Lake monsters used to be all the Rage, now they're making a comeback

News broke around the world in 1934, when the infamous “surgeon's photo” of the Loch Ness Monster was published on the front page of the Daily Mail. 

According to PBS, river monsters have been a part of Scottish folklore for thousands of years. The earliest known reports of a monster terrorizing the freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands dates back to 565 AD. Saint Columba reported in his diary that he had defeated the monster with the power of the Holy Spirit.     

New evidence of a Loch Ness Monster taken in 2018 by photographer Chie Kelly 

“Columba was on his way to visit a Pictish king when he stopped along the shore of Loch Ness,” Stephen Lyons wrote for NOVA. “Seeing a large beast about to attack a man who was swimming in the lake, Columba raised his hand, invoking the name of God and commanding the monster to ‘go back with all speed.’ The beast complied, and the swimmer was saved.”

The first modern report dates to 1933 when a road was opened that accessed the northern area of the Loch. A couple reportedly saw a giant monster breach the surface of the water. The report was published in the Inverness Courier and journalists from around the world traveled to capture the story.

Public Hoaxes by actor Marmaduke Wetherell

The Daily Mail hired Marmaduke Wetherell to see what he could find in the Loch. Wetherell was well known to the public as an actor, and in what some said was a stunt, footprints were found in the search that were claimed to be from the monster. Wetherell took plaster casts as proof. It was later proven to be hippopotamus prints.

The Infamous “Surgeon’s Photo”

That next year in 1934, Robert Kenneth Wilson took the most well known image of the Loch Ness Monster. The “surgeon's photo” showed what looked like the neck and head of a dinosaur sticking out of the Loch. The British Journal of Photography examined the photo in 1984 and concluded that the image was zoomed in when it was published in the Daily Mail, and that the actual subject in the photo was under a meter in height. It turns out in the end that Wetherell was also behind the “surgeon’s photo” hoax. 

New Evidence of a Monster in Loch Ness

New photos of a potential Monster surfaced last week which has given Nessie a significant PR boost. Photographer Chie Kelly took the photo on a 2018 trip to the Loch, but was afraid to release the images due to fear of public backlash.   

“About 200 meters from the shore, moving right to left at a steady speed was this creature,” Kelly said in an interview with the Telegraph. “It was spinning and rolling at times. We never saw a head or neck. After a couple of minutes, it just disappeared and we never saw it again.”

The Largest Loch Ness Monster Hunt in Decades

The Loch Ness Centre organized a two day search for Nessie at the end of August that generated “multiple submissions of potential sightings.” The evidence was published in a report of the search which amounts to indistinguishable surface activity at the Loch.

The event garnered so much attention in the media that Kelly was inspired to release the 2018 photo she had kept secret. It took over the news cycle as some claimed it was definitive proof for the existence of Nessie. The Loch Ness Centre was so impressed with the photo that they included it in an official report of the search findings.

“These are the most exciting surface pictures I have seen. They are exactly the type of pictures I have been wanting to take for three decades,” Steve Feltham said in the Loch Ness Centre report.

New Video From a Lake Monster in China

New cell phone footage was released yesterday in the New York Post that shows a mysterious creature on the surface of Lake Tianchi in China. The footage, taken by Ms. Li, has been circulating Chinese media. The video appears to show the surface of the water break from the movement of a long, thin creature.

Why do so many people report seeing river monsters?

Our oceans, rivers, marshlands, and other aquatic ecosystems remain largely unexplored compared to the surface land of our planet. Reaching the great depths of the Mariana Trench was a scientific advancement in the search for unknown aquatic life, but many creatures floating in our bodies of water remain undiscovered. Scientists have explained the Nessie phenomenon as a result of public hoaxes, misinterpreted sightings of waves and possible giant eel sightings. Scientists have done research to test the water for possible evidence of the aquatic plesiosaur dinosaur having lived in the Loch and results came back negative. The plesiosaur was determined to have gone extinct 66 million years ago, making this hypothesis unlikely. Further research determined the Loch formed 10,000 years ago and its climate would not have supported plesiosaur life.  

While the new reports from Loch Ness and China trend on the internet landscape, scientists have yet to find any data that supports the existence of unknown lake monsters. Most eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence are determined to be mis-sightings. 

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