Bumping Into Nessie?

Stories of alleged collisions with the Loch Ness Monster are a rare class of report indeed and normally involve the larger vessels that have traversed the loch over the decades. But like the proverbial bus, you wait a long time for one to turn up and suddenly two arrive. Given this unusual rarity (whether it was Nessie or not), I am noting them down in the "incident log" or should I say incident blog? First up is Duncan Roberts as printed in the Daily Record dated 18th September 2024 (link here).

A swimmer in Scotland has claimed he felt something brush up against him in Loch Ness. Duncan Roberts, 39, from Australia was bracing the icy waters of the iconic Scottish loch for a charity challenge. The daredevil was swimming to the deepest part of Loch Ness when the chilling encounter occurred. He commented:

"The depth and the darkness of that water plays tricks with your mind. There is some weird energy at play in that water. And during my swim I experienced a bump half way across. It was something big. The water is pitch black and I had my eyes closed a lot of the time as the depth and darkness terrified me so I didn't see anything. I just felt it, a big thud in the chest."

Speaking to What's The Jam, Roberts added: 

"I think anyone who swims in the deep part of the loch is lying if they say they haven't thought about the monster. I was focused on getting across as quickly as possible so the hit was a shock. I was already nervous enough before the swim. If I knew something was going to bump into me halfway across I would definitely have been having second thoughts."

Roberts is one of only five people in the world to have skateboarded 870 miles around Iceland. However, he stated that the swim across the fabled Scottish loch was far tougher. He said: 

"It was one of the toughest things I've ever done mentally. I live in Australia and surf all the time often with Great White Sharks. I was way more scared of getting in the Loch Ness water. It was one of the toughest things I've ever done mentally. I flew all the way from Australia so it would've been tough to back out. The loch is beautiful but definitely has a vibe about it that makes you freeze at the thought of swimming in it. Not to mention that it is roughly six to 10C.

It also has the sensation of pulling you under a little. I think because it is fresh water and so deep. It is very different to salt water. I was hoping to not have an encounter. The deep dark water alone is scary enough, let alone worrying about what else might lurk below. There were definitely moments of awe and beauty as I caught glimpses of the length of the loch while I took breaths during the swim. But I wanted to get to the other side at Urquhart. Swimming into the castle shores was pretty magical."

However, the swim was only half the challenge. Roberts then got out of the loch and donned a kilt. The daredevil proceeded to climb Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain. Once at the summit, he played the bagpipes and climbed back down all in one day.

Then we move onto the second "collision" but this time involving two canoes. This is taken from the Daily Star dated 24th September 2024 (link here).

A father and son duo claim they were attacked by the infamous 'Nessie' while canoeing on Loch Ness. Geoff Potts, an experienced guide, and his son Chris were each paddling in their own canoes when they were both struck from below. The sudden impact almost caused Chris to lose grip of his paddle. Geoff, 53, and Chris, 24, are no strangers to the famous loch, having canoed there numerous times, but this time was different. Geoff shared:

"I guide canoe trips on the Great Glen. I've done around 40 or so in the last few years. A few weeks ago while I was out with my son Chris something bumped my canoe hard from below. And when I mentioned it to Chris he said he hit something with his paddle which nearly took it out of his hand. I didn't see anything. I just felt a big thump against the bottom of my boat. In nearly 40 Great Glen crossings I've never experienced it. Chris saw nothing too but he also hit something hard with his paddle which nearly made him drop it. I've completed around 40 crossings since 2021 including the first recorded non stop solo crossing that I'm aware of in an open canoe."

He added that the impact felt different from hitting a log.

"Loch Ness has an impressive presence about it - I mean it's huge, As I've completed it so many times it was confusing to get a thud which sounded dull. I have hit logs before but this was not like hitting wood at all. You immediately wonder what it was. But the water is so dark you can only see down a foot or so."

Looking at Duncan Roberts first, I was not certain what swimming route he took, although it looks like he started at Dores and swam diagonally down loch to Urquhart Castle for a swim of about five and a half miles. Using Google maps to draw a line to his finishing point at Urquhart Castle allows us to mark the rough halfway mark where he says he collided with the object.

Duncan talked about the uncertainty of swimming in a loch with a reputed monster in it. He certainly made me think of the old phrase "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know". Where the devils he knew where the great white sharks he has swum near and the unknown one was lurking in Loch Ness. Whatever he may have been hit by, a primal psychology can kick in which leads to a surge of emotion and perhaps confusion.

But for some reason he doesn't actually tell us how he reacted or what went through his mind. What if the next bump proved to be more violent? Dare he look down into the water to see what the object was? The closest we get is that if he had known this would happen, he would have had second thoughts. 

Looking at the map, that right turn at the halfway point is a third of a mile swim to shore as opposed to the remaining 2.5 to 3 miles to the castle. If you have received a worrying shunt, does your more primal self not scream to take the shortcut or by sheer effort of the will you plough on, telling yourself it was just a tree log and that no one has ever been killed by such a beast? If I thought something huge had put in a first hit, I would be doing a rapid right angle turn towards the nearest shore!

So what could have hit him? He merely says it was "a big thud in the chest", but pronounced enough for him to say "it was something big". Nothing was seen and perhaps he didn't want to look down into the inky depths. It would have been useful to know if this was a short, sharp collision or more prolonged, like something rasping along your mid rift. It sounds more like a sudden event to me, as if something came up vertically from below and then receded back down.

Was the "big thud" bigger than a thud from a pike, ferox trout, log or seal? A thud can be as much a product of speed as mass, but again how extended was the "thud"? It was unlikely a seal was in Loch Ness and if it was a log, I would have thought it more likely that he would have collided with it head first? If there had been heavy rainfall a day or two before then there could be a fair bit of debris floating in the loch, though generally nothing one could call "big".

I think I need to ask Duncan some more questions and I noticed he was posting on Facebook and he himself is not excluding larger fish as an explanation. But I move onto the canoeists. This is certainly on the face of it a more interesting story as we have two experienced canoeists who have some credentials as regards familiarity with the paths along the loch surface. One gets the impression they had gone over this route before and certainly no experienced canoeist is going to go into shallows where a barely submerged rock is going to hit them and cause some serious damage.

The sequence of events looks like it collided with Geoff's canoe first and then his son hit the object with his paddle just as Geoff was asking Chris about it. I have taken a few pictures of canoeists with my trap cameras and they tend to travel in a line, one in front of the other which would suggest to me that the object was moving in the opposite direction to the canoes, hitting Geoff's at the front first. Whatever the story, it was lacking in detail and so I contacted Geoff and/or Chris Potts on their commercial adventures website with more questions. The answer I got back from someone saying they were Chris Potts was:

This never happened…. I’m still wondering why on earth my photo is in the newspaper!!

Okay ... so I noticed that Geoff was already on social media telling his story on Alan McKenna's Loch Ness Exploration Facebook group. He stated this happened two weeks before his posting on the 14th September, placing it on about the 1st September. He joined the group on June 21st 2024 and further commented on the 26th that "My money is on a large freshwater sturgeon". So is he saying his canoe collided with a sturgeon? Just in case anyone didn't know, there are no sturgeons in Loch Ness.

Duncan Roberts had joined the group on the 10th September, three days before he posted. This leads to a few questions. What held up Duncan for four months from publicizing this story? Geoff had been on the group since June 21st without a word as far as I can see, then has his alleged encounter on the 1st September, but says nothing on the group until yet another rare collision story coincidentally turns up 12 days later from Duncan? I welcome any corrections to the timeline as I see it.

Does telling potential canoe trip customers that you might collide with Nessie a negative or a positive for bookings? Maybe it is time to move on from these accounts for other reasons. If it was one of the creatures, then such collisions stories are, as said already, rarer than rare. Other accounts I have gathered over the years are boat collisions from 1978 and 1943 which I detailed in this article. The curious thing is that the owner of the 1978 boat was called Stephen Roberts, surely not related to our swimmer, Duncan Roberts? I also covered an article from 1969 regarding the Vickers Pisces submarine being jolted by unidentified objects (link here).

There is also Alex Campbell's story about how he was out in his rowing boat when something suddenly heaved up his vessel from the water below and then settled back down again. You then have speculations about other boating accidents being caused by the monster with no one at the time suggesting anything other than normal but tragic circumstances.

That is four stories from the past eighty years prior to these two recent accounts. There may be other stories out there and one must point out that none of these accounts mention seeing the cause of their collision apart from the 1943 story from Lt Commander Francis Russell Flint. So that gives a huge gap in such accounts since 1978.

Animals in general do not go out of their way to crash into other objects, it tends to reduce their health points, so to speak. But animals do collide with boats as has been seen on various phone videos of whales breaching and dropping onto nearby vessels and so on. They also collide when they deliberately attack prey or competitors.

Under what circumstance would a Loch Ness Monster crash into something or somebody? Maybe that dark peat stained water is too opaque at times? Or maybe the given creature was sick and disoriented? Or perhaps it just wasn't paying attention and was distracted by a tasty passing salmon? Since 1978, they seem to have managed to avoid hitting anything, even a Nessie won't win an argument with a Jacobite Cruise Boat.

If Duncan or Geoff wish to make further comments, they can join the conversation at the link below.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Alan Wilkins and his 1975 Nessie Photograph

 

Another Nessie fan emailed me recently asking if I had any of Alan Wilkins photographs which were taken in July 1975. I recalled that at the time, as a teenager, I had seen one such picture on the front page of the Sunday Express, cut it out to keep, but today I had no clue where it had gone. So the hunt began ending with me finding a scan of it in my files and some other items.

Regarding Alan himself, he was one of the understated monster researchers during those heady days in the 1970s. He was in fact the man who helped coin the term "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" back in 1975 using his knowledge of Latin as a classics teacher in the south of Scotland. A letter written from Sir Peter Scott to Alan in November 1975 shows the conversation that was ongoing before the famous unveiling of the Rines/AAS underwater photographs a month later (my thanks to Howard Pate for this image).

The main reference to Alan Wilkins' experience on the day he took the above photo is laid out in an article in the Field magazine published on the 27th November 1975 entitled "The Monster: Four Vital Sightings".  This recounts what was an unexpected day for Alan on the 18th July 1975, when he had not one but four sightings in the space of 15 hours. This began at 7:20am, one and a half miles south of Invermoriston, where he saw a long dark line appear on the surface which was followed by a black shape which submerged in a swirl of water. However, this was observed at about a distance of two miles through 10x50 binoculars (Alan's sketch below).

Later at 10:20am, Wilkins reported seeing what looked like an inflatable boat moving in the haze off Fasagh, two and a quarter miles away. He took some photographs and a few seconds of cine film. Sketches based on the photos are shown below. On seeing the photos, Alan classed it as a two humped object changing into a one humped object.

Three minutes later at 10:15am, an object appeared in the same area, which his wife through the binoculars, first described as a man in a boat, but which then submerged, re-appeared and progressed across the loch. A sketch of that is shown below.

By the time Alan had refocused the binoculars, he observed a line of three humps as sketched below. A man from the next caravan in the camping site also confirmed seeing three humps with his own binoculars as did a couple called Roger Selwyn and Sylvia Williams. Wilkins surmised the distance between the single hump and the other two suggested two animals.

These objects progressed for another fifteen minutes until at a range of 3450-3800 yards away. A further burst of cine film was taken and this particular sighting lasted 28 minutes. A second article was published in the next Field magazine on the 4th December detailing the other two sightings. At 9:25pm, Alan saw a black patch in an area of boiling water and two triangular humps surfacing and then submerging. This was also seen by two of the previous witnesses and is sketched below.

The final sighting occurred at 10:25pm when a series of three humps was again seen and proceeding out of Invermoriston Bay about one mile away under the light of the moon. Wilkins watched this via his binoculars mounted on a tripod. The humps progressed before turning at a right angle to travel away from them. He estimated them as being about four feet high and as one animal as they moved in unison. His sketch is shown below and I think this was when he took the photograph at the top of this article.

At this point he observed some interesting transitions as the humps changed from three to two, back to three, to two, to one and so on. Another previous witness, Sylvia Williams, also observed these, calling out the same changes as Alan in unison. Thus concluded the sightings which were then investigated by members of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, including a certain Dick Raynor who tape recorded eyewitness testimonies. Tim Dinsdale and others accepted the genuineness of the reports.

Not surprisingly, considering the previously stated large distances and evening hours, most of the photos and cine film were rendered inconclusive, except for one or two images. A set of some images, plus some taken by co-witness, Roger Selwyn, were sent to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, USA for image enhancement - in the similar alleged manner as the 1972 "Flipper" picture. These would then be passed onto JARIC for further analysis.

What the outcome of those processes were is not known, but the LNIB accepted the genuineness of the sightings. And with that, Alan Wilkins seems to disappear from the Loch Ness scene. I see no reference to any further activities by him in Rip Hepple's newsletter. The Rines underwater pictures would soon swamp any attention his own pictures may have received and it seems he eventually moved onto other things. What did he eventually make of his sightings as time progressed? After all, at up to two miles away, one would normally hold such accounts lightly, if he had not employed binoculars and taken some images.  

And what did he think the creature was back then and what does he think now? I imagine, if he is still with us, he would be aged around ninety years old. With all this in mind, I have attempted on several occasions by letter and phone to contact Alan without success. I believe he still lives in the Dumfries and Galloway area and has spent recent years in the subject of Greek and Roman history, publishing works such as on Roman military equipment. I even found a more recent photo of the man himself.

So, Alan, if you read this, get in touch with me. I would love to speak to you.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Frank Searle's Last Photograph

 

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.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Quest 2024 and Webcam Images

Back at the end of May, it was off once again to Loch Ness for a bit of Nessie Hunting and a bit of Nessie Fellowship. To borrow from a TV program about another mystery, it was the Fellowship of the Hunt. Loading the equipment into my car, I headed off from Edinburgh and up the familiar route of the M90 and A9 roads.

THURSDAY 30TH MAY

Towards the evening, I turned into Drumnadrochit where I would stay at the Loch Ness Hostel. I usually go camping on the other quieter side of the loch at Foyers, but since most of the action was going to be around Drumnadrochit plus Foyers was about a 25 mile drive away, it was no contest.

The "Quest" is organised by the Loch Ness Centre and they had invited anyone involved to a meet up at the Loch Ness Inn just a walk away from where I was staying. There I met up with Alan McKenna, Chie Kelly and some of the Loch Ness Exhibition staff. Alan heads up the LNE and Quest surface watches while readers will remember Chie as the lady who took that very interesting sequence of photographs in 2018 which were released last year.

So we spent the first part of the evening examining Chie's pictures and offering various opinions and observations concerning them and the very good stabilized sequence of those dozens of images further released this year. I admit I have to still to publish a follow up article based on that sequence and another meeting with Chie was organised for the days ahead.

It was at this point that exuberance entered the room. By that I mean the lively Ashley from Washington State who had travelled all that way to join the Fellowship of the Hunt. She is a die hard Nessie Fan and was keen to play her part in the loch watches that were coming up. We welcomed her into the fold and made sure she was part of the team and justified her effort to make it over here to Bonnie Scotland.

In fact, after dinner and a rest, Ashley, Alan and myself headed down to Temple Pier just before midnight to try out some equipment. In Alan's case, it was his trusty hydrophone and in my case, it was the Flir thermal camera. There were a number of boats berthed in the pier, some with occupants. Looking out across the pier to Urquhart Bay did not reveal much to the naked eye, but the FLIR infra-red revealed all as the buoys stretched out into the distance (below). However, nothing anomalous was apparent beyond these man made objects.

Alan dropped the hydrophone into the shallow waters and we listened in to the various noises it was detecting. We knew at that shallow depth and proximity to the pier that it was unlikely to be near any large aquatic creatures. So, Alan's ambition is simple yet complex - get the hydrophone out into the greater depths of mid-loch at night-time and free of all day time noises. All you need is a boat and a skipper who is qualified to navigate a boat at night-time. The complex bit is bringing all that together.

Meantime, on the active hydrophone, one persistent, gurgling noise was an outlet pipe discharging into the bay on the other side. One other noise came and went. We speculated it was someone on a berthed boat flushing their toilet. Well, the sceptics say you got to consider all possibilities. Only too happy to oblige, though Ashley thought it must have been one aggressive piece of flushing. This is a family blog, so I ain't going to enquire further into that! The fun ended at one in the morning and it was off to bed.

FRIDAY 31ST MAY

The next day started off with a solo walk around the area of Drumnadrochit. I actually had not taken a good look around the town for years and in that time it has undergone a major expansion in house building and that has not stopped as I passed by ground being cleared for further new developments. Having said that, as one walked around, it was clear that houses of various kinds had been built across the decades. It just seemed that things had accelerated.

I then headed from the new to the old, walking towards ancient Urquhart Bay for a bit of surface watching. Going through the woods before reaching the bay can be a bit of a maze before the loch comes into view. Once you get through the woods, you come to one of the rivers feeding into the bay. There is no bridge, so unless the river level is low or you have found a well placed tree trunk or stepping stones, you will likely get wet feet. Once over the river, it was a short walk and Urquhart Bay opened up before me (see image at top of article). 

There were quite a few sandbanks along the way and since there had been several accounts of large beasts coming ashore here and even leaving three toed tracks, I thought I would keep my eyes open for unusual depressions in the sand. One wondered how long such spoors would persist. In any case, only deer and humans prints to report.

I stayed there for about three hours watching the loch and any activity around it. A swan glided past into the bay (below). A guy with his family stripped to his pants and dived in the cold loch, Various dogs darted about, including one that misjudged the depth of the shallows and plopped out of sight before quickly reappearing. No sign of any larger creatures appearing out of the water though.

After this ended, it was back to the Loch Ness Inn at 7pm to meet Alan McKenna and Chie for a closer look at her photos. Later on, Dave from Birmingham turned up in his car for the Quest. I already knew Dave from his postings on various cryptids groups, so it was good to meet him in the flesh. Once we met up with Ashley, it was decided to go back out that night with the equipment, but a different location.

What Alan wanted to do was get to the jetty where various boats dock to let the tourists off at the castle. From the end of that pier, the water is deeper than what we were limited to at Temple Pier. Little did I know what an expedition this turned out to be. Alan, Dave, Ashley and myself parked up on the road by the castle and headed towards the pier only to be confronted by fields of prickly gorse bush and thick fern. However, we did beat a path to a wire fence which barred our way to the pier.

It was eminently scalable, but not everyone was onboard with vaulting over it, lol. We headed the other way towards the shore, but the drop was too steep and slippery plus it was getting dark. Prior to that Dave had dropped his mobile phone somewhere along the way, but the Fellowship of the Hunt proved their hunting skills in tracking it down. If only Nessie was that easy to find! So with sodden socks and a few marks from being assaulted by the gorse bushes, we defaulted back to Temple Pier where we showed Dave the gadgets we used twenty four hours before.

SATURDAY 1ST JUNE

The "Quest" began the next day at 0930. The media scrum of last year was not so evident and it looked like volunteers just picked up any guidance from online. In fact, those late nights at Temple Pier must have had their effect as I turned up late. Alan and Ashley were heading off to help on the Deepscan boat, so I offered to head off with Dave around the loch stopping at the various designated observation points as well as a few other spots.

I was also a kind of tour guide and would point out to Dave various events of significance as we went along in his car and its complement of Godzilla figures adding to the monster atmosphere. First up was Altsigh where John MacLean had his famous sighting back in 1938 where he spotted this beast.

By now the weather was beautiful as the sun shone down upon us in complete contrast to the downpour of last year. We went down past the backpackers hostel to the spit of beach at the mouth of the Altsigh stream where McLean had his encounter. Dave is a expert in photography and filming who lectures on the subject as well as making his own documentaries. So, he brought some heavy duty equipment with him ready to capture in high quality anything that stirred on the loch.

One thing we discussed was Adrian Shine's theory that McLean only saw an otter which fooled him as he was looking across the loch almost eye level with the water and hence lacking a frame of reference. I demonstrated to Dave how this was wrong as McLean is documented as pointing across the mouth of the Altsigh to the same shoreline he was on and where the creature was. In other words, the near shoreline provided a frame of reference not far behind the creature which itself was twenty yards away. Add the fact that McLean was a regular and experienced angler at the loch and one wonders what could possibly go wrong? 

The only fallback as ever is to declare he was a liar but sceptics are averse to doing this as it comes across as simplistic and lacking in any critical analysis skills.

So we were off to a good start and next up was the Horseshoe Scree on the opposite shore where Torquil MacLeod had his encounter with a large creature half out of the water. This was an official observation point and so we scrambled down the bank to get a better view. A man and his son joined us later and a conversation ensued about the "Quest" and the famous monster. Famous accounts attract sceptics and as with the McLean case, so it was with this account. Another sceptic has attempted to debunk this one as well. 

After that it was a short drive to the layby near where Roy Johnston took a sequence of detailed photos back in 2002. We again made our way to the shore and scanned the area comparing it to one of the Johnston pictures for scale, distance and other similarities. The most frustrating bit was when a small boat appeared to our right approaching the spot where Johnston's creature surfaced. We waited in hope for it to cross over that spot for a good comparison shot.

But alas he turned and headed off in the wrong direction. I understand Alan might soon be taking to the loch waves with his own boat. I wonder how open he is to navigate anywhere we send him 😏? And, yes, you guessed it, Roy Johnston has also been targeted for debunking. Pressing on, we had a pit stop in Fort Augustus and made a brief visit to the official observation point at the pier there. It was here that an opportunity to speak on the accounts of Gregory Brusey and Alex Campbell presented itself.

But time was against us as I had to be back at the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm. So we drove onto Foyers to visit the Tim Dinsdale site. When we got there and I pointed out the loch, Dave was surprised how far away we were from the loch. Dinsdale stated he first spotted the object 1300 yards away, which is about three quarters of a mile. Below is a still from one of Dave's videos. We again took footage, sized up the problems involved and then took note that time was running out.

So it was a final stop at Dores and we checked out the photographic metrics of the Chie Kelly photos. More on that at another time and we got back to the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm where I would prepare for a Loch Ness Debate with Alan McKenna, Richard White and Jenny Johnstone as MC. Nessie fans may recall that Richard White took an interesting series of photographs back in 1997 (below).

The debate began with our short biopics and Richard White's account. Now I must admit I have not really covered Richard's photos on my blog, His account is certainly credible and I learnt more that evening than anything before. So I hope I may cover his picture sequence in more detail in a future blog. We certainly didn't discuss his pictures during the debate, mainly because no one asked about them!

That aside, we fielded questions on our opinions on the best photograph, the effect of hoaxes on research, what to do with a captured Nessie, funding for technology and so on. If you're wondering what we would do with a captured Nessie, we would record every square inch, get the DNA biopsy, attach radio tags and release back into the loch.

WEBCAM IMAGES

At the debate I noticed our webcamming friend, Eoin, was in the audience with his wife. After the debate we had a discussion on his recent activities. The webcam he usually watches was offline and we both did not know why at the time. I have encouraged him to try out the webcam at the Clansman as I think it is a better camera for resolution and position.

A week after that, Eoin emailed me with a four minute clip from the Clansman taken on the 9th July just before 8am. What appears to be one object with a small forward protuberance to the left and a longer disturbance behind moves slowly but uniformly from the far right to left (up the loch) before it moves out of range of the webcam (which pans across the Clansman parking area).

You can view the complete video clip here. What could it be? A floating branch with the tip at the front and some of it horizontal behind? The fact that it retains a regular distance between small and larger disturbance does indicate it being one object, which Eoin estimated at about 16 feet long and 100 yards out. Opinions are invited.

I also received some webcam images from Andrew Williams who took them from the Airanloch B&B webcam at Lochend about 7am on the 27th May, just three days before I arrived at the loch. It seems seven in the morning is a good time for webcamming. Andrew told me:

The object captured in the images was moving at quite some speed creating a well-defined wake. Looking at the distance from Webcam to the object I don't believe it to be a bird as it's two big plus the speed it was going would be much too fast for a bird. It reminded me of a torpedo with something dark just breaking the surface. I also captured what appears to be two objects swimming together? 

There is no doubt the wake is being produced by an animal and Andrew discounts smaller creatures like birds. My first thought was whether it was an otter as they would be active around dawn, but there is nothing solid I can see that breaks the surface. The double object picture shown next does not appear to be connected to the wake and could be two small animals.

Andrew sent me two timestamped images which facilitated an estimate of wake speed. The first is above and the second below. Using the objects on the far shoreline as reference points, then one can produce an estimate of distance covered. How far out the wake is can be more of a guesstimate, but I will put it out halfway across the loch. So, the time lapse between the two images is 137 seconds and using the Google Map scale in the bottom right gives a distance covered of about 110m which gives a speed of 0.8 metres/second or 1.8 miles per hour. This is not very fast and could be achieved by a variety of aquatic objects.

The closer the wake is to the shore then the slower it will be and vice versa. The issue with all webcams is the same issue for all cameras and video equipment. We need to see something large and solid break the surface to take this further. That is what we all want and I thank Eoin and Andrew for their contributions. Keep up the hunt, people. You may be the person that captures that large object rising high and mighty from the depths!

Going back to the Quest, Alan then headed off on holiday to Loch Morar with his wife. I await his report from that trip! Meantime, Ashley, Dave and myself tried to find somewhere to eat about 9:30pm  in Drumnadrochit. Not much chance of that, so we ended up with burgers and kebab in a local chip shop. Ashley was tired and called it a day after that and I gave her a final farewell and thanked her again for her heroic trip from all that way from Washington state.

With some energy left, Dave and I returned to the A82 road by Urquhart Castle for more infra-red watching till midnight. Dave rediscovered the IR option on his video equipment and that looked pretty good on the viewfinder display as you can see below. Apart from a bright heat spot on the far shore which we figured was perhaps a camp fire, it was finally off to bed.

SUNDAY 2ND JUNE

The next morning I packed up and had breakfast with Dave, discussing ways ahead. He had taken a good bit of video footage of which you have seen some stills here. We made some resolutions to investigate some items further (once we can afford it 😁) and with that I said my goodbyes to him. Hopefully, the Fellowship of the Hunt will meet again on the next Quest, if not sooner!

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Adrian Shine's New Book

 

A while back Adrian told me he was intending to publish a new work and I immediately assumed it would be a larger work on Loch Ness, its legendary Monster and perhaps something biographical as regards Adrian's work around the loch and Loch Morar too. I was soon set right when he told me it was a book on Sea Serpents. The description of the book is as follows:

A Natural History of Sea Serpents, re-examines the cold-case enigma of sea serpents and monsters described by impeccable witnesses over three centuries. These reports have sometimes intrigued and puzzled the most eminent scientists of their times, yet often became the butt of popular derision. Naturalist Adrian Shine, best known for his fifty years examining Loch Ness as a ‘sympathetic sceptic’, reveals how the loch actually held the key to the greater mystery. He exonerates the integrity of most witnesses, often remarks upon the accuracy of their observations yet offers bold and radical interpretations of what they have seen.

The book digs deep into the roots of the legend and shows how expectations ‘evolved’ from those ‘serpents’ to prehistoric ‘monsters’ during the nineteenth century. The book cites over a hundred reports and contains as many illustrations as evidence for its conclusions. His findings, stemming from knowledge of ships, the sea and the true monsters living there, cover the entire spectrum of reports, giving new insight, for example, into the famous HMS Daedalus episode of 1848, the description of a very unusual creature seen by two zoologists in 1904 and the serpent seen by hundreds off the coast of New England in 1817. Nothing daunted, he investigates reports of huge serpents seen battling whales and creatures which defy our understanding of vertebrate anatomy by bending both sideways and up and down, whilst under fire by the French Navy.

This book will certainly generate debate within the cryptozoology movement, yet also challenges the theories of the preeminent sceptical writer on the subject, Dr. Robert France, who has proposed whales and other creatures entangled in pre-plastic era fishing gear as the cause of most sea serpent encounters. Nevertheless, the author shares this ethnobiological perspective and ends with a strong conservation message.

I won't preempt Adrian's conclusions, though one would expect his statement about Loch Ness being the key to the wider mystery as a big clue. Will he be closer to a Henry Lee or an Anthonie Oudemans in his assessment of this great aquatic enigma? One suspects more the former than the latter. Adrian's book will published on the 31st July and can be viewed on Amazon here.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Fordyce's Monster walks over Sceptical Theory

 

When examining the techniques used by sceptics in debunking claimed eyewitness account, there are at least four major factors involved in this process:

1. The involvement of known objects and effects in and around Loch Ness.
2. The imperfections of human observation and recall.
3. The role of dishonesty and exaggeration up to hoaxing.
4. The psychological factor of expectation.

These combine into a general theory that all observations are misperceived objects whose description is exaggerated by one or more of the three factors in the list. The exception is when someone fabricates the entire incident and no misperception is required. It is fascinating to note that almost everything that has ever been near the loch (apart from maybe the insects) has been used as an explanation for what people claimed to have seen.

Indeed, a published list of explanations for monster sightings cites twenty-two natural and man-made items that occur around the loch. I am sure that is just the minimum and indeed new explanations can be manufactured by grouping individual explanations together (for example, "otter" and "mirage" have been combined to provide the explanation for an apparently oversized animal). 

Now there is no problem in employing the basic premises of this theory and researchers who believe in the existence of large animals in Loch Ness have used them to assess and filter out inferior testimonies from the very start of the phenomenon back in the 1930s. What is not acceptable is the misuse of the theory and this is because practical applications of it can run into their own issues of objective versus subjective analysis, skewed by bias.

Such applications stretch credibility to the breaking point and we find their explanations almost as lacking in credibility as the monster scenario they attempt to explain. However, one recent application seems to have rendered one of the four factors irrelevant. Last week, the Loch Ness Exploration Facebook group posted a rather nice rendition of the Fordyce Monster shown at the top of this article. I covered this story in my book, "When Monsters Come Ashore" and part of Lieutenant McP Fordyce's original account from The Scots Magazine of June 1990 is reproduced below:

The following morning we set off on our journey back to England. The weather was fine, a beautiful spring day, and we had a lovely run by the side of Loch Ness as far as Foyers where we spent a short while admiring the famous waterfall. Shortly after leaving Foyers, the road to Fort William turns away from the lochside and runs through well-wooded country with the ground falling slightly towards the loch.

Travelling at about 25 mph in this wooded section, we were startled to see an enormous animal coming out of the woods on our left and making its way over the road about 150 yards ahead of us towards the loch. It had the gait of an elephant, but looked like a cross between a very large horse and a camel, with a hump on its back and a small head on a long neck. I stopped the car and followed the creature on foot for a short distance.

From the rear it looked grey and shaggy. Its long, thin neck gave it the appearance of an elephant with its trunk raised. Unfortunately, I had left my camera in the car, but in any case I quickly thought discretion the better part of valour and returned to the vehicle. This strange animal occupied our thoughts and conversation for many, many miles and we came to the conclusion that it was an escaped freak from a menagerie or zoo. We felt that a beast of such tremendous proportions would soon be tracked down and captured.

The original sketch of the creature in the 1990 article is shown below. Now this account also presents a problem to believers in a large aquatic creature for obvious reasons. Whatever Fordyce saw bears little resemblance to a creature equipped to live in a large body of water like Loch Ness. Nevertheless, this does not give the green light to accept any explanation for what he saw and everything has to be examined.

So when this new artwork appeared, arch-sceptic, Dick Raynor repeated his theory on this story saying:

The sketch was made from a verbal description of an oblique hind view of whatever crossed the road 150 yards ahead of their car, not a side view as in the sketch. The description has all the key hallmarks of a deer carcass being transported by a pony fitted with a deer saddle. Red deer cannot be legally shot in April so the local worthy leading the pony would be keen to avoid scrutiny.

When I challenged this opinion, Dick posted to my own Facebook group with some other interspersed observations:

I have never suggested a stag on a deer saddle as an explanation for any other incident near Loch Ness, so I don't see it as a "usual sceptical explanation", neither have I suggested that the witness was drunk, or a complete idiot. Those are your words. I partially agree that he was a good distance away from it, but more importantly he was seeing something totally novel to him, so it was impossible for him to 'recognise' it. With my background and experience, I can recognise the described activity from his own narrative, and I think he would welcome it.

...

Ah, big sigh! This is the correct way, and to spell it out in simple terms for Nessie-huggers the chap leading the pony/horse with a deer saddle would be out of sight to an observer behind or to the right of the activity. Another land sighting bites the dust, I'm afraid. (In the real world)

...

After a very busy day driving 130 miles south to Inverness, I am so pleased that you have posted a query involving a 6-legged Fordyce creature, which L McP Fordyce should have reported. This was answered more than a day ago on other FB groups, and explains from which side horses and ponies are led and why the other legs have been seen . Thank you. Go look at the snaps again.

So, Dick posted some photos of dead deer on ponies being led by someone. Dick wished to emphasise that the person would be leading the pony from its left hand side and thus the person would somehow not be visible to Fordyce driving towards the other side of the pony if it and owner were crossing the road towards the River Foyers.

Let's unpack this theory unveiling a progression of layers of complexity which are added to save this theory from being binned. So the basic theory is that Fordyce thought he saw a giant, black hairy "camel" cross the road ahead of him but it was actually a man leading a pony with a dead deer on its back.

Objection 1: Fordyce should have seen the man leading the pony.

Add layer of complexity 1: No, the man would always be obscured by the pony.

Reality Check 1: It did not take long to find photos which contradicted this argument. In fact, I only needed to go to one website, alamy.com. In these images the person would not have the pony between him and Fordyce. In other words, not hard to miss. Given how easy it was to find these images, one could assume that Dick was only interested in finding images which fitted his theory. I would also point out that the pony does not totally obscure the taller person even if in Dick's favoured position.

Objection 2: As you can see from all these pony and deer photos, they are out on the moors where the deer are, but this "pony" is coming out of forest, crossing the road to where the River Foyers is and onto Loch Ness. Why?

Add layer of complexity 2: The man was poaching deer because it was not hunting season and so had to take a sneaky route.

Reality Check 2: So where exactly was this incorrigible local and his heavily laden pony heading? A look at an ordnance survey map of the time raises an issue. The River Foyers bisects the image below from top to bottom. Once they cross the river, there is either more forest or its all uphill towards Loch Ness with several hills hundreds of feet high with a precipitous drop down to the loch beyond. If I was poaching, I would just wait till nightfall and take a more sensible route.

Objection 3: In general, perceiving a pony carrying a dead deer as a giant, black hairy "camel" makes no sense from any perspective.

Add layer of complexity 3: Fordyce "was seeing something totally novel to him, so it was impossible for him to 'recognise' it." which (somehow) transformed it into a freak monster.

Reality Check 3: Leaving aside the question of why Fordyce's wife also saw what he saw, why wouldn't Fordyce figure out it was a pony carrying a deer with a man leading? Dick quotes Fordyce saying "from the rear it looked grey and shaggy." but interprets that to mean Fordyce never saw the beast fully side on. This is not correct. Fordyce said it crossed the road in front of them but then got out the car and pursued the beast on foot, only to then say it presented a rear view.

For the two statements to be consistent, he first saw it side on from the car as it crossed the road but by the time he had finished his approach on foot, it had crossed the river and was now walking away from him full rear view. That would then allow Fordyce to see the alleged owner if he had not seen him earlier. Therefore, Dick is forced to posit an oblique rear view to keep his proposed human out of sight.

Was the sight of a pony carrying a deer so "novel" to Fordyce that he utterly failed to process what he was seeing? Break this down into its constituent parts. Would he had been flummoxed by an unburdened pony crossing the road? I doubt it. Add the owner leading it. Would confusion reign? Not likely as Dick claims the person was out of sight. Add some load onto the pony like some bags. Was it now "impossible to recognise"? I will go out on a limb here and suggest Fordyce had seen beasts of burden carrying loads before. Replace the bags with a dead stag. Now Fordyce is thrown into a state of confusion. Convinced? I am not and the burden of proof definitely does not lie on this side of that debate.

THE MAIN POINT

But still there is the unanswered question of why Lt. McP Fordyce would mistake a pony carrying a deer for a bizarre, giant camel-like creature. Well, the usual answer is the fourth item in our list - the psychological factor of expectation. This piece of psychology takes on magical properties in the hands of sceptics as normal objects such as boats, branches, dogs, birds, waves, otters, insects, canoes, buoys, seals, swimmers, rubbish and pipes bamboozle people into thinking they just saw an enormous creature. If they saw the same things in Loch Lomond, Loch Tay or Loch Rannoch then they usually wouldn't give them a second glance. But according to debunkers, some magical mist descends on visitors as soon as they reach Loch Ness turning them into incompetent observers.

As I said above, the theory is true as far as it goes and is usually reserved for instances where the amount of visual information is limited by time, distance, rain, mist, etc. Somebody claiming to see a large hump at one mile away for two seconds in driving rain is not going to get much attention. But here was Lt. McP Fordyce and another witness on a fine day at 150 yards and decreasing. Whatever you may think of his unusual description, the creature was Nessie-like from the top half up - long neck, small head, dark in colour and a humped back. So you would say it is a candidate for a bit of Nessie Expectation reimagining and that is what Dick has done.

Right? Wrong!

Fordyce says two important things:

In April 1932 while living in Kent, my fiancee and l travelled to Aberdeen to attend a family wedding. ... At the time of the sighting we were quite unaware of there being anything strange in Loch Ness ...

You only need to know two words here - "April" and "1932". It would be over a year before stories of large creature in Loch Ness appeared and took hold of the public imagination. The Aldie Mackay story was print locally in May 1933 and it gained UK interest around September 1933 or 17 months later. So there was no "Nessie Expectation" psychology to floor eyewitnesses because there was no "Nessie" in the mind for any alleged psychology to play with. A pony carrying a dead stag would have no more effect on him that one seen near any other loch.

Yet Dick treats this sighting as if it happened a year or two later and applies the theory nonetheless. After all, Fordyce mentioned a long neck and hump! What is the conclusion of this surprise methodology? I would say it implies that a number of sceptics don't believe the theory either, else they wouldn't be retro-fitting it to pre-1933 accounts. It is just another means to an end in the mission to debunk all and every account of that most inconvenient monster.

But where does this leave Nessie believers? The account of a Nessie but with long legs and a shaggy hide is also a tad inconvenient - depending on what you think the creature is. It doesn't exactly fit the giant eel theory, for example. In fact, one may be tempted to erase it by taking Dick up on his offer, but his alternative explanation isn't solid enough. So what does one do? Assume Fordyce made it all up? That is the easy option and requires about zero intellectual effort. 

Strangely though, it is not the only member of this camel-like genre, as seasoned fans will be aware of the MacGruer land sighting from about 1919 where the creature was described thus:

Asked to describe the creature he had seen, Mr Wm. Macgruer, Oich Bank, Fort-Augustus (who was one of the children concerned), said that it reminded himself and the others of nothing so much as a camel. It had a long neck, a small head, a humped-up back, and fairly long legs. It was, however, considerably smaller than a camel, but its skin or coat was almost the same colour - pale yellow.

Two similar accounts from between the two world wars, but nothing I am aware of since. How many are required to take this genre seriously? Not enough as it stands I would say. One other option I favour is the matter of time. I mentioned time under observation was a factor in ranking a report but time between observation and recording it is also a factor. Unless an observation is recorded as close to the time of the encounter as possible, the memory of it will fade, even accounting for the fact that such an event imprints itself deeper into the memory. That fading will depend on the individual, but in the case of Lt. McP Fordyce, the gap is over sixty years. 

But by how much would recall of this unusual event degrade between 1932 and 1990? If you are into your 70s, 80s or 90s, you may be able to answer that question better than I could. Or did the subsequent flood of stories from 1933 onwards colour the memory of what he saw? Apparently not much, if at all, considering the non-standard nature of the description. What is certain is that he saw something with his Nessie-free mind that jolted him and his wife. 

When I first covered this account in 2013, I did consider the escaped camel theory where one of the darker haired species of dromedary somehow escaped from one of the visiting zoos to Inverness or even from a nearby private menagerie. I discounted it as a most improbable event which was not even reported by any newspaper I could find and Fordyce would probably have figured out it was a camel anyway. However, his stated forbearance to not get too close to the creature suggests it was no more than camel-like in his mind.

Fordyce himself though the creature he saw was amphibious but frequented the nearby  Monadhliath mountains. I am not aware of any other stories from that region corroborating such a creature. We have a description of a creature which is too Nessie-like to be other animals but not Nessie-like enough to be  the aquatic creature which occupies the main debate. For me, this creature, whatever its actual objective form was, remains a non-Nessie creature, until someone comes up with some theory that does adequate justice to the integrity of the two Fordyces as eyewitnesses.

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com