Monday 4 May 2015

A Wee Bit of Monster Hunting



I went up to Loch Ness recently for a brief one night stint. The drive up from Edinburgh took three and a half hours amidst changeable weather but there was enough periods of warm and sunny weather to enjoy the loch and its grand vistas.

I normally do not go up on my own, so I took that opportunity to indulge in some good old fashioned monster hunting. By that I mean, just drawing up the car at some quiet spot by the loch with a good view and scanning the troubled waters for its elusive inhabitant. Naturally, the camera and binoculars were at hand. I took this brief video from one of those spots just north of Inverfarigaig on the quieter south shore.




They say calm weather is "Nessie Weather" though whether that is down to the beast or the observer is a matter of opinion. My view tends to the latter, the creature is simply easier to spot on calm waters. I don't think the monster is bothered about the state of the weather above it, being a dweller of darkness. As I watched the dozens of one and two foot breakers continually agitating the waters, I could easily imagine missing a living hump surfacing briefly in a shallow manner.

I sat in my car in a very sedentary manner scanning the loch whilst eating my Pot Noodle and mulling over various matters in my head. After all, to stare at the loch for three hours like some programmed robot is a bit taxing on the physical and mental faculties. Or to put it more bluntly, boredom can set in after a sustained period. That is why it is good to punctuate the session with some other diversions.

In fact, the old met the new that weekend as I moved on from the old technique of watching the loch to collecting the trap cameras I had set up the previous August. There were three in total and they were all still in place when I got to them. Well, not quite. I had one camera strapped around a tree trained on the loch. However, when I got there, it was now pointing along the shoreline, a change of ninety degrees to the north.

I speculated that some wag had played a trick on me and repositioned the camera. That view changed when I opened the camera and water poured out. The camera had not been moved by human force, but by storm force. Then I remembered that some weeks back, Loch Ness had experienced its worst storms in twenty years. The B&B owner had told me of their ferocity and how a fallen oak had narrowly missed their house. Viewers of Steve Feltham's facebook page will also recall how the waters at Dores Bay had nearly reached his home.

Okay, I wasn't too hopeful that I would get anything from this camera, so I went back to the B&B and examined the cameras (whilst watching the Augusta Masters of course).  The dry cameras were okay but had strangely recorded next to nothing, not even swaying bushes and furry animals. The flooded camera totally failed to power up in any way, which came as no surprise. The camera had been about two foot above the ground at its lowest level, but I can quite believe that this still allowed it to be partially submerged during the storms. 

Remarkably, the SD card inside had survived and I had pictures to look at! In all, it had taken a surprising 2100 pictures before the batteries packed in by late October. That was a lot more than normal and most of these were of waves breaking on the shore beneath the camera. In terms of specification, the camera takes a sequence of three pictures on detecting motion out to 15 metres. There is also an infrared sensor which will trigger the same run during the night.

The first picture below was typical of the various images of boats that triggered the camera. Nothing remarkable there, but it gives you an idea of what to expect if a large creature swims by. The canoe below would be comparable in size to a single hump passing by and you can see there is sufficient detail in the picture to offer the hope of an unambiguous picture of a Loch Ness Monster - if it deigns to surface nearby!



Otherwise, a lot of pictures were of the type below - waves crashing into the rocks below.




At night time, the pictures take on a more surreal black and white aspect. Does the picture below depict a young Nessie trying to climb up a nearby rock? Not quite, it is the tail of a small mammal darting past the camera from left to right! I would guess it was a Pine Marten.




What the next picture depicts is not entirely clear to me, but that looks like a paw on the bottom left.






The identity of this creature is more certain - long neck, humped back, it has to be a heron!




The next picture below is a bit more puzzling, what is the object poking out of the water at about 7 o' clock near the centre of the image? Unlike the other triple trigger images, there was only one image of this object. Since there are three rapid sequences of images depicting bright sunshine, I deduce it was the brightness of the sun that triggered the snapshot.

But what was the object? Since it not a large object and its presence was fleeting enough not to trigger another image, my best guess is that this was a fish jumping out of the water.




As you can tell from the next picture, somebody came across the camera. They clearly did not steal it, so I thank them for their civility in keeping it there. This is not the first time, the camera has snapped someone having a look at it, but this is now one time too many, so I think I need to find a more secluded spot!

Overall, no Nessie pictures, but let us put this into context. The coverage of the camera is a notional 350 metres squared. The surface area of Loch Ness is about 56 million square metres meaning the camera is covering less than 0.0006% of the loch.




In fact, I need to rethink how to point cameras at the loch. Two thousand pictures of waves ensured that the unit ran out of power during a run from August to October. However, the camera is meant to run from August to April! I clearly need to position the camera higher to exclude the waves moving in below. Sunsets are also an issue as a bright sun setting on the opposite hillside can trigger quite a few pictures as well. Back to the drawing board.


AN INTERESTING STORY

Another venerable part of the tradition of monster hunting is talking to witnesses and other people around the loch.  As I was coming back up from the shores around Altsigh, I got into a conversation with a local man who had lived in the area for over six years. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, it became apparent the local was a keen angler and so I eventually asked the inevitable question about the Monster of Loch Ness.

Now, our man was sceptical of such a beast and likened it to believing in Santa Claus; however, he told a tale. Armed with torch and rod, he had gone out alone into the darkness to do some night fishing by the Altsigh.  It was during this nocturnal angling that something unexpected happened.

In his own words, he related how he heard a tremendous splash nearby accompanied by a "roar". At that point he belted up the slope and got as far from shore as he could. He demonstrated this "roar" to me and for all the world it sound like something guttural which I could not quite liken to in the animal world. It was a bit like gargling without water, if you know what I mean.

Despite all this, he offered an explanation for his experience. Since he could not clearly make out the form of the object near him, he concluded in the cold light of day, that it had been a deer which had come off the hills to swim across the loch. He explained that sometimes deer do this when shooting parties hunt them (although there was no shooting going on at that time of night). he had gone back to the shore and satisfied himself that he had found the tracks of the offending animal.

As I pondered that story in my mind, his wife came up and joined the conversation. On mentioning this strange incident, she pointed out that he suffered heart palpitations for over a week afterwards. I could understand that happening, whether it was deer or not, but then she reminded him that he had told her that the dark form had reached above his own head height!

I eventually said my goodbyes to them but immediately evaluated what he had told me. I didn't doubt that deer would on rare occasions go for a swim across Loch Ness, but the idea of deer tracks nagged in my mind. I had just come up from the beach in question and it is a mainly pebbled affair flanked by an incline of trees, bushes and grass. So I was wondering how a deer could leave tracks in that context.



No doubt there are some areas where an imprint may be left (such as around the Youth Hostel), but nevertheless, if I had pressed him more, I would have asked how he knew those were the tracks of his presumed deer and why he had not heard the sound of hoof on pebble behind him beforehand. But, I will leave it at that, having recorded the story while it was still fresh in the memory.


MORE PICTURES

Meantime, the dashcam attached to the windscreen of the car continued to operate around the loch. Here is a clip of the run from Dores to Inverfarigaig. It is somewhere along this stretch of road that the Spicers had their famous view of an unknown creature lumbering from their left, only to disappear into the foliage on the other side.





Sunday morning began very wet as I left the Bed and Breakfast and I wondered whether it was worth doing anything else. But the sun was not long in coming out for a final stint of good weather and so (as mentioned above) I headed to Altsigh were two sightings of note occurred.

The first was the land sighting by Alfred Cruickshank in 1923 and I will return to that in a future article. The second was the close up sighting by John MacLean in 1938 where the Altsigh burn flows into the loch. I clambered down the bank near the Youth Hostel and made my way to the estuary to take some pictures for the MacLean article, but I also add them here.

The first picture is looking up towards the Altsigh burn from the loch.




The next view is of a small spit of land bisecting the river to the right and the loch to the left. It is not known whether this spit existed in 1938, but I could imagine John MacLean standing there casting his fishing line as a creature beyond his expectations surfaced only sixty feet from him.



And, finally, looking across the loch from this small shingle beach.




After exploring this region and just generally watching the loch under the warmth of the sun, it was time to head back south to Edinburgh. I hope to be back in May. In the meantime, I include another dashcam footage as I headed out of the village of Foyers heading south. It was along this stretch of the road that the curious case of Lt. Col. Fordyce happened.





The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Thursday 30 April 2015

A Follow Up to the MacRae Film

Copyright: Süddeutscher Verlag

Loch Ness Monster researcher, Ulrich Magin, emailed me with a three hump photograph that has been on his files for years. While it is of interest in its own right, he wondered if it could have a link to the legendary MacRae film that was recently discussed on this blog? I reproduce the picture above with Ulrich's email below. 

You might be aware of me as a person that has commented upon the monster from time to time. I have read your column on the McRae film, and just possibly I have a clue. I am not very sure myself. There has always been an alleged Nessie photo widely used in German sources that appeared to be a still from it (or, if you want, a photo created in imitation of the alleged film). It might also be something completely different, and perhaps you know it. I enclose photos of two reproductions,

photo A from: Elke Kahlert (ed): Die Urwelt lebt. dtv, Munich 1972, p. 31

photo B from: Helmut Höfling: UFOs, Urwelt, Ungeheuer. Ensslin, Reutlingen 1980, p.280

Both give as copyright holder Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich. At the time (ca 1980), I contacted that publisher, never to receive an answer. Some magazine reproductions were better than the enclosed photos, and you could just discern an almond/slit-like eye in the conical head at the left, to the left of the pointed, frill-like ears.

The photo (and it might be a still from an early SF film I am unaware of, etc.), however, contains many elements of the description: "three humps, together with the neck and head, are clearly visible. The neck is held low over the water and seems to be writhing to and fro. During the sequence, a bird flies down and lands on a stone in the foreground, which helps to give scale to the picture.

The Orm's head appears to be bluntly conical in profile - rather like half a rugger ball, to quote Mr Dallas. On the crest of the head are two hornlike sense-organs. Starting between these, and running down the neck, is a bristly mane. Mr Dallas said that this mane reminded him of baleen; it is stiff yet flexible and the texture seemed to him fibrous rather than hairy. Slit-like eyes can be made out on the head but they are not very distinct."

Clearly visible on the photo (it is the same in both books, no variation in the waves) are large, regular, very unlikely scales on the humps, which have not been commented upon by Holiday.

By the way, there are a number of "authentic" Loch Ness monster photos that are only ever published in German media, and may have their origin here rather than in Scotland. Possibly this is one of them. Kahlert's book was first published in 1970, close to Holiday's account. It might be a German forgery. It might be a still from a SF film. It might be a still of the McRae film - who knows.

I would add that I do not recall ever seeing this photo. I agree with Ulrich that we really can't take this photograph further on our own. He has done the work at the time trying to track down further information. There is no background to indicate it was taken at Loch Ness and we know nothing about the photographer or his supposed encounter.

In that light, it could be anything from a staged hoax (such as this one from Germany) to a still from the MacRae film. I would only add that it was my presumption that the creature in the Macrae film displayed a longer neck. Anyway, if anyone has further information on this photo, send an email or add a comment below.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com


Thursday 23 April 2015

A 1934 Picture of Nessie?



My apologies first of all for not blogging this picture sooner. I have been sitting on this for months ever since I photocopied the newspaper article in Glasgow (I don't think the story is available online). Fellow cryptozoologist, Scott Mardis, came across a very cropped version of the picture during his research which prompted me into action.

The picture was taken on the 10th June 1934, but the identity of the photographer is not known. My excuse for delaying was to go to Loch Ness to line up the hill contours to establish the general location, but I will assume it was taken at Loch Ness near Fort Augustus. The account of how the picture was taken was also printed (see below and click to enlarge).




However, the picture is not new to the general Nessie literature. Peter Costello, in his 1974 book, In Search of Lake Monsters, reproduces a drawing of the picture. Based on the shallowness of the hump, he does not assign great evidential value to it.

Roy Mackal also mentions it without reproducing it in his book, The Monsters of Loch Ness, and, like Costello, consigns it to the inconclusive category. Maurice Burton also includes it in his sceptical book, The Elusive Monster, as does Witchell in his The Loch Ness Story, but none show the photograph. Today is your chance to see the original article.

Looking at the picture itself, it is not of great quality and there may even be retouching going on by the picture staff (a practise that was applied across all manner of newspaper photographs in those days). However, the sea serpent researcher, A. C. Oudemans, had reproduced the picture in a 1934 dutch article (below) which improves the quality but is cropped in extremis. Certainly, this picture shows the object to be a dark object consistent with the witness description (as a side note, I have been intending to translate this article for months, bear with me).




If this is a picture of the Loch Ness Monster, then we are looking at it in its double hump aspect. The problem is the relative shallowness of the hump which opens it up to sceptical interpretations of boat wakes. The photograph below taken over forty years ago by the Loch Ness Investigation gives you some idea of the problem.




We have also have the controversy over bow wave pictures in the recent David Elder video and again the shallowness of the phenomena opens it up to such interpretations.





If you believe there is a large creature in Loch Ness, then it is reasonable to expect shallow hump photos. In my own view, the creature is a water breather and so any breaking of the surface is largely accidental and there is no instinctive behaviour behind it. So how does one distinguish a barely breaking hump from a bow wave?

Well, there is one way to quantify this and that is to calculate the height to length ratio of the phenomenon in the given image. Applying this to our various images above we get the following numbers (I have added error estimates since uncertainty is part and parcel of such investigations).

Daily Express 0.05 +/- 0.006
LNI wake        0.034 +/- 0.006
Elder picture   0.031 +/- 0.006

It is to be noted that the 1934 object is 47% greater in its ratio than the next highest. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, but the question has to be asked, how high can this ratio be for natural bow waves? If the object in question goes above such a limit, do we discard bow waves as an explanation in this case? At this point in time, the best number is 0.034 for the LNI wake.

Another point which tends to argue against a bow wave is the fact that there seems to be no other waves in the picture. You will note that the two example pictures of wakes display this extended nature, but there is not so much indication of this in the Express picture. The caveat to be applied there is that the quality of the picture mitigates against a full analysis.

So what is it? A bow wave or something else? If somebody can find a bow wave picture with a ratio that approaches the Daily Express object, leave a comment below.

POSTSCRIPT: One possible location for the photograph may correspond to the view below which was taken two or three miles out of Fort Augustus on the A82.




The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com







Wednesday 22 April 2015

Nessie for Scotland's National Animal



The unicorn is apparently Scotland's national animal; but should it be changed to the Loch Ness Monster? Tourist agency, VisitScotland, think so and have set up a petition calling for the change.

I have already signed the petition, I ask other Nessie fans to do likewise!



A campaign has been sparked to have Nessie usurp the Unicorn as Scotland’s national animal.

Scotland’s National Animal is currently the unicorn – a legacy from William I’s decision to use the mythical creature on his coat of arms.

The campaign, launched today at the VisitScotland expo 2015, led by Inverness cruise company Loch Ness by Jacobite and is calling on the public to support essie’s quest to be formally recognised as a more relevant National Animal of Scotland, or at least as the National Monster.

The first sighting of the Loch’s oldest inhabitant dates back to 565AD, and the age-old question that she may or may not still roam the Highland waters is worth millions to Scottish tourism annually.

Just this week internet giant Google launched its own quest to survey the waters of the great Monster, making the need for a National status even more time critical.

It is now hoped that the public will get behind Scotland’s most famous mythical creature, by signing a petition which will be presented to the Scottish Government in an effort to secure Nessie a rightful place in the country’s legacy.

Freda Newton of Loch Ness by Jacobite said: “We have been running tours of Loch Ness for 40 years now, with many of our visitors coming to search for, or at least catch a glimpse of one of the world’s most famous monster.

“Nessie is an icon and an asset. There is no doubt she attracts hundreds of tourists to Scotland every year and she deserves recognition. If not as our National Animal, then at least she should be awarded the title of Scotland’s National Monster.”

To help raise awareness of Nessie’s plea, a new Twitter account has been set up to give the Loch Ness Monster her own voice, as she outlines her manifesto for change. 

@RealNessie is spearheading the campaign – reaching out to people online to support her cause.


The campaign has already received support from The Monster Raving Loony Party who have vowed to make Nessie Scotland’s National Animal and a protected species.




Tuesday 21 April 2015

A Couple of Items



If you use the Internet, you probably already know about Google putting up a picture for Nessie's 81st "birthday". Well, it's actually the 81st anniversary of the Surgeon's Photo, you can read about my 80th anniversary piece here.

There is also a special link to do their StreetView version of a trip under the waters of Loch Ness. My browser seized up when I tried it, Firefox just gets worse with age. On another browser, you get a cool trip down to the depths, but the distance from light to dark is brief due to the peat stained waters. Enjoy the trip.




When I watched Google's promo video, I was under the impression that the cruise boats at the Loch Ness Centre were used for the job. It turns out that Marcus Atkinson's boats were also (if not exclusively) used to do the 3D camera jobs, photos here.  Good job, lads!

While I am here, the BBC's Secret Britain is running an episode called Hidden Highlands of Scotland tomorrow. They will include an item on Mhorag, the monster of Loch Morar. I am not sure if Nessie features, but it's nice to see her sister get some airtime for a change.

The program runs on Wednesday 22nd April at 2100 on BBC One and you can watch it on iPlayer afterwards.

POSTSCRIPT: The Mhorag documentary can be viewed internationally at this YouTube link.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com




Friday 17 April 2015

Denys Tucker, Nessie and the Powers That Be



Scott Mardis had posted on the Natural History Museum's treatment of Dr. Denys Tucker and his belief in the Loch Ness Monster. You can see his post here.

By coincidence, the Independent newspaper has now published a story on his dismissal based on records released under the Freedom of Information Act. You can read that here. Was he fired because he believed in the Loch Ness Monster or for more mundane reasons? Despite being a qualified zoologist, will sceptics still dismiss his claimed sighting of a large creature in Loch Ness? Of course, they will.

The Daily Mail is also running the story here as are the Mirror.

It to be added that Dr. Tucker had a march on the other scientists for he claimed a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. That account is reproduced below in his letter to the New Scientist dated 27th October 1960. Click on the images and then right click for "View Image" (depending on your browser). Or you can view the original letter and replies from Maurice Burton, Constance Whyte and others at this link.

So you see, when the monster hoves into your view, things change. You are still a scientist, but you are now a scientist who has seen something inexplicable. Perhaps some of the highly trained sceptics who view this article can tell us what this professional marine zoologist saw in Loch Ness that day in 1959. To quote: 

"I, a professional marine zoologist of respectable experience, did see a large hump travelling across flat calm water between Inchnacardoch and Glendoe on 22nd March 1959, and do quite unashamedly assert it belonged to an unknown animal."





Dr Denys Tucker is not a name familiar to us today, but 56 years ago he was an eminent zoologist at the Natural History Museum whose star was very much in the ascendancy. Their youngest researcher by a decade, he was an expert in fish who was praised by his colleagues - until he claimed to have seen the Loch Ness monster, leading to him being sacked. Now new papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal details of his seven-year legal battle to be reinstated, including attempts to sue the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Dr Tucker began his academic career after serving in the Second World War as a pilot, joining the Natural History Museum in 1949 as a scientific officer in department of zoology. He rose quickly to the rank of senior in 1951, and then principal scientific officer by 1957. A favourite of senior academics, his bosses once said: 'Most people who know him would agree that in intelligence he is to be classed with a few of our most brilliant colleagues.'

However, all that changed in 1959 when, after a trip to Scotland, he claimed to have seen an 'unnamed animal' breach the surface of Loch Ness. He wrote a letter to New Scientist magazine saying that the creature could only have been an Elasmosaurus, a subspecies of long-necked dinosaurs that roamed the earth 80 million years ago. Announcing his findings to the public, he concluded: 'I am quite satisfied that we have in Loch Ness one of the most exciting and important findings of British zoology today.'

While his announcement certainly fired the public imagination, and sparked three decades of academic research into the loch, his superiors at the museum were less than impressed. According to documents seen by The Independent, Dr Tucker was asked whether his new interest in Nessie was a 'suitable topic' for a lead researcher to be involved with. Questions began to be asked about his previous work and his shadowy disciplinary record, which allegedly included speculating about the sex lives of colleagues, and waving a pistol at a superior.

The final straw came in 1960 as Dr. Morrison-Scott was appointed the new director of the Natural History Museum, and decided that Dr Tucker had to go. The sudden dismissal so shocked Dr Tucker that he decided to launch a legal campaign to be reinstated which included suing the trustees of the museum in person.
While today that would mean dragging a bunch of academics into court, back in 1960 it meant launching cases against Archbishop Lord Fisher, then head of the Church of England, Harry Hylton-Foster, then Speaker of the House of Commons, two viscounts, and a marquess. This caused deep consternation in the corridors of power, with officials keen to shut the case down, worrying that if he won they would be stopped from firing a civil servant ever again.


Despite determined efforts by the government to keep senior figures out of the witness box, the case made it all the way to the Court of Appeal, before finally being tossed out. Dr Tucker never held an academic post again, and remained convinced that the establishment were involved in an attempt to cover up his findings at Loch Ness. Following the collapse of his court case he settled in Wimbledon, writing reviews and papers, before moving to France, where he died in 2009.




The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com


Monday 13 April 2015

The James Currie Film




This post is probably more by way of a postscript to the previous article on the MacRae film. The James Currie film is another alleged movie of the Loch Ness Monster which has never been verified to exist. The source of the story is an article in the Aberdeen Evening Express dated the 18th September 1973 in which the reporter (Charles Fraser) tells readers of the attempts by a "leading monster hunter" (Roland Brown) to get this film released for analysis. The article is reproduced above with thanks to Mike Dash for the scan.

The article takes us back to 1938, when retired bank manager James Currie of London arrived at Loch Ness with his movie camera and a six inch telephoto lens, determined to capture the Loch Ness Monster on film. Setting up his camera at a point on the shore opposite Urquhart Castle, he kept vigil for eleven days until his luck was in as the monster put in the desired appearance.

The account tells us that a wake appeared at 300 yards which soon led to the creature surfacing with long neck, three humps and a triangular shaped head as it progressed along the loch. We are told Mr. Currie exposed up to three minutes of film of this greyish brown creature splashing about.

However, having gone to these lengths to obtain this vital piece of footage, James Currie decided to place the film in a bank vault in Great Portland Street, London, "until such time as the public takes such matters seriously". At the time of writing, the article states that Mr. Currie had been dead for over twenty years.

If this all sounds familiar, you would be right. The whole saga sounds like the McRae story, but using a different person. But could this be another separate, sensational film hiding from view? The idea of not one but two detailed films of the Loch Ness Monster being under lock and key strains even the credulity of the most sycophant Nessie fan.

Unlike the McRae film, we have no information on Currie's family or genealogy that could lead us to a death certificate or any other information. We now have a clear picture of who Dr. MacRae was, but Mr. Currie was a bank manager and that is it. My own perusal of the British Library news archives turned up no such person, though admittedly, a newspaper mention is no guarantee, even for a bank manager.

Unfortunately, the newspaper article raises more questions than it answers. The reporter states that all this was reported in "contemporary reports". However, a search of 1938 press clippings shows up nothing about this incident. The closest I could find was a sighting of three humps, long neck and tail by a party of tourists on the 11th July near Invermoriston Bay, miles away from the stated location of James Currie.

By 1975, the article had entered the consciousness of the monster hunting fraternity. In a MacRae film exchange between Alastair Dallas and Alan Wilkins, Dallas had been asked about this Currie film. He said he had no knowledge of Currie or his film.

Fraser also recounts the tale of the MacRae film, but his retelling of that tale is full of errors. The article claims MacRae came across the creature floating, as if asleep. He claims a scaly tail was visible. Furthermore, he states a boat is visible in the film, scaling the creature to 30 feet. Finally, he asserts that all the trustees of the film were now dead.

None of these so called facts are in the account Holiday relates in his book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness". We can only assume Fraser embellished the story and hence his telling of the Currie story is under suspicion of exaggeration too.

However, the similarities between the Currie and MacRae films suggests there is more than mere coincidence at work. Consider these parallels in the two cases.

Both men filmed a long necked monster with three humps.
Both films run for several minutes.
Both describe the head as being conical in nature.
Both men decided to keep the film in a bank vault until the matter was taken more seriously.
Both men had died over twenty years ago (25 years ago in MacRae's case).

Paul Harrison, who was involved in the hunt for the MacRae film also made enquiries to the Aberdeen Evening Express regarding the article author, Charles Fraser. No one from that time had heard of him, which suggests he was a freelance writer not permanently employed at their offices.

Enquiries to seasoned Nessie researchers also turned up a blank as to the identity of the so called leading monster hunter, Roland Brown. I also did a search for the variant "Ronald Brown" which proved negative as well.

One could argue that the name "Roland Brown" was a false name to allow the real monster hunter to get on with his detective work anonymously. The same could be applied to the Currie story being a cover for the actual MacRae film, but again deflecting so that the likes of Alastair Dallas would be left alone. However, this strained interpretation still leaves us wondering why the real investigator did not eventually step forward with whatever he had found?

All in all, the indicators point towards this 1973 article being a fabrication. Why it was done is not clear, but if Mr. Charles Fraser is reading, perhaps he could tell us!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com