Classic Sightings: Those Strange Humps

Date: Summer 1946
Time: afternoon
Location: Near Whitefield
Witnesses: Robert Wotherspoon, Rev. John Taylor Stark and wives
Type of sighting: Multiple humps and tail in water

It's time for a classic sighting and this one from 67 years ago is interesting from more than one point of view. Our main witness, Robert Wotherspoon, was a man of some means and reputation from the Highlands. According to his obituary in the Glasgow Herald of 28th December 1968, he worked his way up to senior partner for the solicitors McAndrews and Jenkins and during the war he was promoted to commanding officer of the northern region of the Air Training Corps. After the war, he went into business and became managing director of Caledonian Associated Cinemas, a chain of fifty cinemas and also served as the Provost of Inverness between 1954 and 1961.

As a self made millionaire, it seems it would not be in his interest to become the butt of jokes if he ever claimed to have seen Nessie. Nevertheless, he was adamant about what he saw on that clear Summer day. The sighting came into focus for me when I came across a 1957 article about Wotherspoon speaking at a series of business engagements in North America. The clipping below is from the Calgary Herald dated 28th October 1957 followed by a transcript of the story.

Loch Ness Monster Sight Is Described By Scotsman

One of the few men ever to see the Loch Ness Monster arrived in Calgary this weekend and told how it happened. He is Robert Wotherspoon, provost (mayor) of Inverness and vice-chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board.

As managing director of Caledonian Associated Cinemas, owners of 50 theatres throughout Scotland. Mr. Wotherspoon is visiting Canada and the US primarily on business.

But he finds the monster is like an eight-ender in curling or a hole in one at golf. Once it happens to you, everything else seems comparatively unimportant. Expressing surprise at the interest shown in the monster here Mr. Wotherspoon contemplated asking Inverness to send on a postcard showing what the beast looks like. As far as Mr. Wotherspoon is concerned, it (or parts of it) looks like nothing so much as an elephant taking a bath. Two friends, a minister and his wife, were visiting him at the time he saw whatever it was. He decided to take his guests down to see Loch Ness in his car. The Loch is about six miles from Inverness.

"A few miles down the loch, I spotted the monster," Mr Wotherspoon related. "The people in the car were very skeptical. So I stopped and walked to the side of the water. There, right enough, was the monster, about 20 yards out from the shore."

Mr. Wotherspoon recalled that, a few weeks earlier, a circus was in town and he had seen a group of elephants "disporting themselves" in a river. He decided that the first hump of the monster resembled an elephant lying on its side. The size, color and texture were the same.

"There were other humps and spaces between them," Mr. Wotherspoon continued. "I did not see the head. The place where the head would be was under water." Adding to the drama, a salmon leaped high out of the water. At the instant when it fell back in, the humps of the monster straightened out.

Mr Wotherspoon believes the salmon had had it. "obviously swallowed by the monster." At this point, the monster turned toward the centre of the loch and soon Mr Wotherspoon lost sight of it. "As it proceeded through the loch, it created a wash not unlike that of a small fishing boat." he reported. "I estimated its length at slightly more than 60 feet."

He had run to his car to get a camera. But the car had recently been washed and, at that time, the camera had been removed. The minister accompanying Mr. Wotherspoon also saw the monster and verified the discovery. Several imperfect pictures of the monster have been taken since it first was sighted in 1895. The best photo corresponds to what Mr Wotherspoon saw, he said.

Mr Wotherspoon said his current trip is in the nature of a "goodwill mission" to all Scots in Canada. "Particularly, as provost of the capital of the Highlands, I would like all Highlanders to know that we think very kindly of them and wish to convey heartiest greetings to them." he said. "A warm welcome awaits them when they decide to pay a holiday visit home."

I lie reported that the tourist season in Scotland this year had been "phenomenal—the best we have ever had." His main business interest at the moment, Mr. Wotherspoon said, is the development of commercial television in Scotland. Problems of televising in Scotland are similar to those in Western Canada, he said. He is interested in knowing how Canada gets television in to remote areas such as the interior regions of the Rockies.

A few months before his death, Mr. Wotherspoon again related his story to David Cooke with further details for his 1969 book, "The Great Monster Hunt". We learn that he saw three humps in total and the sighting occurred opposite Urquhart Castle. The name of the other male witness was also given as the Reverend John Taylor Stark. He also added that the tail became visible as it moved to the centre of the loch and it pushed up waves 2.5 to 3 feet high.

John Taylor Stark, it turns out, was an influential Baptist minister in Scotland leading the faithful at the Victoria Place Baptist Church in Paisley near Glasgow. He was also President of the Baptist Union of Scotland in 1944-45. Can we conclude that two witnesses such as these were not likely to fabricate such a story? I would, others may not.

Wotherspoon's sighting is remarkable for its proximity of a mere 60 to 70 feet away. Not many other sightings can claim to be closer. Interestingly, he comments that the creature had a hide similar in texture to that of an elephant. He is not the first to mention this but others have mentioned a smoother more polished texture. One would imagine you could not have both but I am not so sure as we look further into this story. 

HUMPS

Looking at the humps, I am struck by the fact that he saw three humps separated by water only a mile down the road from where Lachlan Stuart took his famous three hump photo five years later. Was Wotherspoon's sighting a near copy of what Stuart claimed to have seen? We cannot be sure for Wotherspoon does not say what shape his humps were plus he did not see any head or neck as Stuart claimed.

  

My own feeling is that the humps were more rounded and closer together. I conclude this because of what he says next:

 "Adding to the drama, a salmon leaped high out of the water. At the instant when it fell back in, the humps of the monster straightened out."

This is a statement loaded with implication. We have had other sightings in which the humps have changed shape before the witnesses' eyes but here the action is seemingly accompanied by intent - the proximity of food. The salmon drops into the water and the humps simultaneously straighten.

Fascinating.

I have stated on this blog before that the Loch Ness Monster is more an opportunistic predator than one which roams the loch in pursuit of prey. The diffuseness of the food stock demands that patrolling the loch is not an energy efficient procedure. There is food enough in the loch but it must be caught in a better way. In a previous article I suggested a ploy similar to the Angel Shark where the creature lies in wait ready to grab its passing prey (see clip at end of said article).

Furthermore, the retractable appendage (which may or may not be a neck) which I also discussed in this article could shoot out in a manner conjusive to this tactic. Shooting out an appendage to capture prey is a common energy saving tactic employed in the animal world. Frogs and chameleons have employed their tongues successfully in this venture before we ever arrived on the scene of time.

  


So, imagine the scene under the water as Robert Wotherspoon observes the salmon re-enter the water and the humps straightening. The monster's neck/appendage shoots out to grab the salmon and a cause or effect of this is that the humps straighten out. Does the appendage extending cause the humps to straighten or does the humps straightening cause the appendage to extend? That is an area of some speculation.

One line of thought is that the humps are buoyancy devices which allows the creature's humps to stand so far out of the water or at varying other depths below the surface. Other animals employ inflatable sacs for various purposes - courtship display, defense or mock attack. The gas used can be air or some other gas with a different density, indeed it is also possible that the loch's water could also fill the sacs.

How this affects appendage extension/retraction is unclear but is worthy of further thought. Different animals employ different techniques. The chameleon uses a form of coiled collagen to further propel the tongue. The frog uses muscle fibres at right angles to each other. What the Loch Ness Monster uses may be gas or water based.

Another seeming contradiction may be answered here and that is the reports of  smooth and rough skinned monsters. It may be objected that swimming animals tend to have smooth skins so as to reduce drag underwater and that is true. But we have already suggested that the monster is not given to frequent motion (though it can up its speed if required on rare occassions).

However, our inflatable hump scenario can perhaps answer this in that when the humps are fully inflated with gas, air or water) then the skin  "fills out" to give our oft reported smooth skin and when deflated it contracts and takes on a more wrinkly appearance. Perhaps, but in the world of the Loch Ness Monster there is plenty of room for speculation and a bit of lateral thinking.

HISTORY 

One further point that this case obliquely refers to and that is the antiquity of the Loch Ness Monster. You may have noted that the author of the Calgary Herald article states that:

"Several imperfect pictures of the monster have been taken since it first was sighted in 1895."

Now the modern era of Nessie began in 1933, so where did the reporter get this date of 1895? The most obvious answer, given the context, was from Mr. Wotherspoon himself during his Nessie talk. Where did he get the date from? I would suggest from local sources back in Scotland. 

This theory is backed up by what Mr. Wotherspoon added as a postscript to his talk with David Cooke in 1968. He said that he arrived at the loch "over forty years ago" and it was shortly after that that he began to hear stories about the monster.  

The aforementioned obituary from 1968 mentions that Mr. Wotherspoon arrived at Inverness in 1921. From that we conclude that he was aware of a creature in Loch Ness twelve years before it became international news in 1933.

Given the connections that Robert Wotherspoon had as a local businessman and his love for fishing and hunting (stated in Cooke's book), it is no surprise that if there was gossip of something strange in Loch Ness, he would be a prime candidate to find out.

Why he should state 1895 is not clear as there is no claimed sighting for that year. One clue is from a letter to the Times in 1933 from the Duke of Portland:

“I should like to say that when I became in 1895 ... the tenant of the salmon angling in Loch Oich and the River Garry, the forester, the hotel keeper and the fishing ghillies used to often talk about a ‘horrible great beastie’ as they called it which appeared in Loch Ness.”

Had the local men recently seen something which prompted such discussions? There is no further information to make a judgement. The subject is further energised but not concluded by rumors rathers than facts as the Loch Ness literature talks of a Glasgow newspaper which mentioned the monster in 1896 and there is the curious case of UFO researcher John Keel finding an article on the Loch Ness Monster in an 1896 Atlanta newspaper. Again, neither of these articles has been found but one wonders if these four allusions to something happening around 1895-96 carries a kernel of truth? Only further research and digging into the archives may reveal an answer and if we do find anything, it will be reported on this blog.

The Extraterrestrial Loch Ness Monster

Is the Loch Ness Monster a species of animal that is not only beyond the reach of identification but also beyond the reaches of this planet? In the latest of our series of articles on "What is the Loch Ness Monster?", we come to possibly the weirdest one yet.

The question will naturally arise as to what grounds one would base such a claim upon. I personally have none but we like to look at all theories on this blog whether they are considered respectable or not. However, it was a comment by a reader recently that proved the catalyst for this article. He had said that it was the higher strangeness sightings that he was mainly interested in and this got me thinking for there was a story that was dimly in my memory.

It involved a person who claimed they had had an extraterrestrial encounter with the Loch Ness Monster. and for the life of me I could not remember the source of the story.  As it turned out, my years of teenage research into UFOs and other strange phenomena proved worthwhile as I had kept some notes and that story was there. It involved a man called Ted Owens and was related in a book called "UFO Trek" by Warren Smith. The author had included snippets of an interview he conducted with Ted Owens who was a "contactee". Owens claimed to be in contact via telepathy with extra-dimensional beings he called the "Space Intelligences" and also claimed they had given him special psychokinetic abilities to influence such things as the weather. The relevant part of the interview is quoted below:

Smith: I understand you were in Scotland and found out something about the Loch Ness Monster. Would you share that with us?

Owens: I went over there to make contact with the SIs. They sent me on a mission and Loch Ness was one of the places I was to visit. It was the dark of night, just after midnight, when I stood on the shores of the lake. That's when the monster came up out of the depths and surfaced. It wasn't more than twenty or thirty feet from the shore. It stared at me and in the moonlight I could see a long neck, about eight inches in diameter, and a small head. The head was about the size of a football. I communicated with the creature. It is from another dimension and has a link with the SIs. The monster does not die because it does not have a life system as we understand it. Actually, there is more than one such creature in the Loch.

I would presume this alleged incident took place in the early 1970s. Quite a story as you can imagine but what shall we make of it? In more ways that one, the extraterrestrial Nessie theory is similar to the Paranormal Nessie theory. It solves such questions as food supply and elusiveness. In this very quote, the creature is implying it has no need of whatever is in the loch for nutrition and the question of elusiveness is further answered since there is a presumption that its obvious intelligence and other abilities makes it decide whether to put in an appearance before those incredulous humans.

But then again more questions arise than answers. After all, it is a contentious subject whether alien life forms even visit the Earth today, let alone leave other such lifeforms in lakes around the world. The natural assumption is that dropping an extraterrestrial creature in a foreign world would probably not work out ecologically and biologically as out of place creatures tend not to do well outside of their natural habitats. But then again, these are highly advanced aliens, so they have presumably solved that problem (Note: Owens claimed these Space Intelligences were extra-dimensional and composed of light and energy, so not quite the traditional visitors from another planet).

Why the creatures are even in a remote Highland loch is not answered and the fact that this creature is intelligent and perhaps even telepathic stretches credulity further. If one believes in alien visitors (and there are may who hold to that view) then it is perhaps not such a leap to believe they may have placed other lifeforms in earthly locations. However, for others, Ted Owens may have been better advised to have held back at this point!

But there is one area of the Loch Ness legend which does chime with this story and that is the old Water Horse tales. The Loch Ness Kelpie was described as intelligent as humans (if not more) and also could communicate with them (albeit verbally). Indeed, in one account from the 19th century, we have the Loch Ness Water Horse engaging a human in conversation on the subject of returning its magical bridle! Was this modern story no more than a continuation of that venerable tradition? 

Perhaps it is as we investigate further. We have actually met the author Warren Smith before as he wrote a book on the Loch Ness Monster which we featured in our Loch Ness bibliography. The book is titled "Strange Secrets of the Loch Ness Monster" and was published in 1976. This was my short review of the book:

A book with a back cover which asks some startling questions. Such as is Nessie the relic of a lost underwater civilisation? Is there a connection between Nessie and the Hollow Earth, Bermuda Triangle and UFOs? Best of all, is her picture carved in ancient pyramids?

Pertinent questions to which the answer is a collective "No". As it turns out, this boilerplate book is a general survey of lake monsters worldwide with perhaps a third of its 234 pages devoted to Nessie and other Highland creatures.

Interestingly, Smith doesn't mention the Owens story in this book and it rather takes the view that the creature may be a giant eel. So did Smith not believe Owen's story or was Owen's story only made known to him after his Nessie book? As it turns out, a biography on Owens called "The PK Man" by Jeffrey Mishlove states that Owens was interviewed by Smith in 1975, so he would have known about it beforehand. Furthermore, Mishlove's book makes no mention of this Loch Ness incident which may be explained below.

I say that because the waters are muddied further in an article on Warren Smith written back in 2007 called "Warren Smith: UFO Investigator or Hoaxster". This article by Tim Banse claims that Smith would fabricate entire UFO stories for his books. The reason given was simple, the money was required to pay the bills and buy Christmas presents for his four kids. The article can be found here.

If Smith did fabricate this Loch Ness Monster story, then it would be clear why he did not include it in his more mainstream Nessie book. But the case is not proven, did Warren Smith or Ted Owens make the story up or did Ted Owens really believe he had such an encounter at Loch Ness one night long ago?

Whatever the truth behind this story, like the Fordyce case it is a statistical outlier and should be treated as such. The vast majority of Loch Ness Monster cases in no way suggest the kind of creature that Ted Owens describes. Until corroborating reports come to light which back it up, it needs to be decisively set aside.

That does not discard our Extraterrestrial Nessie as a theory, it just does not have much if anything to back it up .. unless readers wish to add anything they may know.
 

More Rip Hepple Nessletters

Please find below the links to the final set of Rip Hepple's Nessletter. Under Rip's suggestion, the series stops at issue 120 in January 1995. This set of scans is a bit different to previous ones which were image files. These ones are PDF files which were scanned at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh which is a twenty minute drive from my house. 

The appearance of the scans are also different as my home based scans were done on an A4 scanner which each page completely covered. At the library, the scanners are more heavy duty and can cover much larger page sizes. So when you view a page you will also see some of the surrounding machinery of the scanner.

Also, I was not allowed to separate pages which were fastened by staples, so when the page was folded over, there may be a few words missing which are under the staple fold. If I had more time I would redo the images to exclude the machinery, but at about 400 pages and the fact that no information is gained, I'll leave that to a distant future date.

However, at about 400 pages, one thing I do want to finally add is an index. So at some point I will go through each newsletter adding subjects such as sightings, theories, persons, ecology and so on.

Enjoy the archive and let me know of any issues you may notice.

P.S. I note issue 118 is missing, I'll need to figure out what happened there!

No.71 August 1985 - link

No.72 October 1985 - link

No.73 December 1985 - link

No.74 February 1986 - link

No.75 April 1986 - link

No.76 June 1986 - link

No.77 August 1986 - link

No.78 October 1986 - link

No.79 December 1986 - link

No.80 February 1987 - link

No.81 April 1987 - link

No.82 July 1987 - link

No.83 August 1987 - link

No.84 October 1987 - link

No.85  December 1987 - link

No.86 February 1988 - link

No.87 April 1988 - link

No.88 June 1988 - link

No.89 August 1988 - link

No.90 October 1988 - link

No.91 December 1988 - link

No.92 February 1989 - link

No.93 April 1989 - link

No.94 June 1989 - link

No.95 August 1989 - link

No.96 February 1990 - link

No.97 April 1990 - link

No.98 July 1990 - link

No.99 August 1990 - link

No.100 November 1990 - link

No.101 March 1991 - link

No.102 June 1991 - link

No.103 August 1991 -  link

No.104 October 1991 - link

No.105 December 1991 - link

No.106 January 1992 - link

No.107 March 1992 - link

No.108 May 1992 - link

No.109 July 1992 - link

No.110 September 1992 - link

No.111 January 1993 - link

No.112 March 1993 - link

No.113 June 1993 - link

No.114 August 1993 - link

No.115 November 1993 - link

No.116 January 1994 - link

No.117 April 1994 - link

No.118 - TBD

No.119 October 1994 - link

No.120 January 1995 - link

Sceptics and the Fordyce Case

Some further thoughts came out of the Fordyce land sighting article I submitted recently. This was prompted by some comments on this blog and elsewhere that suggested Mr.Fordyce saw nothing more than a horse crossing the road. But before we proceed any further and to erase any doubts in your minds, here is a picture of a horse crossing a road.

original link

Unmistakable, really. It's a horse, what more needs to be said? Well, it is put to us that Fordyce saw a horse and so we must examine this proposition. The first question that naturally arises is how two witnesses (Mr. Fordyce and his fiancee) could mistake such a well known animal for any other than what it was? The answer is that they should not. I mentioned previously that I have seen deer as I drove through the same location and there was no doubt about what I saw - common deer. I expect if Fordyce did see a horse then the probabilities will dictate he would recognise it as such and we would have never heard from the man to this day.

I would not even class such a proposition as a species of the critical thinking that sceptics claim to have the upper hand in. I say this for the simple reason that such a proposition is useless without a reason. The proposer must explain the reason why he or she thinks the witness mistook a horse for something completely freakish. In other words, the burden of proof lies with the proposer.

Until then, the proposition is nothing more than guesswork and should not be taken seriously. After all, if the proposer is not serious about explaining his theory, neither should we be serious about receiving it.

Now I am not suggesting that we must de facto accept that Mr. Fordyce saw an outlandish creature, but one often gets the impression with sceptics that any old suggestion will do because it is always going to be more probable than the idea that whatever the witness saw was a monster.

This is not critical thinking and is more a form of the logical fallacy of petitio principii or "begging the question".  In other words, the premise and conclusion are wrapped into one package and presented as a solution. In reality, it is a process which has the end event of the conclusion ("he saw a horse") but what the prior reasoning may be lies behind a thick fog - if it is there at all.

So each proposed explanation must stand or fall on its own merits and not be judged in relation to other explanations. This should be the target reasoning of the "sceptics" but sometimes it is no better than the reasoning of some "believers".

I'll leave the last word to the horse.

Mhorag, Loch Ness and the Brahan Seer

The BBC and some other outlets are talking about some old tales of Mhorag as found in the works of the Highland writer, Alexander Carmichael. As it turns out, these have been in the public domain for over a year and I did an analysis of them in this article back then.

Another interesting piece from the Carmichael blog is relevant to Loch Ness but not necessarily to the Loch Ness Monster. From this article, we have this quote about the famous prophet, the Brahan Seer:

One typical tale, noted down on 3 January 1872, from an unnamed reciter in Gramsdale, Benbecula, tells of how the seer came by his powers of prophecy and then how he eventually threw this stone into Loch Ness. It is said that when this stone is eventually rediscovered that all his prophecies will come true.

The actual Carmichael text says this:

He then got a box and in the box a stone and in the stone all the prophecy. He kept the stone and as long as he kept it he [kept] prophesying. He threw from himself the stone in a lake at near Lochness. When this lake is drained the stone will be found and then many things will come to light. 

This suggests the stone may actually be in a loch beside Loch Ness rather than in Loch Ness itself. However, there are quite a few small lochs in the area. Another link suggests that the next person to find the stone will have two navels! I don't have two navels, so it doesn't look like I will be the winner. However, better it is a smaller satellite loch than Loch Ness when it comes to the task of draining.

I would guess that some lochs have been drained or at least had their water levels reduced as various engineering projects have been performed across the Highlands since the 19th century. Loch Ness itself has had a few hydro-electric projects at Foyers, Glendoe and I think on the opposite side up from the Altsigh Burn, though whether any lochs were substantially affected by any such projects is another question.

However, having identified potential historic lochs, the next problem would be more challenging, how do you find a certain small stone out of thousands and how do you know it is the prophet's stone? The one clue we have is that it had a hole through its centre. That's all you've got to go on and to make matters worse, the loch in question probably hasn't been drained!

They've looked for the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail and El Dorado. Perhaps a hunt around Loch Ness for the Seer's stone would make for a pleasant diversion from monster hunting.

Jamie Stoker's "Loch Ness"

Here is a website I like. It is a portfolio of photographs, comments and interviews surrounding the area and mystery of Loch Ness as seen through the eyes of freelance photographer, Jamie Stoker (pictured below). He tells us that as a kid his ambition was to become a cryptozoologist which is a feeling I can concur with at the same stage of life!

Interleaved with beautiful pictures of the loch, Jamie includes interviews with various Loch Ness personalities - Adrian Shine, Dick Raynor, Steve Feltham, Tony Harmsworth and Willie Cameron. In this he manages to maintain a balance between between "sceptics" and "believers" (for want of better phrases).

I hope you enjoy his montage as much as I did.

Inverness Courier on upcoming Nessie Conference

The Inverness Courier has a large part to play in modern sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. It was their report of a "strange spectacle" on Loch Ness in May 1933 that was the first in an innumerable stream of journalistic write ups on this phenomenon that continue to this day.

Unlike the prior era when such eyewitness testimonies were dismissed as old Kelpie legends, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the need to boost the local economy provided an ample reason for letting this story run - whether there was a monster in the loch or not! One quote apposite to this is from Charles Paxton:

Despite his sole visit, Mr Paxton maintains he is qualified to take part in the conference as he will focus on the statistical analysis of more than 800 eyewitness reports, many of which had been obtained by trawling back issues of the Courier.

He found the peak years for recorded sightings were 1933 and 1934.

“It was incredible,” Mr Paxton said. “If you go back over the old issues, you realise what a massive impact it had. There were traffic jams all around the loch.

“The council in Inverness had a tourism budget but they decided to dispense with it as so many people were flocking to Loch Ness. Until I started to read about it. I had no idea what a massive phenomenon it was.”

Original story here.

Details of Conference here.