen a huge seal in the loch to close it all off with the explanation that this was what all the fuss was about. Actually, Wetherell's seal would clock in at nearly thirty feet and it was a sighting as convenient for the end of the expedition as the discovery of tracks was at the beginning. Like Alastair Boyd, co-author of the Surgeon's Photograph expose book, I think Wetherell cooked up this sighting. There was no seal in the loch at that time, certainly not one of those proportions.

That led to the Surgeon's Photograph of April 1934 and the oft-mentioned story of the investigation into how Wetherell and his associates had seemingly duped the Daily Mail. The other author of the expose book alongside Alastair Boyd was David Martin and he was interviewed about the Wilson picture. Not once was Alastair mentioned in the documentary. You would think he had nothing to do with the book, so I was a bit puzzled as to why he was not even credited with his part in this story.

Various other events from 1933 to 1934 were mentioned such as the Edward Mountain expedition and of note was what appeared to be a glimpse of the leader, Captain Fraser's, log book. Or was it? I wonder what dark corner that book is being held in. Then the documentary took a big leap of 24 years from 1934 to 1958. Had the Loch Ness Monster vacated the premises and gone off on holiday somewhere? No, the media generally lost interest to focus on the troubles in Europe and all that came from that. 

The story resumes with the Peter MacNab photograph published in 1958, though it was taken in 1955. Some comments were made about the photograph suggesting they did not accept it but no expose story like the Surgeon's Photograph was forthcoming, because there are none. However, all seemed to be going well at this point as there was no concerted sceptical attack upon the stories or images as a whole. I began to think that the second half of the documentary was going to metamorphose into an attempted demolition job as various opinions on why these were all non-monsters would unfurl one by one.

But that didn't really happen.

So, the documentary entered the busy period of 1960 to 1972 as the Dinsdale film was taken and appeared on the BBC Panorama program rekindling interest in the monster and a series of expeditions throughout that decade. At this point, Simon Dinsdale entered the story as did some people from the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. These were Dick Raynor, Alison Skelton and Peter Davies, who volunteered for service over those years. I do not recall seeing the latter two in television before, so that proved to be of additional interest as these people recounted their tales of monster hunting and also the human side of the story.

Alison was the wife of Clem Skelton, one of the important members of the LNIB whose camera skills helped set up the various camera watches. He had altogether been a Spitfire fighter pilot, high altitude reconnaissance photographer, actor, novelist and monster hunter.

I was interested to hear her give an account of an encounter that Clem may have had with the creature back in those days. She said he was rowing across the loch about the time of dusk when something came up beside him, making bubbling sounds and was larger than his boat. He did not investigate and rowed as fast as he could to shore. I guess I would have done the same thing rather than think of the photo-op of the century.

Then Dick Raynor told us about his time there and the film he shot in 1967 of an object making its way on the loch leaving a wake behind it. The LNIB regarded this as an important piece of evidence and submitted it to JARIC for photographic analysis, concluding the object was perhaps seven feet long and travelling at 5mph. The story of Dan Taylor and his yellow submarine were told before moving onto the arrival of Robert Rines and the Academy of Applied Science from America.

Dick commented that this felt like NASA was getting involved in the hunt and it wouldn't be long before they got results. On and after the night of August 8th 1972, i would have certainly felt that way. Dick Raynor and Peter Davies recounted their experiences on the night the famous "flipper" photograph was taken. What came out of that leads us into the section of the documentary on Robert Rines.

This took us into 1975 and those controversial head and body photos, the article in the prestigious Nature magazine naming the Loch Ness Monster, the postponed meeting with scientists and the press conference at the House of Commons. A leap of 12 years then takes us to Operation Deepscan and its inconclusive results.

So the program switched to two investigators, Rikki Razdan and Alan Kielar, who discovered the 1972 flipper photograph was a claimed enhanced image which bore little resemblance to what the Jet Propulsion Laboratories produced and they were right. It had been retouched by parties unknown who to this day have not confessed to the deed. They also visited Winifred Cary to find that Robert Rines had used her so called psychic dowsing skills to pinpoint where to place their underwater cameras. To this day, it is not clear to me what Rines' reply to this was?

One thing seems certain, as a lawyer Rines never sued them over these claims. We then switched to a fuller exposition of the Surgeon's Photograph hoax, but there was no new information added to that particular story. After some more psychological words about people wanting the monster to exist, we ended up with the recent eDNA survey results and no reptiles but lots of eels. 

That eel reference left some speculating that some of what had been previously spoken about could support a giant eel theory. They picked the so-called eel-like nature of what the women at the Halfway House in 1933 saw and the "snake-like" characteristics of what Hugh Gray photographed. Well, at least they admitted these people saw a large unknown creature but there is nothing eel-like in what was reported by those women or anything snake like in Gray's photograph. But, as stated earlier, if they had used the superior Gray image and dug around a bit more, they would have had an eel-like head to bolster their case.

After some more lightweight psychology about the monster being ingrained in the culture, a mystery we cannot let go and the more we want to believe, the more it stays in our mind, the documentary ended. After all that, I wondered if a change in direction for this genre of documentary was required? How about a documentary that focusses on land sightings, or one on events before 1933 or one that tracks a team of monster hunters (like the bigfoot programs) and so on? Well, the last one may be in the offing, but I suspect even the general viewing public may be getting tired with the same old format.

Maybe that is more down to the lack of imagination of the broadcasting organisations to whom these documentaries are sold to. Either way, the vast majority of stories on the monster remain untouched by these people while they play it safe with a tight subset of the genre which is rarely updated. 

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The author can also be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

A Visit to the new Loch Ness Centre Exhibition

 

A week or so ago, I made it up to Drumnadrochit to visit the new exhibition which is now under the management of Continuum Attractions and has undergone extensive changes over the first half of this year. It was time to see how the Loch Ness Monster story has been re-created by them over forty years since the first incarnation of this opened under the guidance of Tony Harmsworth. That first one was very much along the lines of the plesiosaur theory and everything was just about evidence while the subsequent exhibition was more along the lines of "no monster here" and everything was no longer evidence.

The exhibition moved from one extreme to another and so the question now was where the new one lay between these other two. Now I have to say here that I would not consider myself a suitable reviewer of exhibitions such as this. That is not because I am being paid to hype it or because I am related to anyone in the company. Rather, having imbibed a lot of the monster story over the decades, one can get a bit pernickety about things others would consider minor matters.

Moreover, the exhibition was not specially designed for me or any other monster believer or indeed for any sceptic. It is an exhibition designed for the average person, who, though not stupid, has little knowledge of the subject and may want to know more. Therefore, the job of any such exhibition is to present the subject in such a way that does not deceive or try and lead a person down one path to a fixed conclusion. In that light, I offer my thoughts and observations.

I turned up on the Friday and found that there had been a power cut and so had to wait for perhaps ten minutes while this was sorted out and everything was brought back up to speed. I went in and at this point I will confess I got in on a free ticket from Continuum Attractions. That was no big deal as I had helped them out on a few minor things and that was a fair exchange. I would say there was about five of us going into the exhibition. This was a week before the schools in Scotland closed for the Summer holidays and so I wanted to be there before the tourists began to arrive en masse over the next few months.

The first room we entered was a kind of ante-room before the main event. There were various famous and purported photographs of the Loch Ness Monster hanging on the wall along with sketches and a picture of the most famous man of all, Tim Dinsdale. On the wall beside these pictures was a quote from myself taken from one of my books. Don't worry, that was the first and last time you would hear about me in the exhibition! A nice touch above the pictures were four numbers hanging on hooks - implying they were subject to change. They were the numbers 1, 4, 4 and 5. Or to be more precise, one thousand, four hundred and forty five sightings and counting ... 

That would be the number taken from Gary Campbell's Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. So all a good start I thought. Throughout the ensuing exhibits, the "classic" photographs, though not explicitly presented as evidence of the Loch Ness Monster, were neither subject to some of the unfalsifiable and withering arguments you get from sceptics. Well, one or two were but I move on.

Adrian Shine, the curator of the previous exhibition, would feature more than anyone else in the presentations. So he was there in the ante-room in a kind of "live" framed picture. I wasn't sure whether that implied an imbalance in views. On the one hand, he was there as an expert on the hydrology, limnology and history of the loch. On the other hand, he was also there as a sceptic regarding there being any large exotic creature in Loch Ness. Where one began and the other ended was not always clear to me.

Alongside Adrian's animated portrait were two interesting items from the lore of the great story - a copy of the Drumbuie Stone and Marmaduke Wetherell's hippo ashtray. One of them was accompanied by a text asking if this could be linked to the monster - a recurring theme as I ventured on into the first video room. There were eight rooms in all, taking me fifty minutes to go through. The first was an introductory video of the natural history of the loch from ancient geological times. 

I studiously stood and watched this, though a man and his two kids just took a glance at it and hastily moved on. Why pay good money but then rush through? Maybe the power cut delay had messed up his itinerary or something. The video was an entertaining walk through volcanic times using video graphics up to a present day clip and set the scene for the mystery.

I next walked into the Myths and Legends room and was greeted by the voice of David Tennant, famous for his portrayal of Doctor Who and apparently a Nessie fan. He provided the voice over and it was natural that this room was the next subject to greet us. It had that kind of ethereal feel to it which captured well the nether-world of kelpies and water horses.

By this time, I was wondering if the room dimensions were exactly the same as the prior exhibition. It looked like it, but the refurbishment was more important than whether rooms had been combined or split up. It was next onto the room of Nessie's origins as a multi-screen display took us through the early 1930s and the beginnings of the modern monster. This was in a dramatised form using actors representing such people as Aldie Mackay and Alex Campbell in the setting of an old style pub.

Alongside that was a screen displaying people, photos and sketches linked to the mystery as shown below. Here the old classic photos were again on display and in general they were neither praised nor pilloried, which I guess was the best I could hope for. One or two were questioned and I do not recall seeing the O'Connor, Shiels or Cockrell photos.

It was interesting to see actors who were non-white depicting eyewitnesses. I guess this was to fulfill diversity quotas but it made me think whether there had been any such eyewitness over the last ninety years. I could not think of a single one and although back in the 1930s that would have been no surprise, nobody over the last few decades came to mind. Of course, most of the time the ethnicity of the person involved is never stated. They are there out there somewhere, but who was the most famous one? I am sure someone will let me know.

The next room was a high vaulted space bathed in green light which conveyed the depths of the loch and the exploration of it. Well, it is actually more tea-like but green is perhaps more calming. The effects made one think they were standing at the bottom of the loch looking up as a large screen took us through the various underwater searches over the years. The effects were good with the odd mysterious shadow flitting past but I did not agree with the sceptical assessment of the 1975 "body" picture taken by the AAS. Well, I did say this exhibition wasn't crafted with a small cadre of Nessie hunters in mind!

The next room was what I would describe as the previous exhibition compressed into one room. This was the domain of Adrian Shine as he appeared on a large video screen in front of the John Murray boat giving us his perspective on the decades of the hunt, what animals may or may not be Nessie, the other usual suspects which fool observers and where do we go from here? Now I do not mean that Nessie scepticism was confined to this room only, it was not, but this was the room to go to for that genre of opinion. As I said, this was going to be an exhibition that would attempt to balance these two opposing poles. Did it achieve that? I will give my take on that at the end.

Nevertheless, it was a well presented video, and yes, people are fooled by everyday phenomenon, and so that had to be said, it just depends how you say it. As the tour drew to a close, it was into the penultimate room which was a kind of reprise of what had gone before as final arguments were made. There was a display of items highlighting curious explanations of monsters but the main focus was the video wall and at this point we finally got to meet some Nessie believers in the form of Steve Feltham and Alan McKenna who were stating their case to me. No worries, chaps, I am all in.

With all that done and dusted it was time to place your vote. What did I think? Plesiosaur? Big fish? Hoax? Boats? Logs or what? Make your choice and press one or more of those nine buttons. That was quite fun and my vote was added to produce a video wall display of all cumulative results. And the winner was ... well, you just got to love the voting public.

I took snapshots of the running totals and may come back at the end of the Summer to see how the voting has progressed. The final room may or may not have been a room, perhaps more of an exit hall. But it had preserved something that was for me a favourite part of the previous exhibition and that was the video testimonies of some well known sightings, straight from the witnesses themselves. 

This is something any enquiring mind should listen to and so I was glad to see it still there and a bit more modern looking. However, it was hard to hear the audio as there was some music playing over it in the same area. In the last exhibition, there was a set of headphones one could plug in to the display and hear it clearly. But it appeared there was no headphone facility, perhaps this was some health and safety rule about sharing a headphone. Anyway, I told the staff nearby about the issue and hopefully it will be sorted soon.

Overall, it was a big improvement on the previous exhibition in terms of presentation, entertainment and seeking a balance between belief and scepticism. However, what was actually presented as potential evidence for the Loch Ness Monster was small, the sonar hit of October 2020 taken from a Cruise Loch Ness boat got some attention at the end. As stated earlier, it was good to see some classic images presented uncritically, but no more than that. I wondered where some other classic images were, such as the Dinsdale film? Or more modern ones from the last twenty years.

Perhaps there was copyright and licensing issues tied to some of those? You can't just put on display images owned by others when you are charging a fee to see them. Such is the commercial world of the Loch Ness Monster. On the other hand, sceptical images of logs and wakes are pretty much free. So how did I rate the exhibition for balance between scepticism and belief in the creature?

I assigned a mark to each of the eight rooms out of 100, so 60:40 would be 60% pro-Nessie and 40% anti-Nessie for want of better phrases and each room was given equal weight. I added them up and got a balance of 55:45 in favour of Nessie. So I could say that the exhibition had achieved a balance with a tilt towards Scotland's most famous creature. Others of course, may come up with different numbers, but go yourself and form your own opinion as to how the mystery of the loch has been newly presented to us in Drumnadrochit.

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

The author can also be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com