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Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster
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The legend of the Loch Ness monster can be traced back to 565 AD, when Saint Columba, a Christian missionary, is said to have banished the murderous water beast to the lake.

The Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known as Nessie by the locals, is said to live in the large Loch Ness Lake in Scotland. Loch Ness Lake is 22 miles long, about a mile wide, and at its deepest point 950 feet deep. In a nearly inaccessible, remote area up until the early 1930s, the loch is part of the Great Glen which runs like a deep crack running clear across Scotland. A small town, Fort Augustus, is located at the loch's southern end, and the town of Inverness is located at the northern end of the lake.

Nessie has been seen in the Lake for a very long time, it seems. Sightings have been reported in print as early as AD 565 in the manuscript of the Life of St. Columba (vol. 6, book 11, chap 27). It seems that a water monster had bitten to death a man in Loch Ness. St. Columba made a sign of the cross, sending the monster away. In 1871 or 1872, a Dr. D. MacKenzie, who lived in Balnain had seen the Loch Ness monster, described it as resembling an upturned boat, "wriggling and churning up the water."

Nessie first appears in a modern report in the 20th century in July of 1930. Three young men were fishing in a boat out on the lake, close to Dores in the lake's southern portion. Suddenly, 600 yards away, the water became disturbed as a large creature just under the surface was spotted swimming toward them. It turned away about 300 yards from their boat.

In April of 1933, Nessie was seen by Mr. and Mrs. John Mackay as they traveled along the newly made road from a trip to Inverness. In the middle of the lake, they saw a large animal disturbing the water, with two humps which then made a half turn and disappeared.

In fact, in the very warm summers of 1933-34, Nessie was seen quite a lot by people, perhaps due to the heat, which seemed to make the creature less shy. From the 1940s all the way through the '90s, these sightings continued.

In 1960, Torquil MacLeod saw a Nessie almost out of the water. He reported that it was between 40 and 60 feet long, with a long neck similar to an elephant's trunk, and had paddles on the front and back parts of its body.

Another interesting sighting came on June 7, 1974, by monster hunter Frank Serle, when, accompanied by a woman from Quebec, he was approaching a barbed wire fenced area near Foyers, by the beach front. As they walked by, they heard a splashing sound. Peering over the barbed wire, they saw two baby creatures near the shoreline. "They were about two feet long, had dark gray, baby elephant-like skin, fat bodies, long necks, small heads with protruding eyes, and snake-like tails. They each had two stump-like appendages on either side of their bodies." When Serle tried to scale the fence, they scuttled away in a crab-like fashion back into the lake.

The first pictures of the beast were taken by amateur photographers. Near Foyers, Hugh Gray was walking on a bluff, fifty feet above the Loch, when the creature suddenly made an appearance, rising up out of the water about 200 yards away. The startled Gray took pictures of the beast while it was two or three feet above the water. Only one of them came out, and it was a bit blurry because he let the film sit in the camera for two weeks, owing to ambivalent feelings over it. His film did catch the vague, grayish bulk of the creature, but it was not accepted as evidence by the scientific community or zoologists.

The so-called
"surgeon's photo".

He was planning to take pictures of birds, but was in for a surprise when first arriving at this spot, so the story goes. He saw the customary disturbance in the water that is always reported when Nessie makes an appearance. Using a telephoto lens, he managed a clear shot of the "serpentine head," and dinosaur-like neck before it slipped away into the lake once more.

The scientific community declared it a fake, basically an April fool's joke. Many years later another investigator, Tim Dinsdale, made a startling discovery. He found that if one looks closely at the picture, one can see from a distance a faint "concentric circle" of rings around the head of the creature, and if you look closely you can see another circle in the background, indicating the presence of a body just below the surface. In 1972, the photo was enhanced by a NASA computer technician, and whiskers could be seen hanging down from its mouth.

The most successful mission to photograph Nessie was the 1975 expedition sponsored by the Academy of Applied Science, in cooperation with the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau. One camera with high speed film activated by sonar was placed on a bottom ledge, 80 feet down in the lake. Another camera hung forty feet below the boat — and a similar distance above the bottom camera — took backup pictures at preset intervals from June 19th to the 20th.

While sonar repeatedly detected large objects near the bottom camera, something had stirred up the silt at the bottom of the notoriously murky Loch, obscuring everything. But the backup camera captured amazing images near the strobe light beam, revealing part of a pinkish body, an upper torso, and the neck and head of a living animal, with two stubby appendages. The most startling image clearly shows an underwater dragon looking at the camera, in half profile, its nostrils visible, with an open mouth and several horn-like projections. After studying several frames of various body segments, experts have estimated that this curious animal has an overall length of 20 feet, an 18-inch neck, a mouth measuring nine by five inches, and six-inch horns set about ten inches apart.

Other clear pictures of the animal were taken by Dr. Robert H. Rines, who led a team of investigators from The Academy of Applied Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1972 and 1975. One of his 1972 pictures shows very clearly an eight-foot-long flipper-like object. A 1975 photograph clearly shows a long-necked creature and its front flipper.

Some in the scientific community, as represented by Roy Mackal, a director of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau and a professor of Biochemistry at the University of Chicago have concluded that "a population of moderate-sized, piscivorous aquatic animals is inhabiting Loch Ness." In his 1976 book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" he thoroughly examines the evidence of this unknown species of animal with a critical eye, and still comes to this conclusion. Despite this, most in the scientific community remain doubtful of the animal's existence.

There are several theories concerning Nessie. One holds that pictures and accounts show it to be a member of the Plesiosaur order — specifically an Elasmosaur — of the Mesozoic era, supposedly extinct for more than 70 million years.

Another researcher, Ted Holiday, who investigated the loch from 1962 to 1965, concluded in his book "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" that the creature was simply a giant version of the common garden slug, an ancestor of the squid and octopus. A type of "Tullimonstrum gregarium, a creature with the shape of a submarine, with a broad tail." Holiday argued that in ages past they were present all over England, and formed the biological basis for dragon legends.

He also developed another more eccentric theory connecting Loch Ness monsters to black magic. Intrigued by the horror of witnesses of Nessie and similar creatures in Ireland lakes — where it is commonly thought that such animals couldn't possibly survive — he theorized that Nessie-like sightings were merely projections of evil doers who dabbled in the black arts. Toward the end of his life in the early 1970s he wrote two books on the subject: "The Goblin Universe" and "The Dragon and the Disc."

Interestingly, later in their investigations in the late 1980s, Tim Dinsdale and Erik Beckjord — "hunters of unexplained mysteries" — came to believe that Nessie was a paranormal phenomena. Beckjord showed a film he took of the creature, which impressed some who saw it as being a white, shape-shifting thing, and not a reptile."

Meanwhile, Nessie continues to be seen occasionally on the lake, especially when the water is calm, to the delight not only of lucky tourists but also of the local people, who depend on tourism for their economic livelihood. In a more universal sense, Nessie is an unknown animal/creature/cryptid which stimulates the public's sense of wonder and belief in something supernatural, wild, and somewhat dangerous. Most of the evidence suggests, however, that Nessie is "a shy, amiable and quite harmless" creature, that doesn't pose a threat to people.

Nessie, Still In The News

PHOTOGRAPHS

Hover your mouse over the pictures below for captions.

That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness seems now beyond doubt. Don't scoff, dear reader, and don't be so cynical. There's every chance the so-called "Loch Ness Monster" exists, in some form or another.

Nessie was first spotted back in AD 565 – a biography of the Irish monk Saint Columba mentions a giant "water beast" dragging a man to his death in Scotland's River Ness. Wider interest was not sparked until 1933, when a road was built along the loch, making it much less isolated. Within months, people came forward claiming to have seen a giant beast near the water. The following year saw the publication of the "surgeon’s photograph", probably the best-known image of the creature.

The "surgeon's photograph" is the first photo showing Nessie's head and neck. Taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynecologist, it was first published on April 21, 1934. Wilson refused to have his name associated with it, and it ended up being known as the "surgeon's photograph". Wilson said he was looking at the loch when he saw the monster, grabbed his camera, and took four photos. Only two of them came out clearly; the first reportedly showed a small head and back, while the second showed a similar head in a diving position. The first photo became well known; the second drew little attention because it was blurry.

Loch Ness is a large, deep, freshwater loch (the Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Scots word for 'lake') in the Scottish Highlands extending roughly 23 miles southwest of the ancient castle known as Inverness.

Adrian Shine runs the Loch Ness Project. He was inspired by earlier international explorers like American Dan Scott Taylor, who patrolled the loch in his Beatles-inspired Yellow Submarine in the late 1960s.

“I’m sure that some species will be found which have probably not been described," he says.

Professor Neil Gemmell has travelled from the University of Otago in New Zealand to collect water samples in Loch Ness, in the hope of finding out more about the creatures that dwell there.

“Over 1,000 people claim that they have seen a monster," he says. "Maybe there is something extraordinary out there.”

In this photo he is shown dropping a five-litre probe into the loch.

Professor Gemmell says he's no believer in Nessie, but he wants to take people on an adventure and communicate some science along the way. He says that when creatures move about in the water, they leave behind tiny fragments of DNA. It comes from their skin, feathers, scales and urine. The DNA results will be compared against a database of known species.

"I'm going into this thinking it's unlikely there is a monster, but I want to test that hypothesis. What we'll get is a really nice survey of the biodiversity of the Loch Ness."

Steve Feltham has lived on the shores of Loch Ness for more than 25 years. He left his home in England to try and solve the Nessie mystery, and says he has no intention of leaving.

He said: “The quest continues and I am as dedicated to this as I have ever been."

In July 2019, boat skipper Mike Bell claimed he'd caught a sonar image of Nessie. The picture, captured while he was taking a group of tourists for a trip on Loch Ness on June 27, shows the bottom of the loch, a fish, and a long, thin object about 115 feet underwater.

Tales of a giant creature lurking below the murky waves of Loch Ness have been around for more than 1,500 years. Academics and researchers hope that the marvels of modern science can eventually unravel the mystery.

Professor Gemmell believes, after much probing of the loch, that Nessie could be a giant eel. "There's no shark DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. There is also no catfish DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. We can't find any evidence of sturgeon either. There is a very significant amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled — there are a lot of them. So — are they giant eels?"

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dismissed Neil Gemmell's speculation that Nessie could be an eel, saying, "I am not taking that as conclusive proof of non-existence of the Loch Ness Monster." He added, "Let me put in this way, there is a part of my soul that still yearns to believe."

Lisa Stout of Bellevue, Ohio was exploring Loch Ness via Google Earth when she found this fantastic shot of what could possibly be Nessie.

"While there are many people who do not believe that the Loch Ness Monster exists, there is practically no one who would not be overjoyed to find out that it did."

— Daniel Cohen 1970

Visit the
Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register

The fossil of a giant sea creature that resembles the Loch Ness Monster has been unearthed in Antarctica. It took decades for researchers to recover the 70-million-year-old remains of the elasmosaur, which would have weighed as much as 15 tons.

The creature — with a snake-like head, a long neck like a giraffe and a body similar to that of a manatee — lived during the Cretaceous period alongside the dinosaurs.

On June 1, 2018, footage emerged of a distant object "cavorting" in the loch for 10 full minutes. Irishman Eoin O’Faodhagain was stunned by the 20ft creature diving and surfacing in the loch — his footage has been accepted by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register.

For many years, travelers have gone to great lengths to find the Loch Ness Monster. In all that time, conclusive proof of Nessie has yet to emerge. Might the truth simply be that the renowned water beast has moved? In September of 2016, the world's most famous aquatic creature was apparently spotted in the Humber Estuary, in Hull, England.

Conspiracy theorists risk hypothermia and drowning if they follow through with a plan to storm Loss Ness in search of Nessie, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has warned. In July of 2019, almost 60,000 people signaled their interest in “storming” Loch Ness to find the fabled monster, prompting warnings from the local lifeguard crew about the treacherous nature of the loch.

1827 — During a trek to Loch Ness, Scotland, a young Charles Darwin encounters a mysterious and terrifying creature that provides a spark for his evolutionary theory.

2013 — Almost two hundred years later and across the Channel in Paris, the Eiffel Tower is under attack. Only through detective work, intuition, and a judicious application of high-tech weaponry does former Army combat engineer Tyler Locke prevent a massacre.

What Tyler doesn't know is that the assault is just the beginning of a conspiracy so dark that it not only threatens the lives of those he loves, but could also ignite World War III. Racing against time to uncover Darwin's centuries-old secret, he must solve a series of cryptic clues to find a manuscript that has been so cleverly hidden it hasn't been seen since the Victorian age.

Tyler's quest takes him from the bustling tourist hotspots of Seattle to the splendor of Versailles to the remote Highlands of Scotland in a battle to reveal the shocking truth behind the legend of the Loch Ness monster.

Amazon web page

The Loch Ness Monster: a creature that should have died out with the dinosaurs, or a legend built on hoaxes and wishful thinking?

Sir Peter Scott, internationally renowned naturalist and president of the World Wildlife Fund, was convinced that the Monster existed. So were senior scientists at London's Natural History Museum and Chicago University; they lost their jobs because they refused to renounce their belief in the creature. For decades, the scientific establishment was determined to quash attempts to investigate Loch Ness — until Nature, the world's greatest research journal, published an article by Peter Scott featuring underwater photographs of the Monster. Drawing extensively on new material, Gareth Williams takes a wholly original look at what really happened in Loch Ness. A Monstrous Commotion tells the story as never before: a gripping saga populated by colourful characters who do extraordinary things in pursuit of one of evolution's wildest cards.

Amazon web page

A 30ft model of the Loch Ness Monster built in 1969 for a Sherlock Holmes movie has been found almost 50 years after it sank in the loch.

The beast was created for the Billy Wilder-directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, starring Sir Robert Stephens and Sir Christopher Lee.