The Big Book of Mysteries. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe
Several fishermen, timber workers, and a hotelier reported what they described as something “very big and horrible” surfacing not far from them in Loch Ness.
1903: Three witnesses in a rowboat tried very bravely to get closer to it but failed to narrow the distance between the creature and their boat. They reported the humped contour of what they saw.
1908: John Macleod reported seeing something more than twelve metres long with a body that he described as “eel-like and tapering.” According to John’s account it seemed to be floating on, or very close to, the surface. After a few moments, it moved away.
1923: Miller and MacGillivray had a good clear view of something in the loch and described its distinct hump.
1929: Mrs. Cummings and another witness saw a humped creature on the surface for a few moments. As they watched, it submerged.
1930: Ian Milne saw something inexplicable in the loch very early in the morning. He reported that it was moving fast — close to twenty knots — and he was sure he saw two or three of the characteristic humps along its back.
1943: Something at least ten metres long was observed submerged but clearly discernible just below the surface of the loch. It was very early in the morning and the witness was sure that he saw at least one large hump.
1947: The MacIver family and two or three other witnesses reported something very big and very strange that was moving fast across the loch.
1953: A group of timber cutters working beside the loch reported seeing the creature for two or three minutes.
1954: A fishing boat’s echo-sounder detected something about twenty metres long at a depth of 170 metres.
1960: Torquil MacLeod and his wife reported seeing a creature while they were in the Invermorriston area. They had it in view for almost ten minutes as it sat on the opposite shore, and they described it as grey with skin like an elephant or hippopotamus. They also noted its paddle-shaped flippers.
[1960]: Tim Dinsdale took a very significant ciné-film of it in the same year. He gave up his profession as an aircraft engineer in order to devote all his time to investigating the creature.
1961: A large group of guests — nearly twenty of them — at a hotel overlooking the loch reported observing something more than ten metres long. It rose from the water and they had a clear view of it for five or six minutes. Those witnesses were convinced that they could clearly see the monster’s humps — frequently reported during many previous sightings.
1962: Sir Peter Scott (1909–90), son of the famous polar explorer Robert Scott, was renowned for his high intelligence, his skills as an artist, his services to natural science — and his dry sense of humour. He helped to found the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau, and named the creature being sought: Nessiteras rhom-bopteryx. That sounds like an excellent piece of scientific nomenclature, but it can be broken down into an anagram of the type that delights advanced crossword enthusiasts. The seemingly dignified, scientific Latin name which Sir Peter awarded to Nessie can be made to spell out the phrase Monster hoax by Sir Peter S. Was it a deliberate anagram — or just a curious coincidence? Cryptographers and code-breaking professionals know just how easy it is for what seems like a clever anagram to be mere chance. No great mathematician from the depths of mathematical history ever decided to call a decimal point a decimal point simply because the anagram: A decimal point = I’m a dot in place existed. Sir Peter’s naming of the monster might have been as accidental and innocent as the decimal point example. There are also a great many bluffs and counter-bluffs in the archives of investigations into anomalous phenomena: things that seemed inexplicable at first turn out to have simple, mundane explanations — but the next set of investigations shows that the so-called simple and rational explanations were themselves wrong — and there is an anomaly to be investigated after all! It might have appealed to Sir Peter’s mischievous sense of humour to pretend that there was only a hoax in Loch Ness, not a mystery. As a dedicated conservationist, it might also have occurred to him that the best way to keep prospective monster-hunters away from the loch was to pretend that it was all a hoax.
1969: Four members of the Craven family watched a creature ten metres long surface, disturb the water significantly, and then sink down into the depths again.
1970: Dr. Robert Rines of the Academy of Applied Sciences in Belmont, Massachusetts, spent time investigating the loch and was convinced that the creature — or creatures — existed.
1971: Dinsdale’s team reported something very mysterious and very much alive rearing up out of the loch.
1972: Former paratrooper Frank Searle investigated carefully and reported several significant sightings. He believes that there’s a colony of at least a dozen of the strange creatures living in the loch.
1974: Henry Wilson and Andy Call described a creature twenty metres long with an equine head. They saw it surface and thresh the water for ten or fifteen minutes while they watched.
1975: On June 20, Dr. Rines’s team took some very interesting and convincing pictures deep in the loch.
1996: Witness Bill Kinder described something odd rising up from the loch with two humps clearly visible.
2003: Witnesses on the Royal Scot train during the early afternoon saw something big and inexplicable moving at an estimated twenty-five knots along the loch. They also reported that the weather was calm at the time, so there was no wind to account for the movement of some casually floating, inanimate object.
Leaving Occam’s Razor oiled, sharpened, and ready in its waterproof case for the sake of wider, more complex, and imaginative arguments, what speculative explanations might be available? The first possibility is the survival of something like a prehistoric plesiosaur: the general description of the plesiosaur included flippers, humps, a long neck and tail. The second theory comes within the sphere of phenomenalism. This is a philosophical theory that suggests that there are hard, scientific, material facts at one end of the spectrum of phenomena — things such as bricks, mortar, and Newton’s Laws of Motion. At the other end are pure imaginings and fantasies, such as dreams of riding up cider waterfalls in canoes made of chocolate pulled by gigantic sugary dragonflies.
Phenomenologists hypothesize that of the hundreds of reports, between these two extremes there are some intermediate observations that are neither hard, provable fact, nor pure, subjective fantasy. Without necessarily including it in their theories, phenomenologists would entertain the ancillary possibility that things like the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, apparitions, and phantoms might have a quasi-existence — perhaps gliding between time frames or probability tracks to impinge upon what we fondly call reality. This realm of speculation also includes tulpa-like thought forms.
There are other theorists who regard the Loch Ness monster as something paranormal, sinister, negative, and threatening — perhaps a primitive, elemental spirit-being, taking on quasi-physical appearances as and when it chooses.
There are also the mechanical theories — that the monster is really an artifact of some kind. According to these speculations, the more modern appearances may be due to tests of secret inventions of the Ministry of Defence — such as small submarines. The ancient appearances, if mechanical, would have to tiptoe into Von Daniken Land and incorporate theories about highly intelligent aliens from the stars, from Atlantis, or Lemuria, equipped with a technology that included submarines.
Interest in the loch is as fresh today as it ever was, and some is truly heartwarming. Lloyd Scott suffered from chronic myeloid leukemia until a life-saving bone marrow transplant put things right for him in 1989. Determined to help others in similar circumstances, Lloyd became a world record holder in a charity marathon, completing the London Marathon in an ancient diving suit with a copper helmet. His latest charity