MYTH or MONSTER

Although Nessie was sighted as far back as the 6th century A.D. it is the modern day sightings that have captured the public imagination.

In the early part of the 1930's a new road was built around Loch Ness which in turn brought in a spate of new sightings from road users and sightseers. Up until this time stories of the monster circulated more within the local community but talk of other sightings were spreading outwith the village.

The first recorded sighting of Nessie on land was made by Mr. Spicer and his wife, on July 22nd 1933, who were driving down the road between the Loch Ness side villages of Dores and Inverfarigaig. They caught sight of a large cumbersome animal crossing the road ahead, which was some 20 yards from the water. They first saw a long neck, forming a number of arches, a little thicker than a elephant's trunk and a huge lumbering body heading towards the Loch. It disappeared into the bushes out of sight. After this sighting reports flooded in and interest grew on an international scale. Speculators offered huge prizes for the animal, dead or alive. Circus owner Bertram Mills promised a sum of £20,000 to any man who could bring the creature alive to his circus.

Probably one of the first photographs to be taken of the monster was snapped by a British Aluminium Company worker, Mr. Hugh Gray, near Foyers. It showed a writhing creature creating a considerable disturbance on the surface of the Loch. He only saw part of the animal which he estimated to be around 40 ft. long, which included a thick rounded back and also a muscular looking tail.

In December of the same year a hippo's foot had been planted by a prankster and all was taken seriously until officials finally uncovered the truth. This had an affect on future reports of sightings, as they were taken less seriously. But still reported sightings were becoming increasingly common and more intriguing.

On the 5th of January, 1934, a motorcyclist almost collided with the monster as he was returning home from Inverness. It was around 1a.m. and was bright due to the moonlight. As Mr. Grant approached Abriachan on the north-eastern shore of the Loch he saw a large shape loom on the right side of the road. As he approached the object he saw a small head attached to a long neck. The animal saw Grant and promptly crossed the road back down to the Loch. Mr. Grant, by this time, had jumped off his motorbike and followed the path it took to the Loch only to see the rippling water where the creature had entered. In April, 1934 the most famous photograph was obtained by a London surgeon as he heading towards Inverness along the new road.

This event encouraged more people to come forward with their tales of sightings.

An event on the 5th of June, 1934 was considered to be of importance but was not widely publicised. It involved a young girl from the Fort Augustus area who was employed as a maid in a large house close to abbey. It was about 6:30 a.m., the maid was looking out of a window down the Loch. She saw on the shore, ' one of the biggest animals she had seen in her life, ' at a range of about 200 yards. Her description was similar to those of others, giraffe like neck, small head, skin like an elephant and two very short fore legs or flippers. She watched it for around 20 mins when it re-entered the water and disappeared.

There were a number of privately funded investigations, most of which were not successful, which took place in the same year. There was one such expedition which did have a degree of success. It was led by a Sir Edward Mountain in July, 1934. During that period of research and investigation he obtained five still pictures of the monster, he had observed the monster, along with members of his team, and had actually filmed the monster. It was probably because the expedition was so well funded that a result was most likely and that a poorly funded investigation would be doomed to failure.

As the threat of war with Germany grew stronger, Nessie and all the sightings were furthest things from peoples minds, but there were some recorded sightings and even a number of photographs were taken. During the war Loch Ness was in control of the Navy and the loch area was secured. This did not stop the monster from making itself known. In May, 1943, a Mr. C.B. Farrel of the Royal Observer Corps was on duty to warn of incoming enemy bombers but instead observed the movements of the monster at a distance of 250 yards. He saw 20-30 ft. of the monster's body and the neck which was approximately 4-5ft. above the surface of the water. The eyes, he explained, were large and the body of the monster appeared to have a 'fin'. It finally submerged without a movement on the water.

When the war was over and up until the late '50's sightings of Nessie continued as people got back onto the road with their motorcars on the Loch side road. The monster was still a local source of interest but remained the complete enigma.

In 1951 a new photograph appeared which to some confirmed the existence of the monster. On the 14th of July at around 6:30 a.m. Mr. Lachlan Stewart, a woodcutter employed by the forestry commission, saw something large moving out on the Loch. With a friend he ran to the waters edge and there about 50 yards away they saw three humps, each about 5 ft. long moving at fast speed. Mr. Stewart ,who had picked up a small camera before leaving his house, took this photograph. Seconds later a small head and long neck appeared in front of the first hump then the monster turned out towards the centre of the Loch and with a lot of splashing swam off and sinking head first 300 yards offshore, disappeared. Mr. Stewart estimated the length of head and neck to be 6 ft., and then 15-20 ft. behind the last hump he noticed a commotion in the water suggesting the movement of the tail.

In December 1954 another 'sighting' was made by a Peterhead fishing drifter called 'Rival III'. The vessel captured an unusual graphical recording of a large object at a depth of around 480 ft. - 100 ft. or so above the bottom - which kept pace with the boat for half a mile then disappeared.

Another eyewitness account happened in October 1955, by Colonel Patrick Grant of Knockie Estate. He was travelling from Fort Augustus to Invermoriston and nearing Inchnacardoch Bay he saw a great commotion in the water between 100-200 yards from the road. He brought his car to a stop and could see a black object above the surface 10 or 15 ft. long. In less than a minute the object suddenly started swimming eastwards, parallel with the shore and very near the surface though submerged. Moving at great speed it travelled 200-300 yards and disappeared completely.

1955 brought one of the most intriguing photograph ever taken. Peter A. Macnab from Aryshire was having a holiday in the Highlands and was preparing to take a photograph of Urquhart Castle. His attention was drawn to his left where he saw an enormous dark animal with two humps. This is the photograph he took.

Spring 1958. The proprietor of The Foyers Hotel, Mr. Hugh Rowand, his wife and two friends were seated in their garden overlooking Loch Ness when his eye caught a stationary fin shaped object in the water near Sand Point. A few seconds elapsed and the object sprang into life and shot across the Loch towards Drumnadrochit. Mr. Rowand guessed it's speed to be in the region of 20-25 knots.

A Mr. H.L. Cockrell of Dumfries, Scotland, had a remarkable experience with the monster in the Autumn of 1958 when he met it in his canoe on the Loch. Mr. Cockrell being an expert seaman and familiar with small crafts had developed a waterproof camera with flash equipment which he used from his camera was strapped to his head like a miner's lamp and activated by the movement of his mouth which left his hands free to paddle. He was boating about dawn on the Loch when something appeared about 50 yards away. It looked like it had a large flat head 4 or 5 feet long and about 3 feet to the rear of this he noticed another thin line, all very low in the water. He swung round to approach what ever it was and to his great horror it turned towards him. He took a shot with his camera and kept moving towards it and to his relief the creature turned to another direction. When the film was developed , although it showed the Loch to be calm, there was a great deal of disturbance on part of the surface of the water.

The day after Mr. Cockrell's sighting the monster was seen by a Mr. Brown and his wife from Invergordon in the same place but closer to shore. They described it as three thick black humps moving through the water with 50 ft. ahead of the humps a movement which seemed to suggest a head.

A member of the Northern Naturalists Organisations, Mr. Peter O'Connor from Gateshead, Durham had a sighting on the 24th May, 1960. From the garden of the Foyers Hotel he and a number of other people saw the creature at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. At first he thought it was a rowing boat about 200 yards from the Foyers shore but using his field glasses he could see a brown coloured object which was slowly sinking.

Mr. O'Connor encountered the monster yet again 3 days later on the 27th of May, 1960. Between 6 and 6:30 a.m. he went for a walk along the shore beside Foyers Bay and the monster glided into view around the headland. He waded into the water up to his waist to get a closer view. It features were small and sheep-like and a very, very strong neck. It's skin appeared smooth, very like a seal. He turned to yell to his companion and then turned back and took this photograph, to the right, as it disappeared into the turbulence it had created.

Generally regarded to be the first major scientifically planned expedition of its kind to visit the Loch was conducted on the 27th June to 23rd July 1960 by The Universities (Oxford and Cambridge) Expedition. The purpose being to make a general study of Loch Ness, paying particular attention to the possible existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Participant in the expedition numbered 30 volunteer graduates and under graduates who used cameras and an echo sounder mounted on a boat. They did encounter one visual sighting of what appeared to be the monsters back moving through the water. Another sighting they had was of an object that continuously changed shape on the surface of the water. Numerous echo soundings were taken which were of unusual character.

A sighting was reported on 7th August 1960 by a witness who wished to remain anonymous. The witness was driving south- westerly along the main road towards Abriachan pier when he noticed a small yacht travelling up the Loch. He then realised there were two V wakes parallel to one another. The closest of the two wakes came from the yacht and the second appeared to be caused by something just under the water. The object surfaced and looked just like a midget submarine without its periscope. The colour was greenish black, about the size of the yacht, which was in fact 48ft by 10 ft.

In 1973 an interesting sighting was reported by a Mr. Jenkyns of Pointclair, Invermoriston. Mr. Jenkyns had a head/neck sighting in a close range observation. The sighting report is as follows : Mr. Jenkyns lived in a house which is 12 yards above the surface level of Loch Ness. On Saturday 10th November 1973, at about 11:45am he tried to start a tractor which had been stuck for some weeks on a piece of rough ground sloping down to the loch edge to partially built jetty it was a cold slightly damp day, with a strong south-westerly wind on the surface giving a heavy swell with waves over 2ft high. Mr. Jenkyns used an engine chemical to start the tractor and as the tractor did not have a silencer there was an explosive noise, so loud that Mrs. Jenkyns heard it in the house, despite all the windows being double glazed. Immediately after the noise of the starter, Mr. Jenkyns heard a very loud splash, which he described as an impact splash as if something very heavy had been thrown into the water. It was a single noise and was not followed by any further splashing. Being under the impression someone must of thrown a heavy object into the water, he got down from the tractor, walked round it and a good look along the shoreline. He then went back to the tractor and 2 mins after hearing the splash noticed in the water 5 yards of the end of the jetty a ring of concentric circles, showing despite the waves. While he was looking, a little to his left an animal emerged quietly and smoothly (the distance from the observer being about 45 yards) in a north-easterly direction parallel to the shore, then submerged straight down. Throughout, the object maintained a rigid pole-like posture and its motion through the water was very smooth, with no apparent sign of any jerky movement. The head and neck were slate-black, quite rigid and about 9 inches in diameter. He observed a slit mouth, what appeared to be some large scales on the top of the head but not the neck, and above the mouth an eye or possibly a vent. The eye was quite tiny in proportion to the mouth. When the object rose out of the water, it formed an angle 80 degrees to the water, but when it started to move and throughout the movement it formed a 60 degree angle. There was no sign of any fins, horns or other appurtenances. The water at this point is estimated to be only 10 - 20ft deep.

Going on a number of years, this sighting occurred on the 13th July 1979 by Paul H. Biermasz who was on holiday in the Loch Ness area. This is Mr. Biermaszs' own account of his sighting. In July 1979 I had a Nessie sighting that goes as follows : I was driving from the camp site where I was staying at Invermoriston, north to Inverness on the main road when a few miles after Urquhart Bay, passing a lay-by with a good Loch view, I saw 'It'. 'It' was at a distance of some 200-300 metres, shaped like an upside- down (black) rowing boat, speeding away from the shore. The speed was remarkable because of the wave 'it' produced. Other people must have seen 'it', a sailing boat crew might have spotted something as 'it' was coming their way. A touring bus was in front of me and crossed the road to pull into the lay-by. Passengers in the rear of the bus were pointing at the Loch also. Everything happened in seconds. The time of this sighting was between 10 and 11 a.m.. The sky was cloudy but the Loch could be clearly seen and the wind was very low. Back in Holland the story of my sighting was not believed so I have kept quiet about until now.

A Lancashire man, named Bill Kinder, observed a black, shiny object rise out of the water and leave a 10 metre wake. This took place on the 9th of April, 1996 around 10:00am, just north of Fort Augustus. Also on the same day, the Ling family from London who were travelling behind Bill Kinder on the west shore, reported seeing two humps rise out of the water and leave a long trail.

On the 10th of April, 1996, two large brown shapes were spotted by a couple from the Black Isle, which appeared to be 10 feet in diameter and 3 feet apart. The object was 200m from the shore near Urquhart Castle, it then travelled across the Loch and disappeared.

A representative of Union Commercials, named Jonathan Murphy, on his first visit to Loch Ness to make a television commercial for Vodaphone, contacted a local paper and said he saw something in the water. He had photographed the object which was then sent to NASA for a thorough investigation. This happened on the 14th of May, 1996.

Staff and guests of the Craigdarroch House Hotel, Foyers, witnessed, on the 13th June, 1996 at 8:30pm, a bubbly disturbance which was followed by a wake, it then travelled zigzag across the water, creating movement on the Loch for around 10 minutes.

During their visit to the Loch Ness Caravan and Camping Park at Invermoriston, Emilio Demnio and Nikhi Banjeri from Preston, reported seeing a dark brown or black hump appear in the middle of the Loch and stayed for around 10 minutes, on the 21st of July, 1996 at 2:15pm.

While on the pier at Fort Augustus, three witnesses including holidaymaker Nick Watson saw at around 5:30pm on the 1st of August, 1996, a black hump approximately a mile from the shore. It was creating a large commotion on the surface. A few minutes later it headed away from them and disappeared.

In 1996, staff members at the Clansman Hotel beside Loch Ness, during their lunchbreak around noon witnessed several humps appear in the Loch. They appeared to be black and were around 1 metre long. They disappeared and shot to the surface again further out in the Loch within moments.

This sighting was made in September 1996 by Frank Meyer of Cincinnati, Ohio. These are his own words : As someone with scientific education (physics) I will not believe in anything I don't know for sure. But I was on Loch Ness for four days in 1996 during the first days of September with four relatives, we saw something we could not quite explain: We had rented a motor cruiser to travel on the Caledonian Canal for two weeks. We spent one night at the Foyers pier. The weather had been fine in the evening, and the loch was very quiet in the morning, practically no waves at all, clear weather. Around 8:45 AM, I noticed something like the trunk of a large tree, floating motionless just under the surface, about 100 meters in the direction of Urquhart Castle. My four fellow boaters saw it, too, after I asked them what it was. It did not move for at least 15 minutes (well, one of us thought it had moved slightly). We speculated what it could be, we watched it with binoculars (which revealed that it was not a single blob of darkness, but had limblike substructures, as if it really was a dead tree), but nobody took a single photo! I still can't believe it... Finally we took off to visit Urquhart Castle. I took a course that would take us close to the point the mysterious object was floating. Due to the position of the steering wheel, I could not see it during the beginning of the approach and relied on the others to take a close look. But when we got there, nothing was visible. Not only that, but nobody had actually seen it disappear. One moment it had been there, a moment later it was gone without a trace. It was obviously no tree. Was it one of the almost stationary zones of rippled water that can occur on lakes due to wind and current? It was so isolated - one dark spot in a wide totally quiet surrounding - and stayed unchanged for 15 minutes or more, and it was darker than the normal shadow - to me that explanation seems practically impossible. The same reasons exclude a cloud shadow. For a mirage it was not far enough, and one thing I am absolutely sure of: It was under the surface. The only thing I can think of as possible explanation is a thin floating layer of dark particles, slowly collected overnight by the currents of the Foyers bay and of the open loch, clearly visible only because of the flat viewing angle. But then, why didn't it disappear gradually when we approached the spot?

A family reported seeing an object travelling quickly through the water on the 16th of February, 1997.

A local man from Glenurquhart filed a report about seeing two humps in the water near to Abriachan.

On the 21st of March, 1997 a South African holidaymaker reported to have seen two humps appear from the water near Aldourie Castle beside Loch Ness.

Travelling down the south side of the Loch on the 22nd of March 1997, Richard White of Muir of Ord a number of humps moving on the water around 200m from the shore

On the 15th of April, 1997 a visitor from the Isle of Skye reported seeing something odd in the water near Foyers.

An object which looked like a pole appeared from the water near Dores, the top of which looked like a small head that looked around and then disappeared. This incident happened on the 14th of June, 1997.

On the 21st of June, about 1 mile south of Urquhart Castle, at around 9:00am, a dark object was spotted moving swiftly across the Loch.

Another sighting was reported by the producer and technician of an American film team who were filming a documentary at Strone Point, above the castle. They spotted a dark object moving swiftly across the Loch about 1 mile south of Urquhart Castle around 9:00am. Unfortunately it had disappeared before the cameraman had time to record it on film. This sighting took place on the 21st of June, 1997.

The "Royal Scot" from Fort Augustus reported two sonar contacts at a depth of 400 ft. in a trench just north of Fort Augustus on the 2nd of July, 1997.

The "Royal Scot" again reported a similar contact at a depth of 300 ft. on the 4th of July, 1997.

There was a report of a camper, who was staying at the Loch Ness Caravan and Camping Park at Invermoriston, on the 9th of August,1997, which told of her experience during an incident at around 3:00am. She had heard something splashing about in the water and realised some ducks nearby were becoming restless for some reason. Then she said she heard a strange buzzing noise from the Loch but it didn't sound like a boat or other engine.

A report of a large, dark, coloured object appearing in the water near Abriachan and moving at speed was on the 13th of August, 1997.

The first reported sighting of the Loch Ness Monster in 1998 was made by a 22 year old female tourist from Marlborough, Wiltshire at 8:55am on Saturday 30th May. She saw a large black object rising about 10 feet out of the water just beneath Urquhart Castle and claimed she had been able to see the object for a full 2 minutes before it disappeared.

On June 17 1998 at about 5 a.m. a group of young men on a hill walk claimed to have witnessed Nessie as they were descending a hill near Inverfarigaig. The men, brothers Adam and Mark Sutherland and Peter Gillies from Inverfarigaig and Peter Rhind from the Black Isle watched the shape for about 45 minutes through binoculars before it disappeared under the water. They described the shape as being about 300 metres from the shore, massive in size with a long tail. The Loch was flat calm at the time.

This latest sighting occurred on Saturday 19th September 1998 and is told by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Carter from Marsden, West Yorkshire.

We had just arrived at Strone Holiday Chalet near Urquhart Castle, overlooking Urquhart Bay. It was about 3:00pm. We parked the car at the rear of the chalet and were preparing to unload the car. My husband decided to stand and admire the view over Urquhart Bay, when he noticed a black object in the water of about 14 foot in length. He stood for some 30 seconds trying to identify what the object was and not being able to he ran back to the car, opened the boot and reached for his binoculars. He asked me to come and look at the object with him. We both went to the side of the chalet and I also saw the same dark object in the water. My husband stood looking at it through binoculars for about 30 to 45 seconds until it disappeared under the water. I myself was looking at it with the naked eye and can also say it was a large dark object, around 14 foot in length. It looked to have a body and a head and it was animate, then it sunk into the water without any obvious diving motion. My husband's description of the object is very similar to mine. He saw a black, slick object of about 14 feet in length and stood 3 feet out of the water, there was no visible signs of flippers, fins, or a tail. It's head appeared to be perfectly round, like a football, but with obvious sign of a muzzle i.e. like that of a seal. The object was moving slowly through the water with a slight bow wave, and it did not arch its back to dive, it just gently slipped below the water. On Saturday the 19th the weather conditions were fine and clear and we did not notice any vessels in the Bay at the time, the water was very calm.

Both my husband and myself have in the past observed dolphins and seals in the wild and this object did not look like either. We have been visiting the Loch Ness area for about 4 years and have seen the Loch's water in many different moods, also we have observed the wakes from boats and have seen wind slicks and dark shapes on the water which are often mistaken for Nessie. What we observed was none of the aforementioned, it was a solid object moving through the water.

Although we have ruled out what it was not, neither of us know what it was. All we can say is that we saw a large, black animal in Loch Ness.