Strange Places: Loch Ness

Does the Loch Ness Monster, the World’s Most Famous Cryptid, Truly Exist?

Loch Ness is a 23-mile freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands. The stretch of water is the second-largest such loch in Scotland after Loch Lomond and also the second deepest after Loch Morar. Such is the vastness of the place that it contains more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and the area is home to a variety of fish such as trout, salmon, pike and sturgeon. Named for the River Ness which flows into the loch, the name “Ness” is believed to derive from the Celtic for “roaring one”, though this is likely to refer to water rather than the most infamous creature allegedly in the loch — The Loch Ness monster, or Nessie for short.

There have been rumours and sightings of a beast in the loch for years, and 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the first “confirmed” sighting. In 1923, a D. Mackenzie of Balnain reported that back in 1871 he had witnessed an object “wriggling and churning up the water” of Loch Ness, the thing increasing in speed before disappearing. Some, however, have contended that the earliest sighting of a monster may have been Saint Columba in the year 565. Writing a century later, the abbot of Iona Abbey Adomnán said that Columba had witnessed a party burying a man near the loch and, when asked, they told him…