Abominable Science

by Daniel Loxton

  108 Quoted in “Yeti Finger Mystery Solved by Edinburgh Scientists,” December 27, 2011, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-16316397 (accessed May 19, 2012).

  109 Tom Slick, “Expedition a Success, Proves Yeti Exists,” Daily Boston Globe, July 26, 1958, 4.

  110 Buhs, Bigfoot, 46.

  111 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 46–47.

  112 Napier, Bigfoot, 52.

  113 Buhs, Bigfoot, 112.

  114 For a discussion of the scientific team, see Michael Ward, “Himalayan Scientific Expedition, 1960–61,” Alpine Journal (1961): 343. The team’s 150 porters are noted in Buhs, Bigfoot, 112.

  115 Edmund Hillary and Desmond Doig, High in the Thin Cold Air (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962) 130–131.

  116 Ibid., 82–83.

  117 Ibid., 103.

  118 Ibid., 131.

  119 Ibid., 131–132.

  120 Ibid., 88.

  121 The loan agreement for the scalp specified that “Sir Edmund Hillary and the members of the expedition put into effect an appeal to the sponsors of the expedition, mountaineering societies, and the general public to establish and support a school for the benefit of the people of Khunde and Khumjung villages.” With help from the World Book Encyclopedia, the Indian Aluminum Company, and the International Red Cross, and labor from Hillary and his friends from the expedition and local village, the school was soon made a reality. See Hillary and Doig, High in the Thin Cold Air, 88. That school was only the beginning. “At the request of Sherpa residents,” Hillary reflected in 2003, “we helped establish 27 schools, two hospitals, and a dozen medical clinics—plus quite a few bridges over wild rivers. We constructed several airfields and rebuilt Buddhist monasteries and cultural centers. We planted a million seedlings in Sagarmatha National Park to replace the vast number of trees destroyed for firewood and used to build the small hotels that came with the growth of tourism” (“My Story,” National Geographic, May 2003, 40).

  122 Napier, Bigfoot, 59.

  123 Ibid., 61–62.

  124 Ibid., pl. 3.

  125 Quoted in “British Climber Says He Saw Abominable Snowman,” Stars and Stripes (Darmstadt), June 13, 1970, 4.

  126 Quoted in “Names and Faces,” Boston Globe, June 8, 1970, 2.

  127 Zhou Guoxing, “The Status of the Wildman Research in China,” Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/zhou.htm (accessed May 19, 2012).

  128 “Yeti Is Just a Plain, Old Brown Bear, Says Chinese Expert,” World Tibet Network News, January 13, 1998, http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=1998&m=1&p=13_4 (accessed May 19, 2012).

  129 Quoted in “Dogs from U.S. Will Hunt the Yeti in Nepal: Search for Snowman Opens This Month,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 4, 1958, A8.

  130 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 144–147.

  131 Ibid., 151–156.

  132 Anthony B. Wooldridge, “First Photos of the Yeti: An Encounter in North India,” Cryptozoology 5 (1986): 63–76, and “An Encounter in Northern India,” Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/wooldridge.htm (accessed October 22, 2011).

  133 Quoted in Michael Dennett, “Abominable Snowman Photo Comes to Rocky End,” Skeptical Inquirer 13, no. 2 (1989): 118–119; Jerome Clark, Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Visible Ink Press, 1999), 599–600.

  134 “The Snow Walker Film Footage,” Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/films/snowwalker.htm (accessed October 22, 2011).

  135 Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, 7–8.

  136 Ibid., 98–100.

  137 Ibid., 129–130, 142.

  138 Ibid., 146.

  139 Ibid., 154, 156.

  140 Ted Chamberlain, “Reinhold Messner: Climbing Legend, Yeti Hunter,” National Geographic Adventure, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0005/q_n_a.html (accessed October 22, 2011).

  141 Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, 156.

  142 Charles Haviland, “‘Yeti Prints’ Found Near Everest,” December 1, 2007, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7122705.stm (accessed October 22, 2011).

  143 Alastair Lawson, “‘Yeti Hairs’ Belong to a Goat,” October 13, 2008, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7666900.stm (accessed October 22, 2011).

  144 “Abominable Snowman” [season 3, episode 59], MonsterQuest, History Channel, October 25, 2009, “MonsterQuest: Abominable Snowman, Pt. 1,” YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYwO_k7vDmg (accessed October 22, 2011).

  145 Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, 157.

  4. NESSIE

  1 As Ronald Binns explains, “In fact there had been a road along the north shore of Loch Ness since the end of the eighteenth-century. Tourists and motor vehicles had been passing along it well before 1933…. All that happened in 1933 was that sections of the north shore road were improved. The road was resurfaced along its entire length and there were a number of repairs carried out” (The Loch Ness Mystery Solved [London: Open Books, 1983]), 63.

  2 Tony Shiels, Monstrum! A Wizard’s Tale (London: Fortean Times, 1990), 69.

  3 “The Quaternary (the last two million years),” Scottish Geology, http://www.scottishgeology.com/geology/geological_time_scale/timeline/quaternary.htm (accessed June 29, 2010).

  4 More specifically, both the River Ness and the Caledonian Canal open into the innermost section of Moray Firth, called Beauly Firth. For its part, the length of the River Ness varies, depending on what is counted. Loch Ness empties first into a man-made body of water called Loch Dochfour (created when the water level of Loch Ness was raised during the construction of the Caledonian Canal). In total, the river route from Loch Ness proper to the mouth of the River Ness at Beauly Firth is a little over 8 miles. Sources that estimate the length of the River Ness at 6 or 7 miles are excluding the length of Loch Dochfour.

  5 Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 72.

  6 Quoted in ibid., 63–65.

  7 “The Sea Serpent in the Highlands,” Times (London), March 6, 1856, 12, reprinted from the Inverness Courier.

  8 Lewis Spence, “Mythical Beasts in Scottish Folklore,” Scotsman (Edinburgh), March 4, 1933, 15.

  9 Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (New York: Norton, 2000), 109, 205, 388.

  10 Thomas Hannan, “Each Usage: The Water Horse,” Scotsman, October 25, 1933, 10.

  11 Spence, “Mythical Beasts in Scottish Folklore,” 15.

  12 Hannan, “Each Usage,” 10.

  13 John Graham Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, Illustrated from History and Practice (Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes, 1834), 543–544, 682.

  14 W. M. Parker and S. M. Young, letters to the editor, Scotsman, October 24, 1933, 17.

  15 John Noble Wilford, “Legends of the Lochs: Quests by Saints and Science,” New York Times, June 5, 1976, 8.

  16 Michel Meurger, with Claude Gagnon, Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (London: Fortean Times, 1988), 122–123, 126.

  17 Ibid., 122.

  18 Quoted in ibid., 212.

  19 “Sea Serpent Hoax of 1904 Is Bared,” New York Times, April 25, 1934, 17.

  20 Inverness Courier, October 8, 1868. Incidentally, this is an early use of the word “monster” in relation to Loch Ness, contradicting the common claim that Alex Campbell coined the term for Nessie in 1933. Campbell’s use of the word was, however, instrumental in the creation of the modern legend of a Loch Ness “monster.”

  21 Adrian Shine, Loch Ness (Drumnadrochit: Loch Ness Project, 2006), 7.

  22 Reuters, “Travel Bargain Hoax—and So Is ‘Monster,’” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1972, 2; “Operation Cleansweep 2001,” Loch Ness and Morar Project, http://www.lochnessproject.org/loch_ness_sundberg.htm (accessed July 5, 2010).

  23 “A Scene at Lochend,” Inverness Courier, July 1, 1852.

  24 The newspaper quotes him as having said, “Dia mu’n c
uairt duian, ‘a iad na h-eich-uisg’ tk’enn!” Catriona Parsons was kind enough to tackle a translation for this book: “I’m pretty confident this inscription is a garbled version of the Gaelic phrase ‘Dia mu’n cuairt dhuinn, ‘s iad na h-eich uisg’ a’ tighinn!’” she concluded. Literally, “(Let) God be around us, and the water-horses [kelpies] coming!” My thanks to the Gaelic Council of Nova Scotia.

  25 The three men were Ian Milne, R. C. M. Macdougall, and G. D. Gallon, all of whom were Inverness locals. See Rupert T. Gould, The Loch Ness Monster (1934; repr., Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1976), 36.

  26 Quoted in “What Was It? A Strange Experience on Loch Ness,” Northern Chronicle (Inverness), August 27, 1930.

  27 The keeper’s story, itself a contender for “first recorded Nessie sighting,” is an important case about which little seems to be known. Is this anonymous “keeper” the same person as William Miller, who is discussed in Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 35? Miller is identified as a “keeper,” and his alleged sighting in 1923 matches the description and timescale of that of the keeper mentioned seven years later in “What Was It?”

  28 Piscator, letter to the editor, Inverness Courier, August 29, 1930.

  29 “Lake Mystery in Scotland,” Kokomo (Ind.) Tribune, October 8, 1933, 12.

  30 Most books identify her as “Mrs. Mackay” or even “Mrs. John Mackay,” although she was the primary witness. I take her first name from Tony Harmsworth, who interviewed her in 1986, Loch Ness, Nessie and Me: The Truth Revealed (Drumnadrochit: Harmsworth, 2010), 91–93.

  31 Today, this building is home to the Loch Ness Exhibition Center and its associated research effort (Loch Ness and Morar Project).

  32 Alex Campbell, “Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness: What Was It?” Inverness Courier, May 2, 1933.

  33 Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 39–40.

  34 “Loch Ness ‘Monster’: Ship Captain’s Views on Occurrence,” Inverness Courier, May 12, 1933.

  35 Dick Raynor, “A Brief Overview of ‘Nessie’ History,” Loch Ness Investigation, http://www.lochnessinvestigation.org/history.html (accessed June 25, 2010).

  36 Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 208.

  37 There is some uncertainty about this date. Most sources date the Mackays’ sighting to April 14, 1933 (which was the date provided by Gould in 1934). However, Campbell’s original news item dates the sighting to “Friday of last week,” which would be April 28, 1933. Compare Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 39, with Campbell “Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness.”

  38 Dennis Dunn, “King Kong Caps the Lot,” Daily Express (London), April 19, 1933, 3.

  39 “King Kong and the Schoolboy,” Scotsman, May 9, 1933, 6.

  40 George Spicer, letter to the editor, Inverness Courier, August 4, 1933.

  41 Tim Dinsdale, The Loch Ness Monster (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 41.

  42 Shine, Loch Ness, 9.

  43 Quoted in F. W. Holiday, The Great Orm of Loch Ness: A Practical Inquiry into the Nature and Habits of Water-Monsters (New York: Norton, 1969), 30–31.

  44 Quoted in Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 44.

  45 Quoted in Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness, 31. Note, however, that Spicer’s initial letter to the Inverness Courier estimated the creature’s length as “six to eight feet long.” He swiftly revised this measure upward to what became the canonical description of 25 or 30 feet long. In 1934, Spicer told Gould, “After having ascertained the with of the road, and giving the matter mature thought in every way, I afterwards came to the conclusion that the creature I saw must have been at least 25 feet in length” (quoted in Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 46).

  46 Quoted in Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness, 30–31.

  47 Spicer, letter to the editor.

  48 Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 46.

  49 Shine, Loch Ness, 7.

  50 Adrian Shine, e-mail to James Loxton (Junior Skeptic research assistant), June 22, 2006.

  51 Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 26.

  52 Denis Lyell, letter to the editor, Scotsman, April 30, 1938, 17.

  53 “Loch Ness Monster: The Plesiosaurus Theory,” Scotsman, October 17, 1933, 9.

  54 “Loch Ness ‘Monster’: Ship Captain’s Views on Occurrence.”

  55 Duke of Portland, letter to the editor, Scotsman, October 20, 1933, 11.

  56 Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 30.

  57 Amy Willis, “Loch Ness Monster: The Strangest Theories and Sightings,” August 26, 2009, Telegraph (London), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6095673/Loch-Ness-Monster-the-strangest-theories-and-sightings.html (accessed June 28, 2010).

  58 See, for example, Henry Bauer, The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 51; and Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 50–51. In addition, in early 2010 I made my own failed attempt to locate the story using the searchable “ProQuest Historical Newspapers” archive and other newspaper archives.

  59 Bauer, Enigma of Loch Ness, 159.

  60 Charles Thomas, “The ‘Monster’ Episode in Adomnan’s Life of St. Columba,” Cryptozoology 7 (1988): 40–41. The Latin in the original article has been omitted.

  61 Ibid., 40.

  62 Ibid., 43.

  63 Ibid., 44.

  64 Robert Bakewell, Introduction to Geology (New Haven, Conn.: Howe, 1833), 213.

  65 Philip Henry Gosse, The Romance of Natural History (London: Nisbet, 1861), 357–360. Gosse, it should be noted, is best known for his book Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (London: Van Voorst, 1857), which underlies much of creationist thinking to this day.

  66 Elasmosaurus was a plesiosaur with an exceptionally long neck that lived in the late Cretaceous period (98–65 million years ago). After lopping off the top of the elasmosaur’s head with a machete, the hero bizarrely—and successfully—transplants a young companion’s brain into the beast. Eventually, its human intelligence fading, the creature (I can’t help but think of it as “Elasmosaurenstein”) turns on the protagonist and devours him. See Wardon Allan Curtis, “The Monster of Lake LaMetrie” (1899), Gutenberg Consortia Center, http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/lametrie.htm (accessed September 12, 2011).

  67 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World (1912), Gutenberg Consortia Center, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/139/139-h/139-h.htm (accessed September 12, 2011).

  68 Rupert T. Gould, The Case for the Sea-Serpent (London: Allan, 1930; New York: Putnam, 1934).

  69 Quoted in Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 25–26.

  70 Ibid., 24.

  71 Philip Stalker, “Loch Ness Monster: A Puzzled Highland Community,” Scotsman, October 16, 1933, 11.

  72 Philip Stalker, “Loch Ness Monster: The Plesiosaurus Theory,” Scotsman, October 17, 1933, 9.

  73 Alex Campbell to Ness Fishery Board, October 28, 1933, quoted in Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 110–112.

  74 Quoted in Dinsdale, Loch Ness Monster, 126.

  75 Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 79–80.

  76 Stalker, “Loch Ness Monster: The Plesiosaurus Theory,” 9.

  77 F. W. Memory, “The Monster Is a Seal: Conclusions of the ‘Daily Mail’ Mission,” Daily Mail (London), ca. December 18, 1933–January 19, 1934, undated clipping, Loch Ness and Morar Project Archive, http://www.lochnessproject.org/adrian_shine_archiveroom/paperspdfs/LOCH_NESS_1933damail.pdf (accessed October 10, 2011).

  78 Rupert Gould, “The Loch Ness ‘Monster’: A Survey of the Evidence,” Times, December 9, 1933, 13.

  79 “The Monster of Loch Ness: New Accounts from Eye-witnesses,” Times, December 18, 1933, 9.

  80 Douglas Russell, letter to the editor, Scotsman, October 20, 1933, 15.

  81 Nicholas Witchell, The Loch Ness Story (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 72.

  82 Daily Express (Glasgow), December 16, 1933, 8.

  83 Daily Express, May 10, 1934, 6; “Trips to See the ‘Monster,’” Scotsman, October 31, 1933.

  84 “Buses to the ‘Monster,’” Scotsman, March 10, 1934, 11.

&n
bsp; 85 “I’m the Monster of Loch Ness” (sung by Leslie Holmes in a British Pathé film released on January 25, 1934), British Pathé, http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=28215 (accessed June 1, 2010).

  86 “Loch Ness in the Films,” Scotsman, December 11, 1934, 8.

  87 Daily Express, November 13, 1933, 10; September 3, 1934, 20; January 25, 1934, 7.

  88 “Sandy, the Loch Ness Monster,” Times, January 30, 1934, 12.

  89 Daily Express, January 9, 1934, 11.

  90 Scotsman, February 28, 1934, 14.

  91 Dennis Dunn, “Monster Bobs Up Again … Hotels Doing Fine,” Daily Express, April 24, 1934, 3.

  92 Scotsman, December 16, 1950, 6.

  93 Steuart Campbell, The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1997), 37–38.

  94 Gould, Loch Ness Monster, 23.

  95 Elwood Baumann, The Loch Ness Monster (New York: Franklin Watts, 1972), 12.

  96 Roy P. Mackal, The Monsters of Loch Ness (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1976), 95–96.

  97 Campbell, Loch Ness Monster, 38.

  98 Mackal, Monsters of Loch Ness, 95.

  99 Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness, 26.

  100 Mike Dash, “Frank Searle’s Lost Second Book,” December 27, 2009, Dry as Dust: A Fortean in the Archives, Charles Fort Institute, Blogs.forteana.org/node/95 (accessed July 4, 2010).

  101 Quoted in Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness, 26–27.

  102 Mackal, Monsters of Loch Ness, 95.

  103 Quoted in “Mr. Wetherell and a Broadcast,” Daily Express, December 23, 1933.

  104 Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 28.

  105 Quoted in “Hunter’s Story of Finding of Spoor,” Scotsman, December 26, 1933, 10.

  106 Strix [Peter Fleming], Spectator, April 5, 1957, quoted in Binns, Loch Ness Mystery Solved, 28–29.

  107 David Martin and Alastair Boyd, Nessie: The Surgeon’s Photograph Exposed (London: Thorne, 1999), 34.

  108 “Monster Mystery Deepens,” Daily Mail, January 4, 1934.

  109 Martin and Boyd, Nessie, 27.

  110 The “Surgeon’s Photograph” is really two photographs: the famous image and a less impressive image said to show the creature diving. Cryptozoologists criticize skeptics for concentrating on the famous image and ignoring the second, but I will also follow that pattern. In my opinion, the second photo offers little to no additional information. It is consistent with the same model sinking or tipping over or with another object—but the image is too poor to answer for itself.