The History Of The Loch Ness Monster – And The Theories On What It Could Have Been

The history of the Loch Ness Monster – a giant creature that inhabits a loch in Scotland – goes back a century, or many centuries, depending on who you ask. 

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The monster, the myth, the legend

The earliest sighting connected to Nessie by some goes back all the way to 565 CE, with a strange tale from Saint Columba, recorded in the seventh century CE. According to Adomnán's Life of St. Columba, the saint stumbled across the scene of a monster attack whilst attempting to cross the river Ness.

“At another time also, when the blessed man was sojourning for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa [Ness]; and when he had come to the bank, he sees some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate fellow whom, as those who were burying him related, a little while before some aquatic monster seized and savagely bit while he was swimming, and whose hapless body some men, coming up though too late in a boat, rescued by means of hooks which they threw out," a translation of the text reads. 

At this point, the saint ordered one of his fellow travelers to cross the river to retrieve a small fishing boat, called a coble. While asking a man to cross a river recently host to a monster attack isn't what we'd call the most saintly of all the behaviors, Lugne Mocumin obliged, taking off his clothes and attempting to swim to the other side.

"But the monster, which was lying in the river bed, and whose appetite was rather whetted for more prey than sated with what it already had, perceiving the surface of the water disturbed by the swimmer, suddenly comes up and moves towards the man as he swam in mid stream, and with a great roar rushes on him with open mouth, while all who were there, barbarians as well as Brethren, were greatly terror-struck," the tale continues. 

According to the story, the saint made the sign of the cross before yelling at the creature: "Go thou no further, nor touch the man; go back at once." At this point, the creature was apparently "terrified" and swam away as if it had been dragged away by a rope. Whether this tale is really connected to the Nessie folklore, or has since been incorporated following more recent tales, is debated.

The legend of Nessie really took off after reported sightings in the 1930s captured national attention. The first of these was when Aldie Mackay saw a "whale-like fish" or "beast" in April 1933.

"The creature disported itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron," the Inverness Courier reported.

"Soon, however, it disappeared in a boiling mass of foam. Both onlookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing, for they realised that here was no ordinary denizen of the depths, because, apart from its enormous size, the beast, in taking this final plunge, sent out waves that were big enough to have been caused by a passing steamer."

That article refers to earlier legends of beasts dwelling within the loch. Later the same year, another sighting was reported, involving one George Spicer and his wife (not named in the paper). According to the report, the two were driving in the area when they saw an odd sight in front of them.

"I was looking ahead, and as my wife spoke I observed the most extraordinary form of an animal move across the road. I am willing to take any oath, I am willing to make any affidavit, and so is my wife, that we saw this Loch Ness beast. It seems futile to describe it because it is nothing like anything I have read about or seen. It was terrible. Its colour, so far as the body is concerned, could only be called a dark elephant grey. Its movement must have been rapid, although to us it seemed cumbrous because of its bulk. It had come out of the bracken on the hill side. I saw no tail, nor did I notice any mouth on what I took to be the head of the creature," Spicer claimed of that day in July.

"On the other hand, my wife drew my attention to something on the back of the monster that looked like a deer, but if that were so it would suggest that the creature's mouth was somewhere about the bulk of its body."

According to Spicer, the two drove closer, but when they drew near, they found it had completely disappeared. Other sightings, and photographs, emerged of the supposed beast, which soon became known as the Loch Ness Monster, or the much more adorable "Nessie".

The most famous of these – "Surgeon's Photograph", taken in 1934 – shows a long neck and head poking out of the water, and is very much the classic image of Nessie people have in their heads. But this photograph turned out to be a hoax, the result of a disgruntled former London Daily Mail employee who had been ridiculed by employees at the paper after he had himself fallen for a Nessie footprint hoax. As a reasoned response, he contacted a model-maker to help him go one better, faking an image of the beast.

What is Nessie?

So, what have people suggested the "monster" could be? A popular idea, based on descriptions of the animal and an abandonment of logical thinking, is that it is a plesiosaur, a Mesozoic sauropterygian marine reptile with a very long neck that went extinct around 65 million years ago. 

According to those who believe this idea, a group of the reptiles survived and examples still live in the loch. If this was the case, they would have had to have survived elsewhere, as the loch only formed at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago, before moving into their new home.

That is, of course, a pretty outlandish idea, and we have little reason or evidence to think that the Loch Ness Monster (if one exists at all) is an ancient reptile that has managed to keep itself concealed from the world bar a few brief sightings.

More grounded (though not necessarily correct) explanations suggest that people seeing giant eels, Greenland sharks, or giant catfish are the cause of the sightings. So, what is it really? 

For other classic cryptids, we have a better idea. Supposed samples of Yeti hairs, bones, teeth, skin, and poop have been found over the years, with some of them submitted for scientific testing. In one study, which analyzed samples, they turned out to be from the Asian black bear, the Himalayan brown bear, the Tibetan brown bear, and a dog.

Nessie does very little in the way of shedding, and any teeth it may have lost over the centuries have clearly sunk to the bottom of the loch. But in recent years, researchers have attempted to study the monster more scientifically. Camera traps were set up in the 1970s, but to no avail, and sonar searches have also turned up nothing. 

More recently, one team attempted to analyze water samples from the loch for traces of DNA. That team found no evidence to support most of the potential candidates.

"We did not find any giant reptiles; we didn't find any reptiles at all," Neil Gemmell, a geneticist at Otago University in New Zealand, told Live Science in 2019. "We tested a variety of ideas about giant sturgeons or catfish that might be here from time to time, but we did not find those either." 

While the survey found traces of over 3,000 species of animal in and around the loch's water, there was no mysterious DNA that could belong to a plesiosaur. But there was a lot of DNA from one potential cause of Loch Ness Monster sightings.

"There is a very significant amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled – there are a lot of them. So – are they giant eels?” Gemmell added to BBC News. 

"Well, our data doesn't reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of the material says that we can't discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness. Therefore, we can't discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch Ness Monster might be a giant eel."

That hypothesis, while having the advantage of being backed up by large amounts of DNA, might not be the explanation either. Looking at catch data from the loch, a 2023 study found that the European eels within it tended to be on the smaller side. Extrapolating from that, they estimated that the odds of finding one over 1 meter (3.2 feet) in the loch are about 1 in 50,000. 

“However, this is not quite the ‘monster' postulated,” the study explains. “Indeed, the probability of finding a 6-meter [20-foot] eel in Loch Ness is essentially zero – too low for the software used to provide a reliable estimate.” 

“Thus, while large eels may account for some eyewitness sightings of large animate objects rising to the loch surface, they are unlikely to account for 'sightings' of extraordinarily large animals, which may instead be accounted for by wave phenomena, the occasional stray mammal, or other reasons.”

In short, we still don't know what people are seeing that makes them believe they have seen Nessie. A combinations of sightings of natural objects, a few hoaxes, a bit of imagination, and a lot of folklore are mixed to make the monster.