Nessie lives in the highlands of Scotland in Loch Ness, which she is often named after. This monster has been speculated about for many, many years and is a tourist hotspot for anyone interesed in anything cool. This creature is defined as a cryptid because there is no scientific fact she exists, like the chupacabra and bigfoot.
She has four fins, with the front two being slightly larger than the back two. Her tail is as long as her neck and she has a small head, with presumambly backwards facing sharp teeth for catching fish. She is also often claimed to be a long-surviving dinosaur called the plesiosaurs.
The earliest report of a monster associated with the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St. Columba by Adomnán, written in the 7th century. According to Adomnán, writing about a century after the events he described, the Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of the Picts with his companions when he came across the locals burying a man by the River Ness. They explained that the man had been swimming the river when he was attacked by a 'water beast' that had mauled him and dragged him under. They tried to rescue him in a boat, but were able only to drag up his corpse. Hearing this, Columba stunned the Picts by sending his follower Luigne moccu Min to swim across the river. The beast came after him, but Columba made the sign of the Cross and commanded: 'Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once.' The beast immediately halted as if it had been 'pulled back with ropes' and fled in terror, and both Columba's men and the pagan Picts praised God for the miracle.
In 1938, Inverness-shire Chief Constable William Fraser wrote a letter stating that it was beyond doubt the monster existed. His letter expressed concern regarding a hunting party that had arrived armed with a specially-made harpoon gun and were determined to catch the monster 'dead or alive'. He believed his power to protect the monster from the hunters was 'very doubtful'. The letter was released by the National Archives of Scotland on 27 April 2010.
In December 1954 a strange sonar contact was made by the fishing boat Rival III. The vessel's crew observed sonar readings of a large object keeping pace with the boat at a depth of 146 metres (479 ft). It was detected travelling for 800 m (2,600 ft) in this manner, before contact was lost, but then found again later. Many sonar attempts had been made previously, but most were either inconclusive or negative.
On 12 November 1933, Hugh Gray was walking along the loch after church when he spotted a substantial commotion in the water. A large creature rose up from the lake. Gray took several pictures of it, but only one of them showed up after they were developed. This image appeared to show a creature with a long tail and thick body at the surface of the loch. The image is blurred suggesting the animal was splashing. Four stumpy-looking objects on the bottom of the creature's body might possibly be a pair of appendages, such as flippers. Although critics have claimed that the photograph is of a dog swimming towards the camera (possibly carrying a stick), researcher Roland Watson rejects this interpretation and suggests there is an eel-like head on the right side of the image.
In 1934, the 'Surgeon's Photograph' purported to be the first photo of a 'head and neck'. Dr. Wilson claimed he was looking at the loch when he saw the monster, so grabbed his camera and snapped five photos. After the film was developed, only two exposures were clear. The first photo (the more publicised one) shows what was claimed to be a small head and back. The second one, a blurry image, attracted little publicity because it was difficult to interpret what was depicted. The image was revealed unfortunatly as a fake in The Sunday Telegraph dated 7 December 1975.
Information about the Loch:
Loch Ness itself has more water than all the other lakes in England, Scotland and Wales put together. It is around twenty two and a half miles long and between one and one and a half miles wide, a depth of 754 feet with the bottom of the loch being as flat as a bowling green and holds 263 thousand million cubic feet of water which is around 16 million 430 thousand million gallons of water with a surface area of 14000 acres and could hold the population of the world 10 times over. It is fed by 7 major rivers the Oich, Tarff, Enrich, Coiltie, Moriston, Foyers and Farigaig plus numerous burns, with only one outlet the River Ness which flows 7 miles through Inverness into the Moray Firth 52 feet below the loch surface. Knowing this information, it is the perfect environment for her to live as it IS true that the loch never freezes.
