It’s likely you’re familiar with Nessie the Loch Ness Monster. Or, should I say, the hoax that some kind of creature inhabits Scotland’s Loch Ness. But this historical hoax actually goes back quite a ways. This makes it a subject of historical inquiry, even if Nessie the Loch Ness Monster is as real as elves or fairies.
Nessie the Loch Ness Monster – Early Sightings
Believe it or not, the first identification of a creature with Loch Ness comes from ancient times. The Picts of ancient Scotland made stone carvings of a beast with flippers. The first written account comes from a biography of St. Columba and appears in 565.
St. Columba is a very important historical figure. He gets credit for bringing Christianity to Scotland, arriving with (what else?) twelve disciples in 563. Soon thereafter he encountered a supposed monster after journeying to Loch Ness. He may have sought the monster out.
According to St. Columba’s biographer, a monster bit someone swimming in the loch and was about to chomp a second person when Columba arrived. He commanded the creature to “go back with all speed.” It did, never striking again.
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Modern Sightings
In May of 1933 new reports of a creature surfaced after the completion of a road provided people better views of Loch Ness. A local couple claimed they’d seen a huge creature. The media, always vigilant for sensations to attract subscribers, pounced.
Correspondents arrived in short order. A circus offered 20,000 pounds for the beast’s capture. The London Daily Mail hired a big-game hunter to take down Nessie the Loch Ness Monster. He even found footprints of his prey, although he never bagged his prize.
The footprints proved fake—it was a hippopotamus print. But that didn’t stop others from looking in the years to come. In 1934 a photograph appeared purporting to be the creature, but it, too, was fraudulent.
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Nessie the Loch Ness Monster “Facts”
Well, the fact is no creature exists. Several expeditions have spent considerable money without locating proof of a giant creature in the lake. Many substitutions have been offered, such as large eels or other amphibians. Most have ruled out ridiculous explanations like a plesiosaur. They’ve been extinct for over 60 million years, for one thing. For another, how would warm-blooded dinosaurs survive in a frigid lake in Scotland? How would they maintain their population?
(This has not, mind you, put a complete end to the speculation of the presence of dinosaurs. I once read of Christian “textbooks” in Louisiana offering Nessie as proof that humans and dinosaurs lived simultaneously. Click here to read about it in the Washington Post.)
But that doesn’t stop people from looking. Scotland gains something like $80 million in tourist dollars each year from the legend. Other fanciful creatures, even if less famous, supposedly exist as well. (Click here for Wikipedia’s listing of them.)
Why do people give credence to mythical creatures? Geez, it beats me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get more garlic to protect myself from the vampires disguised as bats living in my attic.
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