National Review, September 15, 1997

Loch Ness, 1997, © Andrew Stuttaford — Loch Ness, 1997, © Andrew Stuttaford

You don't believe that a saucer crashed at Roswell, New Mexico? After all, there were, they say, witnesses. Sort of. Military men, a rancher, maybe some archaeologists. Well, to the folks over by Loch Ness that is nothing. They have got a saint, Columba no less, who allegedly saved a swimmer from a "savage beast" in the loch over a thousand years ago.

And it doesn't stop there. The legend survived, and so did the monster—or its descendants—to reappear before John Mackay and his wife in March 1933. Interestingly, they were the proprietors of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, which overlooks the loch. Other sightings soon followed. The world press picked up the story, and the Drumnadrochit Hotel filled its empty rooms.

The sightseers have never really gone away. Drumnadrochit is today still Nessteria's epicenter, visited by well over one hundred thousand people each year. That's not bad for a little Scottish village. To find it, take the hopelessly inadequate A82 west from Inverness. Be prepared to drive slowly behind tour buses, and wait until you see that Barney profile and long green neck rising from the waters. Not inappropriately, it's a fake, a concrete creature wallowing in a Pond Ness rather than the more majestic loch nearby. Nevertheless, it signals arrival at the "Official" Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Centre.

Official it may be (who says?), but it is not alone. The Original Loch Ness Visitor Centre is just down the road. Relations between the Loch Ness pair are not too good. Asking at the Official for the way to the Original is as well received as asking a Montague for directions to the Capulet place.

After all, why go elsewhere when the Official Centre is, it claims, the home of the authoritative exhibition? It is certainly impressive, a multi-media presentation with spooky music, "authentic relics of the search" (if not of the monster), clever illuminations, and tantalizing talk of creatures that may, just, perhaps, have survived the Ice Age. Showroom dummies with ZZ top beards are dressed as ancient Celts. Was the monster their folk memory of dragon-prowed Viking longships? Other mannequins, similar faced but with late disco-era hair, prefer to be more scientific, crouching in a bathysphere or standing on the deck of a research vessel. They stare out blankly - at the tourists, who gaze vacantly back.

Perhaps they should go and see the movie at the Original. There's speculation, scenery, and a good collection of eyewitnesses. A sturdy lot they are too: a priest, honest-looking men in tweed caps, slightly old-fashioned rural faces out of an episode of Miss Marple. Exactly the sort of people that Agatha Christie warns us not to trust.

And how right she was. The Loch Ness story is a handbook of human error, more damaging to the notion of eyewitness evidence than Johnnie Cochran. Some people see what they want to believe. An otter becomes a monster's neck, a wave a plesiosaur's wake. Others just make it up. Baron Muenchausen should have settled in Drumnadrochit. He'd have found plenty of hoaxers only too pleased to lend his tales a hand. Or a hippopotamus foot (the 1934 "tracks"). Even the "Surgeon's picture" (the famous one, with what looks like an umbrella handle coming out of the water) was probably a model attached to a toy submarine. Or so says one confession. Which may itself be a hoax.

But there have been serious attempts at research as well, if often of a rather British kind. Cameras have gone adrift and negatives been lost. American money has been asked for (and criticized). Nevertheless, the loch has been surveyed, scrutinized, and sonared. And little has been found. To be sure, there has been an ambiguous photo or two, even a mysterious echo, but little more - Less conventional approaches have done no better. Everything has been tried — psychics, a wizard, bacon. All failures. Perhaps an earlier exorcism was to blame.

We may never find out. The science may be against Nessie, but proving a negative (in this case, that the monster does not exist) is never easy. And the nature of the loch does not help. More than 800 feet deep, 24 miles long, and a mile wide. Loch Ness contains the greatest volume of fresh water in the United Kingdom. The waters themselves are dark, stained with peat. Visibility is poor. To some, underwater photographs from the 1970s can show a flipper, a gargoyle-like head, or "anal folds." To others the pictures merely reveal a tree stump or other debris. But, in Loch Ness finding nothing proves nothing. No one has even been able to locate the remains of the one monster that is certainly there: a mechanical Nessie sunk, tragically, during the filming of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

If Sherlock cannot find the beast, neither, probably, can we. And that is just fine with Drumnadrochit. The tourists will keep coming to the centers, the restaurants, the shops, and the pubs. They will buy their "monster" ices at the Coffee House and their groceries at Nessie's Nessessities. At the Nessie Shop, the bagpipe muzak will continue to play. There will be T-shirts to buy, plesiosaur-shaped shortbread to munch, and "Monster's Choice" whiskey to drink.

Serious? No, not very. And this Is how It should be. Whether she exists or not, Nessie is indeed a survivor, a relic from an earlier, better era. Mysteries used to be fun, tales for late at night. We enjoyed believing them, even if we knew, deep down, that they were not really true. From the Yeti to Eldorado, they brought fun to millions, but were an obsession of only a few. Now, with rationalism under fire, we want more from our myths. They have to mean something and be, in some way. real. Yet proper research is far too much trouble, and may lead to a disappointing result. So we turn legends into a pseudoscientific, paranoid cosmology, with a Roswell just another focus for a vague, superstitious unease.

Lucky Nessie has escaped all this. She swims on, Moby without Ahab, an enjoyable outing, a pleasant fantasy. And only one conspiracy theory.

Just what was the real reason for Inverness-shire County Council's refusal, allegedly on zoning grounds, to allow the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau to maintain its headquarters at nearby Achnahannet? We should be told.

Loch Roswell?

National Review, September 15, 1997

© Andrew Stuttaford, 2024.