Nessie
The word “Loch” is the Irish/Scottish Gaelic word for lake or for sea inlet, and there’s an estimated 31,460 lochs in Scotland. The largest loch in Scotland is Loch Katrine, but the most popular lochs include Loch Lomond, Loch Fyne, and of course, Loch Ness.
Loch Ness is the second largest body of water by surface area consuming 22 square miles, and due to its depth, is the largest by volume in the British Isles. Its deepest area is more than 700 feet and is the largest body of water in the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north, to Fort William to the south. In 2016 Mr. Stewart, a retired fisherman, claimed his state-of-the-art sonar system found a crevice about 889 feet deep at Loch Ness, but some say that was a technical anomaly with his equipment. Yet others disagree and believe it could be a hiding place or even an underwater cave entrance where a large sea creature resides.
Enter Nessie:
One of the earliest reports of the famed Loch Ness monster appeared in the book, Life of St. Columba, by Adomnan, written back in the sixth century AD. According to the writings, Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of Picts with his followers when he came upon locals burying a man by the River Ness. They told the monk the man was swimming in the river when he was attacked by a “water beast” which mauled him and dragged him underwater. Although they tried to rescue him in a boat, he was already dead by the time they got to him. Columba then sent one of his followers, Luigne moccu Min, to swim across the river to look for evidence of what happened. Within minutes of Luigne being in the water, a creature appeared and swam dangerously close to him. Columba seeing this reacted quickly by making the sign of the cross with his hands and yelled to the beast, “Go no further! Do not touch the man! Go back at once!”
The great water creature stopped as if it had been “pulled back with ropes” and quickly swam away. Columba’s followers and the local Picts, gave thanks for what they had just experienced and perceived it as a miracle. This in turn made Columba a very popular and powerful religious figure.
This is such a great story, one which was described by an early monk, that’s still told today by the locals of Loch Ness. But was it just a story, or did the event actually happen?
Since the sixth century there have been numerous reports of something seen swimming in the Loch, so many times, that the legend of Nessie refuses to go away! So many sightings occur, that many websites exist tracking them. One website in particular, Lochnesssightings.com, has the official Loch Ness Monster Register. With over 1100 sighting reports registered from 565 right up to 2019, this clearly shows a lot of people are seeing something at the Loch.
Here in the USA we have our own version of Nessie named, “Champ”, a lake creature that lives in Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain is a 125 mile long body of fresh water shared by New York and Vermont extending into Quebec. Sightings of Champ go back to the 1800’s with the most recent one back in 2009. But what type of monster or creature is Champ, and what is that sea monster called Nessie, the grand-granny of lake or loch monsters?
(Picture courtesy dinosaurpictures.org [esthervanhulsen] )
Nessie is believed to resemble a plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur with a long neck and four flippers. They lived from the early Jurassic period to the end of the Cretaceous period from about 220 million years to 66 million years ago. Plesiosaurs lived in the Mesozoic era, and currently not known exactly when and why they went extinct. There appears to be no evidence of their demise although the asteroid impact theory seems the most plausible. They also had a wide roaming area from the European seas and around the Pacific Ocean, to Australia, North America, and Asia. A recent discovery of an 85-million-year-old plesiosaur fossil found in Antarctica, pushes the species back by 15 million years earlier than expected meaning, this sea creature has been swimming around for a long time.
Champ, from Lake Champlain, is considered to also be a Plesiosaurs just like Nessie. Lake Champlain was formed over 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and was an arm of the Atlantic ocean. The lake is about 400 feet deep, not as deep as Loch Ness, but some say there’s an underwater cave system there. Loch Ness was also formed around 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and could the 2016 crevice theory also be a cave system?
Even more cool:
Could Lake Champlain and Loch Ness be connected underwater through a cave system dumping into the Atlantic and could Champ and Nessie be related? Could there be a family of Plesiosaurs living in an unknown region that periodically pop up at Champlain and Loch Ness?
As a UFO investigator I’ve experienced many things I can’t explain and seen many things appearing to be related to extraterrestrial origins, so who am I to say a living Plesiosaurs doesn’t exist; which is why when my wife and I visited Scotland, Loch Ness was a must site to see. And, I wasn’t disappointed. To see the Loch first hand reminded me about the first time my sister Debbie and I visited the famous Roswell debris site in my Jeep. Both times and both places I stood in awe, taking in the scenery while reminiscing about all the stories I’ve heard, and boy, there are a lot of stories for both.
If you ever get a chance to visit Scotland, which is a magical place all by itself, take a day and head over to Loch Ness to visit Nessie, and say “hi”! You may not be able to see her, but if she’s there, I bet she’ll be seeing you.
blog info links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster
http://www.lochnesssightings.com/
[RIP] Stanton Friedman July 29th, 1934 – May 13th, 2019
Category: Miscellaneous, The Z-Files
