Nessie

["Terry Colvin" <colvint@CC.IMS.DISA.MIL>]

Forwarded from the forteana mailing list after cross-posting. TWC


______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: Nessie
Author:  forteana@primenet.com at smtp
Date:    23/7/1995 9:10 AM


Well Bill, 

I believe that there is definitely something there.  Plesiosaur? NO! 
Dinosaur? NO! NO! NO!

Fish? Seal? Otter? YES!.....perhaps.  I have not seen any evidence to 
suggest that there is an outrageously large animal in the loch.  If 
it were a fish rather than a mammal (or reptile), that would explain 
the lack of sightings.  If it were a land mammal, that too would 
explain the small number of sightings.  I think that the sightings 
that are made are due to a variety of causes.  I don't believe that 
you can pin all of the sightings to one source animal as many appear 
to be doing.  The 'monster' beliefs arise from the attempt to do just 
that.  Trying to imagine what sort of animal could cause all the 
different types of sightings.  I would like to say that I can pass 
all sightings to particular animals or plain hallucination, but I 
can't.  I am not a marine/fresh water zoologist, but I think that I 
can safely stick my head on the block and say that there is no way 
a plesiosaur, or a dinosaur, lives in Loch Ness.  There I've said it, 
and will probably be damned by the Scottish tourist board now.

Neil

Neil,
Some of the various monster sightings in the world have made me 
wonder whether there may be caverns where these creatures live. IOW, 
Nessie doesn't actually spend most of its time in the Loch. It spends 
most of its time elsewhere and from time to time wonders into the 
Loch. 

 Has any R&D been done in this regard?
Another thing which intrigues me is that the geographical location of 
*MANY* strange creatures seems fixed - permanently so - for hundreds 
of years. People continue to have sightings decades apart. Therefore 
the creature seems to live in that area some/all of the time. In 
William Corliss's Science Frontiers I've come across references to 
wind blowing out of wells and blow-holes being made in the snow by 
winds coming from inside the Earth.  This is pretty much the same as 
Lord Lytton's "The Coming Race" (1871) wherein he talks of seeing 
dinosaur type creatures deep in a mine and that he couldn't believe 
it, but the wind blew down there as normally as it did on the 
surface.

So I wonder if perhaps many/most of the strange creatures which keep 
recurring, but which we can't find when we chase after them - whether 
they exist in subteranean caves.  Of course how they exist without 
light is another issue. Though the Soviets did find bacteria up to 12 
miles down at the Kola Peninsula - which is far deeper than anyone ever 
expected. They also found fossils deeper than anyone had ever expected.


Cheers,
       Jan...

* Hell was full so I came back...