Nessie and Hunt the Gowk
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 1st, 2006
The story of Nessie revolves around key events that happen in April.
A pattern emerges that tells us the monsters in Loch Ness may be especially visible as the northern spring weather has more people motoring and cycling around lochside. Or is it about increasingly active cryptids in the water?
The first good sighting occurred on April 14, 1933, when Mr. and Mrs. MacKay, traveling from Inverness to Drumnadrochit, saw two large humps in the middle of the loch, swimming parallel with Aldourie Pier (on the opposite side from where they were). The single best piece of moving photographic evidence of Nessie is a film taken on April 23, 1960, from the eastern shore by Tim Dinsdale.
But April also, of course, begins with a day of trickery. Is there a relationship to April Fool’s Day and Nessie lore? Certainly, if you are overly skeptical, you might find this a key to debunk one bit of Nessie lore, and people have.
The most famous photograph was supposedly taken of the creature by a surgeon, Robert Kenneth Wilson, a British gynecologist, on April 1, 1934, (although some websites incorrectly give the date as April 19th). He was traveling north alongside the Loch towards Inverness, about 2 miles north of Invermoriston.
Wilson was driving with “an unnamed friend.” Indeed, Dr. Wilson apparently was with a married woman with whom he was having an affair. In those minor but intriguing details lost in the puritanical revisions of such matters, the affair and that Wilson took the photographs after he noticed something in the water while at lochside relieving himself, are often left out of accounts.
Was the Surgeon’s Photographs (for there are two of them) part of some kind of April Fool’s joke? If it was, the joke would have been on Wilson for April 1 is declared the day to “Hunt the Gowk,” the Scottish equivalent of April Fool’s Day (a gowk is a cuckoo). Was surgeon Wilson the Gowk?
Skeptics would have you believe so, saying it was an elaborate hoax using a toy submarine and based on some family feuds. Nessie researchers would point out two things. First, Wilson never claimed what he saw or took was Nessie, but merely an animal he could not identify. Second, Loch Ness investigators like Richard Smith remind us that the debunkers have overblown the use of funny timelines and forgotten details (there was no death bed confession, plasticwood of the type said to have made the toy submarine didn’t exist in 1934, and everyone forgets the second photo).
Why was Dr. Wilson secretive and shy about talking about the photographs he took? Now you know the rest of the story. How would you feel about taking a couple snapshots of something strange in a lake on Hunt-the-Gowk day, if you were traveling on vacation while having an extramarital liaison?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
If he didn’t wish to compromise his extramarital liaison, why then release the photo at all? Because it isn’t Dr. Wilson’s photo.
I think maybe you take the term ‘plastic wood’ a bit too literally. Moldable natural polymers have existed since the 17th century. In the 1800s, natural polymers or latex rubber were commonly mixed with saw dust to make a moldable compound. By the mid 1800s vulcanization allowed man made polymers, or rather, man-improved natural polymers, for use as moldable agents. Cellulose nitrate emerged in the mid 1800s, Thermo-setting plastics, amino plastics, and thermoplastics also predate the Nessie photogragh.
I suspect that the use of the term ‘plastic wood’ wasn’t a reference to a current DAP product at ACE Hardware, but a simple generic descriptive of a moldable material, many versions of which were readily available in 1934.
As for Dr. Wilson’s refusal to name his monster Nessie, he had only lent his name to the hoax and sought only a bit of local fun, but the hoax was believed and took off in the media of the day and he grew tired of it. He began to downplay. So what?
Have you seen the second photo? I have. It is clearly not even of the same object. It is also of a much inferior quality. A hoaxer taking multiple photos would be expected to use the ‘best’ one.
Dr. Wilson was not ‘secretive and shy’ about talking about the photographs at first. It was only when the story exceeded the local area and he began to become pestered by believer and newspaper writers that he became more reticent to speak, and began downplaying the whole thing.
The author of the hoax is Wetherall. Dr. Wilson took no photos, only claimed to have at Wetherall’s behest, to lend them credibility. Wetherall has a documented local history of hoaxes. He used an imported umbrella stand -the hollowed out foot of a hippopotamus -to make ‘monster’ tracks in the area for dupes to find.
I once hoaxed a UFO photo. One fellow I know owns a copy of it, still insists it ‘might be real’ even after I admitted the hoax, showed him the model remnants, etc. Once he bought in, he couldn’t seem to extricate himself even when absolute proof was provided.
I think the same sort of belief dynamic affects many people who had long accepted the Dr. Wilson photo as geniune.
Hi All
Obviously each claim to proof of any kind should be considered with an objective, open mind and heart
I believe in the lochness monster, have done since my childhood. Never seen any credible proof of its existence but hey I have believed in God since who knows when. I’ve studied religion for many years and guess what STILL NO PROOF!
The Lochness Monster, Big Foot, Fairies, Demons, Angels etc. etc. all require one thing to allow them to become reality- FAITH!!
GET MY POINT?
Having studied the loch ness phenomena for a great many years(unknown to my university employers,who do not approve) and having seen something strange in Loch Ness, I can only comment from my own perspective. Death bed confessions to monster hoaxes seem to be the thing these days. It’s become fashionable once again to not believe, and to protect their families from media intrusion people often change their stories. I’m sure if my employers found I said I’d seen something in the loch they would send me for a mental health review. It’s not so many years ago that staff from the Natural History Museum were, shall we say made redundant, for investigating Loch Ness. It’s just something to bear in mind when looking at stories of past denials and also memory, something I teach a bit about, is notoriously unreliable. People may look back and say ..no I can’t have seen anything..I know I did.
I think the surgans photo is fake. I keep heering about it on t.v they allways say its a toy boat with a surgans head on top of the toy boat it’s a hoax!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!