LESSER NESSIES - SURVEYING THE 'OTHER' MONSTERS OF MAINLAND SCOTLAND'S FRESHWATER LOCHS

Sketch of Morag, the monster of Loch Morar, based upon eyewitness accounts (© Michael Playfair)

Everyone has heard of Nessie, the reputed monster of Loch Ness, but fewer people realise that mystery beasts of various forms have also been reported from a sizeable number of other mainland Scottish freshwater lochs. Many of these reports were first compiled in Peter Costello's standard work In Search of Lake Monsters (1974) and later summarised in Michael Newton's very comprehensive Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology (2005), but here is a representative selection.

LOCHS ARKAIG, ASSYNT, AND FEITH AN LEÒTHAID

With a maximum depth of 359 ft and measuring 12 miles long, Loch Arkaig is situated in the Lochaber area of the Highlands. In a diary entry for 3 October 1857, English politician Lord Malmesbury recorded that his game stalker, John Stuart, had twice seen at Achnaharry the horse-like head and hindquarters of a 'lake-horse' basking at the loch's surface at sunrise when there were no ripples on the water. This loch monster has since been dubbed Archie.

Loch Arkaig (© Angela Mudge/Creative Commons Licence)

In an article on Scottish loch monsters published during the early 1850s, Malmesbury included a claimed monster sighting from 1837 on Loch Assynt in Sutherland by two fishermen, who also saw it a second time shortly afterwards on a small island in this 6.3-mile-long loch. Very hairy, and grey in colour, the creature was compared by them to a young bull in size but with a broader back. It was about 3 ft tall, quadrupedal, with a bulldog-like head and large eyes.

Loch Feith an Leòthaid is connected to Loch Assynt, and during the 1930s an unidentified creature with a long neck and a deer-like head apparently surfaced close to the boat of Kenneth MacKenzie from Steen, gazing across this vessel's stern before disappearing again.

LOCH AWE

The third largest freshwater loch in Scotland by surface area (which is approximately 15 square miles), Loch Awe in Argyll and Bute is also this country's longest at 25 miles in total, and is reputedly home to a mysterious serpentiform monster known as the beathach mór. As far back as the 16^th Century, fishermen were claiming that this loch's waters harboured gigantic eels "as big as a horse with an incredible length" - a belief that remains prevalent here today, though no eel of such inordinate dimensions has ever been drawn forth and made available for scientific scrutiny.

Do enormous eels inhabit the vast waters of Loch Awe? (public domain)

LOCHS EIL AND LINHE

One of the most unusual water monsters reported from a Scottish freshwater loch is the faceless, vermiform horror encountered at Loch Eil in the western Highlands by author Denys-James Watkins-Pitchford and documented by him in 1962. Here, quoted directly from his book September Road to Caithness and the Western Sea, is his first-hand description of what he saw:

I was watching some mallard paddling about among some weedy rocks at the end of a little promontory when there appeared out of the calm water exactly opposite me a large black shiny object which I can only compare with the blunt, blind head of an enormous worm.

It was, I suppose, some 50 yards from where I was standing, and it kept appearing and disappearing, not moving along, but rolling on the surface. The water was greatly disturbed all round the object. It had a shiny wet-looking skin, but the head (if head it was) was quite unlike a seal's and had no face, or nose, no eyes. It rose quite a long way out of the water, some three feet or more, before sinking back.

The most obvious explanation for a large elongate creature in a Scottish freshwater loch is an eel; but unless the creature was inaccurately recorded by its eyewitness, an eel with no face, not even any eyes, would be a very unusual one indeed - and one that could rise 3 ft or more out of the water would be even more so (as would a worm for that matter!).

Loch Eil is linked to Loch Linhe, a sea loch on Scotland's west coast and where, during the 1890s, a still-unidentified eel-like animal of sizeable length but bearing a mane was found dead at Corpach Lock, close to Fort William at Linhe's north end. Might this have been a vagrant giant oarfish Regalecus glesne that had made its way, or (perhaps dying) had been carried by water currents, into this coastal loch from the open sea? Long-necked Nessie-type monsters have also been sighted here, during the 1940s and again during the 1960s.

Was a giant oarfish found dead in Loch Linhe? (public domain)

LOCH GARTEN

Situated in the Strathspey area of Scotland's Cairngorms National Park, Loch Garten is most famous nowadays for the RSPB-coordinated success story in the breeding of wild ospreys here, but in bygone times it was famed for reputedly being home to a fearsome lake monster known as a water-bull or tarbh uisge. Resembling a hybrid of horse and bull, it sported a huge horned head, a jet-black mane, and would give vent to an extremely loud, hideous, roaring bellow.

According to local lore, a bold crofter once sought to trap this formidable creature, using as bait a young lamb attached to a very large hook, which in turn was tethered by a long sturdy rope to a huge lochside boulder weighing many tons. After rowing out to the centre of the loch and dropping the hooked lamb there, the crofter returned to shore in the hope that the water-bull would swallow the bait during the night, and thus be snared internally by the engulfed hook, after which he would haul the beast ashore. But when he checked the following morning, both the lamb and the boulder were gone. All that could be seen was a deep rut in the ground, where something with immense strength had dragged the massively heavy boulder into the loch.

Was a water-bull lured to its death in the dark waters of Loch Garten one night by a canny crofter? (© Steve Garvie/Wikipedia – photo-manipulated by Dr Karl Shuker)

As the water-bull was never seen or heard again, the inference in this tale is that once in the water, the huge boulder's weight had dragged the water-bull down to the loch bottom - where, unable to free itself from the hook that had snared it internally when it swallowed the lamb, the monster had drowned.

LOCH LOCHY

The lesser Nessie that has attracted most media attention in fairly recent times is Lizzie, the monster of 10-mile-long Loch Lochy - Scotland's third deepest loch (531 ft at its maximum depth), sited immediately below Loch Oich. With no publicised sightings for 36 years, Lizzie reclaimed the headlines in September 1996, when a 12-ft-long, dark-coloured mystery beast with a curved head and three humps reared up out of the water and began moving round in circles in full view of several staff and guests at the Corriegour Lodge Hotel, overlooking the loch. According to Aberdeen University psychology student Catriona Allen, who studied this amazing sight through binoculars: "It certainly wasn't a seal, otter, porpoise or dolphin".

In late July 1997, a six-man expedition featuring previous Loch Morar diver Cameron Turner and led by Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, arrived to conduct a sonar sweep of the loch. Encouragingly, they achieved success on their very first day, when their equipment detected a large unidentified object swimming in the middle of the loch and estimated at 15-20 ft long - far bigger than anything known to be there. Turner came back to Lochy in September 1997, but no new evidence was obtained.

Maps pin-pointing some of mainland Scotland's 'monster' lochs – click to enlarge (© Ordnance Survey (left); © Jarrold & Sons Ltd (right); / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

LOCH LOMOND

By surface area, totalling 27 square miles, Loch Lomond in Scotland's West Dunbartonshire/Argyll and Bute/Stirling region, and marking the boundary between central Scotland's highlands and lowlands, is the largest stretch of inland water in the whole of the island of Great Britain. In terms of anomalous aquatic animals and other esoterica, moreover, it is also famous as the locality claimed in an atlas published in 1659 to harbour "fish without fins" and a mysterious "floating island". And in 1724, Alexander Graham of Duchray claimed that locals living nearby sometimes see the water-horse reputedly inhabiting its waters.

More recently, at Easter 1980, a Mr and Mrs Maltman and their daughter were camping near the edge of Loch Lomond at Luss when a head and slender neck rose up to a height of about 5 ft above the water surface, no more than 200 yards away, with a long curved back visible behind. This amazing spectacle lasted for 30 seconds or so, then the head and neck swiftly submerged and were not seen again. The Maltmans were so frightened that they fled, later returning only to pack their belongings before journeying back home. And in 1997, a somewhat indistinct, unidentifiable moving object was filmed in the loch by investigator Nick Taylor.

Equally unexpected but totally verified, incidentally, is the presence on Inchconnachan, one of this loch's islands, of a naturalised, thriving population of Australian red-necked wallabies Macropus rufogriseus (also known as Bennett's wallabies). They are descended from some that were introduced there during the 1940s by Lady Arran Colquhoun, and Inchconnachan is nowadays referred to colloquially as Wallaby Island.

A rare albino Bennett's wallaby (© Dr Karl Shuker)

LOCH MAREE

The fourth largest of Scotland's freshwater lochs by surface area, and situated in Wester Ross in the Western Highlands, Loch Maree is also referred to as Loch na Bèiste ('Loch of the Beast' in Scottish Gaelic), due to the muc-sheilch. This is a local name popularly applied to its own particular water monster and loosely translates as 'turtle-pig'. Yet despite its descriptive name, and the fact that sightings of this monster are reminiscent of Nessie reports, featuring humped backs rising above the surface and resembling capsized boats, zoologists have sought to identify it as merely a large eel.

LOCH MORAR

The most famous lesser Nessie is Morag, the monster of Loch Morar, whose history, like Nessie's, dates back many centuries, as testified by a very old Scottish song:

Morag, Harbinger of Death,

Giant swimmer in deep-green Morar,

The loch that has no bottom...

There it is that Morag the monster lives.

Loch Morar is 11 miles long, approximately 1.5 miles wide, and with a maximum depth exceeding 1000 ft it is Britain's deepest freshwater lake. Unlike the waters of Loch Ness, however, which are extremely peaty, Morar's are very clear, enabling objects situated at quite a distance beneath the surface to be perceived with remarkable clarity - as exemplified by visitor Robert Duff's extraordinary sighting on 8 July 1969.

A joiner from Edinburgh, Duff was fishing from a boat in Meoble Bay on the loch's southern shore, where the water is no more than 16 ft deep and very lucid, when he spotted what he described as a "monster lizard", lying motionless on the loch's white, leaf-strewn bottom, looking up at him. Duff estimated the creature to be 20 ft long, with a snake-like earless head, slit eyes, and a wide mouth. Its body was grey-brown with rough skin, and it had four limbs, with three toes visible on each front foot, plus a tail. He was so startled that he revved the boat up and made off at once. Later, however, he returned to the same spot, but the animal had gone.

Loch Morar (© Lynne Kirton/Geograph Project/Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence)

Even more dramatic was the 5-minute confrontation experienced on 16 August 1969 by Duncan McDonell and William Simpson. At about 9.00-9.30 pm, but while still daylight, their motor boat was travelling along the loch at a speed of 6-7 knots when McDonell, at the wheel, saw a creature in the water about 20 yards behind but moving directly towards them. A few seconds later it caught up, and collided with the side of their boat, seemingly unintentionally but nonetheless with sufficient force to hurl a kettle of water off the boat's gas stove and onto the floor. McDonell attempted to fend the beast away with an oar, frightened that it may capsize the boat, but because the oar was old it snapped in half.

When Simpson saw this, he picked up his rifle, ran out of the cabin, and aimed a shot at the creature - which slowly sank away from the boat. They did not see it again, but they did not see any blood either, or any other sign to indicate that Simpson's bullet had hit it.

According to Simpson and McDonell, the portion of the creature that they had observed was 25-30 ft long, with rough, dirty-brown skin, and three humps or undulations standing about 18 in above the water surface at the highest point. The head was brown and snake-like, measuring approximately 1 ft across the top, and raised 18 in out of the water.

On 1 August 1996 came the electrifying news that Cameron Turner, a diver from Darlington, had discovered some bones from a large unidentified animal at a depth of 60 ft in Loch Morar. Could these be the mortal remains of a Morag? Sadly, no - the following day a biologist formally identified them as the bones of a deer.

Returning to the media headlines in 2013 after two decades of cryptozoological reticence, the most recent claimed encounter with Morag featured a trio of sightings in close succession. For within the space of just two days during summer 2013, holidaymakers Doug and Charlotte Christie from Brechin in Angus apparently saw the monster on three separate occasions while staying at Kisimuil bed-and-breakfast at the lochside. They saw a 20-ft-long black object in the middle of the loch, for 10 minutes on the longest occasion before it submerged again. Charlotte likened it to a whale, Doug to a submarine.

LOCH OICH

Wee Oichie or Oichy of Loch Oich, directly below Loch Ness and 4 miles long, traditionally sports a flattened head rather than the familiar equine form often noted for Nessie and various other Scottish loch monsters. Having said that, the head of the very big, black, serpentine beast that rose to the surface one summer's day in 1936 was vaguely dog-like, according to A.J. Robertson who spied it while boating at the loch's southwestern end. Certain other eyewitnesses, moreover, including a former loch keeper at Oich interviewed by investigator J.W. Herries during the 1930s, have likened Wee Oichie to a huge otter.

Swimming otters may sometimes be mistaken for monsters – and vice-versa? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

As a river connects Loch Oich to Loch Ness, some researchers have speculated that perhaps Wee Oichie and Nessie are one and the same, merely swimming back and forth from one loch to another via this interconnecting river. Indeed, during the mid-1930s, Herries interviewed three eyewitnesses who claimed to have actually observed such an animal journeying via this means from Ness to Oich.

The most recent Oichy sighting currently documented occurred on 22 August 1998, when two Lochaber locals who wish to remain anonymous saw a large dark-coloured hump, rough but symmetrical in shape, break the surface a few hundred yards east of the Well of the Heads and about 22 yards from the shore as they were driving along the road next to the loch. Interestingly, they could see underneath the hump, thereby indicating that the creature was coiled and elongate. The two eyewitnesses got out of the car and ran onto the beach, armed with cameras, but the hump had already gone back down. Readily discounting identities such as swimming sheep, a line of otters, a seal, deer, and other commonly-posited candidates, they speculated that it might have been an eel, but with what they estimated to be a diameter of 18 in, if so it would have been one of truly prodigious proportions.

LOCH QUOICH

Situated west of Garry roughly 25 miles northwest of Fort William in Lochaber, Highlands, Loch Quoich is 9 miles long, with a maximum depth of 281 ft, and is supposedly home to a horse-headed but markedly serpentiform water monster. During the early 1930s, one such creature was even allegedly witnessed on land, when an unnamed lord, fishing on the loch's shores, spied it lying on a stony beach near to the water. It was also seen by the two fishing guides accompanying him, but he swore them to secrecy, afraid that the locals would consider all three of them inebriated, so their accounts remained unreleased for many years.

A collection of monster reports from Loch Quoich and other Scottish freshwater lochs was compiled by Father Henry Cyril Dieckhoff, from the Benedictine Abbey at Fort Augustus. Sadly, however, he died in 1970 before completing a book that he had been preparing, and which would have contained all of these reports.

LOCH SHIEL

Loch Morar is a famously remote lake, much of which can be reached only by boat, but this is also true of Loch Shiel - Scotland's fifth largest loch, with a length of 17 miles, a width ranging from 100 yards to a mile, and a maximum depth of 420 ft. Its own resident monster is known as Seileag.

A mesmerisingly beautiful image of Loch Shiel (© Gil Cavalcanti/Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence)

Seileag's most diligent investigator was the afore-mentioned Father Dieckhoff, who collected many reports. One of these, dating from 1905, featured Ewan MacIntosh, two young boys, and an old man called Ian Crookback, all of whom observed three humps above the water surface with the aid of a telescope while travelling across the loch opposite Gasgan aboard the little mail steamer Clan Ranald.

A massive creature with a broad head, wide mouth, long thick neck, and seven "sails" (humps) on its back was viewed through a telescope by Ronald MacLeod as it emerged from the water at Sandy Point one afternoon in 1926. Indeed, it was claimed by MacLeod to be bigger than the Clan Ranald!

LOCH TAY

Scotland's sixth largest loch by area and over 490 ft deep at its greatest depth, Loch Tay is situated in Perthshire, is approximately 14.5 miles long and typically 1.0-1.5 miles wide. Cryptozoologically speaking, however, the most notable mystery beast from this vicinity was not reported in the loch itself but from the nearby Firth of Tay, during the late evening of 30 September 1965. Moreover, it was actually seen on land, and therefore in full – a rare event indeed.

Here is my documentation of that very remarkable incident, from my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995):

[It] was brought to cryptozoological attention by veteran monster hunter F.W. Holiday. It was 11.30 pm, and Maureen Ford (wife of amateur flyweight boxer David Ford) was driving with some friends along the A85 by car towards Perth, in northeastern Scotland. Close to Perth, Ford suddenly spied an extraordinary creature by the roadside, only a few yards from the banks of the River Tay, which enters nearby into the Firth of Tay - an inlet of the North Sea. She described it as: "...a long grey shape. It had no legs but I'm sure I saw long pointed ears."

Less than 2 hours later, it was seen again - but this time on the opposite side of the road, to where it had evidently crossed during the intervening period. At 1 am, Robert Swankie was driving along the A85 away from Perth towards Dundee, when his headlights revealed an amazing sight. As he later revealed in a Scottish Daily Express report (5 October 1965):

"The head was more than two feet long. It seemed to have pointed ears. The body, which was about 20 feet long, was humped like a giant caterpillar. It was moving very slowly and made a noise like someone dragging a heavy weight through the grass."

Swankie slowed down, and opened his window, but he could see another car not far behind, so he decided not to stop, and continued his journey. His testimony, and also that of Ford, were taped by an enthusiastic investigator, Miss Russell-Fergusson of Clarach Recordings, Oban, and the police were also informed. In the Express report, one of their spokesmen commented that in the dark the headlights of a car could play tricks when they strike walls and trees - but as Holiday sensibly pointed out, if Swankie's sighting had merely been an optical illusion, why didn't he see monsters throughout his road journey?  And how can an exclusively visual deception create a dragging sound?

Far more reasonable, surely, is the scenario of a reclusive sea creature emerging under the cover of darkness from the Firth of Tay, possibly via the River Tay itself, and, by sheer chance, being seen by two night-travelling eyewitnesses during its brief overland foray.

A popular cryptozoological identity for highly elongate water monsters is an evolved, modern-day species of zeuglodont whale, possessing a more flexible vertebral column than that of fossil forms and therefore capable of performing the vertical undulations often reported for serpentiform aquatic cryptids. Might this be what emerged from the Firth of Tay 50 years ago?

Restoration of a zeuglodont, revealing its elongate body shape (© Tim Morris)

LOCH TREIG

A reservoir since 1929, the ominously-named Loch Treig (Scottish Gaelic for 'Lake of Death') is 5.6 miles long, and is located in a steep-sided glen just over 12 miles east of Fort William in Lochaber, Highlands. According to local medieval folklore, it was home to ferocious water-horses, but mystery beasts have also been reported here in modern times. Indeed, in 1933, during the creation of the extensive hydroelectric scheme now present in this area encompassing Treig, B.N. Peach, an engineer in charge of that scheme, stated that some of the divers working on the project had quit the job or had asked to be moved to other jobs because they claimed that there were monsters in this loch's depths.

LOCH WATTEN

Last – and definitely least – is Wattie, the infamous monster of Loch Watten, infamous inasmuch as its history owes precious little to cryptozoology, and even less to reality, as I discovered when conducting the only detailed investigation ever undertaken into this extraordinary case. All is revealed elsewhere on ShukerNature – click here to read my full exposée.

Holding my copy of The Monster Trap – Peter Haining's collection of supposedly true mysteries containing his account of the Loch Watten monster that inspired my extensive investigation of this exceedingly dubious cryptid (© Dr Karl Shuker)

As with the Nessie saga, many sober sightings have been reported at these Scottish lochs that do appear to feature something more than misidentified otters, seals, sturgeons, birds, boats, algal mats, and suchlike - but what? All of the familiar cryptozoological Nessie contenders have been offered - a surviving plesiosaur, an undescribed species of long-necked seal, an elusive modern-day version of the officially long-extinct elongate zeuglodont whales, a giant form of eel - but with no physical evidence to examine, no firm taxonomic identification can be offered.

If such reports as those documented here are indeed genuine, however, it seems likely that the species responsible can actively migrate overland, or via connecting rivers, from one loch to another (eels readily come to mind here) - thus explaining sightings in bodies of water that are too small or insufficiently stocked with fish and other potential prey to sustain a permanent, viable population.

Reconstruction of the possible morphology of the long-necked (aka longneck) category of water monster, represented by both marine and freshwater versions (© Tim Morris)

They do say that it takes all sorts to make a world, and certainly, from traditional water-horses, water-bulls, and turtle-pigs to modern-day long-necked, serpentiform, and even vermiform aquatic cryptids, this maxim is also clearly applicable to the cryptozoological world, at least as far as the multifarious monsters reported from mainland Scotland's freshwater lochs are concerned.

Beautiful vintage picture postcard depicting Loch Awe (public domain)

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted from my forthcoming book Here's Nessie! - A Monstrous Compendium From Loch Ness, and was inspired by a much shorter account that originally appeared in my book Mysteries of Planet Earth.

LOCH WATTEN'S MISSING MONSTER - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WATTIE?

"It was a bright spring day, and steely sunshine glinted over the mountains of Caithness when Colonel Arthur Trimble first saw the monster of Loch Watten.

"The monster’s eyes were slits in a huge squat head, and its body, which loomed under the rippling water, appeared at least 20 feet wide. It observed him for several seconds. He even had time to take a photograph of it. "

John Macklin – ‘The Trap He Set Was For A Monster...’,
Leicester Mercury, 28 March 1966.

I first learnt about the existence of winged cats – which subsequently became an investigative passion of mine - when, as a teenager, I read a fascinating little book by prolific author Peter Haining entitled The Monster Trap and Other True Mysteries (1976). That same book introduced me to a couple of other subjects that I have since pursued in depth too – the Green Children, and the mysterious mini-mummy of Wyoming.

Ironically, however, the chapter that interested me most of all (and which gave its title to the entire book) was also the one that has mystified me most of all – because, over 35 years later, and in spite of the fact that it is potentially of immense cryptozoological significance, its subject has resisted every attempt made by me to uncover any additional details regarding it. Consequently, I feel that it is now time to give this whole perplexing matter a long-overdue public airing online.


THE (VERY) MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MONSTER TRAP

The setting for the truly extraordinary episode documented in this chapter is Loch Watten – a Scottish freshwater lake in Caithness’s River Wick drainage system. Its grim tale as given in Haining’s book (in which the chapters’ stories, although all allegedly true, are written up in a dramatised, novel-like style) can be summarised as follows.

According to Haining, the incident in question took place some 10 years before the flap of Nessie sightings in 1933, and featured local estate owner Colonel Arthur Trimble (who had retired in 1922 from the British army). It all began on the morning of 21 April 1923, when Trimble was walking his spaniel, Bruce, by the lochside, not far from his estate. He had a camera with him, as it was a pleasant morning and he hoped to take some photographs. After reaching his usual point for turning back, Trimble called to Bruce, who had run some distance further ahead, and after waiting for him to come back, Trimble looked out across the loch – where, in Haining’s words:

"Something dark and looming had suddenly appeared on the surface of the water.

"The Colonel squinted his eyes and raised his hand to half-shade his face. The form was clearer now. It looked like a kind of neck with a huge flat head.

"Keeping quite still, he looked harder and could see that it was indeed a head and neck, and that there were slit eyes staring directly at him. Below the surface of the water he could make out the shape of an immense body, at least twenty feet wide.

"Colonel Trimble could hardly believe the evidence of his senses. It seemed like some huge water monster."

Haining stated that although the monster was less than a hundred yards away, thanks to his years of army discipline Trimble did not panic, and lifted his camera. Just as he was about to take a photograph, however, his dog Bruce spied the monster and immediately ran towards it, barking loudly. Startled, the monster disappeared beneath the water almost at once, but at that same instant Trimble succeeded in snapping a single photo, although he had no idea whether he had actually captured the beast’s image. When he and Bruce arrived back home and he told his housekeeper, a local woman called Mrs Doris Dougal, what had happened, she confirmed that he had seen the loch’s legendary ‘serpent’, and suggested that he report his sighting.

With my copy of The Monster Trap (and an interested Velociraptor looking on...) (Dr Karl Shuker)

That same day, Trimble took his camera’s film to the local chemist shop for developing, and when he collected his photos two days later he was delighted to discover that although the picture snapped by him at the loch was slightly blurred, it did indeed depict the monster’s head and neck above the water surface. Consequently, that afternoon he penned an account of his sighting for London’s Times newspaper, enclosed with it a copy of his photograph, and posted it a few hours later. From then on, Trimble visited the loch daily, in the hope of seeing and photographing the monster again, but leaving Bruce at home to ensure that he didn’t cause any disturbance this time if the monster should reappear.

Unbeknownst to Trimble, however, on 1 May, while he was once again at the loch, Bruce managed to sneak out, and when Trimble returned home later that day he was met by Mrs Dougal with the disturbing news that Bruce was missing. The two of them spent some time searching for the dog locally, but to no avail – until Trimble saw a man approaching from the direction of the loch. The man was Trimble’s nearest neighbour, the local doctor Robert McArdish, who told Trimble that he had spied Bruce swimming in the loch – but just as the doctor had been about to call out to him, he had seen a flurry in the water, as if something else was also there, and then the dog disappeared, after which the waves settled again, but with no sign of Bruce.

Enraged by the apparent killing of his dog by the monster, the following day Trimble set about building an extraordinary ‘monster trap’, consisting of 50 fathoms of rope attached to an enormous sharpened spike of steel that had been shaped into a massive hook. Trimble baited this hook with a large piece of freshly-purchased horsemeat, and after rowing into the middle of the loch in his dinghy he lowered the hook into the water, attached a marker buoy to the end of the rope, and dropped it overboard. Then he rowed back to shore, and returned home.

The next morning Trimble went out to inspect the trap, but it had not been touched, so he repositioned it elsewhere in the loch, and came back home. This procedure was repeated up until the evening of 4 May, when he informed Mrs Dougal that he was going out to the loch again, even though it was almost dark. Just on 9.30 pm, after looking outside to see whether he was returning as he was late, Mrs Dougal suddenly heard a single loud, terrified scream, from the direction of the loch. Racing outside to the gardener’s cottage close by, she hammered on his door, explained what had happened, and the two of them ran fearfully to the loch. There, in some reeds at the lochside, was the half-submerged body of Trimble, and as they looked down at it, they saw to their horror that his chest had been pierced by the giant hook, which was still attached to the rope. And as they stood there, they heard something:

"…something that turned their blood to ice – and haunted them for the rest of their days.

"It was a sound which came from the loch. The sound of something large that splashed as it swam away from the shore... "

And with that dramatic little flourish, there endeth Haining’s tale of the Loch Watten monster (let’s call it Wattie, for short).


WHITHER WATTIE?

Needless to say, one would imagine that such an episode, far more sensational than anything that even Nessie can lay claim to, would have subsequently featured in every major (and minor!) cryptozoology publication as a matter of course, as famous – or infamous – as the story of the Surgeon’s Photograph and other endlessly rehashed and recycled cryptozoological histories. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Indeed, I have yet to discover a single mention of the Wattie history anywhere – I know of no book, periodical paper, magazine article, newspaper report, or website that contains even the briefest reference to it. Moreover, the only acknowledged claim to fame of Loch Watten, other than having been formally designated as an SAC (Special Area of Conservation), is that it is a good body of water for fly-fishing for brown trout. In stark contrast, any celebrity status as a monster-haunted lake is conspicuous only by its absence. So how can such anomalies be explained?

Let’s look at some background information, beginning with a few additional details supplied by Haining himself. In his book’s introduction, he stated that when selecting stories to be covered by him in it, he didn’t want to repeat ones that lots of other writers had already utilised. Instead, he decided:

"I would use stories that had particularly fascinated me in which I had done considerable research, if not actually visited the places in question. Consequently, I feel that it is now time to give this whole perplexing matter a long-overdue public airing."

Furthermore, in the opening to the ‘Monster Trap’ chapter itself, he stated that although Nessie was certainly the most famous Scottish monster, she was not the only one, noting that there were stories of water horses and serpents from many other Highland lochs, and then commenting:

"One particular monster story has always fascinated me, but amid all the fuss about ‘Nessie’ it rarely gets mentioned."

For ‘rarely’, substitute ‘never’!

Yet according to Haining’s book, local people claim that there have been stories of a monster, which they term ‘the serpent’, in Loch Watten for many years, but no documentary records of actual sightings prior to Trimble’s ultimately fatal incident. Is this true? Never having visited the loch myself, which is only 14 miles from John O’Groats in the far northeast of Scotland, I have no idea whether there is any verbal tradition of a monster here (though I have yet to communicate with anyone versed in Scottish mythology or cryptozoology who has ever heard of such tales). However, I would have expected at least some documentation of it, were such a tradition to exist. After all, as Haining correctly pointed out, there are accounts of monsters for a number of other lochs – including Ness, Morar, Oich, Lochy, Shiel, Arkaig, Lomond, Quoich, and Treig (click here to check out my ShukerNature blog article chronicling these lesser Nessies).

Loch Watten (Wikipedia)

Another anomaly concerns Loch Watten itself. Despite being the second largest of Caithness’s lochs, it is under three miles (4.65 km) long, less than a mile (1.6 km) across at its widest point, and boasts an average depth of only 10-12 ft (2.5-3.0 m) – a very far cry from the immeasurably greater size of Loch Ness, Loch Morar, and other notable bodies of Scottish freshwater associated with monster traditions. If the kind of huge reptilian monster (at least 20 ft wide – so how long was it?!) allegedly encountered by Trimble were truly real, it would surely require a much more substantial aquatic domain than Watten.

Nor do these inconsistencies constitute the full extent of my concern for the validity of Wattie as a bona fide cryptid. When I first attempted to research this subject, back in the early 1990s, I wrote on two separate occasions to Haining, having obtained his correct address, but I never received a reply to my requests for information, and as he died in 2007 this most direct line of investigation is no longer an option. In addition, I met with a succession of dead-ends when attempting to uncover any Trimble-related leads (not even trawling through death registers and army records online elicited any evidence for his supposed former existence). I also searched meticulously through the relevant period of back issues for The Times, but did not find any published letter or photo by Trimble.

Peter Haining (picture source unknown to me)

In short, the only known source of information (to me, at least) concerning Wattie is Haining’s book, and, therefore, Haining himself – which to my mind is the most disturbing aspect of all concerning this mystifying tale. The reason why I say this is that some of Haining’s other publications have already attracted considerable controversy in relation to the validity – or otherwise – of their claims.


SPRING-HEELED JACK, SWEENEY TODD, AND WOOLPIT’S GREEN CHILDREN – THREE REASONS FOR WATTIE WORRIES

For example: in a detailed paper on Spring Heeled Jack (Fortean Studies, vol. 3, 1996), Mike Dash revealed that he was unable to obtain independent corroboration of various accounts and details that had been published by Haining in his book on this subject (The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring Heeled Jack, 1977). And even an engraving claimed by Haining to show the recovery from a marsh of one of Jack’s victims – a victim, incidentally, undocumented by anyone else – in reality showed no such thing.



Moreover, when Mike Dash wrote to him asking for sources, Haining replied that he was unable to supply any because all of his research material had been loaned to a film scriptwriter who had subsequently vanished. Not surprisingly, perhaps, in his paper’s annotated bibliography, Mike made the following comments regarding Haining’s book:

"The only full-length work on the subject is a curious hodge-podge of the accurate, the overtly-dramatised and the invented...it repeats many existing errors, creates new ones, and is so single-mindedly determined to fit evidence to the theory that Jack was the Marquis of Waterford that it does not flinch from introducing made-up evidence to support this case."

Equally controversial are Haining’s books on Sweeney Todd, Fleet Street’s homicidal hair-snipper. Although Todd is widely assumed to be an entirely fictitious character spawned by the Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian times, Haining published two book-length treatments, respectively entitled The Mystery and Horrible Murders of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) and Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1993), in which he alleged that such a person had actually existed.



However, this claim has attracted much criticism, for a variety of reasons, including those summarised succinctly in Wikipedia’s entry for Haining [as most recently accessed by me today, 11 June 2012]:

"In two controversial books, Haining argued that Sweeney Todd was a real historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800, was tried in December 1801, and was hanged in January 1802. However, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims. A check of the website ‘Old Bailey’ for "Associated Records 1674-1834" for an alleged trial in December 1801 and hanging of Sweeney Todd for January 1802 show no reference; in fact the only murder trial for this period is that of a Governor/Lt Col. Joseph Wall who was hanged 28 January 1802 for killing a Benjamin Armstrong 10 July 1782 in "Goree" Africa and the discharge of a Humphrey White in January 1802."

In short, there are notable precedents when faced with questioning the reliability of claims made by Haining in the absence of any independent sources of evidence to examine. Even in another chapter of The Monster Trap, documenting the Green Children, it is curious to note that the famous, historically-recorded incident of the Woolpit Green Children receives no mention whatsoever. Instead, Haining devotes the entire chapter to an exceptionally similar version allegedly occurring several centuries later in Spain – a version subsequently revealed by other researchers to be a complete fabrication, by person(s) unknown, directly inspired by the Woolpit episode.

And I hardly need point out that Haining’s description of Trimble’s supposed photo – slightly blurred but showing a head and neck – is more than a little reminiscent of the Surgeon’s Photograph of Nessie. Also worth remembering is that aside from his non-fiction books, Haining was a well-respected, extremely knowledgeable anthologist of horror and mystery short stories of fiction.


WAS THERE EVER A WATTIE? OVER TO YOU!

It gives me no pleasure whatsoever in questioning the legitimacy of the Wattie affair as documented by Haining, especially as the book in which it appears is one that has been instrumental in introducing to me various other subjects that have since become significant in my own researches – and I would therefore be delighted if my concerns regarding this case could be convincingly dismissed. Yet it is clear that the omens for Wattie’s validity are not good.

Nevertheless, it would be rash to deny this tantalising tale out of hand without having first given an opportunity for it to be investigated publicly. So here, gentle readers, is where you come in. If there is indeed anyone out there with direct or indirect, integral or background information relating in any way to monsters reported from Loch Watten, and to the Trimble incident in particular, I’d love to hear from you.

Similarly, if Haining’s research files have been preserved, any details of where and whether they can be accessed would be very welcome. After all, if we are to believe his claim that all of the subjects in his book were ones in relation to which he had conducted considerable research, these archives undoubtedly offer the most likely source of primary and additional data concerning this most monstrous of Scottish crypto-mysteries.


WATTIE UPDATES

The original publication by Fortean Times in issue #253 (September 2009) of my Wattie article (forming the basis of the above account of mine), and its republication in my book Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2010), followed by my posting of this ShukerNature version on 11 June 2012, have so far triggered six notable responses, as revealed in the following series of updates.

UPDATE #1

The first of these responses was an email of 28 August 2009 that I received from Rod Williams of Talgarth, Wales:

"I am a regular reader of Fortean Times and your item on Wattie was interesting but feel that it was a concocted tale by Peter Haining.

"I have read Hugh Miller's Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland and also Samuel Smiles’s biography of Robert Dick [Robert Dick, Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist, 1878], baker, biologist (botanist mostly) and geologist. A man who walked many miles at night over large parts of Caithness.

"I cannot recollect in either book mention of Loch Watten or a/its monster. Both men were not above mentioning curious tales, particularly Miller who was well into hauntings and weird happenings; apart from being a quarryman turned geologist he seemed to thrive on such tales.

"I may have missed any reference of course but the book of Miller's can be read on line for free should you wish to check it out.

"Not sure of Dick's biography being on line but probably is.

"George Borrow's Wild Wales (circa 1854) mentions 'crocodiles' in Welsh lakes or rather stories of these mythical beasts and enquires of people on his journey whether they knew of any local legends relating to these little lakes and crocs.

"Again I don't remember any specific stories as it has been many years since reading the book. I think I need to re-read it sometime.

"Our local lake Llangorse Lake has large pike in it and one chap told me that when he was wind surfing and was stood in the lake (shallow in many places) something large brushed his leg."

Quite apart from confirming the absence of Wattie information from some literary sources new to me, Rod’s email is also of value for the interesting snippets of information concerning Wales’s mystifying water ‘crocodiles’, which I’ve read about in a number of publications and which deserve a detailed examination in their own right.

UPDATE #2

The second response was a letter penned by German cryptozoologist Ulrich Magin, which was published by FT in November 2009. In his letter, Ulrich revealed that Haining’s account of Wattie was almost identical to a tale included by French fiction writer George Langelaan in Les Faits Maudits (not Maufits – as erroneously titled in Ulrich’s letter) or ‘Cursed Facts’ - a book of forteana published in 1967, containing an eclectic mixture of retold press clippings and fictional stories. Langelaan claimed that his source for that particular tale was a Times news report from May 1932, but a search for it undertaken by Ulrich failed to unearth any such report.



UPDATE #3

The third, very significant response was a letter that I received from FT on 31 March 2010, which had been written to me on 23 March by Lance Shirley of Cornwall and was accompanied by a remarkable enclosure – a photocopy of an article that had been published in the Leicester Mercury newspaper on 28 March 1966 in what appears to have been a regular, long-running series of articles published under a ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ banner. Written by a John Macklin, the article was entitled ‘The trap he set was for a monster...but it was the colonel who died’. Reading it through, I discovered that its content and wording were so similar to Peter Haining’s chapter The Monster Trap that it seemed highly likely either that Haining had directly copied Macklin’s account or that he and Macklin were one and the same person.

Portion of the Leicester Mercury story by John Macklin (Leicester Mercury)

As I learnt from Mike Dash, Haining is known to have written under various pen-names as well as his own, so could John Macklin be yet another one? After receiving Lance’s letter and enclosure, I googled John Macklin on the internet, and discovered that just like Haining, he is/was a prolific author, and, again just like Haining, has authored many popular-format compilation books of supposedly true mysteries. Just another coincidence?

In his letter to me, Lance mentioned that he and his family had lived in Caithness, near to Loch Watten, from 1966 to 1976, during his childhood. While still living there in the early 1970s, he had read the Leicester Mercury article, which had belonged to his mother (it had been forwarded to her for its interest value from her father, who lived in Loughborough and always bought this newspaper), and was excited to think that such a creature may live so close to them. Whenever they passed the loch in the car, they always scanned the surface, just in case they could catch sight of the monster. Upon reading my FT Wattie article in September 2009, Lance realised that Haining’s account matched what he could still recall from that newspaper cutting from long ago. Moreover, while subsequently clearing out the loft in the family home, he was delighted to discover it, yellowed with age but still intact, stored inside a biscuit tin crammed with other cuttings (including another John Macklin ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ article from the Leicester Mercury, this time dating from 1969 and documenting a ghostly occurrence in Hoy Harbour).

As Lance points out, what is so interesting is that the Leicester Mercury article predates not only Haining’s book (by 10 years) but also that of George Langelaan (by a year). Consequently, it now seems that Langelaan did not originate this tale after all. Regardless of who did do so, however, no independent, substantiating evidence for its veracity or the existence in Loch Watten of a mysterious creature has ever come forward. Consequently, in my opinion the most reasonable conclusion remains that Wattie is a complete invention.

Irrespective of this, after receiving Lance’s letter I lost no time in pursuing the Macklin line of investigation further. My ultimate goal was the procurement of some current contact details if he is still alive (in which case, of course, he and Haining could not be the same person!); or, if he is dead, uncovering as much biographical information concerning him as possible, in the hope of determining conclusively whether or not John Macklin was indeed merely another pen-name of Peter Haining.

In April 2010, I emailed an enquiry to Macklin regarding Wattie via Sterling, the American publisher of the most recent Macklin book that I have yet been able to trace (a children’s book of true ghost stories, published by Sterling in 2006). So far, however, I have yet to receive any response from him.

Moreover, to me it seemed undeniably thought-provoking that whereas Macklin and Haining are/were both extremely prolific authors who wrote on extremely similar subjects, none of Macklin’s works are cited in the bibliographies of any of Haining’s books accessed by me (or vice-versa). Equally, I have been unable to trace any indication that Macklin has published any books or articles in the years following Haining’s death. And whereas photos of Haining are readily obtainable by googling his name, Google is currently (as of May 2010) unable to locate a single photograph of Macklin. Also, whereas Haining has a detailed entry in Wikipedia, Macklin (despite being a comparably prolific – and hence successful - author) has no entry whatsoever.

So were Haining and Macklin the same person, with Wattie merely the figment of an inordinately prolific writer’s fertile imagination? I was soon to discover the answer, which provided yet another unexpected surprise.

Jonathan Burton's wonderfully atmospheric painting from my Fortean Times Wattie article of September 2009 (Fortean Times/Jonathan Burton)

UPDATE #4

On 8 May 2010, I received a fourth response to my enquiry for Wattie information. This time it was a highly illuminating email from none other than FT’s own Paul Sieveking, who informed me that John Macklin was indeed a pseudonym – but not of Peter Haining! Instead, it was one of many pen-names used by another author of popular-format writings on mysteries – Tony James. The plot thickens! So did Tony James originate the storyline for the Wattie tale, or is there an even earlier version out there somewhere that he had read? If anyone has current contact information for James, I’d like to hear from you!

UPDATE #5

On 12 June 2012, I received an extremely interesting email from fellow FT columnist Theo Paijmans, author of the regular 'Blast from The Past' column, who provided me with the following additional information concerning the Macklin article on Wattie:

"I enjoyed your writing on the monster of Lake Watten.

"Like yourself I researched the origins of this story. The exact same article, illustration included, of the Leicester Mercury, 28 March 1966, was published elsewhere - and six months earlier. I found it in The Gleaner, a newspaper of Kingston, Jamaica, dated 5 September 1965.

"The earliest inception of the tale in print is now September, 1965, but an even earlier date of publication may yet be found. It is quite possible that Macklin's account was published in even more newspapers, abroad and in England.

"The Gleaner published columns not only by John Macklin, but also by Frank Edwards. I have another column by Macklin in The Gleaner, dated 13 February 1966 (The Boy Who Walked Through Walls!).

"I remember that Haining also received criticism for his inaccuracies in the field of horror and supernatural fiction."

So, just as Theo says, this story may go back even further in time. If anyone has seen an earlier version of it in print, I'd be delighted to hear from you!

UPDATE #6

On 3 August 2012, Sheldon Inkol kindly emailed me a pdf of an article that appeared in the September 1969 issue of Beyond, a monthly American magazine also sold in Britain packed with articles on all aspects of unsolved mysteries, the paranormal, UFOs, cryptozoology, and other controversial phenomena. One of the articles in this particular issue was entitled 'Scottish Monster Slays His Pursuer', documented the now-familiar Wattie story (but was illustrated with photographs of Loch Ness!), and was written by someone named Neil McTavish. Reading it through, however, I soon discovered that its wording was identical throughout to the article by John Macklin (aka Tony James) in the Leicester Mercury! Consequently, there seems little doubt that Neil McTavish is yet another pseudonym of Tony James, so the Beyond article - though its existence is interesting - provides no reason that I can see for believing that the Wattie case had any basis in fact.

Front cover of the issue of Beyond containing Neil McTavish's article re Wattie (Sheldon Inkol)

Incidentally, one of the two Loch Ness photos included in this Beyond article is of a mysterious blob in the loch that was allegedly seen and photographed by British explorer Sir Edward Mountain "as it cruised at great speed through the calm waters of the lake", according to the photo's caption. I am not familiar with this photo, as it looks different from the 1934 LNM photo snapped by him, so if anyone has information regarding it, again I'd welcome details.

Alleged photograph of the Loch Ness monster as included and captioned within Neil McTavish's Wattie article in Beyond, September 1969 (Sir Edward Mountain)

Meanwhile, my sincere thanks go to Sheldon Inkol, Ulrich Magin, Theo Paijmans, Lance Shirley, Paul Sieveking, and Paul Williams for shining some important light upon this increasingly complicated mystery, and I am intrigued to see if any new developments will occur in the future. After all, as a certain cult television series used to proclaim, the truth is out there – it’s finding it that’s the problem!


REFERENCES
DASH, Mike (2010). Pers. comms, 1 & 2 April.
HAINING, Peter (1976). The Monster Trap and Other True Mysteries. Armada (London).
INKOL, Sheldon (2012). Pers. comm., 3 August.
LANGELAAN, George (1967). Les Faits Maudits. Encyclopédie Planète (Paris).
MACKLIN, John (1966). The trap he set was for a monster...but it was the colonel who died. Leicester Mercury, 28 March, p. 7.
MAGIN, Ulrich (2009). Wattie. Fortean Times, no. 255 (November): 69.
McTAVISH, Neil (1969). Scottish monster slays his pursuer. Beyond, vol. 2, no. 13 (September): 47-49.
PAIJMANS, Theo (2012). Pers. comm., 12 June.
SHIRLEY, Lance (2010). Pers. comms, 23 March & 2 April.
SHUKER, Karl P.N. (2009). In search of the missing monster. Fortean Times, no. 253 (September): 52-55.
SIEVEKING, Paul (2010). Pers. comm., 8 May.
WILLIAMS, Rod (2009). Pers. comm., 28 August.


This ShukerNature blog post is extracted and updated from my book Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2010)