Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness Monster

The Lock Ness Monster sure does know how to pick a great hiding spot, a giant lake is the perfect place for a creature of its size. The Lock Ness Monster, or "Nessie" for short has captured the hearts and cameras of believers for over 70 years and remains one of the most elusive creatures in the cryptoworld. 

On May 2, 1933, an Inverness newspaper ran an article called "A Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness" that described how Mrs. Mackay encountered the creature on the Scottish lake ("Loch" is Scottish for "lake") and a monster was born. One reason this creature manages to stay in focus is the consistency and number of sightings. It is possible that Nessie could just be an animal previously thought to be extinct, and there is some pretty great evidence supporting the theory that the lakes could have a giant monster in it including reliable witnesses, photographs, sonar charts, and film. Nessie's habitat is the Loch Ness in Northern Scotland running southwest to northeast and the lake is 23 miles long, 1 mile wide, and 786 feet at its deepest point. Lake Erie is also said to be home to a Nessie-like monster. The locals call her "Bessie." The Loch Ness monster, or Nessie, is undoubtedly the most well-known of these aquatic mysteries. But other deep, cold lakes around the world have their own legendary beasts: Chessie in Chesapeake Bay, Storsie in Sweden's Lake Storsjön, Selma in Norway's Lake Seljordsvatnet and "Champ" in New York's Lake Champlain among others.

Characteristics
* Shape: long neck; horse-like head; humped back (one or two humps).
* Color: dark or elephant gray.
* Weight: estimated 2,500 pounds.
* Length: 15 to 40 feet.

Famous Sightings:

The Loch Ness Monster may have been sighted as early as the 6th century, but didn't gain popularity until 1933.
* April, 1933 - Mrs. Aldie Mackay reports seeing a whale-like creature in the loch near Aldourie Castle (where Nessie has been sighted on other occasions). The account was written up for the Inverness Courier by water bailiff Alex Campbell and the excitement about a monster in the loch was born.
* July 22, 1933 - Mr. and Mrs. Spicer saw Nessie on land! While passing the loch on their way to London from Northern Scotland, the couple saw the large creature crossing the road in front of them. Mr. Spicer told the newspaper that it looked like a large prehistoric creature and was carrying a small lamb or some other animal in its mouth. He described it as being about 25 feet long with a long neck. He believed it disappeared into the loch.
* November, 1933 - The first photo of the alleged monster was taken by Hugh Gray.
* 1934 - Brother Richard Horan saw the neck and head protruding from the water at only 30 yards away. He said it reached about 3-1/2 feet above the surface, and the creature was looking at him.
* 1963 - Mr. Hugh Ayton claimed to have seen the creature from shore. He and three friends jumped into a motor boat and followed it for about a mile. He said he could never forget its large oval-shaped eye looking at him from its horse-like head.
* 1972 - A monk at the Fort Augustus Abbey, Father Gregory Brusey, was walking with an organist when they both saw the neck and head of the creature protruding about 6 feet above the loch's surface. They said it moved through the water, turned on its side and submerged.
Theories:

What is it that people are seeing in the loch?

* Skeptics say sightings are actually of groups of large fish, seals, otters or ducks.
* It's also been shown that waves on the surface of the lake can look like the oft-seen humped back of Nessie.
* The favorite theory of believers and many witnesses is that Nessie is a dinosaur known as a plesiosaur - a large aquatic creature with flippers and a long neck that is thought to have gone extinct 90 million years ago. Somehow, it is thought, plesiosaurs survived in Loch Ness (and perhaps some other lakes around the world). There must be enough of them in the loch to constitute a breeding population.
* On Art Bell's erstwhile radio show, he once asked remote viewer Ed Dames to remote view what the Loch Ness Monster is. Dames' conclusion: it is the ghost of an aquatic dinosaur.

Expeditions:

Several serious expeditions have been mounted over the years in search of the Loch Ness Monster:
* 1934 - Sir Edward Mountain paid 20 men to sit at various points around the shore of the lake with box cameras. A few highly contestable photos of shapes on the water were obtained.
* The Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau; 1960s-1972 - Carried out extensive photographic surveillance of the loch using 35mm motion picture cameras fitted with telephoto lenses. Only a few ambiguous sequences resulted.
* The Academy of Applied Science Expeditions; August, 1972 - Led by Dr. Robert Rines, this expedition sonar equipment with time-lapse photography. The result were some very controversial photos, including the famous "flipper" photo and "gargoyle head" photo, both of which were "creatively enhanced" by computers to be much clearer than they actually were.
* Operation Deepscan; October, 1987 - Nineteen cruisers were lined up to conduct a thorough sweep of the entire loch with a "sonar curtain." A 20th boat, New Atlantis, following was equipped with scanning sonar. Although a few "contacts" were reported, nothing could be confirmed.
* Other expeditions have been conducted or planned in recent years that attempted to catch the monster in a net or giant trap. A self-professed "white witch" cast a spell over the loch to protect Nessie from capture. Yes, it gets pretty silly.
* Webcams - Nessie on the Net! has live webcams overlooking the loch, and is promising an underwater webcam soon.
There have been more than 1,000 reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. While people are notoriously bad eyewitnesses, especially to phenomena such as this, a few accounts (some of which are listed above) constitute some of the best evidence for the creature.

There are also a few good photos (Left pic), most notably a shot taken by Anthony Shiels from Urquhart Castle on May 21,1977. It's perhaps the clearest photo of the creature, showing its neck and head high above the water.

Tim Dinsdale's 1960 16mm motion picture film may still be the best evidence for a large unknown creature in Loch Ness. On April 23, he photographed a dark object moving across the loch then turning parallel to the far shore and heading down toward Fort Augustus. Although no features of the creature could be distinguished, experts who studied the film concluded that it was not a boat or submarine, but some large, unknown animate object.

Various expeditions have also recorded numerous sonar contacts with a large moving object within the loch that cannot be explained as known fish.



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