Lake Monster Mysteries (4 page)

In August 1933, eight weeks after the sighting reported by Campbell, a Mr. Spicer saw a creature like “a pre-historic animal” cross the road about fifty yards in front of his automobile. It was carrying a small animal in its jaws, and its long neck undulated as it walked. Spicer estimated it as six to eight feet long and speculated that it might be both a “land and water animal.” Indeed, as one of Spicer's contemporaries told the
Inverness Courier,
the creature was almost certainly a large otter, possibly carrying one of its young (Binns 1984, 19–20).

Monster enthusiast Rupert T. Gould, author of
The Loch Ness Monster
(1934), loved to cite the most unlikely theories about Nessie. The more ridiculous these were, the more he seemed to like discussing them (making, as it were, a straw-monster argument). On Gould's list were mass hallucination, a hollow log “inhabited by a colony of aquatic creatures,” “the reflection on the water of some object on one of the surrounding hills,” the action of an underwater geyser, various saltwater creatures (e.g., shark, sunfish, ray, or squid) that somehow found their way into the loch (but could not survive there), and many other imaginative possibilities—including a dead elephant. One of Gould's methods of dismissing even likely explanations for some of the sightings was by invoking other sightings that could not be so explained—as if there could be only a single explanation for Nessie (e.g., Gould 1934, 117).

In 2001, Italian geologist Luigi Piccardi suggested that the loch leviathan could be an illusion created by seismic activity, since the Great Glen Fault runs along Loch Ness. Nessie hunter Adrian Shine responded that Piccardi's hypothesis could account for only some of the monster reports, and he insisted that boat wakes were the most persistent explanation for lake monster sightings. He also noted that water on the surface could actually flow against the wind, creating the illusion that an inanimate object, such as a log, was an animate one swimming into the wind (Barr 2001).

Not surprisingly, hoaxers as well as tourists have been attracted to the purported monster. One hoax involved the appearance of monster tracks curiously resembling those of a hippopotamus. Indeed, they had been produced using a cast made from a hippo's hoof, apparently taken from an umbrella stand (Nickell 1995, 241–43).

Hoaxing was also the apparent explanation for the July 2003 discovery on the loch's shore of a fossil vertebra that was believed to be that of a plesiosaur (an extinct marine reptile). Although the fossil was authentic, it was embedded in a limestone that was not native to the area. National Museum of Scotland paleontologist Lyall Anderson speculated that the fossil had been planted at the loch to suggest that it
came from a Nessie skeleton. The total absence of skeletal evidence is a recurring argument against lake monsters' existence (Radford 2003).

The tradition of such Loch Ness hoaxes continues to the present day. In 2005, several new Nessie hoaxes surfaced. The most interesting was a reputed monster tooth that was found embedded in a deer carcass along the lakeshore by two American college students. The tooth was reportedly confiscated by a Scottish game official, creating whispers of a conspiracy. The “monster tooth” was later revealed to be part of a deer antler, and the whole thing was just a publicity stunt for a new novel about the loch (Boese 2005).

Fake photos of the monster abound as well, possibly including the first one, presented in 1933—just six months after the Campbell-reported sighting. It was taken by Hugh Gray, a man described as a “leg-puller,” and it depicts “a blurred and indistinct serpentine shape” (Binns 1984, 98, 209). One pro-Nessie writer, Tim Dinsdale, conceded: “It does not show very much of anything. The print has either been touched up, or light has spoiled the picture. There are other features in it which are peculiar” (quoted in Binns 1984, 99). But what about the most celebrated photograph of the Loch Ness monster?

In April 1934, the quintessential photo of Nessie was allegedly snapped by London gynecologist Robert Wilson (
figure 1.3
). Known as the “surgeon's photograph,” it is the most famous depiction of the creature, showing it with a long neck and small head, somewhat resembling a plesiosaur, silhouetted against the sunlit water. A second photo by Wilson was of relatively poor quality.

Over the years, Wilson seemed to tire of the controversy he had stirred up, telling one journalist that he had never claimed to have photographed a monster and that, moreover, he didn't believe in the creature. Subsequently, Wilson's youngest son “bluntly admitted that his father's pictures were fraudulent” (Binns 1984).

Then in 1994, two Loch Ness researchers made news when they provided information that the photos were indeed a hoax, that they
depicted a model made from a toy submarine to which a neck and head fashioned of wood putty had been affixed (Nickell 1995). The researchers' source was the late Christian Spurling, who, two years prior to his death in late 1993, told how the prank had been conceived by his stepfather, Marmaduke Wetherell, with Dr. Wilson agreeing to take the photos (Genoni 1994).

Figure 1.3
The famous “surgeon's photo” of Nessie, taken by London gynecologist Robert Wilson in April 1934, has been revealed as a hoax. (Photo by Robert
K. Wilson)

Subsequently, Richard D. Smith (1995), writing in
Fate
(a magazine that promotes belief in the paranormal), claimed that the hoax itself was a hoax, that Spurling's story did not ring true. Smith insisted that the uncropped photograph shows that it was not taken in “an inlet where the tiny ripples would look like full-sized waves,” as alleged, and he raised other objections. For example, he noted that an estimate of the scale based on the presumed size of the ripples argues that the creature was larger than the model Spurling described. He also cited the implausibility of the explanation of why the model no longer exists:
“Supposedly because the water bailiff [Alex Campbell] appeared and Wetherell quickly stepped on the toy, sinking it.” Smith's credibility was not helped by the placement of his article—sandwiched between a testimonial, “My Glimpse of Bigfoot,” and an article suggesting that “alien technology” was responsible for the strange hybrid creatures of Greek mythology.

It seemed to me that Smith's points ranged from the weak to the dubious, but I decided to solicit a more expert opinion. I therefore wrote to Ronald Binns in 1995, and he responded with a detailed three-page letter. He began by conceding that Smith's perceived faults with Spurling's story might suggest that the hoax was bogus. However, he noted:

On the other hand, as Spurling was an old man when he was interviewed maybe he was just confused. After more than half a century anyone's memory would surely be unreliable. Maybe he was right about how the model was made but wrong about the dimensions. Maybe the model sank accidentally (as did the hugely expensive model monster made for the Billy Wilder film
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes).

Even if the object was 1.2 metres high, so what? It could still have been a model. My own fake Nessie (Plate 3 of
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved
) was a tiny cardboard cut-out head and neck stuck in the neck of a mineral-water bottle and covered in black plastic from a garbage bag (about 12” out of the water). It took ten minutes to make. I don't doubt the Wilson model was better constructed. In the Wilson photo the dark shapes to the left and right of the head and neck could very well be the top portion of a toy submarine.

The second Wilson photograph obviously portrays a different object photographed in different weather conditions (and I suspect from a different angle). It may have been a cruder model, or it may have been a bird. If it is “rarely seen,” as Smith claims, that is because it is a bad photo of a very dubious object. Since it obviously isn't the object shown in the more famous
photo, the obvious question is how did Wilson manage to photograph two monsters?

Binns (1995) continued:

Black and white photographs are so much easier to fake than colour photographs, and still photographs are so much easier to fake than home-movie or video film. The fact that the object shown in Wilson's photograph is very close to the shore is itself very suspicious, as this is just what one would expect from a model thrown into the loch. There is also almost what amounts to a basic rule about Nessie photos and films. The photos, being fakes and/or models, are always of an object relatively close to the photographer. The movie film, being genuine footage of an object which is not a monster, is always too far away to be properly identifiable.

Richard D. Smith is wrong about the object not being photographed in an inlet. The part of the loch where Wilson said he took his photo consists of a series of inlets and there is no reason to suppose it wasn't photographed in one of these inlets (the promontories of which would not have shown in the Wilson photo). Now that we have most of the original print what is surely striking is how the object photographed is more or less dead centre—rather too neatly and well composed for what is alleged to be an animal photographed by chance.

Lastly, there is the curious anomaly of the date. Wilson told the
Daily Mail
he took the photograph on April 19th (1934). However, in Rupert Gould's book
The Loch Ness Monster
(1934) the date is given as April 1st. Perhaps this was a misprint, or perhaps the information came from Wilson and was his way of signalling that the photo was a leg-pull (since in Britain April 1st is “All Fool's Day” when leg-pulling and practical jokes are the order of the day and even the newspapers carry deliberately bogus stories as a joke).

Binns concluded with some philosophical thoughts:

I suspect after all this time we are never going to find out the full facts of the Wilson photo. The telling case against this and all the other Nessie photos is that in later years no one has ever managed to film the objects shown in either colour film, on a home-movie or on a video. The only photographic evidence from the loch which is at all intriguing is the Raynor film of 1967, and that, in my opinion, shows an otter or otters.

I was interested to read in the last edition of Nicholas Witchell's
The Loch Ness Story
that he had discovered that the famous Lachlan Stuart photograph was a hoax involving bales of hay covered in tarpaulin. What has probably been lost sight of over the years is the impact which the Wilson and Stuart photographs had on monster-hunters back in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days we all firmly believed that they were genuine photographs and that the monster was indeed a very big animal with a long giraffe-like neck, capable of transforming itself into a three-humped object.

My impression from a UK perspective is that interest in Nessie has ebbed in a big way since the 1970s, and nowadays people interested in mysteries are far more likely to go in pursuit of crop circles (which from a sociological perspective has many curious parallels with the Loch Ness monster saga).

In addition to Binns's review, another critique of the Spurling story comes from an excellent book,
Bizarre Beliefs,
written by Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson (the latter is
Skeptical Inquirer
magazine's official and indefatigable representative in the United Kingdom). Citing arguments against Spurling's account—for example, that the toy submarine would have been unable to carry the weight of the neck and head and the lead ballast strip used to keep the model stable—Hoggart and Hutchinson (1995) state: “given an explanation which fits virtually all the facts, and meshes in so neatly with what we know of Duke Wetherell (and the gullibility of tabloid newspaper editors) it seems
positively perverse not to accept the Spurling account.” (Wetherell had perpetrated the previously mentioned hoax involving a set of “monster tracks” made by a hippo hoof.) Hoggart and Hutchinson point out that, in all probability, “The dark patch in front of the neck, often described as a ‘flipper,' was in fact the deck of the [toy] submarine.” Aside from the Spurling claim, the authors of
Bizarre Beliefs
go on to say:

To be fair, very few people who have examined the Loch Ness legend, with the exception of the most dedicated believers, ever doubted that this picture was a hoax—or at least that it showed something other than a monster. There were many possible explanations: the shape of the head and neck had been cut out and stuck to a bottle which had been floated on the loch; perhaps it could have been a log, a bird or an otter's tail. In any event, though there was nothing else in the picture to judge how big the object was, it was clear that the size of the ripples around the neck didn't match the bulk of a full-size monster. These ripples were also consistent with something which had been dropped into the water rather than one which had risen up from underneath. It was pretty clear to reasonable observers that if there was a monster, its most famous portrait was of something else. (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995)