Of all the cryptozoological creatures that are said to exist out there, I think the most well-known is, arguably, The Loch Ness Monster. ‘Nessie’ as he, or she, is fondly called by many people is said to have lived in the murky waters of Loch Ness for a long, long time. Indeed a legend tells of St Columba repelling a monster in Loch Ness sometime during the 7th Century AD. Obviously very doubtful now that that creature was one and the same as the present day Nessie if it exists at all. The monster was first brought to the world’s attention in the early 1930s when a man said he and his wife had been driving past the loch when ‘a most extraordinary form of animal’ crossed the road in front of them. The man, George Spicer, described the creature as being about 4ft high and 25 ft long. He also described it as having a very long neck, somewhere between 10-12 ft. Following this account more and more people came forward claiming to have seen the creature, some with photographs to prove their encounter. Perhaps the most famous of these, which later turned out to be fake, was the so called ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’ that a London gynaecologist Dr Robert Kenneth Wilson claimed he took in 1934. The picture (please see below) shows what looks to be a head and neck in the water of the loch but in fact it was a sculpted head mounted on a toy submarine and launched in the shallows. However the exposure of the photo as a hoax has not deterred many from a continued belief in the creature and hundreds if not thousands of sightings have been reported in the decades since. I took a boat ride across the loch in the mid-1990s and though I did not see anything I could see how, perhaps, it could be possible for some form of creature to be living in the loch without detection. The loch itself is so deep that apparently if it were drained it would be possible to fit the world’s population inside-twice. Personally I think, whether true nor not, the stories of some kind of creature, possibly prehistoric, living in the murky waters serves to keep the world a more interesting place and I hope the ‘sightings’ will continue. Thanks for reading.
