by Dom Joly
‘You var Dum?’
I nodded to indicate that I was indeed ‘Dum’.
‘Vollow uss please.’ The window closed and the blue car slid out of the car park and turned right. I followed and we left the village and then turned right again on to a tiny track that wound its way up the hill that rose above Urquhart Castle. After five minutes or so we came to a stop beside a little white cottage with a fabulous view over the castle and the loch. Miko jumped out of the car and introduced himself. He was Finnish and Arnie’s granny was, in fact, his mother. They were both extreme Nessie enthusiasts and happy to talk about anything. A woman called Terry, who was originally from South Carolina, owned the cottage that we were outside. Miko used her place as a location for a couple of webcams that some company in America had provided him with.
The idea was that anyone in the world could control the cameras and scan the loch at any time, creating a non-stop, international team of monster watchers. Unfortunately, despite the webcams having been blessed by a pair of white witches, it seemed that not everybody was as diligent as they should be. Terry had two rather fine-looking sheep that grazed in the field in front of her cottage. These sheep had become something of an online hit with hundreds of people going on the website to watch them do very little. Some people emailed to ask questions about the sheep, while one couple had come all the way over from Germany to meet them.
Miko told me that there was intense rivalry between the different groups of monster-hunters around the loch. Adrian Shriner, the mad professor I’d met earlier, was considered to be the don of the Loch Ness mafia. Shriner’s first exhibition was originally called the ‘Official Exhibition’ and then became ‘Loch Ness 2000’ before becoming the current ‘Loch Ness Experience’. Meanwhile a guy called Donald Skinner opened up another attraction just next door, called the ‘Original Monster Exhibition’. This was now called ‘Nessieland’ after legal threats had been issued for ‘passing himself off’.
A monster-hunter who lived on the other side of the Loch had rowed over and daubed ‘Shriner is a madman’ in orange paint on Urquhart Castle. There had also been incidents of padlocks being put on people’s gates and boats being burnt.
‘It was a bit of a closed shop when I first got here,’ said Miko, looking down dolefully towards Drumnadrochit. He’d actually worked at Shriner’s place for a while before breaking off to go solo. I asked him whether they’d ever got any famous Loch Ness enthusiasts while he worked at the exhibition.
‘We had Kylie Minogue . . . And the President of Botswana.’ Sadly these visits weren’t at the same time and history did not record Kylie’s views on the monster story.
I drove away from the cottage, having made loose plans to organize some sort of boat hunt during the following couple of days. There was talk of sonar equipment and it all sounded rather exciting. Sadly, when I returned to the hotel it was to find my whole family in full mutiny. They had had their fill of Inverness and wanted to head back south and go home. This put a serious dent in the time I’d wanted to spend around the loch. It was a valuable lesson. Monster-hunting is a lonely business and not the sort of thing you do with a young family. I told them that I would think about their request while I had a relaxing soak in the hot tub.
I had it to myself for about five minutes and was just starting to enjoy it when a young guy and his very fat girlfriend got in. They must have been about seventeen and they totally ignored me; they had eyes only for each other. They sat close together with expressionless faces and it was only after two minutes or so that I noticed that she appeared to be giving him a hand job under the bubbles. That was it. Enough was enough. Nessie would have to wait for another day. It was time to hang up my monster-hunting boots for a while.
Epilogue
The one thing everyone asks me on hearing about my monster-hunting activities is: ‘So, do they exist?’ The answer, I’m afraid, is still a rather disappointing ‘I don’t know’. I suppose that this is better than definite proof that they don’t?
I think that there is definitely something of quite some size in Lake Okanagan. I know this because I think I saw it with my own eyes. Whether it is Ogopogo or some sort of sturgeon, I know not. The fact that the sightings there go back so far and have been recorded by so many people makes me feel that there must be something ‘unknown’ in the murky depths. My only hope is that someone will get a photo or some footage while using a decent camera and not suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Just thinking about the amount of shaky footage I have viewed online in the last year makes me rather sick.
The Hibagon was always going to be the most ‘dodgy’ of my hunts and I rather think that this was probably some escaped monkey who happened to be seen at a time coinciding with sightings of creatures like the Yeti and Bigfoot around the world. For some reason 1965-1975 seems to have been an extraordinarily productive time for monster sightings. Maybe it was fashionable? Maybe people had Super 8 cameras for the first time? Who knows? But I am not that convinced about the Hibagon. I was so thrilled, however, to be able to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before I went to Japan, whenever I thought about these places I pictured scenes of massive destruction and horror. Now I think of them as bustling cities full of life and friendliness, a true testament to the human spirit of survival.
The Congo was the most difficult place that I have ever travelled in, and there is certainly no question that if the Mokèlé-mbèmbé exists then it has chosen one of the most remote and unvisited areas of the world to do it in. The real problem in Africa is to distinguish between reality and mysticism. Tribes talk about things in the spiritual world in exactly the same way as they would something real and earthbound. I think it is likely that something unknown to science exists in these vast wetlands but think it highly unlikely that it is a dinosaur. It seems to me that the creature might be more like a manatee, a sort of hybrid hippo/rhino thing. Who knows what lies in Lake Tele and the surrounding wetlands? Certainly not me after my disastrous trip there. But I hope that someone else makes the trip and can tell me more about it. One piece of advice: don’t make a schedule; just go with the flow . . .
I also believe that there is some sort of creature roaming the thick woods of Pacific Coast America. There have been sightings from way back, but what really convinced me was the fact that so many of the people who have seen things are not keen to talk to anyone about them. I’m still not sure about the Patterson/Gimlin film. If it’s authentic, then it’s the most convincing and astounding piece of footage in cryptozoology There’s something fishy about it, however. Before my trip I hadn’t realized that Patterson was an avid Bigfoot hunter. I just thought he was someone who’d stumbled on the creature and happened to have a camera. It just seems too lucky. On the other hand, the location was very remote and you wouldn’t have needed to go that far to fake some footage. Sometimes I look at the film and spot a zip down the back. Other times I’m convinced. You’ll have to decide for yourselves. I still think about those footprints Richard and I saw, though . . . What made them?
I think the Yeti is possibly the most believable of all the ‘monsters’ I looked into. The type of people who have reported sightings of footprints or the actual creature tend to be credible, serious types – adventurers and climbers who have no real gain in allowing people to think that they are crazy. I met so many Sherpas who all had the same belief in this creature and expressed zero surprise in regularly hearing the cries or having yaks killed by one. The mundane way in which Mingmar’s brother showed me the photos he’d recently taken of footprints was compelling in itself. There’s also the sheer inaccessibility of parts of the Himalayas, which makes it very possible, in my view, that something unknown lives there. The skull at the monastery in Khumjung is a puzzle. I have no way of ascertaining whether or not it’s real but it certainly looked the part and I like to think that I got within a pane of glass from touching a Yeti.
And, finally, the Loch Ness Monster. Sadly, I don’t believe that there is anything in there. I t
hink the loch is too small and has been host to too much proper investigation for something to have remained unrevealed were it there. I’m not just saying this so that I don’t have to go back there, promise.
It’s been fun being a monster-hunter. I adore travelling anyway but to travel with a sense of purpose, however spurious, is so much more exhilarating. I’ve met some wonderful people and been to some amazing places. I’ve also met some real creeps and been to a couple of places I won’t ever return to.
Whatever, life is short and the world is wide. Just get out there and go have your own adventures. Me, I fancy a bit of a lie down by a pool somewhere hot with a good book. I wonder what Borneo is like at this time of year . . .