The Big Book of Mysteries. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

sort of head just above the water — not erect or anything — and then all this turbulence back behind it. It was moving in the river at a fair amount of speed. It was obviously something moving, not anything drifting.

      Peter continued: “In a matter of less than a minute it was gone … clean out of sight behind the port wall. It was travelling at about seven or eight knots.”

      Eyewitness Tori Crawford then said,

      When Lesley told us about the fin, we all proceeded to go outside. We were all together, but I was one of the last ones to get outside. There it was, just as Dave said. It was between three and five car lengths long, and there was definitely a big shadow in the water. I only saw a little bit of the diamond head, not a lot of it — what we think was the head anyway. But it was something that I’d never seen before: never! It certainly wasn’t seaweed put together, or anything like that.

      After being asked to draw a picture of what she’d seen, Tori provided more information as she sketched it:

      I was one of the last ones to come out, so I hardly saw anything of the head myself. But you have the wall there and the Martello tower here. And it was as if the creature had bumps like this: the large one in the middle and then a small one just coming off here. It looked like a mountain moving along, but it definitely had a smaller bit toward the tail part, and a smaller bit toward the head. The turbulence coming from the back was unbelievable; it made you think it had flippers.

      Many years experience as an investigator provides a professional researcher with the ability to weigh up the reliability of witnesses to this kind of reported phenomena. Having spent several hours in their company, the authors are convinced that the witnesses whom we interviewed were very sensible, rational people who had made clear and accurate reports about what they had seen in the estuary by Pembroke Dock: precisely what the creature was remains a mystery. Possibilities range from some large, unknown species of marine animal to a miniature submarine manoeuvring in a difficult, shallow and restricted waterway. There are Ministry of Defence activities in this area from time to time, and unconventional new designs of underwater craft may be tested here occasionally.

      Reports of sea monsters from the past — centuries before human technology reached a point where the first relatively modern submarines appeared — would seem to require other possible explanations: unless some of the most ancient sea monster myths and legends owe their origin to underwater craft from Atlantis, Lemuria, or the advanced technology of visiting extraterrestrial amphibians. We live in an incredibly strange universe, and the more we learn of its wonders and mysteries, the stranger and more inexplicable it becomes.

      What we like to refer to as “good, old-fashioned common-sense” can sometimes be far wide of the mark, but it is always worth looking for simple, common-sense answers first before venturing into the misty and uncertain vistas of Von Daniken Land.

      William of Occam’s famous medieval philosophical Razor taught much the same set of truths! William’s basic principle was that we should never make more assumptions than the minimum necessary to explain any phenomenon being studied. It’s also referred to as The Principle of Parsimony. Despite its medieval origins it underlies much of our contemporary thought. Occam’s Razor recommends that we metaphorically shave off anything that isn’t absolutely essential to explain the phenomenon we’re investigating — or the model of it that we’re building.

      Although the widely and persistently reported Loch Ness phenomena do not strictly relate to sea monsters, the Loch Ness sightings are too important to be omitted from any serious study of marine cryptozoology. If sea monsters in general really exist, a detailed survey of Loch Ness will provide the researcher with valuable clues.

      A report from as long ago as the year 565 records how Saint Columba, while travelling up to Inverness on a missionary journey to the Picts, rescued a man in danger on Loch Ness. The original account reports that “a strange beast rose from the water.”

      The geological history of Loch Ness suggests that it was at one time connected to the North Sea, and this would support the argument that members of the Plesiosaur group are reasonably strong claimants for being the Loch Ness Monster — if there is one at all. To add detail to the 565 account, it was said that Columba and his followers knew that a local swimmer had been fatally mauled by something big and dangerous in the loch. Despite this, one of Columba’s followers had valiantly started swimming to retrieve a boat. Suddenly, a huge creature reared up out of the water and made toward the terrified swimmer. Some early accounts, which give the monster its Gaelic name of Niseag, describe it as resembling an enormous frog. This would link it with the vodyanoi of Finland.

      Columba himself ran fearlessly into the water to save his companion, shouting sternly to the monster: “Go no farther! In the Name of God touch not thou that man!” Columba was a powerful man in mind and body — as well as a good and courageous one. Whether it was the saint’s forceful voice, or some paranormal power of holiness surrounding him, the monster decided that on this occasion it had more than met its match and that discretion was definitely the better part of valour: it retreated ignominiously. Could the creature even have been a thought-form, like the Tibetan tulpa, that retreated when attacked by a powerful mind like Columba’s?

      The loch is about thirty-five kilometres long and 250 metres deep: a spacious enough home for the largest sea monster. Duncan McDonald, a diver, was working there in 1880 (albeit with the rather primitive equipment then available). As he carried out his salvage operations on a wrecked ship in the loch, he claimed that he had seen the monster swimming past him. In his report he paid particular note to the monster’s eyes, saying that they were small, grey, and baleful. They gave him the impression that annoying or interfering with Nessie would not be prudent.

      Fifty odd years after Duncan McDonald’s encounter, George Spicer and his wife were driving along the south bank of Loch Ness when they saw a strange creature on land emerging from the bracken beside the road. The Spicers said that it appeared to have a long, undulating neck resembling an elephant’s trunk. The head was disproportionately small, but big enough for the monster to hold an animal in its mouth. As the Spicers watched, whatever the thing was lumbered down the bank and into the loch, where it vanished below the water with a loud splash. In a later interview with a journalist, George said that it had made him think of an enormous snail with a long neck and small head.

      During the 1930s, excitement over reports of Nessie reached fever pitch. Among hundreds of reported sightings at that time was one from an AA motorcycle patrolman. His description coincided closely with what George Spicer had reported. Hugh Gray, an engineer, actually managed to get a photograph of it — but although it was agreed by the scientific experts that the picture had not been tampered with, it was not sufficiently clear and distinct for the creature to be zoologically identified.

      Alexander Campbell, a journalist, described his sighting in the summer of 1934. His cottage was situated beside the loch, and, as he left home one morning, he saw the creature rear up out of the water, looking remarkably like a prehistoric monster. He confirmed the descriptions of the long, serpentine neck given by other witnesses, and added that he had seen a flat tail, as well. Alexander said that where the neck and body joined there was a hump. He watched it sunbathing for some moments until the sound of a boat on the Caledonian Canal apparently unnerved it. Its sudden dive into deeper water produced a miniature tidal wave.

      Saint Columba was by no means the only holy man to see the monster. Some fourteen centuries after Columba rescued the intrepid swimmer, Brother Richard Horan, a monk from St. Benedict’s Abbey at Fort Augustus, also saw the creature. Richard said that it was in clear view for almost half an hour. Horan added that the head and neck were thrust out of the water at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and were silvery grey. Just as a boat had disturbed the monster when Alexander Campbell saw it, so Brother Horan’s view of it ended when a motorboat went past. At the sound of the engine, the monster sank back into the impenetrable darkness of the loch.

      There have been so many reliable and sensibly reported sightings over so many years that it is not easy to dismiss Nessie as a figment of the imagination, an optical illusion, or a shrewd publicity stunt. Of the hundreds of reports, here are