Hunting the (other) loch monster in Morar, Scotland

MORAG IS A LOCH MONSTER with a terrible publicist. Although slightly famous in Scotland, tales of Morag have not spilled into coloring books or Hollywood films. A bit of a sensation in the late sixties, the beast’s home of Loch Morar has shied away from publicizing sightings and remains quite disinterested in a tourist trade that involves humped aquatic creatures.

The case for a monster in Morar, though, is compelling and arguably stronger than discussion of what might be living in neighboring Loch Ness. After Loch Ness, Loch Morar is the best known.

For starters, Loch Morar is the deepest body of fresh water in Europe, reaching depths of over 1,000 feet, beating it’s better known rival by 200 feet,  located just seventy miles away. Unlike the peat stained waters of Loch Ness, Morar’s waters are very clear. Morar never freezes and despite being a deep-sided glacial lake it’s waters comparatively productive.

It is largely uninhabited, flanked by a road that only covers one quarter of its perimeter — this allows for hardly any traffic around the lake, which would explain the lack of tourist sightings.

More importantly, it is the setting for sightings as sensational as any that have come out of Nessietown.

Tales of a monster have permeated the Morar area for centuries. Sightings of the creature, dubbed Morag by the locals, go as far back as the mid 1700’s when residents of the region began referring to the undulating humps, which they saw slipping in and out of the water, as funeral boats. Sightings of these humps were considered by those who lived in this pre industrialized environment to be the ominous warning of death.

According to early stories, “Mhorag” was the spirit of the loch, only appearing in the form of a mermaid when a member of the Gilles clan was about to kick. Later, tales spun of a waterhorse (or “kelpie”) that would lure riders onto its back, then drown them and snack on their remains.

If you’re laughing, you probably weren’t born in the 1700s, when it was completely reasonable to treat most of these tales as fact.

The Golden Age

Nearly eighty years after the first reported sighting in Loch Ness, the creature has started to lose its appeal, out-imagined by Pixar and the like. The romance of a loch monster just might be dead and buried, even if the animal is still alive and swimming.

Still, I wanted to find out if what I’d been hearing was true; if another loch was a more likely candidate for some kind of beastie than the infamous one near Inverness. I went straight to Scotland’s loch monster expert, Adrienne Shine, in hopes of learning a bit more before I set off to Morar myself.

Nobody would know better than Shine, who began his own Morar investigation in 1974. He was sparked by the loch’s most famous account, which made papers around the world. Says Shine:

It was the encounter in 1969 that aroused my interest. I thought if Loch Ness wasn’t the only place where there were these traditions, perhaps there’s more chance of it being real.

He hired a rowboat and drifted at night with a powerful light fixed to a camera, in hopes of repeating the encounter. After this turned up nothing but a false sighting in the form of a rock (“It taught me not to believe the evidence of my own eyes.”), Shine decided to head below water. By 1975 he was manning missions into the depths of a loch in a homemade submersible, during what he calls “the underwater phase of my work.”

Shine is difficult to pin when asked the ultimate question about what’s out there, mostly because he has no definitive evidence either way. He says,”I have no one theory because many animals and physical effects have contributed to sightings.” When asked about his favorite explanation, he offers:

I am accused of the Shine Theory. The occasional migration of sturgeon into fresh water might have started the water horses tradition.

While many argue that such a fish couldn’t live in these lochs, it is quite arguable that no fish has ever looked like a horse more than a sturgeon.

Shine is honest about why he first started hunting the now-famous beast, seeing it first as “a soft option for fame and glory.”

Thirty-five years later, it has become much more than this to him. He’s manned countless expeditions in Loch Ness, most famously with 1987’s Operation Deepscan, during which dozens of sonar-armed boats scanned and mapped the whole of Loch Ness. It proved inconclusive.

If a man like Shine couldn’t find a monster, how would I? There was one thing that Shine said that kept me going.

Wherever these traditions seem to come to the surface now, there’s always a perception that they’re copying Loch Ness.

It was his way of saying that Morar had been written off as a copycat. Could Morar just be a place that had been overlooked? Digging a little deeper into the history of the area, it seemed entirely possible.

Morar and the Monster

I’d been reading The Search For Morag, a history of all known accounts of the monster. Hardly a bestseller, I’d had to order this discontinued title from a collector’s shop and paid dearly for it. Written by two members of The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau expedition to Loch Morar in 1972, the hardback documents everything known about Morar, recalling over 100 years of sightings and probing that ultimate question.

The book doesn’t disappoint, recounting sightings that were, in the words of one subject, “beyond explanation or definition”. Reports generally describe a humped, “eel-like or snake-like” creature, with “black and shiny” skin. It is generally seen on sunny and calm days, when the waters are less choppy and Scotland’s rain isn’t pissing down.

The most famous sighting — the one that grabbed Shine’s attention in August 1969 — involved two local men, Duncan McDonell and William Simpson. In the account, they were on their way back from a fishing trip at the north end of the loch. It was just after 9 p.m. The sun had gone down, but there was still plenty of light.  Hearing a splash behind them, McDonell, who was at the wheel, turned to determine its cause. To his astonishment, it turned out to be a creature coming directly toward them, at a speed later estimated to be between 20 and 30 mph. They describe a creature that accidentally ran into their boat while breaching the surface. Their initial fear was that it might capsize the boat. After attempting to fend it off with an oar, Simpson fired his rifle in the animal’s direction. He fired a single shot at the beast; it seemed unaffected by the blast and slowly moved away and submerged out of site. He claims,

“I then watched it slowly sink away and that was the last I’ve seen of it.”

The whole thing would have been easy to write off were there not scores of other sightings before and after.

Morar is exactly the same as Campbell described it in 1972. The town is comprised of a hotel, a train platform and about ten houses.

The Morar Hotel is one of those terrifying old white houses, the kind with squeaky floors, a mysterious staff, and wall-to-wall carpet. I was given an umbrella at check-in and warned that rain came when it pleased, and often.

I made my way down to the water under careful directions from the hotel (“Turn left at the house with the satellite that’s pointed towards God.”) and took a look. It was ominous, moody and unfathomably quiet. The skies had gone dark and threatened to spill buckets. Nothing living moved on or around the lake. The opposing shore was at least a mile away and not one boat could be seen on the water. The loch was desolate.

The water had a wake that day, mostly because of the coming and going weather. I could see quite easily why there were so many false sightings in these parts — every rock or wave looked like something. One of the most common monster mistakes has been the misinterpretation of a boat wake. I could see why — a number of them caught my eye, tricking me too.

Rocks make a deceptive wake.

The rain finally started to fall as I tried my best to walk the path around the loch. It would have been impossible to circle in one day, so my plan was to make it halfway around, about another hour out from where the road ended.

In the course of six hours I saw three people, seven cars, and about ten houses. There just wasn’t much life on the loch, other than the occasional lamb or sheep.

My eyes remained on the water. It wasn’t so much that I was hoping to spot a giant serpent but more that the loch had some kind of draw, a quiet power that demanded attention. There was no doubt in my mind that if there is ever to be something discovered, it could be found here, rather than in a populated place like Loch Ness.

Half a day later, I was back at the hotel, sans monster story and waterlogged.

But Is There Something?

Nobody would talk to me.

I’d been warned about this from a few people but it was surprisingly true — the town has zero interest in kicking up a story and attracting tourists. It would seem that the fame of the 1969 sighting was enough of a taste for everyone.

I did speak with one woman who wished to remain anonymous. She said that the area was largely run by one of the older families and that they wanted nothing more than for the world to leave them (and their sheep) alone.

The mandate was that if you spoke, there’d be hell to pay. She herself has seen something in the water but brushed it off as quick as it was out of her mouth. “It was probably nothing.”

The sightings in The Search For Morag are all that really remains of the hunt in this loch and may serve as the end of any formal investigation. But they’re still compelling to this day.

There is the story of John MacVarish, barman at the Morar Hotel, had a sighting on August 27 1968:

“I saw this thing coming. I thought it was a man standing in a boat but as it got nearer I saw it was something coming out of the water. I tried to get up close to it with the outboard out of the water and what I saw was a long neck five or six feet out of the water with a small head on it, dark in colour, coming quite slowly down the loch. When I got to about 300 yards of it, it turned off into the deep and just settled down slowly into the loch out of sight. The neck was about one and a half feet in diameter and tapered up to between ten inches and a foot. I never saw any features, no eyes or anything like that. It was a snake like head, very small compared to the size of the neck-flattish, a flat type of head. It seemed to have very smooth skin but at 300 yards it’s difficult to tell. It was very dark, nearly black. It was 10am, dead calm, no wind, brilliant sunshine. I saw it for about ten minuets travling very slowly: it didn’t alter its angle to the water. It looked as if it was paddling itself along. There was very little movement from the water, just a small streak from the neck. I couldn’t really see what was propelling it but I think it was something at the sides rather than behind it.”

And Charles Fishburne:

“It passed within thirty-fifty yards to port…three large, black hump-shaped objects moving quickly through the water.”

Or Kate MacKinnon:

“It was rather like a huge eel…the neck was about one foot in diameter and was black in color.”

What is Morag , the Lake Morar creature?

While there is no doubt that Loch Morar possesses an adequate food supply to support a population of large animals, it is unclear exactly what the creature might be. The majority of sightings describe a creature bearing an undeniable resemblance to the long extinct plesiosaur, but if such animals where to have survived they would have had to adapt to far colder water temperatures than their ancestors are thought to have been able to handle. Biologist Roy P. Mackal has suggested that Morag, the Loch Ness Monster and the other so called monster sighted around Scotland are zeuglodons, a primitive snake like whale believed to have gone extinct over 20 million years ago. Other theories which have been put forth to explain Morag sightings include sharks, seals, eels and even mats of vegetation.

Morar lies in a glacially deepened valley on Inverness-shire’s west coast. Twelve thousand year ago, as the ice retreated, sea water is believed to have invaded the lake, bringing with it an abundance of marine life. Even after the sea water retreated, for a few thousand years the sea animals now in the loch may have had fairly ready access to their oceanic home, because the loch level and the low-tide level were only one-third then what they are today. The sea level at high tide would have been within a few feet of the loch level.

A member of the Centre for Fortean Zoology that participated in the 2005 Loch Morar Expedition has put forth his suspicion that it is a giant sterile eel. The theory is that the common eels swims out to the Sargasso Sea to breed then die. The baby eels follow scent trails back to their ancestral fresh waters homes and the cycle begins again. Sometimes, however a mutation occurs and the eel is sterile. These stay in fresh water and keep on growing. Known as eunuch eels no one knows how old they get or how big. In February 2004 two Canadian tourists came upon a 25-foot eel floating in the shallows of Loch Ness. At first they thought it was dead but when it began to move they beat a hasty retreat. In the 1980s a 20-foot eel was reported in the Birmingham Ship Canal. Another 20 foot eel was supposedly caught in the cooling system in some aluminum works in Dores in the 1990s.

One theory suggests that these rare, naturally occurring, mutations may now be on the increase due to pollution. PCBs and Beta Blocker chemicals have long been implicated in causing sterility in fish. Could they be causing more eunuch eels in the deep lakes of Scotland?

Regaurdless if Morag is a eunuch eel, a prehistoric relic or an evolved new species yet to be officially categorised, Loch Morar does have an adequate food supply to support a population of large animals.

Even if somehow some animal escaped extinction and made its home in this huge lake, with its huge size and deep water, it may take a long time to be able to find any substantial proof of the existence of the Morag.

All of the credible tales have to make you wonder if there is something out there and, if so, what it might be. There’s plenty of exploring left to be done in these waters and plenty of stories to be fished out.

If you’re interested in trying your hand then you couldn’t find a better place than Loch Morar. Just turn left at the satellite aimed towards God and keep walking.

Sources: matadornetwork.com/trips/hunting-the-other-loch-monster-in-morar-scotland, unknownexplorers.com/morag.php, cfz.org.uk/expeditions/morag/morag.htm

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Zimbabwe Mermaids Problem for Water Minister

IOL News has reported that a government minister in Zimbabwe claims that work has stopped on new reservoirs because the employees have been scared off by mermaids.

Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the Minister of Water Resources, reportedly told a parliamentary committee that terrified workers were refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare due to an infestation of dangerous (and evidently thirsty) half-human, half-fish aquatic engimas.

Nkomo claimed the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out rites to appease the spirits, nevertheless the senior politician conceded that even with this frothy gift his emissaries were too frightened to return to the reservoirs. Zimbabwe’s state-approved Herald newspaper quoted Nkomo as stating:

“All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back there.”

The building of the reservoirs is considered essential if Zimbabwe is to provide adequate water for its population and boost agricultural production.

This may prove to be a problem as these vicious mermaids were also said to be present in other reservoirs around the country where many people combine a Christian faith with traditional beliefs.

In Zimbabwe, the confidence level of the population at the Mermaid myth is varied. Some are skeptical of the existence of the Mermaid and other mythological creatures, but some believe Mermaids really exist in Zimbabwe, although not seen.

Is this folklore running out of control or will a military expedition finally reveal photographic proof or even, perhaps, a curious carcass confirming the existence of these enigmatic creatures that have been a part of human legend since virtually the dawn of time… only time will tell.

Source voanews.com/zimbabwe/news/Zimbabwe-Mermaids-Problem-for-Water-Minister-138664059.html

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Is this the Loch Ness Monster? Sonar picture shows ‘serpent-like creature’ at bottom of mysterious loch

• New sonar image described by monster hunters as totally unexplained
• Experts have ruled out the ‘sighting’ being any other fish, seal or debris

Stories, pictures and rumors about a monster living below the surface of Scotland’s deepest loch go back for decades.

But it is now hoped this grainy image of a long ‘serpent-like creature’ may finally unlock the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.

The sonar picture, that shows a large unidentified living object deep underwater, was recorded by Loch Ness boat skipper Marcus Atkinson.

The mysterious being was recorded at a depth of 75ft in the murky water and measured nearly 5ft wide.

MrAtkinson’s sonar fish-finder device records the width of objects in the depths directly below his tourist boat every quarter of a second.

Image produced when his vessel was in the Loch’s Urquhart Bay showed a long moving object that had followed the boat for more than two minutes.

The consistent marks onMrAtkinson’ssonar create a horizontal mass, which is not an indicator of length.

But excited Loch Ness monster experts have ruled out the ‘sighting’ being any other fish, seal or wood debris and believe it is proof of an unknown creature in the Loch.

The picture taken onMrAtkinson’smobile phone of his sonar screen, has won him first prize in the Best Nessie Sighting of The Year Award run by bookmakers William Hill.

MrAtkinson, 43, from Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands, said: ‘I was dropping customers at Urquhart Castle and then got my boat out of the way of the other tour companies.

‘I moved out into the water and looked at the sonar and saw this image had appeared.

‘The device takes a reading of the depth and what is below the boat every quarter of a second and gradually builds up a picture, so it covered a time of about five minutes.

‘The object got bigger and bigger and I thought “bloody hell” and took a picture with my mobile phone.

‘There is nothing that big in the Loch. I was in shock as it looked like a big serpent, it’s amazing. You can’t fake a sonar image. I have never seen anything returned like this on the fish finder.

‘It is a bizarre shape to me. I have shown it to other experienced skippers and none of us know what it was.

‘I have seen a lot of pictures in 21 years of being here but this is the most clearest image yet. Undoubtedly, there is something in the loch.’

Steve Feltham, 49, a full-time Loch Ness monster hunter said: ‘There are no animals in the loch as big as the image here, the biggest thing we see are seals which are nothing compared to this.

‘It’s also totally unexplained and can’t possibly be fish because in water 75ft down you just wouldn’t find them.

‘It’s very exciting and the best evidence we have had in donkey’s years. There is usually a mundane explanation yet no one has come up with one for this.

‘It’s images like this that will keep me going with my hunt for the next 20 years.’

But other marine experts claim the mystery object may well have been algae in the water.

Dr Simon Boxall, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said: ‘The picture is built up slowly as the boat moves.

‘So it’s not a snap shot and thus the image is not an image of a single object unless it is very still.

‘The image shows a bloom of algae and zooplankton that would exist on what would be a thermocline.

‘Zooplankton live off this algae and reflect sound signals from echo sounders and fish finders very well.

‘They will appear as a linear “blob” on the screen, just like this.

‘This is a monster made of millions of tiny animals and plants and represents the bulk of life in the Loch.’

Story Credit to Lawrence Conway for the dailymail.co.uk 20 April 2012

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The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence

‘Mermaids and Mermen’ article by Edward Vizetelly, that appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine No. 209, February 1901.

CC Readers, please enjoy these article scans of fascinating 20th century accounts of mermaid sightings!


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‘Ningen’ humanoid sea creatures of the Antarctic

Over the past few years, rumors have circulated in Japan about the existence of gigantic humanoid life-forms inhabiting the icy waters of the Antarctic.

The ocean’s vast, mysterious depths are full of enigmatic oddities that have never seen the light of day, but while there are few who would deny that the seas are teeming with as yet undiscovered life-forms, most would be reticent to admit that there are any truly gargantuan species waiting to be found in the fathomless deep… Nevertheless, it would seem that the inscrutable Ningen is just such a creature.

The “Ningen” — which translates as “human” in Japanese — was so dubbed by the Pacific fishermen who claimed to have seen the colossal creature in the 1990s. These professional anglers were astounded by the size of this monster and even more shocked by this ostensibly albino beast’s distinctly humanoid form.

These so-called “Ningen” are said to be completely white in color with an estimated length of 20 to 30 meters (between 60 and 90-feet). Eyewitnesses describe them as having a human-like shape (vaguely resembles the head, torso and appendages of a human being), often with legs, arms, and even five-fingered hands and has been described as being a humongous, “blubbery, whale-like creature,” whose smooth, pale form sometimes having fins or a large mermaid-like tail instead of legs. The only visible facial features are the eyes and mouth.





These beasts have supposedly been seen in the Pacific, Antarctic and Atlantic Oceans, and are always described as being extraordinarily large with a whitish complexion. Many observers have also reported that these animals have no distinct facial features save for two, huge eyes and a mouth-like slit. According to most accounts, these creatures are primarily nocturnal and tend to thrive in frigid, arctic waters.

Initial reports of these marine animals were said to have emanated from the tail end of the 20^th Century, which is strange considering how many centuries mariners have been traversing the world’s seas with nary a mention of these bizarre and purportedly gigantic beasts, but before we try and figure out what these things actually are, let’s take a look at what little history we have regarding these captivating creatures.

A LEGEND IS BORN:

While the first known reports of theses mammoth monstrosities are apparently untraceable; it is accepted that the Ningen did not gain any real notoriety until a description of these creatures appeared online in a popular Japanese forum known as 2channel. The individual posting claimed to have been working on a “government whale research vessel,” when one of these creatures rose up from the depths.

According to the account, the anonymous crew member — along with fellow researchers — scrambled up onto the deck to catch a glimpse of what they initially thought was a “foreign submarine” floating on the horizon. However, as the research vessel approached the object it became evident that they were not dealing with a machine-tooled structure, but a living, breathing, behemoth. The crew stared in awe at this biological anomaly until it submerged moments later.

There are persistent rumors that suggest that members of this research team managed to snap a series of extraordinary photos of the “thing” during their brief encounter, but these images were allegedly suppressed in order to spare the government funded research team the shame — and financial ruin — of being associated with this unusual event.

It goes without saying that as soon as this account was published online word of this enigma spread across the globe and a genuine pop culture phenomenon was born. In November of 2007, the buzz surrounding these mystery monsters, and the accompanying photographs, was so intense that the editors of Japan’s “Mu” magazine decided to publish an article regarding this perplexing puzzle.

Mu, much like “Fate Magazine,” is a periodical that is dedicated to the dissemination of information regarding all manner of paranormal phenomena and their article about the Ningen proved to be a huge hit. The author of the piece speculated that these as yet unidentified creatures were likely indigenous to the icy waters of the southern oceans. Mu even displayed a Google Maps image of what was evidently a Ningen swimming in the South Atlantic off the coast of Namibia (second image).

Soon after the article was published a mini-deluge of accounts, photos and grainy video footage flooded the web, but most agree that these unverified reports and images constitute little in the way of real evidence. None of this, however, has dissuaded those who believe that Ningen are corporeal life-forms from speculating that the Japanese government is actually taking these sightings very seriously and amassing a huge body of evidence regarding their existence.

WHAT COULD THEY BE?

One of the more popular theories regarding the identity of these varmints is that they might be an unclassified species of ray.

Skates and rays, for instance, have nostrils and mouths that look like a face. In fact, they look so “human” that they are often mistaken or sold as devils or extraterrestrials — and Japanese fishers know that for centuries.

Could the Ningen be an unknown species of giant, albino ray?

I suppose that it is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility to surmise that an odd species of huge, ray-like fish might be naturally camouflaged to blend in with the floating icebergs and other frozen debris that infest its frigid home.

Some scientists have speculated that human beings have managed to chronicle a mere 20% of all the species living in the world’s oceans. Considering this fact, the chances that large, unknown marine creatures could escape detection — especially if they primarily exist below the ice — improves dramatically.

CONCLUSION:

I’ll be the first to admit that tales of the Ningen have all the vaguely untraceable earmarks of a seafarer’s “fishing tale” combined with the urban myth making abilities of internet pranksters. Add to this mixture a few clever Photoshop artisans and we have the makings of a grand ol’ oceanic legend in the vein of the Flying Dutchman or the carnivorous kraken.

It bears mentioning, however, that — after generations of folklore regarding creatures such as the kraken were vociferously maligned by the academics of the day — modern scientists were finally able to confirm the existence of colossal, whale battling squid in the briny deep. So while most, if not all, of the purported photos of the Ningen are probably fakes and the stories backing them up are just as likely fables, this does not completely rule out the possibility that the genesis of this legend might be a genuine biological entity.

Be they real or prank, Ningen continue to be an intriguing enigma, and until a carcass washes ashore on some isolated beach or is found frozen in an arctic glacier, that’s likely how they will likely remain.

Sources: mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/08/the-ningen-myth-monster-or-make-believe/ pinktentacle.com/2010/01/ningen-humanoid-sea-creatures-of-the-antarctic/ forgetomori.com/2007/criptozoology/ningen-a-bizarre-japanese-cryptid/

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TULLIMONSTRUM, THE TULLY MONSTER

Pioneering Nessie investigator and old school monster-hunter, F.W. “Ted” Holiday, wrote a book in 1968 entitled: “The Great Orm of Loch Ness.”

At the conclusion of his tome, Holiday surmised that the monster in Loch Ness was not the only example of a relic Tullimonstrum skulking around Europe, but that the legends of huge dragons and other bizarre aquatic mysteries, which had plagued the continent for centuries, were most like due to encounters with this spineless beast.

In his book Holiday reports:

“During April 1965 there was a period of heavy rain lasting several days. The loch rose and the River Ness was in spate. A salesman, Mr. George McGill, had business in the YMCA building on Bank St. in Inverness. At 11:45 a.m. the rain was so heavy that Mr. McGill stood in the doorway with a friend watching it. Mr. McGill wrote to me [Holiday]: “Just as we got to the door I looked across the River Ness. What I saw was a large, thick, ridged neck looping out of the water. The height of the neck above the water would be about four feet six inches and it was about eight inches in diameter. There was a disturbance where the neck re-entered the water and another disturbance some distance to the rear. What it was I cannot say, but it was not a fish. It was very unusual and I have never seen anything like it before. I shall try to draw what I saw.”

Holiday does not reproduce Mr. McGill’s drawing in the book, but he reports that it shows, “What appears to be the neck of a smallish Orm which seems to be going down-river on the flood water.”

Finally, an incident that may support the possibility of an animal trying to pass through the canal locks. In 1900 (the exact date is uncertain) an odd animal was reportedly found at the bottom of Corpach Lock on the Caledonian Canal. It was assumed to have come from the loch, although it could just as easily have been trying to get into the loch. To my knowledge, this incident was first reported in print by F.W. Holiday in The Great Orm of Loch Ness . It is also mentioned by Peter Costello in In Search of Lake Monsters. The two versions of the incident differ in that Holiday states that the animal was killed by the workmen who found it, while Costello contends that it was discovered dead by workmen who were engaged in clearing out the lock. Both reports state that the animal resembled a large eel and both describe it as having a “mane.” This incident is not mentioned in Ulrich Magin’s comprehensive listing of recorded sightings, which means that it was not picked-up by the contemporary local papers. According to Fortean Times publisher Mike Dash, the story my have been originally reported to Dom Cyril Dieckhoff, a highland Catholic priest in the 1930s who had a great interest in lake monsters, by one of his correspondents.

When these reports are considered in relation to the veritable wealth of recorded long-neck sightings in the coastal waters of the British Isles it seems reasonable to suggest that the animals in question are capable, under the proper circumstances and at an early stage of development, of making their way into Loch Ness from the open ocean. It would be logical to assume that they would be capable of entering other lochs as well where a navigable link to the sea exists.

Throughout the sliver in the geological record, known as the Pennsylvanian period, which began approximately 320 million years ago and ended approximately 34 million years later, vast low-lying coastal swamps and deltas covered much of West Virginia and the eastern and Midwestern United States, as well as large portions Europe.

During this era there existed a unique carnivorous invertebrate known as Tullimonstrum gregarium, which is speculated to be a distant relative of both the octopus and the common garden slug.
 
This soft bodied creature, of unknown taxonomic standing, is a major candidate for many lake monsters. Everything from Nessie to ogopogo has been explained with the tulimonstrum theory.



Described as having two, huge eyes - attached to stalks - protruding from either side of its body (mistaken for flippers?), a long proboscis with a mouth on the end  (looks sort like a head and neck…), two large prodigious posterior fins and a third broad tail fin, it is no wonder that this fossilized relic has been associated with the legends of so many lake cryptids, from Loch Ness Monster to Mussie to El Cuero.

At the end of its proboscis mouth was a “jaw” that contained eight small, sharp teeth. There is no evidence that the throat went down the proboscis. It seems more likely that the proboscis was a muscular organ used to pass food to the mouth. Near the middle of the body was a transverse bar that passed through the body. The bar had swellings on the end. These may have been the animal’s sensory organs.

Overall, if it were to attain an emmense size it would be the perfect lake monster. Who’s to say a modern descendent of Tullimonstrum isn’t responsible for such lake monsters?

One theory, which has been proposed more than a few fortean researchers, is that this animal may have survived into the 21st century, living in lakes and rivers, and rearing its head every now and again just to give the tourists a good scare.

According to those who support this hypothesis, the Tullimonstrum’s proboscis might be mistaken for the plesiosauride head and neck so often reported by eyewitnesses.

They further claim that the submarine shape of the Tullimonstrum’s body, along with its large flippers, only serve to complete this picture of the prototypical Lake-Monster.

While some scientists have speculated that it is related to snails and other molluscs, it is not really known to what other animals the Tully Monster is truly related.



However, to say that paleontologists can’t make heads or tails of the Tully Monster would be untrue. The claw-tipped proboscis on the front end and the arrow-shaped rear fins at the posterior end can be easily identified in complete specimens. Beyond that, though, this 300 million year old invertebrate remains one of the most vexing fossil species ever found.

Tully Monsters first came to the attention of paleontologists in 1958. While looking for fossils among the mining pits of northeastern Illinois, collector Francis Tully stumbled across an assemblage of marine organisms unlike any found elsewhere in the area. Especially perplexing were six-inch, worm-like impressions found inside the numerous concretions that littered the pits. Soon other amateur fossil hunters began finding them, too, and these strange creatures got their popular name in honor of their discoverer.

When presented with some of these specimens by Tully, the professional paleontologists at Chicago’s Field Museum were puzzled. The Tully Monsters did not correspond to any other known animal. In his 1966 description of these fossils, Field Museum scientist Eugene Richardson gave the animal a proper scientific title – Tullimonstrum gregarium, honoring its discoverer, enigmatic nature, and the sheer number of individuals that had been discovered – but he refrained from giving it a precise place in the tree of life. “While this obscure but plentiful animal is being studied,” Richardson wrote, “I prefer not to assign it to a phylum.”

Richardson published a more complete description of the beasts three years later with colleague Ralph Gordon Johnson. They still were not certain what it was. “There is no compelling reason to assign Tullimonstrum to any of the known phyla,” they wrote, concluding that “It could be imagined as an aberrant member of one of several phyla but the critical evidence is not available.” Nevertheless, examination of scores of specimens allowed the paleontologists to flesh out the anatomy of the monster.

The chief difficulty with studying the Tully Monsters was the fact that all the specimens were only impressions of the soft-bodied animals. No exoskeletons, no chitin plates, and no hard parts were left behind. A few specimens that had begun to decay before they were buried allowed a blurry look at the organs of the Tully Monsters, but Johnson and Richardson were mostly restricted to studying the external anatomy.

As reconstructed by Richardson and Johnson, the Tully Monsters had segmented, semi-cylindrical bodies marked by three remarkable external traits. At the posterior end of the animal were two triangular tail fins arranged like the undulating side fins of squid. On the opposite end, however, Tully Monsters had two peculiar sensory organs. Sticking out of the animal’s head was a flexible schnozzle tipped in a minutely-spiked grasping claw, and further back on the head were two stalks with cup-like depressions. An exquisite specimen in which the mineral pyrite preserved the form of these organs showed that these flexible stalks probably supported the eyes. Slight variations seen among various specimens suggested that eye stalks could be angled forward or backward for different views.

Richardson and Johnson were also able to say a little about the prehistoric habitat of the Tully Monsters. The marine invertebrates lived in the warm coastal waters of a 300 million year old ocean. Fossils of jellyfish, annelid worms, and sea cucumbers were found in the same deposits, but larger creatures swam there, too. “A few [Tully monster specimens] terminate abruptly,” the scientists wrote, “a portion of the trunk having been torn away.” Ancient sharks seemed to be the most likely culprits, especially since the fish left behind fossil feces right alongside the invertebrate body fossils.

Over four decades later, we don’t know much more about the Tully Monsters. Merrill Foster, in his 1979 reassessment of the fossils, considered Tully Monsters to be related to the subgroup of molluscs that contains conches, whelks, and limpets. A more recent 2005 paper hinted that the Tully Monsters might instead be related to the Cambrian invertebrate Vetustovermis, itself a problematic fossil of uncertain affinities. As strange as they are though, there is something familiar about the Tully Monsters. Although separated by about 200 million years, the Tully Monsters show a general similarity to the nozzle-faced Cambrian creature Opabinia regalis. Both had stalked eyes, a flexible proboscis tipped with a grasping appendage, and moved by way of flexible fins on the sides of their bodies. (The fact that the proboscis of the Tully Monsters did not have a mouth or throat – and was probably used to move food to the mouth as in Opabinia – is another clue worth considering.) Might the Tully Monsters be some long-lived cousin of Opabinia, suggesting an as-yet-undiscovered trail of trunked invertebrates? Maybe, maybe not. As ever, we need more fossils.

Other investigators have associated this beast with the nefarious Lindworms.
In 1989 Tullimonstrum gregarium was officially designated the State Fossil of Illinois

sources: wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/tullys-mystery-monster/
wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullimonstrum

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BEHOLD, TRUNKO!!

One of the most bizarre cryptids ever reported was the huge white-furred trunked sea monster that was allegedly observed from the shores of Margate, South Africa, by several eyewitnesses one day during the early 1920s (the precise date differs between accounts - see below) as it battled two whales out to sea for several hours before its lifeless 47-ft-long carcase was later washed up onto the beach, where it lay for several days before the sea took it back out, never to be seen again. During those several days, however, not a single scientist bothered to venture forth to examine or even observe this extraordinary creature’s remains. Nor had its remains ever been photographed…or so I had always assumed - until now!


(Bill Asmussen’s depiction of Trunko being mauled by orcas)

Yesterday, German correspondent Markus Hemmler emailed me with some remarkable news. He had discovered a website containing an allegedly genuine photograph of Trunko - a monicker, incidentally, that I had somewhat lightheartedly given to Margate’s mystery sea monster in my book The Unexplained (1996) but which, to my great surprise, has since become its accepted name. Moreover, the photograph had been snapped by none other than Mr A.C. Jones of Johannesburg - the correspondent and photographer for an article on this entity that had been published in the Rand Daily Mail and also in Wide World Magazine way back in July 1925, thus providing a promising air of authenticity to the image.



Consequently, for the very first time in any cryptozoological publication and utilising the Fair Dealing/Fair Use convention, I now have pleasure in presenting in the context of review and on an entirely non-commercial basis a photograph of the tantalising Trunko’s beached remains, snapped by A.C. Jones (the photo’s copyright owner), and currently included by the Margate Business Association’s website in a page devoted to the creature’s history, which can accessed at the following url: The Legend of Trunco

The appearance of Trunko’s remains in this photograph reaffirms my opinion - first presented in my book The appearance of Trunko’s remains in this photograph reaffirms my opinion - first presented in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited, and now reproduced below - that it was a globster, not a bona fide cryptid. Here is what I wrote about Trunko in my above-noted book:

In his mighty tome, In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (1968), veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans defined and delineated the truly protean ‘great sea serpent’ to yield no less than nine morphologically-discrete taxa of sea serpent, which included various currently-unrecognised species of pinniped, cetacean, fish, reptile, and possibly an amphibian. However, at least one marine mystery beast included in his book appeared so bizarre that even Heuvelmans – “the Father of Cryptozoology” - was at a loss as how best to categorise it, and so, after briefly describing it, he simply omitted it entirely from his great scheme of sea serpent classification.

Known officially as the Margate sea serpent or more colloquially, in recognition of one of its most distinctive characteristics, as Trunko, this truly anomalous animal made its debut on the morning of 1 November 1922 [also variously claimed in some sources to be 25 October 1924 or 2 November 1924]. That was when, according to subsequent local newspaper reports, South African farmer Hugh Ballance looked far out to sea from the beach at Margate, Natal, and saw an amazing spectacle. With the aid of glasses, he could perceive what seemed to be two whales fighting with a huge sea monster, resembling a gigantic polar bear on account of the fact that it appeared to sport a dense snow-white pelage. According to Ballance, who was joined by an ever-increasing crowd of observers as the formidable battle continued, the creature reared fully 20 ft out of the water and struck repeatedly at the whales with what Ballance assumed was its tail - but to no effect, because after 3 hours the whales moved away and their furry attacker floated lifelessly at the surface.

Later that evening its dead carcase was found washed ashore, and was seen to be of colossal size, roughly 5 ft high and measuring 47 ft in total length, which included a 10-ft tail at one end (said in some later reports to be lobster-like), and, incongruously, an elephantine trunk at the other – in place of a head! This extraordinary structure was approximately 5 ft long and 14 in across, and its tip resembled the snout of a pig. Even more noticeable, however, was its luxuriant covering of fur or hair, 8 inches long, and, at least in Ballance’s view, exactly like a polar bear’s, yet with no sign of blood anywhere, despite the ferocity of the earlier sea-battle.

Incredibly, however, despite the huge number of onlookers that it attracted (some of whom brought in a team of 32 oxen to move it seaward, which they failed to do on account of its immense weight), and despite the fact that its corpse remained beached for 10 days, becoming ever more odiferous as decomposition set in, no scientist came to observe or to take samples from it for study. On the evening of the tenth day, the tide took it back out to sea, and the chance to investigate one of the most astonishing zoological secrets of the sea was lost forever.

All that we can do today, therefore, is speculate on what Trunko might (or might not) have been (always assuming, of course, that it was not a newspaper hoax). Certainly, based upon its description taken at face value, this supremely strange ‘marine elephant’ does not correspond with any known species of animal alive today or known from fossil remains. But perhaps there is more to its description than initially meets the eye, harbouring cryptic clues that may shed light on this otherwise decidedly shadowy mystery – a mystery, moreover, that is generally passed over or totally ignored even in the majority of cryptozoological publications.

However, one detailed and highly intelligent assessment of Trunko that does exist is by Lance Bradshaw. In his discussion, Lance raises several valid, important points worthy of consideration here. Take, for instance, Trunko’s unique pelage. It has already been noted in this chapter that dead sharks can acquire, via the pseudo-plesiosaur effect, a covering of ‘hair’, which in reality is nothing more than connective tissue fibres that become exposed during decomposition of the carcase. However, if Ballance’s testimony is to be believed, Trunko bore its snowy fur while it was still very much alive, battling the whales. If this is true, then clearly its fur cannot be explained away as exposed connective fibres. Moreover, it also suggests that Trunko was mammalian, albeit wholly unlike any mammal previously recorded by science.

Yet this is not the only mystery associated with its fur. As Lance has pointed out, exclusively marine mammals, such as cetaceans, are not furry, because this would hinder their mobility. Conversely, marine creatures such as pinnipeds and polar bears, which are furry, do not spend their entire lives in the water. Consequently, if Trunko’s fur were a genuine feature of its morphology, this suggests that it must venture ashore sometimes. Yet as it was apparently limbless, but stupendous in size, how could it accomplish such a feat without becoming fatally beached, probably suffocating under its own weight, as beached whales so often do, even species much smaller than Trunko?

Then there is the equally odd matter of its trunk and supposed headlessness? Unless the head were so small that it imperceptibly graded into the trunk, how can Trunko’s acephalous condition be explained? The most reasonable solution is that the trunk was actually a neck, from which the head had become detached following the creature’s death. Yet as with its fur, Trunko was seen to possess a trunk with no head at its distal end while still alive.

Or was it? Trunko’s anomalous features are anomalous primarily because they were exhibited by Trunko while still alive, not just when it was dead. But was Trunko ever truly seen alive? The great battle with the whales took place some distance out to sea, not at the shore. Could it be, therefore, as postulated by Lance, that Trunko was not alive at all – that what was actually being seen by Ballance and the other observers on the beach was two whales tossing an already-dead carcase back and forth, playing with it just like killer whales, for instance, which are known for frolicking boisterously with their food, often throwing seal victims up and out of the water? During such exuberant activity, Trunko’s head may have been ripped off and eaten or lost, and possibly some heavy chafing of its skin might conceivably have yielded a shredded surface of exposed connective tissue fibres.

Perhaps the carcase was that of a decomposed shark, with the pseudo-plesiosaur effect creating its neck-like trunk and fur. Alternatively, it may even have been a globster - a quasi-octopus complete with hairy surface and a false tentacle resembling a trunk, engendered from the remains of some long-dead ‘globsterised’ whale. This, incidentally, as Lance has noted, would also explain the otherwise-anomalous lack of blood present when the carcase was washed up. A recently-dead mammal that had battled two whales, in contrast, would have been covered in wounds pouring with blood, or at least stained with it. Instead, Trunko’s snowy pelage was apparently immaculate, with (to quote Mack the Knife!) never a trace of red.

Having said that, I am not wholly convinced that even the above-described activity could yield the exceptionally distinctive snow-white pelage described for Trunko both while at sea and while beached, but at least the enigma of this creature’s hitherto unclassifiable morphology is now beginning to look a little less impossible than before. Nevertheless, with no physical remains to examine, the only hope of ever resolving this longstanding cryptozoological case satisfactorily is for another Trunko specimen to turn up one day, and for it this time to be treated with the scientific interest and rigour that it deserves. Interestingly, the prospect of a second Trunko appearing may not be as remote as it may seem. In fact, it may already have happened.

As I noted in my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997), which also contains coverage of Trunko, in November 1936 the carcase of an elephant-headed, white-furred, long-tailed sea serpent measuring 24 ft in total length was discovered on Alaska’s desolate Glacier Island. This time, moreover, its remains were examined, by a team led by Chugach National Forest supervisor W.J. McDonald, but no news of their findings has ever been released, and, as with Trunko, the Glacier Island sea serpent’s remains were not retained.

How extraordinary if, just like the globsters have now been shown to be, an entity as outwardly astonishing as Trunko ultimately proved to be nothing more than the decomposition-distorted remains of a long-deceased whale. Yet until physical evidence can be procured, it is destined to remain just as controversial as they too once were. [Although this is still true, A.C. Jones’s newly-revealed photo strongly suggests that Trunko was indeed a globster.]

As for the occurrence and identity of globsters: in recent times and for the vast majority of cases, the following explanation has been confirmed to be the correct one, and which in my Extraordinary Animals Revisited book I formally dubbed ‘the quasi-octopus effect’ (mindful of ‘the pseudo-plesiosaur effect’ responsible for converting decomposing shark carcases into deceptively plesiosaurian ones):

After a whale dies, its body can float for months, decomposing, until eventually its heavy backbone and skull dissociate from their encompassing skin-sac of rotting blubber, and sink to the sea bottom, leaving behind a thick gelatinous matrix of collagen - the tough protein found in skin and connective tissue. It is this mass of collagen, still encased in its skin-sac, that washes ashore, as a globster. Furthermore, if a few of the whale’s ribs remain within the collagen matrix, and any ‘fingers’ of fibrous flesh are attached to them, these resemble tentacles. And if the whale is a sperm whale, the spermaceti organ gives the resulting globster a bulky shape reminiscent of an octopus. DNA tests that were performed on samples of the tissue from the huge Chilean globster washed ashore in June 2003 independently confirmed its sperm whale identity.

All of which explains how a rotting whale can metamorphose with ease into a giant octopus - and also, it would now seem, into a surreal South African sea monster that had hitherto baffled the cryptozoological world for generations.

Posted by Dr Karl Shuker September 2010, Source: ShukerNature

Top Credit: Penny Miller’ sketch, from Myths and Legends of South Africa (1979)
Second Photo Credit: Photograph of Trunko’s beached remains (copyright A.C. Jones)

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