Is there any truth behind the legend of the Loch Ness Monster?
In 1933, two eye-witness claimed to have seen a prehistoric-like animal in the waters of a Scottish lake. In the following years, the truth would begin to unravel as more people claimed to spot this elusive creature.
There are few eerie legends that survive the centuries to haunt the next generation, but one such creature’s strange tale has persisted over a millennium. On May 2, 1933, an unattributed article appeared in a Scottish local newspaper, the Inverness Courier. It carried the eyewitness account of a married couple who claimed they had spotted a large creature in the waters of Loch Ness. According to the report, “the creature disported itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron.” In the Scottish Highlands, Loch Ness is a 22.5-mile-long lake, nearly two miles across at its widest point, and its murky waters can reach a depth of 788 feet. According to the article, it had “for centuries been credited with being the home of a fearsome-looking monster.” The report hinted that what the couple had seen might be the creature that had inspired stories of the mythical water kelpie or shape-shifting water horse of Celtic legend. This legend dates as far back as over 1,400 years ago.
Three months after the couple’s sighting, the same newspaper published a letter from a Londoner named George Spicer, who claimed that while driving with his wife around Loch Ness he’d seen a strange creature cross the road in front of him. “I saw the nearest approach to a dragon or prehistoric animal that I have ever seen in my life,” he wrote. “It crossed my road about fifty yards ahead, and appeared to be carrying a small lamb or animal of some kind.”
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The author of the first report was Alex Campbell, a freelance correspondent based in a village on the shores of Loch Ness. The couple who made the sighting were Aldie Mackay, manager of the local Drumnadrochit hotel, and her husband. In the weeks following the article’s publication, Campbell wrote more stories on the subject for the Scottish media. Some argued the parties stood to benefit from either journalistic acclaim or tourism.
The kelpies
In one article Campbell stated, “Many people in the area now think that the ‘monster’ is indeed a prehistoric creature.” And he announced with confidence, “It is certain to be seen again.” Perhaps all this would have remained local gossip had it not been for the response of the Scottish media. Catching wind of the strange story, the national newspaper The Scotsman sent journalist Philip Stalker to Loch Ness in October 1933. Stalker filed a report that included an eyewitness account from Alex Campbell, who claimed that although he hadn’t believed in the monster at first, he’d later seen a long-necked creature for himself. Campbell would emerge as a key witness, eventually claiming to have seen the creature on 18 occasions, sometimes at close range. He was, in a sense, the man who invented the monster.
Sea serpent
Stalker published his research in two reports in The Scotsman. He concluded that Loch Ness was inhabited by a large sea serpent that must have come up the River Ness from the sea.
Since the 18th century, hundreds of seafarers claimed to have seen large sea monsters or serpents. And following over a hundred paleontological discoveries in the 19th century, some naturalists began to imagine that these sea serpents alleged to be inhabiting the ocean depths might be plesiosaurs: large, long-necked marine reptiles that lived in the Mesozoic era, between 252 and 66 million years ago. In 1930 this theory gained new currency with the publication of a book about prior sightings called The Case for the Sea-Serpent. Its author, Marine commander Rupert Gould, went to Loch Ness in late 1933 to conduct new research in person based on the latest sightings. He concluded that the Loch Ness creature was a species of great sea serpent that had adapted to fresh water. Gould attributed the sinewy shape of a plesiosaur to the monster, an image that remains to this day.
By fall 1933 the wider British press picked up on the Loch Ness mystery. Within weeks the news became international, offering a bit of levity amid the financial hardship of the Great Depression. Visitors began arriving at the lake, which soon became a regular tourist destination. In December a correspondent of the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reported that thousands of tourists had taken advantage of their Christmas vacations to camp on the shores of the loch “hoping that the unknown monster would appear on the surface of the waters.”
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The legendary photo
What would end up turbocharging the idea of the Loch Ness monster, or Nessie, as it was later named, was a photo—the most important in the history of monsters. On April 21, 1934, the London-based newspaper the Daily Mail published an image said to have been taken by a surgeon named Robert Kenneth Wilson. In the grainy black-and-white photo, something resembling a neck and a small head can be seen sticking out of the waters of Loch Ness. But in reality, the iconic image was a fraud perpetrated by filmmaker and big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell. The Daily Mail had contracted Wetherell the previous year to track down the monster and later fired him for allegedly falsifying evidence of its existence with fake footprints. To get revenge, Wetherell made a small model of the monster’s head and neck out of wood and glued it onto a toy submarine. He launched it into the loch and took several photographs. The respected Wilson was persuaded to send the photos to the Daily Mail. With the job done, Wetherall sank the model, so somewhere at the bottom of the loch there does indeed lie some sort of monster. The truth about the photograph wouldn’t be discovered until the 1990s.
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A native creature
After the initial excitement in the 1930s, the Loch Ness monster’s notoriety waned until reemerging in the 1960s with the rise of parascience. The new researchers distanced themselves from the idea that the elusive monster was a Mesozoic species of sea serpent, arguing instead that it was a creature native to the lakes of Scotland.
To back up this argument, they needed to prove the creature’s existence throughout history. As there was no hard evidence of its existence prior to 1933, they looked to Scottish legends and historical chronicles. This new brand of Nessie hunters claimed that Nessie’s forebears were already making a splash in the time of St. Columba of Iona, the sixth-century Irish monk who brought Christianity to Scotland.
According to the monk Adamnan in his text Vita Sancti Columbae, written sometime before 704, one day St. Columba saw a monster poised to attack a person who was swimming across the River Ness. The saint made the sign of the cross and the beast retreated. But skeptics were quick to dismiss the account, arguing that the Vita Sancti Columbae is a hagiography written a century after Columba lived and includes tales of all sorts of incredible deeds carried out by various saints. This style of writing was popular at the time and meant to illustrate the triumph of Christianity over the paganism of the Picts, the ancient Scots.
Screen monsters
Since the 1970s, there have been various projects to scour Loch Ness in search of an animal yet unknown to science. So far all have been unsuccessful. The tourists, however, continue to arrive in droves to watch the surface of the lake, hoping to spot some unusual movement.
The Loch Ness monster has become a focus for the desire of many to believe that a mysterious creature really could exist in the modern world. Books continue to be published on the subject, and more information than ever before can be found online. Nessie is part of an enchanted world, but also part of the Scottish identity—and more pragmatically its tourism industry. Despite whatever really lurks in the lake, Nessie seems here to stay.
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