Karl Shuker's latest Nessie book and the Surgeon's Photo

I finally finished Karl Shuker's book on Nessie entitled, "Here's Nessie: A Monstrous Compendium from Loch Ness" and review it here, but some things Karl said also merits some thoughts on that most famous of Nessie photographs, the Surgeon's Photo.

Firstly, Karl has brought a lot to the cryptozoological table since the 1990s and his PhD in zoology qualifies him to speak perceptibly on various issues in the field of cryptozoology. Naturally, the Loch Ness Monster is one of those go to subjects and one that gripped the attention of Karl from his youth upwards.

Now the book itself is a compendium, so what we have is an collection of Karl's shorter writings over the years addressing the issue of the monster in its zoological, cultural and folkloric aspects. In that respect, some of the material may be familiar to seasoned Nessie readers. But the main point is that his thoughts are now put down on paper. As I have emphasised before, websites do not last forever. The may end up partially archived on Internet archive websites, but paper adds a degree of permanency which I welcome.

The scope of the book is wide and its depth varied as it moves from detailed analysis of cryptid theories to the lighter aspects of songs written and stamps issued in honour of this most famous of Scottish icons. The book begins in a more serious tone as it looks at the monster as plesiosaur and as long neck pinniped. The long necked seal theory was quite popular back in the 1970s as it was championed by the likes of Bernard Heuvelmans and Peter Costello.

I agree with Karl's conclusions that this is an unlikely candidate for the Loch Ness Monster. There are too many cons outweighing the pros of the argument. I would add the qualifier that I would only consider it viable if the creature was somehow not a resident of the loch, but rather a visitor who breeds and feeds elsewhere. That in itself is another discussion.

The modified plesiosaur also enjoys extended treatment and Karl writes well on this vexed subject. I say vexed because even if plesiosaurs survived the great Cretaceous extinction, we have no idea what they would like today after such a long time. It would be easy to add various adaptions to produce a Nessie-like plesiosaur, but a surviving plesiosaur may actually look nothing like the Loch Ness Monster. 

I also appreciated Karl's lookback at the 1987 symposium on the Loch Ness Monster in Edinburgh which I have read obliquely about in its published papers, but not from the perspective of an attendee. I am trying to think why I did not make this event myself. I suspect it was because I had started working and became a bit too focussed on that! 

Thereafter, the book tends to move towards smaller cultural articles which is probably a wise move as one is more focused at the beginning. 

THE WILSON CONTROVERSY

But let us focus more on the overview of chapter one and Karl's words on the Surgeon's Photo. Karl takes a strong line in viewing the Spurling story of the hoaxed photograph as a hoax itself and bases this conclusion on various inconsistencies he sees in the narrative and which he lists in his book.

Now I myself take the view, based on the balance of the pros and cons, that the Spurling account is true. I don't say that with a 100% certainty as I tend to rate Nessie pictures on a scale of probability which is purely my own personal interpretation (as everyone's will be).

So in the mix of pictures that I regards as fake, real or misinterpretation, I may say a picture is 60-40 in favour of being the monster or I may say it is 70-30 in favour of being a wake or something else. That rating approach will also apply to this famous photograph. Let me now list Karl's objections in no particular order of persuasiveness.
 

1. There was a suspicious delay in publicising the 1975 Marmaduke article, leading to it being too late to question now deceased people.

2. The clockwork submarine with attached neck would be unstable. Karl does admit that a Japanese TV documentary crew did get a toy submarine stable, though he is not convinced of its closeness to the original setup.

3. The ripples around object show it is not moving, in distinction to the claim that the submarine was moving.

4. A 1987 study by LeBlond/Collins study of the surrounding wave patterns suggests the neck is nearer to four feet high and not the one foot that Spurling claimed.

5. The submarine theory does not explain the second photograph (below).

6. There are contradictions between the Wetherell confession and the Spurling confession.

7. Why did the hoaxers not expose the picture to the world and get their revenge on the Daily Mail?

8. The Egginton letter claimed Wilson told Egginton that the photo was a superimposition laid over an original image and not a model.

9. There is no evidence that the toy submarine was used (no photos of it or its deployment). The descendants of Marmaduke Wetherell manage to produce the hippo ashtray with which he produced his infamous tracks, but they could not produce anything to do with the toy submarine.

Now obviously some arguments carry less weight that others. I would not attach much weight to points 1, 4 and 7 as I can see counter explanations. Point 2 and the stability of the modified submarine was always one that could go either way for me. Spurling said he stabilised it by adding lead strips to the bottom and that is fair enough.

This was basically one that needed to be retried to satisfy curiosities. I can't find a link which shows this Japanese crew trying out their submarine reproduction, if anyone can find it, post a link below. But for me, the main test is not placing this in a bathtub, but seeing how stable such an arrangement would be in choppier waters. 

Points 3, 6 and 8 are all variations on the theme of contradictory witness statements. Was the rigged submarine moving or not? Was it actually a manipulated photo rather than a model? Wetherell does not mention Spurling as a co-conspirator and Spurling does not mention Chambers. Wetherell says it was rubber tubing, Spurling says it was plastic wood.

Now I have to say that if this was a group of eyewitnesses describing a monster sighting, the same sceptics who dismiss these contradictions would quite happily use them against any Nessie report ... because their prejudices demand they be used against the eyewitnesses. I expect nothing less from sceptics and their tactics, but should others fall for this?

The answer can be "yes" or "no" depending on the case. My problem is that Ian Wetherell made his confession 41 years after the event and Spurling made his nearly 60 years after. Clearly, there is going to be a significant degree of memory recall issues after such long periods. In fact, one cannot be sure either of them is being accurate in their details.

In the absence of written records or retained artifacts, I would say it is impossible to distinguish a lie from a memory defect after such a long period. That does not mean the basic story is in doubt, but rather the precise details.

Point 9 has its merits as well as we do have the hippo ashtray (now resident at the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit) but we have nothing physical to prove the Wilson hoax. Wetherell claimed the sub was stepped on because a water bailiff approached the group. It seems they did not recover it.

I had a curious thought at that point. Was not Alex Campbell the water bailiff at Loch Ness and so was he the supposed bailiff that interrupted the Wetherells? If so, he seems to have said nothing about it to anyone!

Finally, there is point 5 and that mysterious second photograph. I know critics say the wave patterns are different between the two photos, but the point is that the Spurling theory does not predict the photo, let alone explain it. It was on one of the exposed plates, so what does it mean? To date, I have read no persuasive argument regarding it.

So, do you think these nine points swing the argument towards "monster" or keep it in "hoax" territory? I have been aware of these arguments for some time, but I still weigh the pros and cons and come out about 60-40 in favour of this being a hoax. The one thing I would say is that this story has two confessors - Ian Wetherell and Christian Spurling.

Any one individual can make an accusation against a photo and we have had them in this field and that is why I am cautious about accepting one single person's accusation unless there is some corroborating evidence (e.g. Richard Frere and his lone accusation against Lachlan Stuart).

So we have two people on the record and, unless you believe in a conspiracy, that strengthens the case. And that is where I think I would leave this particular case.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Up at the Loch again

About six weeks after my day trip to Loch Ness, it was time for a longer visit to Britain's largest stretch of freshwater. We pitched up at the Foyers campsite where we have been going for a number of years now and always found a great place to stay. That site is up for sale and we wish Donald and Lyn Forbes well in their retirement and hope the good work continues under new ownership.

Now I do not normally go up north in July as I anticipate a surge of tourism crowds and it is generally hotter for moving around. As it turned out the crowds did not turn up and it looked more like May than July to me. Well, a lot of foreign tourists did not make the trip this year and the staycation people may have gone abroad in bigger numbers than I thought. 

As usual, I took a walk along Foyers beach to take in the views but also this year with a task in mind; as will be explained later. Back in the tent as the sun descended, I read my usual chapter from Ted Holiday's 1968 book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness". The chapter was "Foyers at Sunrise" which describes Holiday's first trip to the loch in August 1962, a spartan affair in an old van with fishing rods and frying pans which ended with Holiday catching his first sight of the creature from Upper Foyers. 

The "orm" was down below in a small estuary beside the old aluminium works, but today I wondered if there was any chance of recreating that view due to the surge in growth of the intervening trees and other foliage. That depends where Holiday was standing, but the loch is not as accessible as it was sixty years ago.

One thing to check on this initial walk was that curious depressed area of grass I had found almost exactly a year before. The first photo shows what this large area looked like then and the second what it looks like now. Clearly some large weight had laid upon it a year ago and at some point it recovered its normal position. Actually, it looked a bit threadbare compared to last year. No worries, I jokingly mused, Nessie's toxic slime must have killed them off.

The following day, the hot and humid conditions continued as we took a leisurely drive up to Inverness, stopping at various points to watch the loch and consuming Pot Noodle for lunch. This was what is traditionally considered, "Nessie Weather", though how much of this is due to monsters or humans is unclear. More people are looking at the loch in good weather and the surface conditions are far less choppy, though there was a cooling breeze travelling up the loch.

In Inverness, we visited some bookshops and took in the reopened Museum. It has to be said that books on the Loch Ness Monster are hard to find in the largest centre of population just eight miles from the loch - apart from the usual kids' books. Even a visit to the well stocked Leakey's Secondhand bookshop had nothing. No Holiday, no Dinsdale, no Whyte or Gould (though their Abebooks account did have two Whyte books). But go online and you will find everything you need.

The next day we did a circuit of the entire loch from Foyers, through Fort Augustus, Drumnadrochit and back down via Dores. Stopping at Kilchuimen for supplies, I had one task which involved walking along the River Oich. There is a path you can take which lies tight between the river and the petrol station. Just remember to bring a machete at this time of year. Once the towering but derelict bridge arch came into view, I remembered Ricky Phillips.

I wondered if the branch he had photographed about two and a half years ago and palmed off as the monster was still there? Yes, it was as the photo below demonstrates. It is right in the centre and the zoom in shows it more clearly. As it turned out, the focus of this trip was all about famous hoax pictures.

Once we were back at base, there was work to be done. The waders were donned and the Garrett Ace 250 metal detector was taken out of the car boot. What has this to do with the Loch Ness Monster you may ask? The answer is the Surgeon's Photograph and the alleged toy submarine employed by Marmaduke Wetherell. Back in March, I had written an article suggesting that the site for this hoax was the western end of the beach at Foyers which I had walked along many a time. 

There was therefore two questions to answer. Did Wetherell leave any pieces of the toy sub when he crushed it underfoot and how detectable would such fragments be today, eighty seven years on? My assumption was that it was a long shot that anything would be found, but there was only one way to find out and start metal detecting.

Since I was searching in the waters of the loch, there was no need to seek the permission of the owner of the beach. Fortunately, the Garrett detector is waterproof up to the control unit at the top. That gave me a couple of feet of water to work with. Since Ian Wetherell stated that his father had stepped on the sub as the water bailiff approached, it did not sound like too deep a waters.

I must admit I felt like that chap, Gary Drayton, from one of my favourite programmes, "The Curse of Oak Island". Would I manage that "top pocket find" and draw the curtain on the infamous picture? As I kicked off and swept the coil above the submerged rocks, the detector began buzzing almost right away. The rocks underfoot are quite big on this beach, going up to a foot across, so it was more about moving rocks than digging.

I reached down into the now cloudy waters and moved the rocks, retried the coil, gathering up handfuls of gravel for testing until I pulled up a very rusty sliding bolt latch. This was followed by hits on some metal bars, a door hinge and a fly tackle. The Gary Drayton effect had moved more onto what some of these objects were. They would send them off to a specialist blacksmith, I had to make my own educated guesses.

I suspect some of this was related to farming equipment, as the fields above used to be farmland. Fragments may have made their way down the hill from the fields above and kids just picked them up and threw them into the loch over the years and decades. How old the items were was not clear. But their thickness certainly helped preserve them over the years. What was also surprising was that they were buried under quite large rocks. I just expected those rocks to not move and things to lie on top.

So nothing related to the Wetherell hoax found, but I did not cover all the possible areas. After such a long time, my expectation was that perhaps the wind up motor unit would survive the longest, but of course, we do not know what was left behind as the Wetherells headed back to London. But all in all, it was a worthwhile exercise.

The next day, everything was packed up and we slowly headed back south. The weather was brilliant throughout, I had also done some reconnaissance on where to place trap cameras on our next visit and the metal detector as a device performed beyond my expectation, though what else one could employ it for in Loch Ness research is not so clear. Any ideas are invited.

As an aside, I listened to some of Scott Mardis' "Haunted Sea" chats on the "Monster X" podcasts in my tent in the evening. I would recommend his interview with veteran Nessie hunter, Henry Bauer and his chat with Ken Gerhard here. All good stuff.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Vagaries of Loch Ness Monster Journalism

Paul Cropper sent me an interesting article from 1934 on the Loch Ness Monster as it was covered abroad. Paul himself is focused on more antipodean cryptids such as the Yowie, but he occasionally sends me anything he finds of Nessie interest. So, thanks again, Paul.

The article itself is from the Californian Fresno Bee publication of March 4th 1934 and is a syndicated article from London.

I am not sure if you can read the article (click to enlarge) but the gist of it concerns a monster hunt, the Arthur Grant land sighting and a few more sightings. The man in the kilt is Lord Scone, Member of Parliament and son of the Earl of Mansfield. Since we are told that the Loch Ness Monster was the talk of the Upper Classes and Lord Scone was a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society, he was the perfect man to cover as he headed north to seek out the monster for himself.

Though he never caught sight of our famous beastie himself, Lord Scone apparently interviewed upwards of fifty locals and tourists who had claimed to have witnessed the monster in its various aspects. We are told about Alexander Ross, the master of Temple Pier, who saw the monster on three occasions the previous August, November and December.

But the piece de resistance was the famous (or infamous) Arthur Grant, who had seen the creature cross the path of his motor cycle earlier in January at the midnight hour. The picture below from the article says "Men examining prehistoric bones on shores of Loch Ness", but this is complete nonsense. The man on the right I would suggest is the now notorious Marmaduke Wetherell who was around during the Arthur Grant event, conducting his own search for the Daily Mail. 

Wetherell went to the location of the land sighting and examined some bones found at the site which were no doubt nothing more interesting that those of a sheep or similar. The photo below gives some context to what I am saying. Clearly, the author of this article is being economical with the truth and he further embellishes Grant's account with stories of eyes bigger than street lamps and roaring belligerently.

What was most interesting was the article's talk of the "Society Monster Hunters" and a photograph of them flying over the monster swimming away at "30 miles per hour". We are pointed to the plane with the right arrow and the monster in the loch with the left arrow. Who is this mysterious organisation and what is the provenance of this photograph?

Things get stranger when an enlargement of the creature is provided in the next photograph below. On closer examination this turns out to be the Malcolm Irvine film of December 12th 1933. This is the first ever alleged motion film of the creature, but all we have left now is this still. However, Irvine claimed he took it from a hillside opposite Urquhart Castle on the other side of the loch. Clearly, this one is alleged to have been taken from a road by the Castle.

But when I saw that picture of the plane, beast and castle, I thought "Where have I seen that picture before?" and a look at Nicholas Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story" revealed the photo below (page 73 of the 1974 edition).

It is the same photo, but a close examination of it showed no plane and no monster! Overlaying the two pictures confirmed there is nothing at the same location on the original picture. The photo had been retouched to give the impression of a plane flying over a monster in the loch. It seems the editor of this article was not prepared to wait for the arrival of Photoshop. Note the monster hunter in the car is not even looking in the direction of the "monster"!

What are we to say to these things? Shoddy journalism in search of a bit of sensationalism is nothing new. I doubt this particular article had any big effect on the overall scheme of things, after all, who today knows about this alleged photograph?

But in the light of my recent modern folklore article, here we see the modern storytellers adding their cultural layers of "interpretation". Eyes like street lamps, roaring monsters and the mysterious band of "Society Monster Hunters" all were added to the mix and copied across various countries to present a picture of the monster which lacked the realism of what the witnesses claimed to have seen.

Fortunately, not all recorders of cryptid history are so fast and loose with the facts. But it is to be recognised that one has to sift and assess to a certain degree, though certainly not to the degree that everything is tossed into the bins of hoax or misidentification. The Loch Ness Mystery is much more subtle than that simplistic approach.

The 19th Century Monster

On this blog, we don't just look forward to the latest reports of strange creatures in Loch Ness but also like to look back at what has gone before. In fact, way back before anyone alive today. I am pretty sure the 1880s qualifies in that respect. To put that decade in context, Queen Victoria was sovereign of a British Empire at its peak, the first Boer War occurred, Krakatoa exploded killing thousands, electric lighting was beginning to appear in towns and the first automobile was created. There was also rumours of a strange creature in a Highland loch south of Inverness as this clipping from the Daily Mail of 1st May 1934 exemplifies.

LOCH NESS MONSTER'S AGE PROBLEM
BRIDLINGTON MAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Recent reports that the mystery monster of Loch Ness may be quite 50 years of age are fully believed by Mr Arthur B. Browne, of St. Andrew's, Bridlington, who lived near Loch Ness over 50 years ago. Mr Browne told a "Mail" reporter that in 1881, when he was 25 years of age, reports were frequently heard of a grotesque creature's presence in the loch. Mr Browne added: "Although I made no special effort to see the creature others commented upon its existence.

RECALLED IN LETTER FROM CANNES

"Since then the thing has apparently been lying dormant, but only last week I had confirmation of a strange creature's existence in the loch 50 years ago, In a letter which I received from a lady living in Cannes, and who in 1881 was in Inverness. "I was at the loch two and four years ago, but then there was no mention of the creature. In the appearance of the present monster, the most significant thing which strikes me is the imprint of its track. l cannot commit myself in a description of the creature of 50 years ago because, although I visited the loch at the time, I did not personally see it." Mr Goodbody, of Invergarry, who with his two daughters, has seen the monster longer than any other eye-witnesses, is a personal friend of Mr Browne.

So we have claims from two people who were at the loch in the 1880s that reports of a strange creature were being promulgated amongst the locals. Neither person claimed to have seen it and one seemed to have been impressed by tracks found at the loch recently. I presume these were the hippo tracks "found" by Marmaduke Wetherell six months previously. Why she was struck by this is not stated, why would this be "most significant" above other reported features?

Perhaps she had experiences of strange tracks at Loch Ness before? It is to be noted that there was one land sighting of the creature reported from that period in 1880 by an E.H. Bright in the estuary of Urquhart Bay. This involved three toed tracks being left behind and one speculates whether the Wetherell story triggered memories of such stories fifty years before?

Either way, I add this story to the panoply of Victorian anecdotes. It takes its place amongst what was a busy decade for monster stories. We have the story of diver James Honeyman and his underwater encounter as well as the better known story of diver Duncan MacDonald's "huge frog" seen by a wreck. There was also the tale of Calum MacLean and the aforementioned E.H. Bright.

We can further add the tales of the Benedictine Nuns and that of historian David Murray Rose and 1885. H.J. Craig claimed to have seen it in 1889 and we can finally add the claims of Roderick Matheson and Alexander MacDonald with his giant "salamander". But whatever one may make of monster stories in the 1880s, my search of online newspapers for that decade produced nothing in the way of such claims.

Yes, there were one or two tales of the Loch Ness Water Horse legend, but I am not minded to discard the testimony of multiple claimants just because the newspapers either were not told or did not bother going into print with them. But I have discussed the reticence of such newspapers during that time elsewhere. Perhaps Murray Rose has been vindicated in his assertion that the 1880s were a busy time for the monster?

One may also add that back in the 1930s when most of these people came forward, we were pushing back the limits of living memory as anyone of adult age in the 1880s would be in their 70s or more in the 1930s. To wit, there may well have been as much activity in the 1860s or 1870s, but there were few living from those days to say as much. Such people are now long gone and any chance to investigate such stories with them. In that regard, we have the likes of Rupert T. Gould to thank for recording their testimonies and putting them down in paper for future generations.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Loch Ness Monster Artists

The Loch Ness Monster has been drawn, painted and modelled in various ways for decades now. Some are not very serious as I  think of the many humorous postcards and models that have been churned out. However, some people with artistic skills have turned their talents to the Loch Ness story and framed their interpretation over a phenomenon that has had many opinions spoken over it.

One such artist is Bradford Johnson who I have communicated with in recent months. He has a long interest in Nessie and her hunters and has produced a portfolio of related paintings over the years. He is currently working on a gallery entitled "Surveillance And Looking For Signs" which focuses on the monster hunters themselves. One example he sent me is of the (in)famous Nessie hunter, Bernard Wetherell, who was implicated in the Surgeon's Photograph hoax.

The paintings are derived from relevant photographs and Bradford is on the lookout for more hunter photographs. If anyone knows a good source for Wetherell pictures, let me know.

You can view his other Loch Ness Monster portfolios below:

At Loch Ness 2000-2001

Monsters on a Page 1990

Search Box added to Blog

The blog has now racked up nearly 200 posts since July 2010 and so some means of searching has become more desirable.

The links I put on the right hand side plus the archive further down help to some degree but how many times do I refer to Marmaduke Wetherell in my posts? I don't know either without some further help!

So I have added a "SEARCH THIS BLOG" box on the right just below the Hugh Gray photo for anyone who is interested. Note this facility will also search the comments section.

As to Marmaduke Wetherell, the answer is that he is mentioned in five posts.

Bobby the Sea Serpent of Loch Ness

 

On my usual strolling through the Internet in search of Loch Ness Monster curiosities, I came upon this item for sale on eBay. It was a copy of the Chicago Sunday Times dated 18th March 1934. The item can be found here. You can zoom into the article and read it for yourself, though the seller has only put the first page of the article on display.

By then, the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon was about ten months old and news of this Highland creature was now a worldwide topic of discussion. However, the memory of sea serpent tales from last century lingered in the American mind as the journalist presumed this to be an ocean going monster which had somehow got stranded in the loch. This was a line of thinking which has persisted in some form to this day.

The catalyst for the article was the recent offer of a reward of £20,000 by circus owner Bertram Mills for the capture of the monster with that famous cage to hold her in shown. This equates to £1,440,000 in today's money. The article says this was equivalent to $100,000. What are the odds of getting five US dollars to the pound any time soon? 

Fifty one sightings are referred to, relying on Rupert Gould's compilation researched a few months before. George Spicer's famous land sighting is given not a few words and Arthur Grant and W. Goodbody's sightings are given some publicity too. Spicer's sighting is stated as happening at 4pm.

With reference to its sea serpent characteristics, mention is also made of two sea serpent accounts. The first being the 1915 account of the U-28 submarine commander, Baron Von Forstner, followed by the 1918 account by another submarine commander, Captain Werner Loedisch. Finally, the only photograph of the monster to that point, taking by Hugh Gray, is discussed. 

The other fact of interest is the sentence "What is it which has affectionately has been christened 'Bobby'?". This is a name of the monster which has long been lost to the mists of time as the public coverage of the creature evolved. The origin of this name is likewise a bit of a mystery and even Loch Ness historian, Nicholas Witchell, admitted in his book, "The Loch Ness Story", that he did not know where it came from. 

I have seen the name used of the creature before, but its use is rather fleeting. After all, "Bobby" seems a ridiculous name to use for the monster and this is enough to explain why it faded from view. One clue as to its origin comes from the contemporary sea serpent researcher, .A. C. Oudemans, who says the name was given to the beast by the Daily Mail newspaper on the 12th December 1933. I have not seen the original source, but it nicely ties up with the expedition to the loch by Marmaduke Wetherell which was sponsored by the Daily Mail.

In fact, newspapers of the time stated that Wetherell was to leave London for the loch on the 16th, a few days later. I would therefore speculate that the Daily Mail felt they had to christen the monster which they thought they were about to shed light on - but never did. The name "Bobby" never got past 1934 but what about its better known name of "Nessie"?

Oudemans makes a similar claim for the Daily Mail, saying they first used this name in their Sunday edition dated June 24th 1934. Again, I have no sight of that edition, but further research showed this not to be the case. The oldest reference I found to "Nessie" was from the Edinburgh Evening News dated 9th January 1934, over six months before which discusses the then recent film taken by Malcolm Irvine. In those days, there were no YouTube clips to view, it had to be at the cinema or private cine reel showings.

Looking at the old newspaper archives suggests the name began in Scottish publications and slowly percolated down south to other British newspapers over the years. But I found no 1933 references to the name "Nessie" which makes me wonder if this was a Scottish response to the London Daily Mail's insipid attempt to use "Bobby" only weeks before? This further report from the English Tamworth Herald dated 31st March 1934 shows the name heading south.

Here is a tale of a group of Scottish rugby fans down for the Scotland-England match towing a model monster named "Nessie". Having said this, the Inverness Courier continued to use the appellation "The Loch Ness Monster" or simply "The Monster" since it had come up with this original formulation which has stuck to this day. But what did Loch Ness Monster researchers think of the name "Nessie"?

Rupert T. Gould as far as I can tell, makes no mention of the name "Nessie" is his June 1934 book "The Loch Ness Monster and Others" preferring the term "Loch Ness Monster" which he attributes to the Inverness Courier. It is possible he had not heard of the term from his London base or perhaps he thought it a term too vulgar to use in serious research.

Twenty years later in her book "More than a Legend", Constance Whyte associates it as a name beloved of press reports but regards it as "undignified" preferring again "The Monster" or "The Loch Ness Monster" . However, she thinks it transliterates well with the local Gaelic name for the beast "An Niseag". This aloofness seems to continue with Tim Dinsdale in his first edition book who only mentions "Nessie" once in quote marks in reference to a letter from an eyewitness.

Ted Holiday is more contemptuous of the word when he also mentions it only once in his 1968 "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" when putting it in the context of comic tourist postcards. In fact, Holiday preferred the term "Orm" or "Dragon" on line with his more exotic views. It seems that least in the 1950s and 1960s, the word "Nessie" was not regarded as a label for the monster to be associated with serious research.

Doubtless, other monster hunters have and had their own preferences for how they mixed their monster terms. I myself prefer "Loch Ness Monster" but will also use "Nessie". Thank goodness "Bobby" never caught on,

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Surgeon's Photographs

Any one that is familiar with the subject of the Loch Ness Monster will know about the "Surgeon's Photograph" taken in April 1934 by Kenneth Wilson. In fact, the image this blog uses is an artist's impression of what may have been seen that day.

Or so it would seem to be Nessie but since the publication of "Nessie: The Surgeon's Photograph Exposed" in the 1990s by David Martin and Alastair Boyd everyone seems to have accepted it is a hoax and moved on.

As good a piece of investigative journalism as it is, some questions still nag in my mind and we will visit these as this blog progresses. But today I wish to focus on the second less well known picture associated with this event. The picture is reproduced below.



Now in the expose book this photograph is mentioned in a little detail. The story is that Wilson took four exposures to Ogston's the Chemist in Inverness for development. Two plates showed something and the others did not. The Daily Mail was offered both but bought only the first for publication. The second plate was not collected by Wilson and Mr. Morrison the chemist allegedly destroyed it but kept a print in his wallet for 20 years until it was published by Constance Whyte in her "More Than a Legend" book in 1957. It also seems that even the print is now lost from Whyte's collection and we do not even know what the original uncropped image looks like and any speculation about what is in that uncropped image remain only speculation which can be interpreted either way according to one's bias so I will say nothing further on that.

There are two things that need to be answered in my opinion. The first is the fact that Wilson took the undeveloped plates at all to be developed by a chemist who was not in on the alleged plot (the book makes no allegation on this point). Logic would dictate that to make sure the whole elaborate plot was successfully recorded on the negative, the development process also had to be done covertly so as to make sure the image was just right. It does not make sense to trust the final stage of the hoax to a third party who cannot be trusted. This leaves a question mark on the alleged modus operandi of the hoaxers. Furthermore, we are told that Wetherell destroyed the model after taking the pictures with no recourse to taking them again if the plates did not turn out well by their untrusted third party chemist!

Secondly, and more importantly, is the way the book treats the second photograph. It is summarily dismissed as having nothing to do with the first photograph, looks nothing like the first "creature" and the wave formation looks different and so on.

But one senses that the book struggles a bit here and an imaginary lawyer defending the Surgeon's Photo would have a field day with this. After all, the natural question to ask is "What did Christian Spurling say about the second photo?". Readers may recall that Christian Spurling was the main character in the expose book who confessed that the whole thing was a hoax he took part in with his step-father Marmaduke Wetherell.

Okay, so Alastair Boyd and David Martin would have asked him about the second photograph. It is unthinkable that they would not have asked him about it in their five hour visit. They knew the second photograph was part of the story and it is a certainty they asked about it. What does the book say that Spurling said about the second photograph? The answer is not a word. If Spurling had said it was a fake too then the authors would certainly have mentioned it in their dismissal of it.

They do not and I put it to you, readers, that the reason Spurling is not quoted as saying it was a fake was because he knew nothing about it. But he was involved in the plot - how could he not have known about it if he was the one who made the fake model? After all, it was one of the four negatives submitted by Wilson for development. How did it come to appear on the plates when the toy submarine with a fake head and neck on top clearly could only produce the first more famous picture? Did the plotters produce a second fake monster in the act of submerging? That is the main question. If Spurling's story is correct, there should be no second photograph so we have a slight conundrum here.

Until we can get to the bottom of the story of the second photograph, I will accept Alastair Boyd has got it right ... but I still have this nagging feeling!

We'll visit this famous story again in later blogs.

Nessie Sceptics at work in 1934

I have masses of e-clippings going back to 1933 and before detailing Nessie and her kelpie predecessor. This particular one is taken from the Hull Daily Mail of 23rd January 1934. The Natural History Museum had not long declared Marmaduke Wetherell's Loch Ness spoors to be the product of a hippo foot.

In that light, two investigators got a hold of their elephant foot waste basket and headed to the beach, as I reproduce below. One thing that escapes me though, didn't the Natural History Museum say that one of the other Wetherell spoors belonged to a rhinoceros? Perhaps someone can confirm that?

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Summing up the Loch Ness Monster (in 1934)

Decades ago, the Field magazine ran an article by Martin Hinton, Deputy Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum in London on the 27th January 1934. By then, the monster phenomenon was about 8 months old and people were asking questions of those in authority. The evidence was scant with the Malcolm Irvine film taken the previous month on December 12th and the Hugh Gray photograph of November 12th along with a few dozen eyewitness testimonies. That now lost film formed the top image of the article as Hinton assessed the phenomenon from his point of view as a sceptical zoologist and is reproduced in text below with my comments following.

SUMMING - UP THE LOCH NESS MONSTER 

Facts versus Visions - An Analysis of the Evidence

By MARTIN A. C. HINTON (Deputy Keeper of Zoology, British Museum - Natural History) 

NO zoologist would deny the possibility of discovering a large creature of "prehistoric type" (whatever that may mean) hitherto unknown to Science, in vast ocean solitudes, in imperfectly explored foreign lands, or even in the limited and completely surveyed waters of Loch Ness. But for more than 200 years zoologists have been busy ransacking this world, and the chance of finding a large vertebrate animal of a type entirely new to Science living anywhere, either on the land or in the sea, grows smaller and smaller every day.

The larger animals of the North Atlantic and the North Sea are fairly well known, and the chance of making a sensational addition to the list is now small indeed. To establish such a discovery today the zoologist would be required to furnish rigid proof based upon a personal examination of at least some characteristic portion of the alleged new animal. Without such proof Science, whose first business is the collection of cold facts, could not recognise such a claim, even though supported by an infinity of eye-witness stories, photographs and alleged "spoors". With good faith all through, such substitutes for real evidence could do no more than make every scientific man very eager to go and collect satisfactory material for himself.

Bad faith showing through, here and there, would arouse his suspicion of the whole story, and would merely tend to divert him from the inquiry. We may accept the 51 eye-witnesses interrogated by Commander Gould and the score or more later witnesses who have made statements describing what they have seen of the Loch Ness "monster" as witnesses of truth; that is to say, each of them has done his best to describe without addition, subtraction or embellishment, what he thinks he saw on the loch or on its shores. Accurate observation, even of familiar stationary things on land, is a very difficult art and accurate description of the impression left by the observation is still more difficult. These difficulties are enormously enhanced when the observation concerns an unfamiliar object seen at some considerable distance in motion in the water, when light, reflections, ripple, wind and haze change from second to second.

Considerations such as these would lead us to expect many discrepancies of detail in the stories of the witnesses; so that no adverse criticism could be based upon the variable nature of their accounts. The more honest and uninstructed the witnesses the more they will differ from each other and the more difficult it will be for the zoologist to find out what it is they are all endeavouring to describe. One fact alone does emerge from this great mass of testimony, namely that for some months the loch has been inhabited by one or more large animals not usually there. Accepting the statements of two or three of the witnesses, we find that the intruder is not confined to the water but comes on shore from time to time, crossing the road, and ascending the slope beyond. One observer surprised the creature on the roadside at night nearly 40 yards ahead. "As he approached, the creature moved, turned a small head in his direction, and then with great bounds crossed the road and plunged into the water." Further. " it had . . . large oval shaped eyes set almost on top of its head . .  a big heavy body, and there were two flippers in front. It seemed also . . . to have two legs behind, and they appeared to be webbed".

From other witnesses we learn that the "monster" chases the salmon, and that it is most frequently seen round the mouths of the streams flowing into the loch or near the exit of the Ness by which the salmon enter from the sea. Several mauled salmon have been found, including at least one "kelt", important. as showing that the injuries were sustained in the loch and not on the upward run of the fish. Now all these facts, looked at broadly, are in harmony with the view that the loch has been invaded by one or more grey seals. They are common in the Dornoch Firth and by no means infrequent in the Beauly Firth. They prey upon the salmon, and probably one or more followed the salmon up the River Ness last year. Seals have been seen in the loch on previous occasions.

The river presents almost insurmountable obstacles to any large marine vertebrate other than a seal or a salmon; but to the grey seal, capable as we know of doing a journey of 30 miles over rough country, the ascent would be easy. The general description of the individual seen on land and of its progress across the road into the water, quoted above, fits the grey seal to perfection if we make allowance for an excusable overestimate of size. Great attempts have been made to lead zoologists to a more romantic conclusion. Much stress has been laid upon the supposed colossal length of the "monster", its small head, long outstretched neck, and serpentine body indicated by humps visible above the water. Each description of the swimming animal is a simple summary of the impressions made upon the mind of each observer by a longer or shorter series of continually changing images. In no one of them could we put implicit trust.

The very agreement of the more sensational stories among themselves tells against them. The observers, despite their good faith, appear to have been influenced subconsciously by three things, singly or in combination, namely, the Kelpie tradition, the sea-serpent myth, and by the picture postcards of the "monster" on sale in Inverness. The Daily Mail, with customary enterprise, sent investigators. These included a big-game hunter. who eventually found two impressions of a large foot upon the shore. Photographs and a cast of these were submitted to the museum, where the impressions were found to have been made on a heaped-up bank of fine shingle with the help of a stuffed foot of a hippopotamus. A wag had been busy - had he used a living hippopotamus the impression would have been different and the big game hunter would not have been deceived ...

Efforts were made to "film" the "monster". Some of the first pictures were reproduced in various newspapers, and two slides made from one of them were shown to the meeting of' British zoologists on January 6th. They showed nothing that could be positively identified as an animal. Although apparently not of great scientific interest, the "monster" is of considerable importance to local industries and to the great world of advertisement. In gratitude business men are asked to address it privately as "ministering angel" reserving "monster" for public occasions.

It struck me reading this sceptical article how little has changed in so called critical thinking regarding the Loch Ness Monster. Hinton (pictured below) was an older colleague of later sceptic Maurice Burton and one senses there was not much difference in their approaches thirty years apart. The one distinguishing factor was Burton's pre-occupation with vegetable mats in the 1960s.

To start with, I agree with Hinton that the real proof is a specimen, be it dead or alive and in part or whole. Nothing has changed in that regard and I have no argument with that from an empirical point of view. However, Hinton's dismissal of eyewitness testimony echoes throughout sceptical history in his successors as a piece of poor science when he asserts that they could not possibly describe what they saw in an accurate manner. 

The trouble with this theory is its unscientific unfalsifiability, to wit, no matter how numerous, how skilled or how close the observers, the testimonies go in one end of this meat grinder and come out "unreliable" with infallible certainty each time. If you would ask Mr. Hinton what eyewitness testimony would escape this tautology, I doubt you would get a clear answer. Note I am not saying each witness will deliver a perfect description, but I am saying there will be accuracy in terms of size and power which differentiates the phenomenon from Highland norms.

Having conveniently rejected all accounts with this blunderbuss approach, Hinton does acknowledge the testimony of eyewitnesses enough to admit they were indicative of the presence of one or more large animals in the loch, though not of the thirty to forty foot variety. He considers the Arthur Grant land sighting and some instances of mauled salmon and kelt to fall in favour with some itinerant grey seals. The inconvenient problems of long necks and humps are dismissed as subconscious embellishments. 

That was his summing up some eight months into the new sensation and some eight decades on, not much has changed in the modern sceptic's summing up. But that pre-war summing up has an awkward ending for Mr. Hinton when he discussed the examination of the plaster casts he and his colleagues received from Marmaduke Wetherell. They were correctly recognised as hippopotamus prints and the product of some joker, though they did not suspect Wetherell himself it seems.

Astoundingly, the hypocrisy of this assessment was later exposed when Hinton was accused after his death of being the person behind the infamous Piltdown Man hoax. Wetherell planted his fake spoors in the cause of advocating a prehistoric monster. Hinton it seems planted his fake hominid jaw, teeth, cranium and tools in the cause of advocating a 500,000 year old fossil human. You can read the defence of this accusation in this 2003 article.

It seems it is not just monster hunters who can be accused of fakery. Even those fine upstanding, critically thinking, sceptical scientists are well capable of indulging in deception. And why should we not be surprised? After all, they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us. Does this disqualify Hinton from speaking on the matter of the Loch Ness Monster? Perhaps not, but the tinkling of broken glass houses can be clearly heard.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Loch Ness Trip Report July 2020

After a long wait, we finally arrived at Loch Ness last week. The coronavirus restrictions had made it nigh on impossible to get to the loch at my usual dates in April and May. By April, I would have usually collected the trail cameras I had left wintering beside the loch. By late May or early June, we would have made our first full trip to the loch. So everything was delayed by about three months until the Scottish Government finally allowed travel beyond five miles from home and facilities, such as the camp site we use, were allowed to open to the public with some social distancing and hygiene rules.

Now we do not usually go to the loch as this time of year simply because it is so busy. The place is heaving with tourists and it is harder to get things done in the quiet and lonesome way that we monster hunters like to do things. However, turning up at the camp, it looked about as busy as it does in May due to the owners having to close down some pitches for social distancing purposes plus the usual rules such as wearing face masks indoors and all the urinals were taped off. The shops were also enforcing these rules. The drive up from Edinburgh was also somewhat easier than usual due to lighter traffic, so I got there in about three hours, which looked like a record time. In fact, we got to the loch early enough to pick up the trail cameras before checking into the camp site.

The cameras had been there three months longer than anticipated, which would normally raise concerns that the increasing number of tourists clambering around the shores would find and steal them (as has happened before). Since there were no tourists at the loch during lockdown, that fear was allayed as all five cameras were retrieved safely. The only annoying thing during that process was a small cloud of flies that had taken a liking to me and followed me down the road. Yes, the midges head net was left in the car.

Once at the site and we had erected the tent, I took my first walk along the beach at Foyers, as is my habit. I strolled to the far end near where Hugh Gray had taken his photograph of the monster in 1933. The loch was in a choppy mood, so it required a bit more concentration to see anything out of the ordinary amidst the churning waves. As it happened, a long but small neck arose from the surface some 30 yards out from me. It was evidently a bird, I would say a cormorant, which quickly dived back below the surface, presumably in search of food. I waited for a few minutes for it to come back up, but with no success, the choppiness of the waters made visual contact harder. I also had a look around the estuary of the river Foyers beside "Dinsdale Island". I had my waders with me and I mused whether I should go over there some time. I also recalled it was the 60th anniversary of the Dinsdale film back in April and his sons had planned to go up for this but were prevented by the lockdown. I wondered if they were due up anytime soon.

A quick check of the trail cameras proved that four out of five had recorded a gamut of images. One had failed to record any images at all, so that would have to be carefully checked before it is deployed again. The other cameras displayed the perennial problem. They record three images on every motion detection. That is great as only boats, birds and you know what will trigger close up images. However, waves coming inshore can also trigger the cameras and produce a glut of useless images unless something coincidentally passes by. The unfortunate result of this effect is that the SD memory card normally fills up within two months and the camera stops, despite the batteries being charged.

Just one camera actually achieved the best balance and recorded only boats and canoes. It is a matter of setting the cameras at the best height above breaking waves but not so high that objects fall outside the conical area of detection. I am still working through these images, though the one of most interest so far was an object or wave in the water which was strongly reflecting the sun behind it, making identification of whatever is was somewhat difficult (see below). The two images are one minute apart as the reflection fades.

The next day, I had a watch at the site where Lachlan Stuart took his famous 1951 picture of three humps. I also brought my metal detector to see if I could find anything of interest, Nothing turned up apart from a wire clip and some old tin cans. I then noticed a helicopter approaching from the south in a manner suggesting they were looking for something in the loch below. I recalled later on that a man had fallen into the loch off Dores the week before. I had no idea whether they had retrieved him dead or alive and whether this helicopter was looking for him. Just as the helicopter passed beyond me, a jet fighter from the nearby RAF base roared past from south to north. I thought, did they know a helicopter was in the area at the same height? That was a potentially unhappy combination of events. As it happened, the jet stayed on the north side of the loch as the helicopter stayed on the south side and both eventually disappeared from view. I leave it as an exercise to see if you can spot the jet fighter in the picture below.

The day was broken up with a trip to Inverness and I went into the Waterstones bookshop. A perusal of their Inverness and Highland section had one paltry booklet on the Loch Ness Monster. This was the slim Pitkin edition I had reviewed before. This was pretty pathetic I thought for the main bookshop of Inverness. Shouldn't they, of all bookshops, be promoting Inverness' main tourist attraction? However, a look at the adjacent Folklore and Mythology section had Gareth Williams' "A Monstrous Commotion". Folklore and mythology, my ....! I quietly moved Gareth's book to the Inverness section, facing front forward, not spine!

Back on the road to Loch Ness, I decided to check out an area where there had been an alleged land sighting in 2003. I covered that story in a previous article back in May where the witnesses described something akin to a giant eel, but which one Nessie expert had decided was just black plastic piping from the local salmon farm. As I drew up beside the Dores septic tank I thought something did not smell right and I went for a walk along the shore where I think they had their encounter.

I walked for a mile and encountered no such piping, old or new. I guess the salmon farm must have cleaned up their act since 2003. I found one three foot section of green corrugated plastic pipe which may or may not have had its origin at the farm. So I had no opportunity to be surprised by a plastic pipe masquerading as a thirty foot giant eel. As I indulged in a kind of combination of beach combing and monster spotting, I came across the various body parts of a deer (below). I wondered what had made a meal of that unfortunate creature. It was here that I first thought of that man who fell off the boat at Dores some days back. Not knowing his fate, I became slightly more vigilant about finding something more macabre on the shore but then there was the old saying that the loch never gives up its dead. If he had not been rescued, I suspect the poor chap was a long way down never to come back up. But then again, how did the deer parts get to shore?

As usual there was too much rubbish on the beach. Some had been washed shore, which is fair enough, but the dinghy like object (below) I saw looks like it was just discarded. Did the truck tyre wash in or did it roll in from the road? have Mind you, there was also this monster like visage which glared at me as I headed back. Was it scowling at litter bugs?

One more stop on Friday was inspired by a chapter I always read when I come up here. It is the chapter entitled "Sunrise at Foyers" from Ted Holiday's "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" published in 1968. It describes his first expedition to the loch in August 1962, which also included his first sighting of what he called the "Orm" of Loch Ness. It sums up the mood of the hunt perfectly for me and so I read it as a form of inspiration to me and no doubt other monster hunters throughout the decades. In that chapter he says he pulled up for the first night on the south shore almost opposite Castle Urquhart. I drove back looking for that spot and I plumped for the parking lay-by beside the old ruin of the Change House. I don't think Holiday's spot was just a grassy bank as he says a truck pulled up beside his van with a dinghy on board or in tow. It sounded like a proper lay-by to me and so I took the picture below to complement his inspiring chapter.

After tea there was an evening walk to the spot where Frank Searle used to live and have his rather modest exhibition hut. He left the area in 1984 but I recorded a video clip of the area with a commentary on Frank's last days there which complements the podcast I did with Scott Mardis on famous fakers of whom Frank Searle is numero uno. You can see that video clip here. Saturday brought intermittent rain and shine and I intended to finally visit the Hambro monument on the Glendoe estate. Armed with some directions from a Nessie fan who had been there previously, we got there and followed the main track straight to the hill on which the pyramid-like monument stands to this day since the death of Winifred Hambro in 1932. I covered that tragic story three years ago at this link. The only mystery in that story is how a fit athletic lady like Winifred failed to swim to the near shore whilst her children and husband managed to do so.

The inscription on the monument reads:

WH-ROH

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

WINIFRED HAMBRO

WHO DIED NEAR THIS SPOT

WHICH SHE LOVED

AUGUST 28TH 1932

Some of the letters are now missing and it is not clear what "WH-ROH" means. I assume the "WH" is "Winifred Hambro". Now just below the monument is Corrie's Cave where the notorious sheep stealer, Alexander MacDonald (nicknamed "Corrie"), hid from English soldiers for some years after he shot at the Duke of Cumberland's army about three hundred years. It is a cleft in the rock perhaps about 15-20 deep. It was somewhere directly below the monument as it faces the loch, but the place was completely overgrown with ferns and heather. I made a somewhat sheepish attempt to descend into the ferns of unknown depth but decided to give up and let the ticks find another victim. Nevertheless, the view of the loch looking towards Fort Augustus is splendid, as the picture below shows.

However, not to deprive you of a view inside the cave, Doug, who gave me the instructions, had kindly sent me his video of his descent into the cave which I include here. He descended during the month of February, when I suspect the vegetation was decidedly more sparse.

After that, it was time for some monster watching at Borlum Bay and a walk past the spot where Margaret Munro's land beast was seen to move about the shore in 1934. There was then a visit into Fort Augustus and the place was pretty much like a ghost town despite the easing of the coronavirus lockdown. I asked a shop attendant what normal month the crowd outside would suggest and she said February. It was certainly quieter than when I am usually there in May. We did our bit for the local economy by buying at a few local establishments. After a time at the pier and trying to spot the Hambro monument in the distant hilltops, we went to pay my respects to the great Alex Campbell at his cottage in the town. Actually, I did more than that, I brashly and boldly went up to the door and knocked to the consternation of a growling dog who perhaps thought I should not be there.

The owner opened up and I asked about Alex Campbell. He knew all about him and the history of the man and was quite happy to talk. He never met him, but since the reason I knocked was to find a living relative who knew Alex, he helped me by pointing out one relative who knew him and may still be alive. I took some notes, we chatted in general about the man and his monster and I left with some detective work to do. As you may know, some sceptics give Alex Campbell a hard time. Well, they give anyone who claims to have seen the monster up close and personal a hard time. This blog defends Campbell against these attacks on his character and reputation.

Come Sunday it was time for an unexpected change of itinerary. I was off to Loch Morar. I had hummed and hawed about taking my drone to that loch with its monster reputation and clear waters and was inclined just to use the drone at Loch Ness. So we drove early from Foyers and I shall expand on that trip in a separate report soon. After tea in Fort William, we got back to Loch Ness about 7pm and I did my usual walk around the Foyers beach. However, as I turned to walk along the river, I was arrested by an unusual sight - a large area of flattened reeds right beside the River Foyers. Some obvious thoughts did go through my mind, but I first had to evaluate the situation and go through all the possibilities. The area is shown below and it tape measured out as about 30 feet by 9 feet, with the thirty feet parallel to the river. As you can see, the reeds beyond are untouched as are the ones in the water. A survey of the ground revealed no tracks of any kind, be it deer or larger. There were some human tracks but not much. It was tempting to conclude some massive weight had dropped on this vegetation and crushed them, i.e. they were horizontal with the stalks bent just above the soil.

Here is a video clip of the depressed area.

So it was time to go through the options. Had a storm caused the river to flood and flatten them? That seemed unlikely as the reeds around them were perfectly vertical. I then remembered there were canoeists camping beside me. I told them about this area of flattened vegetation and whether they had launched from there. The answer was they had not, as they take off from the main pebble beach further back where all the boats are moored. Thinking further, I recalled the campsite owners conduct nature tours around the area and have a den building activity for the families, but they don't go there either.

How about wild campers who had pitched their tent and then moved on? That was a possibility as I had recently noticed two groups of wild campers nearby, further up the river and further along Foyers beach. In fact, wild camping seems to be a bit of a problem in Foyers just now with more wild camping than usual due to the lockdown and some of them selfishly leaving waste and rubbish behind (of which I found none). With that in mind, I surveyed the spot and quickly sketched the directions of the various flattened reeds (below). The distribution of the flattening was not consistent with a large object moving from the water to the land which would have the majority of stalks pointing away from the water, but that assumes a scenario akin to a bull elephant seal coming ashore. Of course, I could probably conjure up a scenario where a large beast could contort to produce this pattern.

My main doubts about the tent scenario was that it was right on the water's edge which is usually a dumb move as a windy night can result in a waterlogged tent and a night time evacuation. There were other spots right beside this one that were good enough to pitch a tent and be away from water. Also, a 30 foot by 9 foot tent footprint looked unusual as wild campers usually move around in smaller tents. It just didn't look right as there were better places to camp nearby, but it seemed to be the explanation that "sucked the least". I left it at that and began packing up for our return home the next day.

On the final day, we stopped by in Drumnadrochit and headed to the Loch Ness Centre Exhibition. I was curious to see if anything had been added since we were last there some years ago. Going in, I noticed the usual covid-19 precautions were in place. We had to supply our names and phone numbers in case someone there turned out to be infected with the virus and we would be phoned and told to self isolate for two weeks. I wonder what Marmaduke Wetherell would have made of the exhibition and the fact that his infamous hippo ashtray was on display? He died about seventy years ago, so we will never know. 

I don't think it had changed much, but perhaps I had forgotten parts of it. We went through various rooms highlighting various stages of the Loch Ness Monster story in a chronological fashion ending up in the penultimate room with the sturgeon theory being expounded. The various propositions delivered to us via the PA system were that the loch was too nutrient poor for large predators and practically all witnesses were fooled by waves, birds, logs, deer, boats and so on. The rest were liars and a few, perhaps just a few, saw an errant sturgeon at some unspecified locations and times in the loch. I found this all just too simplistic and dismissive, but what else do they have to explain the strange things people are prepared to swear they saw?

It was, as it has been for decades, an exhibition designed to kill the monster in a hail of logic bullets. For me, the bullets miss the target. For others, they may wonder why they came here only to be told they were wasting their time. To my disappointment, my favourite feature of the exhibition was closed off. It was the dashboard of eyewitness testimonies. You put on the earphones and press the button to hear the eyewitness recount their own story of what they saw that day. It is the part of the exhibition which is least touched by the hand of scepticism, it is just you and that person from decades past telling a story which raises a defiant fist against logs, birds and boat wakes.

Alas, it was closed due to coronavirus since it involves pushing buttons. Speaking of monster exhibitions, we went outside and I wondered what had become of the competing Nessieland exhibition 100 yards away. I think the business has been sold as I noted that the polystyrene Nessie that dominated the tour was lying in two pieces inside an adjacent alleyway. Perhaps they will appear on eBay soon or end up in a skip along with the other artefacts of the exhibition. I was tempted to take the head home with me, a Nessie discovery in a kind of artificial way.

After that amusing epilogue it was off back home and the end of another trip. Perhaps the thousands of trap camera images will yet give a cryptozoological end to the trip, otherwise it is time to think ahead to the next trip which will be later this year.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com