Researchers and enthusiasts from all over the world have long been tormented by the question: does the Loch Ness monster exist? Even sophisticated modern technology cannot give an exact answer. The existence of Nessie, living in the waters of Loch Ness, was officially announced in 1933. The British newspaper The Telegraph collected the most famous photographs of the legendary monster.

At the end of 2013, two British residents saw a mysterious silhouette about 30 meters long on the surface of Loch Ness on satellite maps from Apple. For six months, experts studied the image and came to the conclusion that the object could very well belong to the legendary monster.

In the summer of 2009, a resident of Great Britain said that while viewing satellite photos on the Google Earth website, he saw the creature he was looking for. The photograph of the service actually shows something that vaguely resembles a large sea animal with two pairs of flippers and a tail. However, it is possible that the satellite could capture an ordinary boat leaving a foam trail.

In May 2007, 55-year-old Englishman Gordon Holmes claimed that he had convincing evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness monster. The researcher decided to place microphones in the lake and study sound signals emanating from the depths. Near the western shore, he noticed movement in the water and immediately turned on a video camera, which recorded the movement under the water of a long dark object heading towards the northern part of the lake. The creature's body mostly remained under water, but its head surfaced from time to time, leaving a trail of foam behind it.

Experts who examined the film confirmed its authenticity and came to the conclusion: a creature about 15 meters long moved at a speed of 10 kilometers per hour. However, Holmes's filming is not considered conclusive evidence of existence in the lake. prehistoric monster. Opinions arose that it could be a giant snake or a worm, a light illusion or a log set in motion by an internal current.

A photograph of the alleged monster taken in 2005.

And this photograph from 1977 turned out to be an ordinary fake. A certain Anthony Shiels claimed to have taken the photo while walking near Yorkhart Castle.

This underwater photograph taken in 1972 by members of an expedition led by Dr. Robert Rhines shows a creature resembling a plesiosaur.

In this photograph, also taken in 1972, the monster appears to be moving to the right, with its wide-open mouth and powerful back visible.

Former army captain Frank Searle arrived at Loch Ness in the early 1970s. Going to find the mysterious creature, he took a huge number of photographs of Nessie, many of which were widely circulated by the media. However, they all turned out to be fakes.

In July 1955, Aersher banker Peter McNab photographed something in the bay near Yorkhart Castle that looked like a huge dark creature cutting through the surface of the lake.

In 1951, Lachlan Stewart photographed some strange hills above the water. Later it turns out that these hills were actually tufts of grass floating on the surface of the lake.

And this is perhaps the most famous photograph of Nessie. London colonel and physician Robert Wilson took this photo in April 1934. The author claimed that he photographed the monster by accident while traveling in the area, bird watching. Only in 1994 was it established that this photograph was a fake made by Wilson and three accomplices.

First famous photograph The Loch Ness monster was created on November 12, 1933 by a certain Hugh Gray.

Loch Ness (literally Nose Lake) is located in the north-east of Scotland in the county of Inverness. The area of ​​the lake is about 60 square kilometers, and the maximum depth reaches 230 meters. The water in the lake, curiously, does not freeze even in the most cold winter. And the living creatures living in its depths amaze with their abundance and diversity. Scottish folklore is replete with centuries-old legends about a monster living in the lake.

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✪ Big disappointment: The legend of the Loch Ness monster New study of the lake

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✪ HOW THE LOCH NESS MONSTER WAS FILMED

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Legend

Shooting Dinsdale

The progress of the boat, filmed by Dinsdale himself for comparison, numerous computer studies, additional verification by Kodak specialists, and the initial JARIC conclusion itself provide convincing evidence that there could be no question of a trace left by the boat.

Professor Henry Bauer, Virginia Polytechnic, USA.

Sound scanning

Disappointed in the effectiveness of visual research, those wishing to find confirmation of the urban legend turned to alternative methods search, in particular, sound scanning. The first session of this kind was carried out in the mid-50s, and since then work in this area has continued continuously. Thus, researchers learned a lot about Loch Ness, in particular, they calculated total The biomass in the lake is a key factor that has a direct bearing on the possibility of a large creature existing here.

In addition, sound research revealed the existence of a seiche effect in the lake, which can cause optical illusion and which Inspector Campbell initially attributed to eyewitness observations. It's about about the sudden appearance of powerful short-term flows of water provoked by sudden changes atmospheric pressure. Such currents can carry large objects with them, which, moving against the wind, can create the illusion of moving forward “of their own free will.” It is this phenomenon that experts explain the silhouette in McNab’s photograph.

Gordon Holmes film

Satellite image

In the summer of 2009, a resident of the UK said that while viewing satellite photos on the Google Earth website, he saw the creature he was looking for. The photograph of the service actually shows something that vaguely resembles a large sea animal with two pairs of flippers and a tail.

Latest Research and Myth Debunking

A group of specialists from the UK, using a robot called Munin, conducted, according to the researchers themselves, the most detailed study of Loch Ness to date (April 2016). Scientists representing the “Loch Ness Project” under the leadership of Adrian Shine decided to check the information provided by a certain fisherman at the beginning of 2016 that there was a huge crevice at the bottom of the lake. According to the fisherman, it could well accommodate the legendary monster. According to the researchers, the robot, using sonar methods, was able to obtain very detailed information about this section of the lake at a depth of up to 1500 meters. At the same time, the maximum depth of the lake reaches “only” 230 meters (this is one of the deepest lakes in Scotland). However, experts decided to check the periodically voiced assumption that it is actually deeper due to not yet open crevices or underwater tunnels, Sky News reports.

No anomalies were found during the study, which means there is no crevice in which the monster could be hiding. According to researchers, this suggests that the Loch Ness monster, apparently, does not exist after all. But the robot, moving along the bottom of the lake, came across a fake monster created in 1969 for the filming of the film “The Private Life of Sherlock” Holmes." During filming, the model drowned in the lake - due to the fact that director Billy Wilder demanded that two humps be cut off from her, which worsened her buoyancy.

The last photo of the Loch Ness monster

Amateur photographer Ian Bremner, 58, photographed what may be one of the most convincing sightings of the Loch Ness monster to date (September 2016). Bremner drove through the highlands in search of a deer, but instead witnessed a startling sight: he saw Nessie floating in the calm waters of Loch Ness. Ian spends most of his weekends around the lake photographing the stunning natural beauty. But when he returned to his home, he noticed a creature in the picture, which he believes could be that elusive monster. The photo shows a swimming two-meter-long creature with a silvery wriggling body - its head flashed in the distance, and about a meter away from it a tail was visible, with which the animal rushing away splashed the water. The creature was spotted as it surfaced for air. The photo taken by Ian shows a long snake-like creature that fully corresponds to the generally accepted description of Nessie that appeared back in 1933. The photograph he took closely resembles some of the clearest and most famous images of this creature. In 2016, “encounters” with the monster have already been reported five times - including evidence provided by Ian. Exactly this a large number of cases of observation since 2002. Some of Ian's friends believe that his photo actually shows three seals playing in the water. Over the years, there have been 1,081 recorded sightings of the Loch Ness monster hiding in the water.

Pros against

The main argument of skeptics remains the indisputable fact that the amount of biomass in the lake is not enough to support the life of a creature of the size attributed to the Loch Ness monster. Despite its enormous size and abundance of water (brought here by seven rivers), Loch Ness has sparse flora and fauna. In the course of research carried out by the Loch Ness Project, dozens of species of living creatures were identified. However, sound scanning showed that the lake contains only 20 tons of biomass, which is enough to support the life of one living creature weighing no more than 2 tons. Calculations based on the study of fossil remains of a plesiosaur show that a 15-meter lizard would weigh 25 tons. Adrian Shine believes that one should look not for one creature, but for “a colony that would number from 15 to 30 individuals.” In this case, all of them, in order to feed themselves, should be no more than 1.5 meters in length; practically this means that the lake is not able to feed a colony of creatures larger than lake salmon (salmon).

In addition to the above fact, there are a number of indirect arguments that also work against the version of the reality of “Nessie”. For example:

However, supporters of the reality of “Nessie” are not convinced by the arguments. Thus, Professor Bauer writes:

Dinsdale's filming convincingly proves that the lake - at least in the 60s - was indeed inhabited by a giant Living being. Moreover, I am convinced that it exists here - or existed - in the singular. Something else remains unclear. Everything indicates that this creature requires oxygen to maintain life. But it hardly appears on the surface. If we summarize the testimony of eyewitnesses who described massive body with a hump, fins and a long neck, the appearance of a modern plesiosaur emerges. But the creatures that live in Loch Ness do not come to the surface and spend part of their lives at the bottom. This suggests that we are already dealing with a descendant of a plesiosaur, which over time developed the ability to remain without air for a very long time.

Supporters of the reality of "Nessie" refer to ancient legends, according to which at the bottom of the lake there is a network of caves and tunnels that allow the monster to swim out to sea and return back. However, studies of the bottom and shores indicate that the existence of such tunnels here is unlikely.

Conscious hoax

One alternative explanation for this phenomenon is that the owners of hotels and other establishments located near the lake used the ancient legend of the monster to attract tourists. Therefore, local newspapers published “eyewitness accounts” and photographs supposedly confirming their claims, and even made dummies of Nessie. Wilson's hoax accomplice, Christopher Sparling, was the stepson of Montague Wethorle and testified that people from the newspaper's editorial office pressured Wethorle to produce conclusive evidence. Noteworthy is the proximity of the activation of the theme of “the monster from Loch Ness” (1933) and the film adaptation of “The Lost World” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1925), which popularized cryptozoology, thereby creating fertile ground for the emergence of an urban legend about the existence of a relict lizard in Scotland. It should be noted that the “first eyewitness” - Mr. John Mackay - was the owner of a hotel in Inverness, and in the film “The Lost World” there is a scene of a plesiosaur sailing past a steamship and a small mise-en-scène at the very end of the picture, where a brontosaurus fell from the Tower Bridge it had broken into Thames, floating on the surface of the river, raising his head high on his thin neck and arching his back exactly as captured in the “surgeon’s photo.”

This version does not explain the early mentions of the creature, but these mentions themselves, like most medieval legends, are not accurate and are not confirmed by anything. It can be noted that the biographies of a number of medieval Christian saints contain references to fantastic monsters expelled or pacified by them (for example, Saint Attracta, Saint Clement of Metz and others); It is possible that the story of the pacification of the monster on Loch Ness was remembered a posteriori, when the urban legend about “Nessie” had already taken shape.

Loch Ness monster, or Nessie is amazing water creature, which, according to legends and eyewitness observations, lives in the large deep Loch Ness Lake, located in Scotland.

The mystery of the Loch Ness monster has been troubling the world for hundreds of years.

The name "Loch Ness Monster" was coined by Evan Barron, a local newspaper editor. If you believe the most common theory, then this monster is a marine reptile Plesiosaur, which existed in the era of dinosaurs and has survived to this day. Most scientists believe that a single creature cannot live at the bottom of a lake; a whole family must live there, otherwise it will die over time. Some argue that the Loch Ness monster is just a figment of people's imagination.

Loch Ness is a huge deep depression in the earth's crust, located in the highlands of Scotland and surrounded by steep cliffs 610 meters high. Since ancient times, this lake has been considered gloomy and mysterious. It is located in an unattractive and difficult-to-reach place for humans.

The picturesque Loch Ness is a paradise for Nessie

Lake Loch Ness was formed at the end ice age, ten thousand years ago. Its depth is 300 meters, its length is more than 38.5 kilometers, and its water is pitch black. The lake bottom has an area of ​​about 57 square kilometers. This lake is one of three large lakes that feed the Big Valley. The huge Vale Rift separates Northern Scotland from the rest of the British Isle. Loch Ness is Britain's largest source of fresh water and the third largest in Europe.

The Legend of the Mysterious Loch Ness Monster Nessie
The story of the Loch Ness monster Nessie dates back to the beginning of Christianity. According to legend, Roman legionnaires were the first to tell the world about a mysterious creature living in a Scottish lake. It was they who, at the beginning of the Christian era, mastered the Celtic expanses with a sword in their hands. All representatives of the Scottish fauna, from mice to deer, were immortalized by local residents on stone. The only image that the Romans could not recognize was the strange representation of a seal with long neck and enormous sizes.

There are many legends about Nessie. But there is also documentary evidence from eyewitnesses

The first written mention of the mysterious monster that lives in the Scottish Loch Ness was made in the 6th century AD. The abbot of the Iona monastery in Scotland, in his biography of Saint Columba, spoke of the saint’s triumph over the “water beast” in the River Ness. At that time, the abbot of Columbus, in his new monastery located off the west coast of Scotland, was engaged in proselytizing the pagan Scots and Picts. As the story goes, one day Columba went out to the lake and saw a funeral. It was the locals who were burying one of their people who had been maimed and killed while swimming in the lake. It was believed that he was killed by Nisag - the Celtic name for a mysterious monster. Armed with hooks to scare away the creature, local residents dragged the body of the deceased to the shore. To bring the boat, one of the saint’s pupils without hesitation jumped into the water. When he sailed from the shore of the lake towards a narrow strait, “a strange-looking animal rose from the water, like a giant frog, only it was not a frog.” With the help of prayer, Columba drove away the mysterious monster.

After this, the Loch Ness monster for a long time calmed down, but unexpectedly in 1880, with a clear sky and complete calm on the lake, a small sailboat capsized and then sank along with its people. There were eyewitnesses who allegedly saw the Loch Ness monster.

This was the beginning of the legend of the Loch Ness monster. In those days, this mysterious monster was represented as an evil water or hellish creature with a horse's head, a water serpent. These creatures, according to legend, lived in the coastal waters and lakes of Scotland and Scandinavia.

Ancient Scottish folklore is replete with stories about terrible water monsters that look like horses and attack people near the shore, called kelpies. Local residents living near Loch Ness today still remember how, as children, they were forbidden to swim in this lake because of kelpies.

Ten years later, after the remains of a mysterious marine reptile were discovered in England in 1719, Nessie began to be credited with the image of a Plesiosaur.

Theories of the origin of the Loch Ness monster

The unknown Loch Ness monster is a dinosaur that went extinct millions of years ago - a plesiosaur. This is the most common version of the origin of the mysterious monster Nessie. According to supporters of this theory, the plesiosaur fell into a trap after tectonic movement raised the land, and part of the prehistoric sea formed into a lake. However, the likelihood that one individual can live for at least several centuries is quite small. In this regard, the population of the mysterious monster must number several dozen individuals in order to be able to reproduce. In addition, such a population needed a large amount of food to feed itself; for such purposes, Loch Ness is small, and is unlikely to feed so many plesiosaurs.

The mysterious Loch Ness monster is a species unknown to science giant fish, long-necked seal or clam.

The Loch Ness monster Nessie is a bathing elephant. This hypothesis was put forward in 2005 by a British doctor, curator of the University of Glasgow Museum Neil Clark. For two years, Clark studied materials related to the mysterious monster. His research showed that the number of encounters with the monster increased sharply when circus tents stopped near the lake. Local residents perceived part of the back and the high-raised trunk of a swimming elephant as the Loch Ness monster.

The mysterious monster Nessie is nothing more than visions that arise under the influence of hallucinogenic gas. This theory belongs to the Italian seismologist Luigi Piccardi. The scientist specializes in finding connections between mythical creatures and geological phenomena. According to him, it is no coincidence that Loch Ness is located on a huge crack in the earth's crust crossing the British Isles. This fault contributes to the formation of small but frequent earthquakes. Characteristic feature These tremors are the release of gases from the bowels of the earth that can cause hallucinations in people. However, the theory cannot explain why all eyewitnesses describe the mysterious monsters in the same way.

It is possible that the Loch Ness monster Nessie is an example of a fairly long-term and very competent marketing company. Thousands of tourists visit the area around Loch Ness every year, which in turn brings huge amounts of money to local authorities. It is quite possible that all information about the Loch Ness creature is falsified materials that are made so that the excitement does not disappear and people continue to come.

There are other theories that are more like science fiction.

Scientific description of the Loch Ness monster

The monster has a three-meter-long neck that rises to a height of two meters above the water. Its body is six and a half meters long and its tail is three meters long. While the Loch Ness monster swims, its neck is at an angle of 30 degrees. Exact amount humps are unknown, as opinions about their number differ. Half of the witnesses claim that the creature has three humps, of which the middle hump is the largest and is a meter high. According to a quarter of witnesses, the animal's back is smooth. Skin color also has no precise description. By different opinions the skin changes from brown to light gray, like that of an elephant. From observations, it can be noted that a mysterious creature rises to the surface of the water most often in the morning.

It is also assumed that the Nessie monster feeds exclusively on aquatic vegetation and fish, and therefore does not need to go ashore often. The mysterious monster's vision is poorly developed, but this deficiency is compensated by a well-developed sense of smell. The monster's respiratory organs are gills. That is why the version that the monster comes to land is practically excluded.

According to descriptions of eyewitnesses and assumptions of scientific archaeologists, the Loch Ness monster can be attributed to a group of reptiles that existed during the period from the Triassic to Cretaceous era. This is approximately 199.6 - 65.5 million years ago. Such animals felt quite good in the water and were perfectly adapted for living in such conditions. However, the mysterious monster, like all mammals, had to come to the surface to replenish its oxygen supplies.

Testimonies of real eyewitnesses who observed the Loch Ness monster

In the spring of 1933, correspondent Alex Campbell published an article in the Inverness Courier newspaper “Sensational phenomenon on Loch Ness. What could this be?”, in which he described in detail the story of John Mackay and his wife. The article talked about how the Mackay couple, while walking along the lakeshore, noticed a strange animal, which they called a monster. Readers were excited by this incident, and Alex Campbell began systematic monitoring of the lake. He saw the monster 18 times. Campbell was able to see the Loch Ness monster most clearly in 1934, when the neck, head and hump of the mysterious creature were two hundred meters from the shore. In the same year, they began to create a road along the northern shore of the lake. For a better view of the largest freshwater body of water in Britain, bushes and trees were cut down. A large number of people and cars appeared on the deserted shores, and the roar of engines pierced the surrounding area. After this, the creature was noticed especially often, perhaps this was due to its curiosity, or maybe irritation. A network of observation posts was organized around Loch Ness by Mr. E. Mounter. Over the course of five weeks, the monster was spotted 15 times.

Two months after the incident with the Mackay couple, the Loch Ness monster was spotted by a team of road construction workers. According to them, the monster surfaced behind the stern of a passing ship in the middle of the lake. According to the descriptions, the strange monster has a rather massive and large body and a huge head.

In August of the same year, three eyewitnesses were confused by the presence of waves on a usually quiet lake. After this, several humps arranged in a row began to float to the surface of the water and submerge again. Their movement was undulating and caterpillar-like.

The question of the existence of the Loch Ness monster was put on the agenda of the Scottish Parliament. It was proposed to catch the animal. However, this idea was rejected, and more and more scientists began to insist that there was no evidence of the existence of such a mysterious animal.

In 1943, military pilot B. Farrell reported to his superiors that during a flight at an altitude of 230 meters above the lake, he clearly saw Nessie. But the British in those years had no time for monsters.

At the end of July in 1935, the Spencer couple, early in the morning, while driving along the road between the villages of Foyers Dores, were surprised when they saw a mysterious creature across the road heading towards the lake. According to Mr. Spencer and his wife, the creature was waddling towards the water at a rapid pace, its neck was thin and long, and its body was heavy and shapeless.

This case suggests that the Loch Ness monster lives not only in water, but also comes onto land. This is also evidenced by 7 recorded cases when the monster was seen on land.

One of the local residents once heard a crash in the thicket on the shore, after which she saw a creature crawling into the water. According to her, it was a huge carcass that moved like a caterpillar. His skin shone like that of an elephant, and in front of him were two feet round shape. It entered the water clumsily, swaying from foot to foot.

In 1951, the Loch Ness monster was observed by a local forester and a friend, and the next year after that, local residents saw a mysterious creature in the water near the shore.

Mrs. Constance White, who lived most of her life on the shores of the lake, published a book in 1957 entitled “This Is More Than a Legend.” In it, she collected about 120 stories of eyewitnesses who saw the Loch Ness monster. The appearance of the monster in all the stories was described approximately the same: a long neck, a massive thick body and a small head.

Over the next fifty years, more than three thousand eyewitnesses seriously claimed to have seen the Loch Ness monster. It is unlikely that so many people could be wrong.

Photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster

Some time after Mackay's story, photographers began to appear at the lake. The first photograph of the Loch Ness monster appeared in 1933. It was made by Hugh Gray, who, returning home from church along the shore of the lake, witnessed “a certain massive object» floating to the surface. Four of the frames that Gray took were spoiled, but on the fifth some mysterious creature was clearly visible. The authenticity of the negative was officially confirmed by Kodak.

In 1937, Robert Wilson, a London surgeon, also managed to capture the monster on film, a photograph from which was published in all newspapers around the world. His photograph amazed everyone: rising above the surface of the water small size a head on a thin neck, resembling a snake's head. The monster's fin was also visible in the photo.

A reward was offered for the capture of the monster, after which material incentives, and not just scientific interest, began to push researchers to search for the mysterious monster.

Throughout the summer, Frank Searle, a demobilized soldier, spent twenty hours a day at the lake with a camera in his hands. He continuously monitored the lake from an uninhabited shore and a rubber boat. And on December 21, 1972, the Loch Ness monster finally showed up two hundred and thirty meters from the boat. On its flexible neck, the monster raised its head and examined Searle’s rubber boat with intense interest for twenty seconds. After this, the monster, plunging into the water, swam under the boat and surfaced on the other side. The observer had another thirty seconds to photograph the animal.

In the summer of 2009, a British resident said that he saw a mysterious creature while viewing photographs on the Internet taken by a satellite. The photograph actually shows something that vaguely resembles a large sea animal with a tail and two legs. Professor Adrian Shine even called the photographs "really intriguing" and said they deserve further research. However, as it was later reported, the picture shows only a boat that regularly makes tours of the lake.

A scientific approach to searching for the Loch Ness monster

Scientists, interested in such an unusual phenomenon, plowed the lake up and down, using sonar, radar and echo sounders. Researchers believed that if the monster was scared, it would come to the surface. For this purpose, they carried out explosions on the lake. Even a small submarine was lowered into the lake. However, the rather low light permeability of the dark waters of the lake made her work difficult.

A little later, special underwater spotlights equipped with cameras and microphones were installed in the lake. The idea behind this was as follows. If the microphones pick up the noise of an animal moving underwater, then the spotlights are instantly turned on, in the light of which the swimming monster is captured by cameras.

In this way, in 1972, the first photographs were taken, which did not cause delight, since a rather fuzzy and indefinite body was recorded on film.

Scientists, having analyzed this fact, came to the conclusion that the Loch Ness monster moves in the water, making a minimum of noise, and therefore the microphone could not turn on the recording device in time. Therefore, the shooting plan was changed. Every 75 seconds, automatic photography began, recording everything that fell into the frame. This is how sensational photographs of the monster’s head and body were obtained. These two photographs became the basis for convening a symposium on the Loch Ness phenomenon. Photographs were presented to specialists and the public on December 10, 1975, which clearly showed that the monster’s body was puffy, its head had two horn-like thickenings on its long neck, and the rear right fin was diamond-shaped.

Scottish folklore is filled with centuries-old legends about monsters living in the dark depths of Loch Ness. However, even now research using modern sophisticated technology is not able to determine whether Nessie and similar creatures are fiction or reality.

Despite this, eyewitness reports do not stop coming from all over the world, and over the years, the mystery of the Loch Ness monster has acquired an incredible amount of details. A lot of documentary evidence, underwater video footage, echo sounder recordings, photographs of varying reliability have been presented over the decades. However, at the same time, there are a huge number of fakes. Research will continue, and perhaps the mystery strange creature will soon be solved.

Very interesting scientific documentary about the Loch Ness monster, filmed by Philippe Cousteau, is posted below - watch this fascinating and educational video about Nessie from Lake Loch Ness.

The famous Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, lives at the bottom of the Scottish Loch Ness lake. That's exactly what one says. Scientists around the world have been trying to prove or disprove the existence of Nessie for several years now. And sensation hunters sincerely hope to meet one of the most mysterious creatures on the planet.

Fact or fiction?

to his appearance Nessie resembles a giant seal with a long neck and the head of a lizard. People who lived near the mysterious lake kept their secret for many years, which was eventually revealed by Roman legionnaires. The strangers noticed the stone figure of a strange animal that they had never seen before. Mentions of unusual creature, living in the lake, can be found in numerous sources dating back to different centuries.

Nessie, the legendary Loch Ness monster, has allegedly been caught on camera numerous times. However, even photographs did not provide scientists with evidence of the existence of a giant seal. Some researchers believe that the long-necked creature depicted in the photographs is actually a visual effect of a seiche. Falsification in order to profitably sell the image is also possible.

Loch Ness is relatively shallow, only 230 m. A huge animal, as Nessie is supposed to be, would not be able to hide and feel comfortable in this body of water. It has been suggested that at the bottom of the lake there is a deep crevice in which Nessie is hiding. However, with the help of detailed research in 2016, it was possible to establish that there are no caves at the bottom of the reservoir. No large animals were discovered that would necessarily be noticed by modern instruments.

Eyewitness accounts

In the late 1950s, a book by K. White was published with eyewitness accounts who claimed to have personally seen the monster. The author herself lived on the shore of the lake for many years and did not notice anything unusual. But even after the book was published, there were people who met Nessie:

Amateur researcher Gordon Holmes tried to make a film about the Loch Ness monster in 2007. He managed to detect the movement of an unknown object in the lake. But this recording did not convince the experts.

No one knows if Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, really exists. The human imagination is capable of creating things that live for centuries. The Scots are unlikely to be interested in finding evidence or refutation of the monster's existence. For them, Nessie is a reliable way to attract tourists who love ancient legends and tales. There really is a monster at the bottom of the lake. The prop monster was created for the film in the late 1960s. The artificial Nessie drowned during filming.

Loch Ness (Gel. Loch Nis) is a large deep freshwater lake of glacial origin in Scotland, stretching 37 km southwest of Inverness. The maximum depth is 226 m. Loch Ness became known throughout the world thanks to the legend of the Loch Ness monster (“Nessie”).

Collection of N. Stepanova

According to legend, the first to tell the world about a mysterious creature in a distant Scottish lake were Roman legionnaires who came to Scotland at the dawn of the Christian era. The first written mention of mysterious creature, living in the waters of Loch Ness, dates back to 565 AD. In the life of Saint Columba, Abbot Jonah spoke of the saint's triumph over the "water beast" in the River Ness. The abbot of Columbus, who converted the pagan Picts and Scots in a monastery off the west coast of Scotland, one day went to Loch Ness and saw that the locals, armed with hooks, were pulling out of the water one of their people, killed in Lake Nisagom (the Gaelic name for the monster) . One of the saint’s disciples frivolously threw himself into the water and swam across a narrow strait to bring in a boat. When he sailed away from the shore, “a strange-looking animal rose from the water, like a giant frog, only it was not a frog.” Thus began the legend of the Loch Ness monster.

In the spring of 1933, the Inverness Courier newspaper published a story by the Mackay couple, who encountered Nessie firsthand. In August of the same year, three eyewitnesses noticed a disturbance on the usually quiet Loch Ness. Then, several humps began to appear on the surface of the water, arranged in a row, then floating to the surface, then again going under the water. They moved in waves, like a caterpillar.

Most supporters of the existence of the monster considered it a relict plesiosaur, but over 70 years of “observations” it was not possible to find a single corpse of the animal. Reports from the 6th century about sightings of the animal also raise doubts.

In addition to the hypothesis about plesiosaurs that have survived to this day, there are other versions of the origin of Nessie. So in 2005, Neil Clarke, curator of paleontology at the University of Glasgow Museum, compared the first reliable data on observations of the monster with the travel schedule of traveling circuses on the road to Iverness, and realized that local residents had not seen prehistoric dinosaurs, and bathing elephants from traveling circuses heading to Iverness. Clark believes that the first observations and photographs of Nessie were made from bathing and swimming elephants. After all, when an elephant swims, a trunk and two “humps” are visible on the surface of the water - the top of the head and the top of the elephant’s back. The picture is very similar to the descriptions and photos of Nessie. According to Clark, the Nessie legend was one of the best marketing moves of the 20th century. It’s not for nothing that the manager of the circus troupe (speaking of elephants!!!) Bertram Mills offered a large monetary reward (? 20 thousand, or? 1 million in modern money) to the one who caught this monster for him in 1933, after The first reports of a large animal with a long neck appeared. This is how Nessie became widely known.

There is also a version of the Italian seismologist Luigi Piccardi that the huge waves on the surface of the lake, as well as the huge bubbles rising from its bottom, are nothing more than the results of tectonic activity on the surface of the lake bottom. After all, a tectonic fault runs along the bottom of the lake. All this can be accompanied by the emission of flames, the emission of characteristic sounds reminiscent of a muffled roar, and also cause mild earthquakes, which are mistaken for a monster.

In 2007, reports appeared in the press that scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examining the bottom of Loch Ness, saw on the monitor screen connected to a television camera lowered to a depth of almost 100 m, a living creature crawling out from under the silt. Upon closer examination, this creature turned out to be a TOAD (!!!) about the size of a palm. But there are deeper backwaters on the lake. Maybe someone bigger lives there? After all, if you believe the biography of St. Columba and the descriptions of eyewitnesses of the century before last, then the Loch Ness monster initially resembled a huge toad or frog. Only in the 20th century did they begin to believe that it looked like a 10-15-meter plesiosaur.

Material prepared by Natalya Stepanova

Sources: wikipedia.org, vseotmambo.nnm.ru, lenta.ru