Loch Ness Monster

The Irish missionary St Columba is said to have been the first person to encounter the oldest inhabitant of Loch Ness or at least that was what his biographer Adamnan wrote in 565. A funeral on the lake was disturbed by the monster. "Go thou no further. Quick! Go back," cried St Columba and the creature disappeared into the impenetrable depths. In the 16th century Hector Boece mentioned in "The History of Scotland" that a "terrible being" had suddenly emerged from the water and swallowed three men.

The next sighting was in 1933 when the A82 was under construction. A Mr and Mrs Spicer were sitting on the north bank admiring the lakeside scenery when a strange, writhing creature crossed the road in front of them. This gave rise to wild speculation that a plesiosaur had survived from prehistoric times and was living in the lake.

The most famous picture of Nessiteras Rhombopteryx, to give Nessie its full name, came from the camera of the London gynecologist Robert Wilson. On April 19, 1934 Wilson reported seeing "something on the water" and took a snap: a long neck of the monster had just emerged from the ice-cold water. But it later turned out that Wilson belonged to a team of five who had set out to play a trick on the media. Shortly before his death in 1993, Christian Spurling, one of the "conspirators", explained his part in the great deception to Loch Ness researchers David Martin and Alastair Boyd. Marmaduke Wetherell, a film producer, although at the time a reporter for the Daily Mail investigating the existence of Nessie, his son Jan and the insurance agent Maurice Chambers were also present. According to the Sunday Times, Spurling, an amateur woodworker, had rigged up a dinosaur dummy on a toy submarine. The ruse worked perfectly.

A host of snapshots and eye-witness reports followed, not to mention a growing stream of visitors. Most descriptions of the beast say it resembles a large sea reptile from the era of tropical dinosaurs. It is said to have a long neck, a small head, fins and several humps, but these features match those of certain species of sea snake.