Nessie on TV
Posted by: Nick Redfern on June 28th, 2012
Glasgow Boy, the keeper of the Loch Ness Mystery blog, takes a look back a few years at a certain TV documentary on the Loch Ness Monster and is not impressed. Not at all!
This is a thought-provoking article that has implications that go beyond just Nessie, and even beyond the larger domain of Cryptozoology. In terms of TV, it says much about how the entire monster-hunting, paranormal, unknown, supernatural and Fortean genres are treated in general nowadays.
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.
Alright, I tried posting on Glasgow Boy’s site, but couldn’t get recognized as having signed in, so I’ll post what I was going to there, here…
I remember a bit about this one, and it was dodgy at best (I may have a copy on DVD transferred from VHS, but not sure). I do remember a Discovery expedition where they studied the fish population and they came up with a much higher number of fish available–enough to support a higher predator.
As for the Surgeon’s Photo–there was supposedly a deathbed confession that it was a hoax…however, I’ve also read that the “deathbed confession” was a hoax–either that or wishful thinking on the part of some scoftic.
And the Dinsdale footage–there was yet another documentary (it might have been In Search Of), and the person that looked at his film reversed the negative which showed a large mass under the visible portion above water, suggesting that much of the animate object was still submerged. In which case, it wasn’t a boat.
Either way, the NG “documentary” was pretty thin all the way around. AND, with shows like Finding Bigfoot and Destination Truth where entertainment is more important than actual facts, it makes you wary of all of these shows—except for The Legend Of Boggy Creek. I know they took some things out of order, and took a few liberties, but most of it was as accurate accounts–I read the book about it, and it sounded as close to documentary as they could get.
@SHJ
He wrote “And the Dinsdale footage–there was yet another documentary (it might have been In Search Of), and the person that looked at his film reversed the negative which showed a large mass under the visible portion above water, suggesting that much of the animate object was still submerged. In which case, it wasn’t a boat.”
As a simple matter of fact, it is not possible for rays of light to pass through a air/water interface at an angle greater than 48.6 degrees from the “normal”. For Mr Dinsdale’s camera to have recorded images from under the water the rays would have had to pass at an angle of 87 degrees.
This underlines the dangers of hiring consultants to tell you what you want to hear, when you should have listened to your physics teacher. W