They seek her here, they seek her there

Otago Daily Times

04-05-2025

When I was a child, I was homeschooled for some time under the auspices of an American fundamentalism programme called "Accelerated Christian Education".
The curriculum was a mess — it was deeply unscientific, homophobic, sexist, racist and Islamophobic for starters. But one thing that really struck me, at the tender age of 10, was a passage in my science booklet that cited the existence of the Loch Ness monster as evidence against evolution.
"Nessie", apparently, was a plesiosaur, and was living proof of creationism being the only possible explanation for life on earth. Understandably, I was confused — and entertained. Surely the writers of this passage were taking the mick. No-one actually believed the Loch Ness monster was real, right?
It turns out that quite a few people believe in the existence of "Nessie". Indeed, only a few weeks ago, an article in the Mirror breathlessly claimed that a Loch Ness monster hunter had caught "two monsters" in a mating dance. Nessie is getting it on, apparently.
The Loch Ness monster, for those who have been living under a rock for the past century, is a mythical creature believed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. "Nessie", as she is fondly known, is large, long-necked, and serpentine, with one or more humps protruding from the water on occasion (allegedly, that is).
Nessie was brought to worldwide attention in May 1933 after a local couple, Mr and Mrs John Mackay of Drumnadrochit, claimed to have seen a beast of hideous proportions cavorting around in the loch. This incident was breathlessly reported in the Inverness Courier : "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."
A few months later, a couple of tourists spotted a "dragon or prehistoric monster", which ambled about in front of their car before plopping into the water and swimming away. Naturally, this sighting only fanned the flames of the "monster" hysteria, and soon London newspapers were sending correspondents to Scotland.
In December 1933, for example, the Daily Mail hired celebrity big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to track down Nessie. Marmaduke purported to have found a series of gargantuan footprints along the shoreline, which he argued obviously belonged to "a very powerful soft-footed animal about 20 feet long."
Unfortunately for Marmaduke and the editors at the Daily Mail , the Natural History Museum soon revealed that the prints had been faked, likely created using a prop such as an umbrella stand or ashtray fashioned from a hippopotamus leg. Whether Wetherell was the architect of the hoax or an unwitting victim of some local tomfoolery remains a mystery to this day.
Nessie was allegedly first photographed on November 12 1933 by Hugh Gray, who was walking his dog along the east shore of Loch Ness. (In the 1960s, it was revealed that Gray's photo depicted nothing more than a joyful otter rolling around in the water.) Then in April 1934, an English physician called Robert Kenneth Wilson allegedly photographed Nessie while on a fishing holiday with his pal Maurice Chambers.
Wilson sold the print to the Daily Mail (which apparently had learned nothing from the Marmaduke debacle) for £100 and the snap, depicting the monster's small head and neck, soon became known as "the surgeon's photograph". Wilson clearly felt a bit embarrassed and tried to exclude his name from the inevitable media-storm, but to no avail; he was fined by the British Medical Association for breaching professional ethics.
The legend of the Loch Ness monster can be traced back to ancient times. There are local Pictish stone carvings depicting a curious beast with large flippers, and the first written account of a monster may be found in a 7th-century biography of St Columba. Apparently, Nessie took a chunk out of a swimmer in the loch and was readying herself to attack another hapless swimmer when the Irish monk intervened, telling the "water beast" sternly to "go back". It obeyed him, and over the centuries Nessie mellowed into a more calm, gentle creature.
In the 1960s several British universities conducted solar examinations of the lake, finding nothing conclusive save for some mysterious, large, moving underwater objects. In 1975, another expedition produced a photograph that appeared to show a giant flipper. There were several other sonar expeditions throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, all with inconclusive readings.
Nessie, apparently, just doesn't want to be found.
So if Nessie doesn't exist, what exactly are all these people "seeing" in the water? Various theories have been put forward, including floating logs, birds, unusual wave patterns, otters, deer, boat wakes and seismic gas. It's also likely that the "monster-hunters" are seeing what they want to see — influenced by Scottish legends of kelpies and other fearsome creatures, they interpret their sightings of eels and the like as proof of the monster. In 2018, our own Professor Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago led a major scientific investigation into the environmental DNA (eDNA) of Loch Ness, analysing 250 water samples to catalogue the life present in the loch. Gemmell and his colleagues found no evidence for mythical creatures like plesiosaurs or large fish such as sharks or sturgeon, but they did detect a significant amount of eel DNA.
I can't quite put my finger on what makes Nessie so delightfully entertaining. Perhaps it's the fact that she's a gentle creature, posing no threat to those who encounter her.
It's as if the Loch Ness Monster is some sort of collective "in-joke", a bit like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. She's a beloved symbol of Scottish mythology and the wild, prehistoric nature of the Highlands.
Nessie is also a tourist boon, bringing in about £1 million ($NZ2.23m) to the area each year. There are Nessie boat-rides across the loch, Nessie exhibitions, cafes and gift shops. I've bought several plushie Nessies for my niece and nephew, and you can also find her on T-shirts, teacups, badges, road signs and even bin lorries.
Staff at the Loch Ness Centre have even hired a team of digital specialists to weed out all the dodgy AI-generated images of Nessie that have been flooding in recently. In an article with the Scottish Sun , general manager Nagina Ishaq implored: "Please don't send us AI pictures. Those pictures won't be entertained ... It's our duty to ensure we keep some integrity, instead of promoting anything that's AI generated to get attention." Nessie is the gift that keeps on giving.
I don't believe a prehistoric monster haunts Loch Ness's depths. But I love the idea of Nessie — the creativity inherent in her sightings, the doctored photographs, elaborate and wildly sensational historic accounts. The Loch Ness monster taps into our love of mystery and wonder; in a sense Nessie represents the "unknown" as something benign and comforting, instead of ominous and threatening.
Whether fact or folklore, Nessie's serpentine grip on the public imagination is unlikely to loosen anytime soon. I like to think of her, frolicking around in the murky depths of Loch Ness, deciding on a whim to thrill a boatload of tourists or show off her flips to a few locals.
I like to imagine Nessie knows what a celebrity she is — she knows the sense of mystery is what makes her legend so enduring, and she'll continue to tantalise us with brief glimpses of her glorious self for centuries to come.
• Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.