The Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness is an immensely deep lake in the northeastern Highlands of Scotland. It is overlooked by brooding hills and wild moorland – the perfect setting for strange and unexplained events. In 1933, a motorist on the new lakeside road saw a tremendous upheaval in the loch*. The waters churned and boiled as a huge monster, its body the size of a whale, broke the surface. The incident was reported in the local paper, and soon the national press was buzzing with news of what came to be called “The Loch Ness Monster.” But legends of large water creatures in Loch Ness go back much further than 1933. In the 6th century AD, the Irish missionary Saint Columba was said to have banished a monster which had attacked a swimmer. And local folk tales, going back centuries, speak of “water horses” and “water bulls” inhabiting Loch Ness. Scientists have seriously suggested that large creatures may have been stranded in the loch, when 60 million years ago it was cut off from the sea. Perhaps their descendants live there still. But despite hazy photographs, mostly highly magnified, of strange “humps” in the water, there is very little evidence, as yet, to go on.