Logic and the Loch Ness Monster

Copyright 2006 Bart Stewart

Is there anyone in the civilized world who has not heard of the Loch Ness Monster? The idea that there may be large or huge unknown animals in Scotland’s great lake has entered the collective culture of the entire human race. Given the immense interest in the subject, it is astonishing to discover just how little there is to support it. And this is not to mention all the negative evidence, or reasons why there could not be such a thing. How and why so many people came to believe in it is the real story of the Loch Ness Monster, and this aspect of the mystery is as fascinating as any unknown animal ever could be. It is an instructive story that should be told.

Unfortunately, the best book on the subject has been allowed to go out of print. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved, by Ronald Binns, first published in England by Open Books in 1983, not only vaporizes the case for the monster, it is entertaining and well written. The author, Mr. Binns, was involved in his youth with the organized search for the Loch Ness Monster. His book is such an absorbing and amusing read; it is well worth having even for those with no interest in the monster mystery. A copy of The Loch Ness Mystery Solved could be easily obtained through any good book search service. A book search will be the only way of enjoying the Binns original, but the logical points he raised in 1983 can be conveyed in this article.

Mr. Binns released his book to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the first newspaper piece on the monster. In 1933, an employee of the Ness Fisheries Board named Alex Campbell wrote an anonymous letter to the editor of the Inverness Courier. He said that a local couple had witnessed a tremendous upheaval of water on the loch, caused by some unknown creature. This sighting would later be revealed to be wildly exaggerated, but it would be the first of a lifelong series of promotions of the monster by Alex Campbell. In his newspaper letter Mr. Campbell began by saying, “For generations Loch Ness has been credited with being the home of a fearsome-looking monster...” Ironically, in contradicting this, Ronald Binns makes his strongest case; his research shows that, in fact, there were no reports of monsters in Loch Ness prior to Alex Campbell’s in the 1930's!

It is widely accepted among monster fans that the first sighting of Nessie dates all the way back to Saint Columba. The saint was said to have witnessed a monster lunge out of the water, roaring, and menacing a swimmer. Columba raised his hand, rebuked the beast in a loud voice, and thus caused it to retreat. This comes from Vita Sancti Columbae, written by Adamnan in 565 A.D. There are two primary problems with it. First, this ancient biography of the saint is little more than a laundry list of fantastic creatures, miracles, and supernatural stories of every sort. It contains all manner of bizarre beasties being killed or driven off by the holy man. To pluck this one account out of the lot, and present it as some kind of evidence for Nessie, is a stretch to say the least. But aside from this, had anyone bothered to read the original text, they would have seen that the incident was not said to have happened in Loch Ness at all, but in the River Ness, a totally separate body of water! The River Ness is a very shallow flow, separated from Loch Ness by Loch Dochfour. It has always been too shallow for navigating.

A few other old-time reports of monsters in Loch Ness are said to exist, and on examination they are all found to be as shaky as the St. Columba affair. A Loch Ness Monster story is said to be found in the 16th century work, History of Scotland, by Hector Boece. This turns out to be in almost exactly the same pattern as the St. Columba episode. An ancient book, full of fantastical tales of all kinds of mythological monsters, contains one mention of a monster in a loch. And, again, what the monster promoters don’t say is that it was not Loch Ness that the story concerns! In this case it was Loch Argyle.

There are no reports of a monster in Loch Ness prior to the 1930's. And no year has had more recorded sightings than 1933.

Not that there weren’t plenty of opportunities for sightings! Far from being the lonely, deserted locale described in monster books, Loch Ness was a major tourist attraction in the 19th century, and has been the site of continuous human habitation for hundreds of years before that. Daniel Defoe, and later Johnson and Boswell, traveled through the area writing history books, but with no mention of anything unusual about Loch Ness. Numerous celebrities of the past visited or lived by the loch, from Queen Victoria to Aleister Crowley. None of them ever mentioned hearing of a monster there.

The 20th century authors who promoted the Loch Ness Monster were never rigorous in their scholarship, to put it gently. These writers borrowed heavily from one another, establishing “classic” items for the true-believer orthodoxy, almost always with the shakiest of foundations. It is a pattern of behavior that can be found widely among paranormalist authors. That, and impressive sales figures.

The first book to promote the monster was called The Loch Ness Monster and Others, 1934, by Rupert Gould. Mr. Gould spent a total of two days at Ness, interviewing Alex Campbell and the minority of locals who believed in the monster. Gould concluded that the monster was a giant solitary newt, fifty feet long, which had somehow entered Loch Ness from the ocean by way of the River Ness in 1933. Just how this dubious creature could go from a saltwater environment to a freshwater lake without dying he did not say. Nor have any of the other writers who hypothesized that Nessie came in from the ocean. Also unexplained was how a lake as small as Ness could support the food requirements of so big a creature. Whale-sized animals need hundreds of miles of open ocean for feeding. Loch Ness is deep, but only twenty four miles long and one mile wide. It is also quite cold; much too chilly for dinosaurs. Ignoring these considerations, Rupert Gould would compile the canon of classic early sightings, which future generations of writers would recycle. Again, the input of one Alex Campbell was heavy.

It is hard to imagine there could have been a Loch Ness Monster mystery without Alex Campbell. His promotion was enthusiastic, in print, radio, and later television, from 1933 throughout his long life into the 1980's. No other person has had as many sightings of Nessie as Alex Campbell, (Eighteen). No other person has ever had so many close up, detailed sightings as Campbell. While the average monster sighting is of a dark shape in the water at a distance of a quarter mile, Campbell’s always sounded more like a scene from Jurassic Park. Oddly, Campbell never once had a sighting when he wasn’t alone, and never once had a camera with him to confirm his story. He is still regarded by the monster faithful as the Grand Old Man of the mystery, but what many fans do not know is that the monster is not the only mystery of Loch Ness that Campbell believed in. Campbell also claimed that Loch Ness is haunted by the ghost ship of St. Columba, which appears exactly every twenty years. The ship looks like an ancient Biblical craft, and glows, as it glides across the dark waters.

The first fuzzy photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, Hugh Gray’s indecipherable image, came along in November, 1933. This was followed by the most famous snapshot of Nessie, the swan-like head and neck profile taken by London gynecologist Robert Wilson, on April Fool’s Day of 1934. With these two pictures, the monster story broke out of Scotland to become international news. Dr. Wilson’s son would later go on record as saying his father hoaxed his photo with a floating toy dinosaur. Since there is nothing but water surrounding the monster in the photo, it is impossible to know its true size or location anyway.

Constance Whyte was a Nessie author during the lean years of the 1950's. Her 1957 book, More Than a Legend, revived the monster myth from over a decade of public apathy. She rehashed all the earlier reports, and then added a new twist. She claimed that the reason there were not more reports before 1933 was because there was no road along the north shore of Loch Ness until then. When the road was built, it opened up the full view of the lake for humans to fully view all the monsters playing there. It is hard to know if some of these writers simply lie, or if their research is really that weak. At any rate, the road along the north shore of Ness has existed since the 18th century, carrying countless people lochside. The road was improved in 1933, but it was open and operating for centuries before that.

When the 50's gave way to the 60's, a familiar pattern happened again. A lull in the monster story was exploded by a fantastic new sighting. In this case it was that of Tim Dinsdale, whose grainy, fuzzy strip of black and white film remains perhaps the only semblance of evidence ever attained for the existence of a large animal in Loch Ness. There are problems with it, however. The film was taken from a distance of roughly one mile. Dinsdale claims he was closer than this, but the scene in the film speaks for itself. A tiny, indistinct object is shown moving across the surface of the loch. It turns and proceeds along up the shoreline. A vehicle can be seen traveling along the road near the shore. This vehicle does not slow or stop and whoever was driving it never came forward to report any monster. The Dinsdale film ends there; significantly it does not show the object emerging or submerging in the water, only the brief seconds of it moving along. Dinsdale said the object appeared reddish brown to the naked eye, which from that distance would indicate it was a fairly bright color. The mystery object in this black and white 16 mm film is too tiny to show any detail. The image is just that of a grainy blob.

Dinsdale almost certainly filmed a small motorboat moving along the far shore of the loch. The film was analyzed by the photo experts at the British Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Center, who issued a report saying that if it was not a motorboat, it was “probably an animate object.” The phrase in quotes has been seized on and trumpeted about by the monster camp, with no mention of the qualifier about the motorboat.

The Dinsdale film led to 1960's Nessie Mania, and the formation of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau. This was a volunteer organization of young people who numbered one thousand at its peak, and included Ronald Binns. Its purpose was to maintain a sustained surface observation of Loch Ness from dawn to dusk, with cameras, and verify the monster’s existence. This organized effort was carried out in warm weather months for a period of ten years. Its results were exactly — zero. Dredging of the loch’s bottom for carcasses is another effort that was carried out for ten years. Results — zero.

Public interest waned again, and true to the pattern, a new flash of excitement was splashed across the newspapers in the 1970's to turn that around. Some odd sonar traces had been received.

Sonar is not the 100% foolproof technology that people sometimes believe it to be. Neither is radar. A University of Birmingham team was testing new sonar equipment at the loch in 1968 when they got their odd readings. While hailing this sonar chart as scientific confirmation of monsters, the Nessie fans ignored the subsequent report by the head of the team, Professor Tucker. He said that the readings could have been caused by gas bubbles released from the floor of the loch when the sonar targeting equipment was lowered down. A two week round-the-clock sonar surveillance of the entire loch was then launched, and turned up nothing.

Among the more famous items of 1970's monster hunting were the underwater photos taken by the American team of Robert Rines. These were the result of a sonar linked camera unit, submerged and set up to take strobe photos every fifty-five seconds upon being triggered by a large moving object. The unit never photographed anything until one night when it mysteriously disappeared, only to be found floating out in the loch. Out of 2000 photos taken by the unit, only three showed anything at all, and amazingly two of these were close-ups of what looked like a flipper. That is, it looked like a flipper after computer enhancement. There is considerable controversy over how much manipulation was done to this image.

The initial communiqué from the Bureau to its members said the flipper contained five digits. These digits are not to be seen in the print released to the press. Zoologists have said that it is possible the “flipper” is the fin of a small fish. There is no way of measuring it for size. The Rines team was back in 1975 with more fuzzy underwater photos, also without any controls to establish size. Critics pointed out that Rines’ camera took clear, detailed pictures of fish and eels in the loch, but the monster shots always needed computer enhancement. Longtime Nessie hunter Adrian Shine thought that Rines’ monster photos were of debris on the loch floor. Rines attempted without success to sell his photos to National Geographic and later Time Magazine for $100,000.

The one factor that brings people back time and again to the Ness mystery is the eyewitness sightings record. According to some of the promotional books, 4000 people have recorded sightings since 1933. But, again, like so much else in monster literature, from whence this figure comes is not made clear. Ronald Binns compiled the total number of sightings that are listed in the published books and newspapers, and arrived at a total less than 400. Many of these are certainly of mirages, which abound at Loch Ness. Eyewitness testimony, despite how many people it has hanged over the years, is a far cry from infallible. Hoaxing is not unheard of, either. And it is not as if no money is involved. The monster mystery is one of Scotland’s biggest tourist attractions. Also, the “quality media” has gotten in on the act, including supposedly educational science television sources like The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and even Nova on PBS. Nessie sells newspapers, too.

Loch Ness is home to otters, long-necked diving birds, and even deer that will swim across the narrower parts. Schools of salmon often rise and swim along near the surface, disturbing the water in long serpentine patterns. Logs from the wooded mountains often float by. Small boats cruise in the distance. In the haze of heat, or mist, or fog, on a vast expanse of flat gray water, even an expert can be tricked by such sights, especially if his imagination has been stoked by enough monster stories.

There never has been a large unknown animal in that lake. But it does exist, in symbolic terms. Taken as a symbol of human folly, our world is absolutely teeming with “Loch Ness Monsters.”