In April of 1934 a London newspaper printed the most famous monster photograph ever taken. A long neck and small head rising from the dark water of Loch Ness, credited to a respected London surgeon. It fooled the world for sixty years.
In 1994 the truth came out. The monster was a toy submarine with a sculpted head, about a foot tall, floated by a big game hunter who wanted revenge on the newspaper that had humiliated him. Case closed, the skeptics said.
Except the story of the loch does not begin with that photo, and it did not end with it.
The first written account dates to the year 565, when the Irish monk Saint Columba is said to have ordered a beast in the River Ness to leave a swimmer alone. More than a thousand sightings have been logged since, many by people with nothing to gain, police officers, priests, a team of sonar operators. The loch itself is a fine place to hide. It is 23 miles long, more than 700 feet deep, and holds more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales put together. The water is stained so dark with peat that a diver cannot see his own hand a few feet down.
In 2018 scientists sampled DNA from across the loch. No reptile. But an enormous amount of eel.
One fake photograph does not explain a legend fifteen centuries old.
Is it possible that something large and unknown still moves through that black water.
Giant eels and wishful thinking, or a creature science has not caught up with?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
What do you think about this? On May 20, 1967, a prospector in Manitoba walked up to a landed craft near Falcon Lake. It blasted him with hot gas and left a grid of burns on his chest matching its vents. Three governments investigated. Canada put it on a coin. Hoax, or the real thing?
What do you think about this? Serpent Mound in Ohio is a 1,348 foot snake of earth, its head aimed at the summer solstice sunset, its body built on the rim of an ancient meteor crater. One dating puts it right after Halley’s Comet in 1066. Sacred art, or a message for the sky?
What do you think about this? Since the early 1990s about two percent of people in Taos, New Mexico, hear a low hum like a distant diesel that never shuts off. In 1993 Los Alamos and Sandia scientists came to find it. Their instruments found nothing. Trick of the ear, or a hidden signal?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a retired air traffic controller cast footprints in Louisiana’s Honey Island Swamp: three webbed toes, a foot long. He had reported a seven foot gray haired creature with yellow eyes standing over a dead boar in 1963. Hoax, or the Letiche?
What do you think about this? For nearly three years beginning April 2, 1968, a glowing figure of a woman appeared on the roof of a church in Cairo, seen by crowds of tens of thousands, Christians and Muslims together, and caught in press photographs. Mass illusion, or a visitation?
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