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From: sacks@classroom.ci.com (Marc Sacks)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc,sci.research
Subject: Re: The Loch Ness Monster
Keywords: Nessie Loch Ness Hallucinations Elasmosaur
Message-ID: <4408@dandelion.CI.COM>
Date: 28 Jul 88 19:58:15 GMT
References: <861@altger.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@dandelion.CI.COM
Reply-To: sacks@classroom.UUCP (Marc Sacks)
Organization: Cognition, Inc., Billerica, MA
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From Robert Sheaffer's "Psychic Vibrations" column in the Spring 1988
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (reprinted without permission):

"Speaking of Loch Ness, it seems that Nessie has been surfacing once again,
although being careful, as always, to choose a place or time so as not to leave
behind any evidence that is too convincing.  This past July the veteran Amer-
ican monster-chaser Jon Erik Beckjord was in Edinburgh to show his Nessie films
taken four years earlier to a meeting of scientists.  While there, he met Alexander

Crosbie, a retired window cleaner from Inverness, who claims to have had Nessie
sightings going all the way back to the 1940s.  Crosbie persuaded Beckjord to
accompany him back to the Loch for another look, citing his own success at
knowing when and where to see Nessie.  On the afternoon they arrived, Beckjord
left Crosbie with his photographic equipment and went off to rent a car.  You
can imagine Beckjord's surprise, not to mention personal disappointment, when
upon his return Crosbie claimed to have filmed an outstandingly find apparition
of Nessie!  'He seems to have a talent for finding the monster,' Beckjord
remarked enviously.  A greatly enlarged print of the monster's head was
published in James Moseley's SAUCER SMEAR, in which Beckjord claims to see not
only the creature's skull-like head, but the faces of several other materialized
entities.  (We recall that, according to Beckjord, crypto-creatures are
actually paranormal manifestations.)  However, neither Moseley nor I, nor
apparently anyone else, could discern any pattern or images whatsoever lurking
in the highly magnified grains of the photographic emulsion.  For the following
issue of SAUCER SMEAR, Beckjord helpfully supplied a copy of the same
print, with the alleged skull-like face sketched in between the grains.  However,
it still failed to impress anyone.  Shifting gears somewhat, Beckjord told the
Associated Press that the creature has a catlike face and a body that 'looks
like a cross between Halley's Comet and the Concorde jet.'  If you are 
confused as to whether the face of NESSITERAS RHOMBOPTERYX resembles a skull
or a cat, remember that paranormal entities can materialize or dematerialize
at will; hence there is no reason to expect them to have the same appearance
during each manifestation.

"In October, 'Operation Deepscan,' a small fleet of sonar-equipped boats,
probed the depths of the Loch.  The expedition, organized by Adrian Shine, a
salesman from London, was not sololy interested in Nessie, but was also
studying the Loch's fish species and underwater currents.  They systematically
covered the entire Loch with sonar capable of resolving objects as small as 
four inches.  While some underwater objects were detected, which were believed
to be floating debris, no monster was found.  However, a film was obtained
of a rotting tree stump under 22 feet of water.  Its shape was virtually
identical to the figure in a photo taken in 1975 by the Academy of Applied
Sciences, purported to be the gorgoyle [sic] -shaped head of the mythical
creature."

An earlier SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (Winter 1984-85) contains an article entitled,
"Searches for the Loch Ness Monster," by Rikki Razdan and Alan Kielar.  
Happy reading.

				--Marc Sacks