Nessies of the Multiple Kind
Posted by: Nick Redfern on January 7th, 2014
Roland Watson’s latest article on the Loch Ness Monster is one of my favorites, as it deals with the seldom-addressed reports involving more than one Nessie at the same time. And, even rarer, when there are three of them!
Here’s an extract from Roland’s latest:
“So how many sighting reports do you think have been made which mention more than one creature? This obviously meant a bit of digging about and my thanks to Charles Paxton for his help. As it turns out, the answer is surprisingly few. Out of over one thousand reports that have made it into newspapers, books and other written sources; the total number is nineteen or perhaps 1.7% of the entire database.”
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
So about the same number of times Nessie has been seen on land. I have this book and it’s not bad.
The lack of multiple sightings doesn’t necessarily concern me… the problem with looking for any cryptid in the water is that you’re dealing with only seeing or catching sight of it in a two-dimensional frame–the plane on the surface of the water (unless you’re really lucky and could get a look at it out of water).
Loch Ness presents even more problems. There could always be others below the surface, even 5-10 below and you’d probably never know because of the peaty loch.
I would wonder at the statistics on sea serpents being seen in multiples too–in the historical database of sightings, I don’t recall that many claims of multiple sightings either. Most times witnesses spy just one head and neck protruding out of the water, heading in some direction or another.
My thought was whether the sceptical theory of lake monsters can account for a mere 1.7% of all sightings being a plurality. Surely boat wakes and other water events present more opportunities than that to deceive observers? Methinks the sceptical theory has a problem.