“At around 09.30hrs. on the morning of September 7th 1933, I was watching the loch from the mouth of the River Oich. There was a thick mist and the sun was shining down the loch when I noticed a strange object about 600 yards away from where I stood. It seemed about 30ft long and what I took to be the head was standing about five feet out of the loch. It seemed to be watching two drifters passing out of the canal into the loch and was turning its head and its body very quickly as though agitated. I watched this for a full minute then it vanished as though it had sunk out of sight.”
This sounds like one of the best documented sightings that we have all read and which appears in nearly every book dealing with the Loch Ness mystery. But it is only part of a letter written on 28th of October 1933 to the Ness Fishery Board by Alex Campbell who was a water bailiff on Loch Ness for 47 years and who became one of the men everyone went to see when investigating the Loch Ness mystery.
To read the rest of the letter it changes the story completely, it goes on to tell, “Last Friday I was watching the loch from the same place under the same weather conditions. Shortly, something like I described before came into my line of vision. The same distance as before but the light was improving all the time and what I took to be the monster was nothing more than a few comorants, and what seemed to be the head was a comorant standing in the water flapping it’s wings.”
That seems to be that. What Alex Campbell took to be Nessie was really just a mirage which he saw and recognised for what it was. But the story does not end there. The next we hear of Alex Campbell is the report of his sighting in May 1934, which sounds very familiar: “One morning in May I was standing near the mouth of the River Oich when a strange object shot out of the water near the Abbey Boat House. I closed my eyes three times to make sure I was not imagining it.”
He saw the head and the huge humped body of a strange creature about 400 yards away. He thought the creature could hear the engines of the two trawlers making their way out of the canal, as it was twisting its head from side to side frantically. As soon as the first trawler came out of the canal mouth it vanished out of sight. He estimated the body at being about 30ft long and the head and neck 6ft out of the water.
This version of his sighting he told time after time to anyone who would care to listen. In fact it was after listening to Mr. Campbell’s story on 21st of April 1960, that Tim Dinsdale within two hours took the first piece of cine film which turned out to be nothing more then a water pattern.
In an interview with Dom. Cyril Dieckhoff of the Fort Augustus Abbey about his sightings, he explained how easy it was to be deceived by birds and other objects and did not want his name mentioned in connection with the monster. Though he agreed to give evidence to any scientific studies but not the press. This we know did not happen as Mr. Campbell appeared in many newspapers and television programmes like Panorama, Arthur C Clarkes Mysterious World, and Walt Disney’s short film, Man Monsters and Mysteries. Every book written about the monster includes Alex Campbell’s classic sighting.
All in all Mr. Campbell did everything he could to make anyone who thought of the Loch Ness Monster think of Alex Campbell. Even though no one seemed to think it strange that he did not report his own sightings until he reported the sighting of Mr. & Mrs. MacKay of March 1933, even though he was the water bailiff on the loch.
In fact Mr. Campbell’s father before him was the water bailiff and he never reported or spoke of anything strange on the loch. In the 47 years Alex Campbell held the job he boasted of 18 sightings of the monster but nowhere are all these sightings recorded and I can only find five or six in all the literature.
I am not trying to discredit Mr. Campbell but simply working on the information written in the many books about the loch and its monster: I believe there is some kind of strange creature living in the loch and hope that by sifting through the evidence of the so-called ‘classic’ sightings and with my expeditions to the loch, we can all draw that bit closer to solving the mystery.
If you have seen Nessie please let us know, personal details will be omitted if that is your wish. Email