The Loch Ness monster: how did the myth begin?

On the 85th anniversary of the first
reported ‘modern sighting’, The Week takes a look at the legendary
beast’s history

In Depth

The creature in question came to be known as the Loch Ness
monster, a beast that has been the subject of numerous stories and
grainy photographs, despite no scientific evidence of the animal
ever being found.

That fact has failed to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for
any news about “Nessie”.

So where did this strange story begin? 

Folklore

The early-20th century sightings and photos undoubtedly
catapulted the monster to worldwide fame, but tales of the creature
predate the 1933 newspaper report by well over a
millennium. 

Stone carvings of a mysterious beast with flippers found near
the loch are believed to date from the time of the Picts, around
15,000 years ago. But there are written reports of a monster
inhabiting Loch Ness as far back as AD565, in a biography of
Scottish saint St Columba.

According to that work, the monster bit a swimmer and was about
to attack another man when Columba fought the beast, ordering it to
“go back”, says Encyclopedia Britannica.

“And even the barbarous heathens, who were present, were forced
by the greatness of this miracle, which they themselves had seen,
to magnify the God of the Christians,” the passage reads.

There were few further recorded sightings up until the 20th
century, but through word of mouth the legend continued to
spread.

Aldie Mackay

Eighty-five years ago today, The Inverness Courier published a
small story titled “Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness”, which quoted a
local hotel manager called Aldie Mackay as having seen a
“whale-like fish” in the northern Scottish lake that was “black,
wet and with the water rolling off it”. Mackay claimed the creature
“went in a circle, round and down” before disappearing from view,
according to the BBC.

The report is widely regarded as the first “modern sighting” of
the beast, and sparked national intrigue.

In the months that followed, further sightings were reported,
leading London-based newspaper the Daily Mail to pick up the
story.

In December 1933, the paper commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a
big-game hunter, to find the monster in the lake.

Wetherall would claim to have spotted large footprints on the
lake’s shores that he believed belonged to “a very powerful
soft-footed animal about 20ft long”.

However, after studying a cast of the footprints, researchers at
the British Museum in London determined that the tracks had been
made using a dried hippopotamus’s foot, and Wetherell was publicly
shamed by the Mail.

The Surgeon’s Photo

In April the following year, respected gynaecologist Colonel
Robert Wilson claimed to have seen something moving in the water as
he drove past the loch. He stopped his car and hurriedly took four
grainy, blurred photos, the first of which appeared to show the
long neck of a serpent-like animal just above the water.

Again, it was the Daily Mail that pounced on the photos,
publishing the first of them on its front page on 21 April
1934. 

Wilson refused to have his name associated with the image,
so it came to be known simply as “The Surgeon’s Photo”. The image
is the most commonly published supposed photo of the Loch Ness
monster to this day.

In 1994, a 90-year-old man named Christian Spurling confessed to
his involvement in a hoax involving both Wetherell and Colonel
Wilson to create the famous Surgeon’s Photo using a toy submarine.
Spurling, Wetherell’s son-in-law claimed the hoax had been planned
by Wetherell as an attempt to get revenge on the Daily Mail for
shaming him, says The Guardian.

Modern times

Remarkably, despite the various hoaxes and a lack of empirical
evidence, numerous sightings of the Loch Ness monster continue to
be reported to authorities in Scotland each year.

In fact, 2017 was the “busiest” year of the 21st century for the
monster, which was “sighted” eight times over the 12 months.

Gary Campbell, who assesses and logs sightings of the Loch Ness
monster, told the Daily Express: “This is the most we have had
this century.

“In recent years, the most sightings in a year we have had is 17
– and that was in 1996. Before that, the 1960s and 1930s were
the times that had most sightings, sometimes more than 20 in a
year.”

Willie Cameron, director of Loch Ness Marketing, told the
Daily Mail in 2012 that around one million
people visit Loch Ness and the surrounding area every year,
generating about £25m a year for the local economy.