The longest recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster occurred on 15th June 1965.
Ian Cameron was a former detective and head of the CID in the Highlands of Scotland and had never previously believed in the Loch Ness Monster.
On the day in question, Ian was angling on the south shore of the loch with his friend William Fraser, who was a few hundred yards further up the shoreline from him.
Suddenly something caught his eye on the surface of the loch which according to Ian: ‘Looked rather like an upturned boat. It was just a black mass; just a large, black mass.’ So, he called to Fraser who came down to join him and they both watched it.
The object started moving to their right, so the pair rushed up the slope to their car and drove down to the next lay-by, to intercept it, as it seemed to be headed for the near shore.
However, when they reached the lay-by, Cameron recalls that the object actually appeared to have a power source. As he told a film crew for the 2008 documentary The Secrets of Loch Ness:
The wind was driving the current to the south shore, with the waves lapping up on the shingle beach, and if the object had no means of power, it was definitely going to come to this shore, but it changed direction. It tracked right across (towards) the Clansman (hotel) … and submerged.
During the sighting, Cameron observed that some cars had stopped on the north shore of the loch, and he realised that the occupants were watching the same thing but from the opposite side.
One of the seven additional witnesses to the spectacle was F. W. (Ted) Holiday, a member of the charity LNPIB (Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau), set up in 1962, whose members had positioned cameras at various points along the shoreline to keep watch for the monster.
In his subsequent book The Great Orm of Loch Ness (Faber and Faber, 1968) Holiday recounted the experience, saying that the object resembled an upturned whaleboat, though the sides of the apparent boat were too high. He further described it as a triangle with a rounded top, which he likened to the upper part of a Gothic window, and it was yellowish-brown in colour, almost mustard coloured. He said that there also seemed to be a dark ridge that divided the object into two halves, like the keel of a boat, and that there was no sign of a head, neck or tail – simply a large mustard coloured mass.
He further wrote:
On the other side of the loch, I saw two men (Cameron and Fraser) who were quite obviously watching the spectacle…The object had now begun to pass between me and the two watchers, and the men moved along the shore as if following it. As it passed up the loch, it visibly increased its speed and the profile began to elongate as more of the length came into view. I gained the impression that it was starting to come across the loch at an acute angle. The men were hurrying up to their car … For the next few breathless moments the riddle of Loch Ness seemed within reach of solution. Had it come across the loch, I would have filmed it (the LNPIB’s cameras were positioned below the Clansman Hotel) … At a quarter of a mile range either camera would have resolved it in considerable detail. However, nothing of the sort occurred. Several times it submerged only to reappear until, at last, it disappeared while still a mile away and I saw it no more.
Ian Cameron, with his police training in mind, told the film crew:
You can establish the time. You can establish the location. You have two witnesses here and, in addition, there are seven other witnesses, who were completely foreign to the two initial witnesses – we don’t even know who they were to this day – who were watching it from the Drumnadrochit side, and that, in my opinion, if it was submitted to any court of law, a judge and jury would accept it without question.
So: what did the nine eyewitnesses see that day? A monster – or something else?
One person who may have an explanation is Adrian Shine, self-taught naturalist, and founder and leader of the Loch Ness Project.
Over the years, Adrian has been carrying out scientific research at the loch, and suggesting non-monster explanations for many of the ‘classic’ (or most convincing) sightings. The Cameron/Fraser/Holiday sighting is certainly one of those, partly due to the duration of the sighting, and partly to the number of witnesses involved, which almost certainly rules out a hoax.
He once wrote:
I want to strip Loch Ness bare, layer by layer, and in finding answers to many seemingly ‘mundane’ scientific puzzles, I hope to find an answer to the one which fascinates the world.
In his booklet Loch Ness, which details his forty years of scientific research at the loch, Adrian writes:
True investigation should simply discover the facts. An interesting facet of my work is the discovery of special things about Loch Ness, which shed unexpected light into the controversy; sometimes explaining what people are really seeing.
Ian Cameron, William Fraser and Ted Holiday considered that the object they witnessed on the surface of the water must have been an animal, or at least an animate object, because it was moving against the waves as if it had a power source. However, in 1985, Adrian observed:
…leaves and branches sweeping past our moored vessel, directly into the wind. It occurred to me that this was a prime example of discovering what is special about the loch.
He discusses the mysteries of the thermocline – the sharp change in density, between the warm and cold layers of the water, and that this is ‘seldom at rest due to “internal seiches”.’
The thermocline is involved in a see-saw motion for days on end, which can create powerful underwater waves. While the waves themselves can’t be seen on the surface, their effects can, thus enabling objects such as logs and other debris appearing to have a life of their own, sometimes moving in the opposite direction to the wind. He also described the Great Glen as being like a wind tunnel, perfectly aligned with the prevailing south-westerlies.
He said:
While the object was moving towards the observers, it was just passing Glen Urquhart. A strong wind blows through this glen and crosses the loch. When it changed direction, it came under the influence of the main south westerly wind, and along the length of Loch Ness.
And what of the object itself?
Cameron and Fraser described the object as ‘a large, black mass’, but the object would have appeared as a silhouette to them as it was 10.30pm and the sun was setting. To Holiday, on the opposite shore of the loch, the object appeared somewhat different. Adrian told me:
In his book, Ted Holiday significantly describes the colour of the monster as mustard-yellow, so it could have been a bale of hay or some similar object that had fallen into the loch.
Adrian Shine is not some arrogant, arch-debunker; he has no axe to grind. He simply gives his opinion on what eyewitnesses may have seen, and then leaves them to make up their own minds.
Adrian’s fascinating booklet, and the ongoing research of the Loch Ness Project, can be found on his website.
