The Loch Ness Monster is part of the popular imagination and culture of Scotland and attracts the curiosity of people looking for the opportunity to take a picture.
The strange creature that has been seen, photographed and filmed by several people and appears to be a species of sea-serpent or marine reptile, similar to the prehistoric plesiosaur.
The first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster took place in the year 565 and was published in the biography of the Irish monk Saint Columba which mentions a giant “water beast” dragging a man to his death on the spot.
In 1880, the monster was sighted underwater by professional diver Duncan MacDonald, who made a brusque signal to be hoisted and retrieved immediately by his crew to the support boat, his colleagues confirmed that MacDonald was very pale and terrified to witness a gigantic creature at the bottom of the lake.
Another 1923 account tells how Alfred Cruickshank spotted a creature over 10 feet long with an arched back.
On May 25, 2007, Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician, managed to film a “black creature, about 45 feet long, moving rapidly through the water”. The video was studied by experts and biologists who concluded that it was indeed an original footage of an unidentified animal, with physical characteristics similar to those of a plesiosaur, but still its existence remained unconfirmed.
Between 2014 and 2017 another creature similar to the Loch Ness Monster was spotted several times in Lake Windermere, England, 25 miles from the Scottish border.
In 2022, the monster reappeared, being recorded in at least four separate sightings, according to the creature’s Official Record of Sightings.
One of them was recorded by a couple who filmed the creature and the video shows something large, estimated at 30 feet long, moving under the water. The husband and wife claimed that the creature had at least one fin or limb that moved “like a paddle” beneath the surface.
Gary Campbell, considered an expert on the monster, said these are the best images he has seen of the alleged creature in 22 years.
“In terms of video evidence, there have been two or three very good ones in the past, but this one is certainly among the best,” Campbell said in an interview.
