Nessie — The Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness, Scottish Highlands, Scotland

Since 565 AD, witnesses have described an immense creature rising from the black depths of Scotland's most mysterious loch — a beast that refuses to be caught or explained.

The first recorded account of a creature in Loch Ness comes from the Life of Saint Columba, written in 565 AD. The monk describes the saint encountering a 'water beast' on the River Ness and commanding it back into the depths with a raised hand. The beast, it is written, retreated 'in terror.' For over a thousand years the accounts continued quietly — fishermen, monks, travellers passing along the Great Glen. Then in 1933, a local couple reported seeing an enormous creature crossing the road near the loch's shore. The story was published. The world arrived. The most famous image — the 'Surgeon's Photograph' of 1934 — showed a long neck rising from the water. It was later partially debunked as a model submarine with a sculpted head. But the debunking did not explain the hundreds of other sightings that have no such explanation. Loch Ness is 230 metres deep in places, with visibility of less than 3 metres due to the peat-dark water. Sonar sweeps in 1987 detected three large unexplained contacts moving at depth — contacts which, the team noted, were too large to be any charted species in the loch. In 2018, an environmental DNA survey found genetic material consistent with a very large eel species — though no eel of sufficient size has ever been caught in the loch. The researchers were careful not to say what size would be required. The creature has never been caught. The loch has never been fully mapped. The water is very, very dark.