Legend of Loch Ness (1976) - full transcript
A documentary exploring the existence of the legendary "Nessie," an aquatic dinosaur that is supposed to exist in the depth of Loch Ness, Scotland.
- [Narrator] Since the first
human being walked upright,
to modern man, he has had
an insatiable appetite
for the superstitious and
a fear of the unknown.
History is filled with
legends of wild beings,
of creatures and monsters to
feed man's sensation of fear.
Nessie, the monster of
Loch Ness, has underscored
these emotions and
stimulated man's curiosity
with a fervor that knows no bounds.
What you were about to witness is unique,
for the first time you will
see the actual underwater
film of a monster, or
whatever creature it is,
as it swims by our submerged
motion picture camera.
Whether it is a plesiosaurus
from 100 million years ago
or a modern underwater
creature science has
yet to determine.
For the first time, you will
see man's attempt to break
the barrier of fiction and
come up with scientific
proof that a monster, or a monsters,
do lurk in the muddy depths of Loch Ness.
Every scientific means at
man's commands is being
used today to lure the
creature from its lair.
From underwater signals created
by a synthesizer, to sonar,
miniature submarines,
and lone divers with
powerful search lights.
The drive to establish once and for all
the creature's existence
has brought people from all
over the world, and they are
risking their lives daily
for just such a fleeting
glimpse of some huge form
of sea life beneath the
surface of Loch Ness.
(gentle music)
(ominous music)
(suspenseful music)
(gentle music)
As man faces unknown dangers
in his pursuit of a legend,
he is hampered by the
lack of physical evidence,
other than testimony of sightings
and a few distorted photographs.
He's driven on by legends,
stories of the monster dating
back from the 12th century,
by tales of mysterious
happenings at the loch.
Even fantasies of strange
beings from outer space
who might have implanted
some new form of life
on our planet.
All this mystery urges him on to pursue
his relentless search to satisfy
his curiosity, to find
something, anything at all,
that will give an inkling,
the slightest clue as to the
monster's actual existence.
We will, in this film,
attempt to explain the basis
and background of the legend,
and try to establish logical theories
as to what the creature
could be and how it might
have come into the loch.
Interviews with people who
have actually seen the monster
will lend credence to its existence,
and undisputed photographs will
corroborate those sightings.
But the proof, the actual
motion picture film
of a creature, may be the
final answer to the legend
of Loch Ness.
(ominous music)
This is John Cobb, attempting
a world speed record,
on the morning of his death.
(boat engine roaring)
(people murmuring)
If Cobb knew the reason for
the crash remains a mystery.
And now the answer may be known only
to the creatures living within the dark,
cold silence of the loch.
(tense music)
The town of Inverness on
the northern end of the loch
is part of the spiritual,
as well as the geographic center
of the Scottish Highlands.
It is located in an area
known as the Great Glen.
And here, beneath the
surface of these deceptively
shining waters, is one
of the greatest and most
elusive mysteries of the world.
This is the home of the Loch Ness Monster.
The loch is actually a narrow trench,
a mile and a half across
its widest point and some
22 miles in length.
During the great Ice
Age, these Highlands were
covered with a layer of
ice estimated to have been
4,000 feet thick.
Slowly, huge glacial
mountains of it began to slip,
gouging steep valleys and
lake beds in its path.
And so Loch Ness was born.
Urquhart Castle was destroyed
by its own occupants
during the 17th century,
to keep it from falling
into enemy hands at the time
of the Jacobite Rebellion.
Far below its crumbling
battlements and ghostly towers
are the deep underwater
caverns in which the monster
is said to live.
And records tell of
prisoners in chains listening
to sounds coming from
beneath the dungeon stones.
Stories about these
caverns are centuries old.
At one time it was thought
there were extended
underground passages to the open sea.
And it was through
these twisting corridors
the monsters came.
Eventually, they grew
too large ever to return,
and remained to haunt the
loch and its perpetual gloom.
But somewhere in that gloom is the answer,
and each dive is like a
corridor leading into it.
It's ironic that the first sightings
of the Loch Ness Monster should
have been made by a saint.
Ancient scriptures tell us
that St. Columba, the man
who brought Christianity
to Scotland, chastised
the monster for having devoured
a parishioner who chose
to ignore a sermon.
Perhaps this was meant
simply as a moral tale,
suited to the needs of a
tempestuous fifth century.
But isn't it curious that
Saint Columba chose to tell
his story of the water monster,
having it take place in what
is now the famous Loch Ness?
Today, 1400 years later,
the legend still lives and priests
at the benedictine abbey
carry the traditions
of Saint Columba into the modern world.
(bells ringing)
- Well, a few of the monks have seen it.
I had the boys investigating
this a year or two ago,
and we found that about
a third of the monks said
they had seen it.
And about a third of the villagers.
I think if you went all
around Loch Ness you might
find that a third of
the people had seen it.
- [Narrator] Most of the
sightings of the monster
have occurred along this road.
The houses and farms through
this countryside face
out onto the loch.
And as a matter of record,
more than 4,000 sightings
have been reported
since the turn of the century.
Alexander Campbell, a
retired fish and game warden,
has over 50 years' experience
of living and working
on the loch.
- Yes, indeed, I saw it 18
times. The first year was 1934.
And that was my best sighting,
because I saw a head, neck,
huge hump, which I estimated 30 feet long.
- [Narrator] In a way
characteristic of a man
whose work consists of assembling fact,
Police Commissioner John Cameron speaks
of his own experience,
- But the impression I got
was the huge size of it.
Now, I have been in
most parts of the world,
Indian Ocean, Pacific
Ocean, and flown over quite
an area of sea and quite
familiar with sharks, whales.
And I've been a fisherman
since I was eight.
And I never saw anything
in the water like it.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] The first known photographs
of the Loch Ness Monster were
taken in the fall of 1933
by Dr. James Lee.
The creature was seen
swimming through the water
with its head erect,
displaying three distinct
humps on its back.
It dived suddenly, when it
heard a sound on the road.
What followed was an epidemic
of journalists, cameraman,
amateur scientists, crowding
the shores of the loch.
There was even a big game
hunter, Mr. A.L. Wetherell,
who had the misfortune
to discover and identify
huge footprints which
later proved to be a hoax.
He had neglected to
notice that the two prints
he found were of the same left foot.
Some people simply made their own monster.
Whenever man discovers anything new,
there's always been something
in him that makes him
want to put it into a
box and take it home.
The monster was no exception.
Overnight there were schemes
to capture it and put
it on tour with a troop of circus acrobats
and dancing girls in some
sort of monster follies.
By year's end, the carnival
atmosphere had begun
to dissipate, leaving a small
core of dedicated minds.
They came from the universities,
the geographic societies,
the camera clubs, and ladies auxiliaries,
all hoping to spot the legend.
Then, in the spring of 1934, were taken
the most astonishing photographs
of the Loch Ness Monster
the world had ever seen.
News was splashed across
Europe and around the globe.
Here was unquestionable evidence.
Summer brought the first
major organized investigation.
During this investigation, many special
photographic techniques were developed,
because of the extreme weather
conditions on the loch.
It was extremely difficult
for investigators
to authenticate their findings,
because each new sighting
and photograph was
a single aspect of the animal.
But none of them could describe it or show
it in its entirety.
- We're not spending all
this time and money trying
to prove that there's a
large unidentified species
in Loch Ness, we know that.
We've seen it and we know it's here.
What we are trying to do
now is identify the species.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] With the support
of Sir Edward Mountain,
the investigations took
on a new legitimacy.
Each morning trucks and
vans rolled expectantly
out of the Highland fog
to set stations up on both
sides of the loch, all
carrying the latest equipment.
(suspenseful music)
- I think the evidence myself,
and I've been interested
in this for 30 years,
is so conclusive that it does exist.
And so many people have seen it.
But I would prefer to put
it the other way around
and say that once your eyes
have given you evidence
of a large creature,
you must then go and look
for what it eats and try
and study its habitat.
- [Narrator] Fishermen know
that to catch a big fish,
it's necessary to lure
them with smaller fish.
This was the first
attempt to troll the loch,
And captain Eustace Maxwell
hoped that by lowering
these baited nets, evidence
would be found telling us
what the Loch Ness Monster has for dinner.
Zoologists can estimate an animal's size
and bone structure from its diet.
Because of the many reputable sightings,
it was decided that there
was more than one monster,
perhaps a whole family of them.
And if so,
then it might be possible
to recover skeletal remains.
But drawing in the nets,
this hope was soon lost.
It would seem the loch
never gives up it's dead.
(boat horn honking)
Occasionally, archeological
discoveries are made
from diggings along the shore.
- But today you've had
a brief look at this,
now about five minutes,
what do you make of it?
- Well, I think that
this may well be a bone,
a very large bone.
And one's first impression
is that this may be part
of a femur of some large animal.
- [Interviewer] Now, what
part's that? That's the-
- [Researcher] The thigh bone.
And certainly a very large object,
I'm fairly certain that
it is made of bone.
- [Interviewer] What makes you think that?
- Well, the texture of
the object, its weight,
and the fact that, if you
look very carefully at it,
you will see what
appears to be bone canals
running throughout the
structure of the object.
It has the typical appearance of bone,
from which the organic
matter has dissolved
over periods of time,
leaving just the ash intact.
- How old would you say it is?
- It's impossible to say,
but it could be very,
very old indeed.
- Could it be, do you think,
part of any animal that might
have lived in these waters?
- It's certainly not a part
of any animal that we know
of in times today.
It's much bigger than any
piece coming from, say,
a large mammal, such as
an elephant or rhinoceros.
- Bigger than that?
- But it's bigger than that.
And if indeed is a bone,
and then I would think that
it comes from some animal,
either that is not known to
science, which is existing now,
or perhaps some prehistoric
animal which is not alive
but which once did exist on the Earth.
- [Narrator] Although the
shark is normally considered
to be a marine animal,
one that lives exclusively in salt water,
there is at least one major exception,
a South American lake
shark that has completely
adapted itself to fresh water.
The shark itself is one of
the most successful animals
in the long evolutionary journey.
It has survived intact
from its beginnings nearly
300 million years ago.
Normally, the shark
would not be considered
as having anything to do
at all with the legendary
animal in Loch Ness, but
because of its apparent
ability to adapt itself to fresh water,
and the fact that there
is a type of shark,
known as a bull shark,
which very closely resembles
an eel with its long
tapered body and small head,
scientists are reluctant
to dismiss it entirely.
The bull shark usually has a
maximum length of eight feet,
although a few have been
reported at nearly 25 feet.
It is not particularly ferocious,
though the behavior of
sharks is never really
predictable and researchers
are seldom anxious
to spend much time in a tank with them.
But it is the scientist's
job to be absolute
in his judgment as possible,
and so the shark must be
considered a candidate
until positively proven otherwise.
Exposition Park in downtown
Los Angeles, California,
a far cry from the cold,
eerie dampness of the home
of the Loch Ness Monster
in Scotland's mysterious Loch Ness.
(birds chirping)
Nestled between the famous
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
and the University of Southern California
is the Los Angeles Museum of
Natural History, home base
for Dr. Robert Leibenberg,
curator of the museum's
huge ichthyology department.
His extensive studies of
sea creatures have taken him
to the most remote parts of the world.
- [Interviewer] Dr. Leibenberg,
in your personal opinion,
is it at all possible that
some kind of sea life could
be what we have come to know
as the Loch Ness Monster?
- The possibility that life exists
in the deep ocean
that is not yet discovered
is very possible.
We don't have the gear or
the facilities right now
to look into all of the ocean to determine
what lives there.
The Loch Ness is just
a small sea or a body
of water that's been locked off.
And if we could drain it,
we could see what was there.
So that our abilities to
look into that body of water
and say, yes, something occurs,
or no something does not
occur are really limited.
So the possibility is that
something could be there,
we haven't found it yet.
Or it's all been a figment
of our imagination.
- [Interviewer] Doctor, assuming
that there is a living creature residing
in the deep waters of Loch
Ness, what would you say
it could be?
- That's a good question.
I'm not really sure what could be there.
There are some candidates,
for instance, a large eel,
one of the fish-like vertebrates
could be there and seen.
It could be a type of marine mammal.
And there have been some
photographs published of one
of the whales or dolphins
that has been lying
on the surface for some
reason, holding up its fin.
And this fin does look
like some of the sightings
that have been made of the
supposed creature that lives
in Loch Ness.
There's also the possibility
that it could be some
large vertebrate or some
large animal that none of us
are aware of.
There is that vague possibility
because we just haven't seen it.
But I think the logical
candidates would be,
if something occurs there,
something such as a large marine mammal,
one that's been landlocked in the area,
or a another type
of fish-like vertebrate that breathes,
that removes oxygen from
the water and stays hidden
most of the time down in
deep waters and for some
reason only comes to the
surface on relatively
few occasions, and it's
been on those few occasions
that a sighting has been made.
- [Interviewer] Would there be
a way for an aquatic mammal,
fish, or reptile, or
whatever we choose to call
the life in the loch,
to have migrated centuries ago
through a subterranean cavern when small,
and to have grown too large
to regain access to the sea?
- It's really quite difficult
to tell the providence
of an animal, where it comes
from, but it's possible,
not impossible, that some type of animal
some time ago
has been or has invaded
this area and subsequently
been trapped in there by some movements
of the Earth or a landslide
or something of this nature.
The Earth itself is constantly moving.
The continents are slowly
creeping around the globe
in a slow drift.
And we can detect that
through earthquakes,
and we can visually see that the Earth
is in the process of moving.
And in approximately three
years, all of the planets
in the solar system are going to line up.
And during this period,
there may be quite a bit of activity,
of earthquake activity.
There may or there may not be,
we just don't know what's going to happen.
And these earthquakes
could resolve in shifting
land masses and they could result in the
movement of earth, so as
to trap bodies of water
and their included animals,
that they cannot get
back into the major part of the ocean.
The marine mammals have been on the Earth
for a short time,
speaking evolutionarily,
they're one of our recent
animals in the ocean, or one
of the more recent animals.
So they differ from something
like the coelacanth,
which has a long fossil
history and has been here
for millions of years.
And we know that from
finding their remains
in the rocks of the Earth.
But they went for a
long period undetected.
We didn't catch them. We didn't find them.
And then all of a sudden in
1939 one was suddenly caught.
Now, rather than not, we can
take something like this,
the coelacanth, as a living fossil,
and relate this in some way
to Loch Ness, I don't know.
This is an entirely different problem.
The Loch Ness differs in that
there have been sightings.
There have been people that
say there is something there.
The coelacanth was a different story.
It was preserved in the
rock. We knew it existed.
We knew it probably had
become entirely fossil,
but all of a sudden it was found.
So we had no hunches,
no thoughts about it.
It just turned up all of a sudden.
And so that made us really, wow.
Here's something that just
occurred that we thought
was fossil a long time.
So it made quite an important
discovery to look at it,
to see how its internal structures looked,
how it was put together,
because we didn't have this information,
we had only the remains in rocks.
Again, going back to Loch
Ness, it's all word of mouth.
It's all something people tell us.
They all see something,
but is it real? What is it?
And we have no basis to
go back and say, aha,
it was a fossil, there is
some record in the fossil,
or there is a record of skeletal remains
in the fossil record, we don't have that.
So it's a problem
of enormous magnitude,
a gulf that we have to bridge here.
On one hand, we know that
the oceans, probably,
in deep waters, contain animals
we have yet to discover.
There are things down there
we just don't know exist.
We have to go out and look for them.
On the other hand, we have Loch Ness.
We have, what supposedly is an animal,
and we can't put a tag on it.
We cannot identify it.
We couldn't tell you
whether it was a fish.
And we couldn't tell you
whether it was a vertebrate.
And there are people that will
say there's nothing to it.
That it is all reflections.
It is all some type of
abnormality during filming
or sonic aberration
that if it were there,
we would know about it.
And since there's no way to
really document the records.
So you have on one hand that we don't know
whether something exists or not.
And we have on the other
hand the discovery of things
that we thought were long
since gone and putting
them together may indicate
that there might be something there.
- Sightings are rare,
and anything out of the ordinary is cause
for great excitement.
- Wanda! Wanda!
Something's right there.
- Where? Where?
- By that white house, to
the right to the white house.
That's been moving.
- You couldn't get it?
- No.
Rest of this, just-
- Yes. Wait.
To the right. You see, it's still there.
Still there and it's
moving, moving to the left.
There it is. Have you got it?
Have you got it?
- Yes. Yes.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Film companies
were eager to make
Nessie a star, but due to her reluctance
to show up for rehearsals,
they were forced to build their own.
Producers had some difficulty
in casting the picture,
because actors were not
willing to appear next
to such terrifying machinery.
A local boy scout troop from the town
of Inverness began an
expedition of their own.
Special merit badges were
created for the event.
Promoters were quick to ride the new wave
of public interest, and
there was a rush to get
many company names associated
with the events on the loch.
Some companies even sponsored
their own expeditions.
It quickly became apparent
that something had to be
done to protect the ecology
of Loch Ness and the monster itself.
Someone announced a bounty on Nessie.
Local constables had to keep a sharp eye
out to prevent any mishaps.
This is Tim Dinsdale, an
English aeronautical engineer.
The time is 1960.
In Europe the war had passed,
leaving the monster in several years
of relatively peaceful anonymity.
Peaceful, that is, until a certain morning
in April when Mr. Dinsdale took pictures
of it with a motion picture camera.
(ominous music)
The authenticity of this film has been
absolutely established through analysis
by the Joint Air Reconnaissance
Intelligence Center
of the Royal British Air Force.
In addition, the footage was screened
through a computer
enhancement process developed
by the United States' space program,
especially for use on the
Moon and Mars expeditions.
A growing list of
sophisticated equipment began
to assemble on the loch,
as well as the inevitable practical jokes.
The body of a sea cow was
smuggled in and planted
along the shore.
A Birmingham musician, John
Sly, wrote a special song
to try to coax the great
beast into poking its head
out of the water.
The monster did not appear,
failing to respond to Bach,
Beethoven and the Beatles.
(bells ringing)
It was obvious that a
major new expedition ought
to have official government sanction,
and that the issue should be
brought before the members
of the House of Parliament.
Such a move would then
lend an air of reliability
to the project.
Norman Collins, a top
British corporation executive
urged members of the business
and scientific communities
to join with him
in soliciting financial and technical aid.
It was necessary to
abolish, once and for all,
the image of the monster as a fantasy
and a drunken fishermen's dream.
At this time, a controversial storm shook
the British Museum of Natural History.
A feud developed among
the museum's officers,
when a member with an
international reputation
was dismissed from his posts
because of his interest
in support of the Loch
Ness research teams.
- [Man] I find it very hard to
believe that it is an animal
in the organic sense.
- And if not a beast, what's that?
- And these occur all over the world,
these juxtaposition between
the great set and then
the sort of flying object,
and the same occurred in China,
it occurs in places like in
Ireland, and the carvings
are there, these sort of humps
on this flying object in front of them.
- [Narrator] The last bear in
the Highland forest was shot
sometime during the 1880s.
Before then, they had been
plentiful in the uplands,
roaming freely through the woods,
playing and fishing in the streams,
and along the shores at the many lochs.
(bears growling)
Bears are excellent fishermen,
and they've been known to
catch as many as 25 salmon
in a single hour.
Investigators on Loch Ness
have long asked the question,
how is it possible for
the monster to withstand
the extreme temperatures
at the bottom of the loch,
where it apparently stays
for most of the cold months?
Some scientists feel that it is able to do
this because it has the
ability to partially hibernate,
like the bear.
And they are currently
involved in research
that is trying to find a link between diet
and the hibernation process.
They know that Loch
Ness is full of salmon,
which comes down from the
mountain streams and rivers,
and that there are several kinds of trout.
The diet of the Loch
Ness Monster is similar
to that of bears,
then researchers feel
it may soon be possible
to make certain tentative estimates.
Through the magic of research,
the investigators of
Loch Ness will solve more
than a single mystery.
These bears, though they've
been gone from Scotland
nearly 100 years, may help show the way.
One of the most persistent
theories about the monster
is that there is no monster at all.
What is seen are simply the manifestations
of the monsters within ourselves.
No doubt, due to the particular quality
of ever-changing light on the moody water
and the sudden leap of
waves under the wind
visual illusions sometimes occur.
Occasionally, the water will
look pleasant and serene,
but experienced divers who have slipped
beneath its sparkling waves
can testify to the hazards
of the dark peat-shrouded currents.
Underwater there is enormous
pressure on a man's body,
and it limits the depths
to which he can dive.
For the Loch Ness investigation bureau,
the submarine was an obvious next step.
(crane whirring)
For several years, the bureau had been
making plans for obtaining the use
of a submarine, and there was much
excitement when it finally arrived.
(people chattering)
Strangely enough, the
actual depth of the loch
is mysteriously unknown.
For years it was thought to
be roughly 700 feet deep,
but a submarine using a depth
sounding device recently
took a reading of 975 feet,
suggesting the possibility
of great holes in the floor of the loch.
Previous dives had brought back report of
caverns, like huge
cathedrals, near the castle.
And there is speculation
today that by exploring
the entire 24 miles of the
loch's floor, using specially
built submarines with
powerful strobe lights,
an entry may be found into a
subterranean world existing
below the loch.
Members of the Pisces submarine crew
repeatedly brought up
stories of exotically colored
fishes and eels.
And several times the
entire two-ton submarine was
simply swirled around like a bath tub toy,
as it rested on the bottom.
Earlier, they'd been tracking
a fast moving object,
only fleetingly visible
in the ghostly streams
of the lights, but each
time they drew near,
the object would flash
away in a manner completely
unlike any animal known
to marine biologists.
To quote one of the technicians,
we're convinced it was not
a school of fish or anything like that.
We just don't know what it was.
The Pisces was also equipped
with a hand or claw.
There was still hope that some part
of an animal's skeleton
could be found on the bottom
of the loch,
and the claw was constructed
to handle objects
of tremendous size and weight.
Robert Love, an American
electronics expert,
personally undertook the
responsibility of designing
a sonar plan to work with the
Loch Ness investigation team.
Since the war, techniques
were invented for detecting
and tracking enemy submarines and floating
underwater mines.
Many of these same techniques
were employed to hunt the monster.
Sonar had a new target.
(ominous music)
(sonar beeping)
Signals were sent out into
the water by the submarines,
which registered on the equipment
onboard the surface boat.
These signals were then transmitted
into a kind of silhouette.
In this way it was possible
to tell how big the object
was and how fast it was going,
much the same way a bat squeaks,
then listens for the echo
to find its way in the dark.
The Biological Research
Center in the Bahamas
reported certain types
of octopus whose behavior
suggested the creature in Loch Ness.
An investigation team
was sent to capture one
of these types for study.
There is enough evidence
for biologists to state
that octopus exist that are so huge,
two of them side-by-side would cover
an entire football field.
Although there are no
known octopus that live
in freshwater environments, it is possible
that caverns may once have led to the sea.
The creatures than may have been driven
into the caverns by predators
and eventually found
their way to the loch.
If any survived, they
might slowly have adapted
to the brackish water of the
loch and begun a new life,
safe from all natural enemies.
So much is unknown about
the Loch Ness Monster
that scientists are literally
working in the dark,
and they must examine
each new possibility,
no matter how remote.
Unlike the Abominable Snowman
of the Himalayas and
the notorious Big Foot
of the Pacific Northwest,
the Loch Ness Monster has
become an institution and
is always a major part of,
not only local celebrations,
but festivals throughout
the British Isles.
(upbeat music)
Some forms of tourism, however,
they stir up resentment on
the part of the local people.
As controversial as the legend may be,
it is still part of Highland heritage.
Over the years one of
the favorite explanations
is that the monster is
actually a seal or a sea lion.
Sea lions make tremendous bursts of speed,
possibly accounting for the long wakes
that suddenly appear in the water.
But tests have shown that
the wakes made by sea lions
are very different than
those created by the monster.
The sea lion might account
for some of the evidence.
But again, the reason this
is completely unlikely
is because sea lions always
give birth on ice flows
or on land.
An occasional live
water birth might occur,
but survival would be very rare.
If the Loch Ness Monster
was some kind of seal,
then there would never have been a mystery
in the first place,
because sightings on land
would be frequent and common.
Whales, the largest mammals on Earth,
have been suggested as the
real legend of the loch.
Not only could they qualify in size,
but when swimming in groups,
their backs do resemble the multiple humps
usually associated with a monster.
But when whales surface from a long dive,
they blow huge quantities of
steam and water into the air,
something the creature has
never been known to do.
The modern world does
not believe in dragons
and sea serpents, and so we laugh at them,
or does the answer take
us back 250 million years.
Wing Commander Basil Cary's wife, Fredi,
first saw the monster when
she was a small child.
She's demonstrated a remarkable
psychic affinity for water,
its spirits and its creatures.
- I taught them water divining
for two different firms of architects.
Generally I taught them map dowsing,
they'd give me a
large-scale map of the area
that I'm going to and I can
go over that with a pendulum
and a non-magnetic pencil until I find out
where the water is,
and then I can take my stick pen and go
along and I know where to
go to look for the water,
you see, it saves a lot of travel.
- [Narrator] When I asked could
she help locate the monster?
- Oh yes.
I told them I had to put the cameras
and where the creatures
are, and they've got photos.
But the thing is, I know where
they live anyway, roughly,
'cause I've watched the
loch so often that I know
where the things live and
I know what the habits are,
and I know what they do.
And so in any case,
I'm able to tell them where
the things live more or less,
and then what they do.
- [Narrator] Some people
stand at the water's edge
each morning and evening for years,
and never catch a glimpse of the creature.
Others have seen it many times.
No one's luck is the same.
- [Interviewer] Once again, Dr. Laufenberg
at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Natural History.
Doctor, can you tell us
about scientists' recent deep
sea discoveries and how these
sea animals have evolved?
What can be told of their
longevity, if anything,
and from their continual
existence in the sea?
- Life in the sea basically has two forms:
those that float or swim,
and those that live on or in the bottom.
And since man has been around,
he's walked the seashores
and picked up forms of life,
so that we have a fairly
good grasp of the types
of life that occur near shore.
However, out to sea and in deeper waters,
these areas remain relatively unexplored.
We're just beginning to do
the explorations of them.
So that it is in the deep sea,
in deeper waters,
that the archaic animals are found,
those animals that have a
long history of life on Earth.
And it's fair to point out
here that if we took one group,
such as the mollusk,
the clams and the snails and all
of their allies, there's
a pretty good indication
that these, has slowly,
over long periods of time,
invaded the deep sea from shallow waters.
- [Interviewr] Doctor,
what species of sea animals
have existed from prehistoric times
and are still found to exist today?
- As a species, rather than an individual,
probably the best known
fish that would fit
this category is the coelacanth.
It has been around,
preserved in the rocks,
for more than 150 million years.
And we knew about this
fish as one of the archaic
fishes that was instrumental
in the colonization
of land through a swamp-like habitat
to become a vertebrate.
And we thought they were long since dead,
that they had become extinct.
But in 1939, there was one caught
by a commercial fishermen,
and he saved that fish
and got it to a museum
and it resulted in the
spectacular discovery
of a living coelacanth.
- [Interviewer] Can we assume
that there is more than one
creature in the loch, which
could account for over 4,000
sightings over the years?
- If you assume that there are
animals living in the loch,
yes, then it's logical to assume
that there is more than one.
However, it should be
considered that there might
be relatively few
animals if they do exist,
and the sightings could be of a very few.
And if this is a locked area,
that the animals cannot escape
if they indeed occur there,
and there are a few of them,
perhaps they have a reproductive method
that ensures continuation of them
for long periods of time,
such as they may have
internal fertilization
and produce few young and
have no real predators.
There's nothing in there
that is going to kill them.
- [Narrator] It takes an uncommon stamina
to endure the long waiting.
Frank Searle knows what it's like.
- I'm not here to prove
that there's something
in Loch Ness, I'm here to
identify what is in Loch Ness.
We have 1400 years of
acceptable written records
to tell us that there's
something in Loch Ness.
For the first five and a
half years I lived in a tent
on the loch side,
spent almost every hour of
daylight out in a small boat.
I've clocked out now
22,000 hours of watching,
15,000 hours of it from a small boat.
- [Narrator] But the trek
into the unknown requires
more than sacrifice.
One must be ready for luck when it comes.
- It's very difficult to get
pictures because you only
see these animals for a short time,
perhaps a seven or eight seconds would be
the average sighting.
So you realize that you've
got to have a camera
in your hand all the time ready to go,
use a camera like a gun.
This is why so few people get pictures.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] None of these
photographs have been retouched.
The original negatives have been examined
by the finest scientific laboratories
in Europe and the United States.
You are seeing only what is here,
just as Frank Searle saw
it through the camera lens.
A few see in the monster
a more pervasive evil.
This is Dr. Armand, an eminent clergymen
and renowned Exorcist.
- I adjure thee, thou ancient serpent,
by the judge of death, by him
who made thee in the world,
that thou look thyself
no more in manifestations
of prehistoric demons.
- [Narrator] The words ring like an echo
from St. Columba's day.
- Be gone now hideous demon
unto thine appointed place
and return no more
to plague the servants of almighty God.
- [Narrator] And with the courage
of Shakespeare's ancient kings,
the minister defies the wind and who knows
what unearthly creation.
Another mystery of Loch Ness,
the infamous Boleskine House.
(tense music)
(dogs barking)
- He himself left a number of
his spirits that he raised,
sort of knocking around the
place when he left here.
I think most of those are sort
of finally pushed off now.
One of the most interesting ghosts,
or whatever you wanna call
it, that inhabit the place,
is one of a chap called Simon Lord Lovat
who was chief of the
Fraser clan at the time
of the Jacobite rebellion,
or whatever it was,
the Battle of Culloden in any way,
which most people would have heard about.
He was finally beheaded for treason
in London, the Tower
of London, and his head
at the time of his execution
was supposed to have
fallen into a basket.
And in fact, didn't, it
rolled off across the floor.
And the story goes that
at the time of his death,
that he was thinking
of himself in the heart
of the Highlands, which we are
just about in the geographical dead center
of the Highlands right here.
And his head still rolls
up and down the corridor
outside this room here.
And can be heard at night.
I've heard it myself several times.
(thunder rumbling)
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Aleister Crowley,
by his own preference,
liked to be called The Great Beast.
Looking out over the grounds
of Boleskine House, past
the graveyard, one cannot help but wonder,
if he saw himself as a kind of alter ego
to that great beast under the black water.
In his strange life,
might he not have communed
with the monster itself,
as he claimed to do so
often with the raised souls
of the dead hovering off the silent stones
of the ancient crypts.
(gentle music)
Chicago, perhaps the
city that might answer
those who waited anxiously
through the years to solve
the great mystery.
The atomic age began
here at the university,
creating a terrible light
more brilliant than 1000 suns,
but it brought with it more
than the technology of destruction.
It brought the power to heal,
and an even greater gift,
the ability of man to
prob the darkness among
the stars and the secrets
beneath the deep oceans.
Professor Roy Mackel is a major scientist
in his field and is
recognized internationally.
For over 20 years he's conducted research
at the biology center at
the University of Chicago.
(uplifting music)
And now, a new idea has to
be tried, a new approach,
a hydroponically triggered
sonar plate has been developed,
enabling a submarine to track the monster
without first disturbing
it with the intense strobe
lights used in normal camera operations.
A pre-expedition trial has been conducted
at an undisclosed location,
and a new factor had
entered the scene, time.
In order for the experiment to work,
it was necessary to begin
before bad weather hit the loch.
Winter was coming to the Highlands.
Sound carries surprisingly
great distances under water.
To avoid startling the monster with noise,
a series of visual signals was devised
with a small electronic float placed
over the area of operations.
In coordination with the divers,
technicians scouted
instrument locations on land,
stringing more than two
and a half mile of cable
and generator wire.
Special devices were
inserted in the regulators
on the divers' air tanks
to muffle the sounds
of the bubbles.
Total silence was the
key to this operation.
The monster had been
known to dive suddenly,
at the slightest noise.
A sensitive plate was put
in position so that it would
not be accidentally set
off by the submarine,
which was to hover nearby.
It had taken more than
two years to develop
an electric motor capable of operating
the submarine quietly
enough for this experiment.
The question was, would the great bulk
of the monster gliding
through the water create
enough vibration to be picked up
by the underwater microphones?
If so, it would trigger the
signal to the sonar crew
and alert the submarine.
There was only one way to find out.
The expedition was ready now,
to go down into the actual
waters of Loch Ness.
What kind of an animal will they find?
Will it be some new creature,
one that man has never seen,
or will it be something that has managed
to evolve unchanged since
the dawn of history,
a creature from the dinosaur
age that time forgot?
(animals cawing)
(ominous music)
(animals roaring)
(dramatic music)
We know for a fact that
creatures long thought
to be extinct do exist today,
virtually unchanged since the
age of the great reptiles,
250 million years ago.
Beginning a life from an egg no larger
than that of an English
Sparrow, the monitor lizard
of the Indonesian islands
grows to an average length
of 10 feet.
They weigh upwards of 200 pounds,
easily over-powering their prey,
which consists of anything
from small rodents to wild
pigs and sheep.
(soft, ominous music)
If the environment in which
an animal lives is cut
off from the intrusion
of other forms or more
dominant animals, then
it becomes a sanctuary,
a kind of harbor out of
reach of evolutionary storms.
Thus, on an island, for example,
or in a stable body of water,
that can remain indefinitely,
adapting over slow
centuries to minor changes
in climate and food supplies.
Distracted from it's
afternoon and search for food,
the lizard is wary when it
detects the scent of man
and lumbers off into the island brush.
But the most dominant animal
of all is man himself.
Despite his relatively small
size and vulnerable body,
his brain makes him master and he becomes
the unnatural enemy.
The prehistoric brain, however, is tiny,
operating on a simple
hunger-fear principle.
And that is why the animals
are so difficult to find.
They are dangerous and unpredictable,
reflecting the time of
their primeval ancestors.
When they are hungry, they
are no longer fearful,
becoming instead ferocious and intrepid.
Hours spent stalking
through the hot island
sun can be rewarded with nothing at all,
or a sudden rush of a hissing
200 pound reptile capable
of encircling a grown man's
waist with his powerful jaws.
(tense music)
(tense music)
Carnivorous habits of
the dinosaurs must've
been terrifying, especially
among creatures 30
and 40 feet long.
They were animals literally
designed for killing,
equipped with special horns and claws
and teeth for tearing.
Even the sky had its own unique terror.
(ominous music)
The instinct for the hunt
was an essential aspect
of prehistoric life.
Without it, no creature survives.
The predator is a beast
within a beast, alive
still, in the blood of a savage kingdom.
Due to the unlocated bottom
of Loch Ness, it's back
to the drawing board.
A means must be devised
to get scientists down
to the depth as yet
unfathomable to the modern
under sea craft, a method
for him to live deep beneath
the surface for extended periods of study.
Underwater science will, of necessity,
be forced to borrow from
outer space technology
or from the blueprints of oil and gas
companies continually
searching for the new deep
sea devices in their never
ending energy exploration.
And maybe we will find
the futuristic drawings
of popular mechanics
magazine and the tales
of science fiction writers
not too far fetched,
or even better yet,
we might draw from the master
of them all, Jules Verne.
Many adventurous companies
all over the world see
an abundance of minerals,
energy and food sources
hidden deep in the ocean.
And they are actually
constructing great depth
underwater craft to free these
vital needs for the world
from the bottom of the sea
needs and relieve the
pressure of land crops,
trying to feed the
millions of hungry people
in the world today.
New substances are being discovered,
stronger than existing methods,
which would aid in
equalizing the tremendous
pressure exerted on the hull
of an underwater machine
in the deepest parts of the ocean.
New breathing apparatus is
in the experimental stages.
All science and technology
will be called upon
to find ways of searching
into the unknown deep
ocean crevices of this new frontier.
It is this mass of information, of trial
and error, of experimental
frustration that will
someday bring forth the
necessary technology
that will enable scientists
to unlock the secrets
of a floor, if there is one,
of Loch Ness, and locate the layer
of Nessie, if she really does exist.
Dr. Lavenberg continues his discussion
of the evolution of sea
animals to terrestrial beings.
- We're pretty well convinced
that life originated
in the aquatic medium, in the sea.
Through billions of
years, the earth has been,
or the terrestrial parts
of earth have been leached
and the salts and material
have drained off in the ocean.
So when life originated,
it probably was fresher
water than that occurs today.
Less salts were in it.
As life evolved in the ocean,
it became more complex.
And then, in this sequence
of evolutionary events,
some of the animals that had
formed, like the coelacanth,
began to move into shallow
waters or swamp like areas.
And they were able to
survive in that habitat.
And that was the very
beginnings of the terrestrial
form of life.
These animals were able to
invade a hostile environment.
And one of the major changes
had to be that in terms
of the egg.
In the aquatic medium,
the egg is surrounded with
water and doesn't desiccate,
but on land it could dry up.
So that these animals at
first were in a medium,
in this watery medium, and tied to it for,
and tied to it in terms of reproduction
for that keeping the egg
moist so that it didn't die.
And we're one of the
major jumps then to get
into the terrestrial
environment was to have an egg
that was protected from drying up.
And once this happened,
this really enabled the animals
to invade and colonize
the terrestrial habitat.
- [Interviewer] Doctor,
no one has ever unearthed
any hard evidence of
a monster of the loch,
ever having killed anyone
or hauled an animal back
into the loch.
If Nessie is a benign creature
or a family of creatures,
does that lead to any
conclusion that it could be
from the fish family,
rather than from the
reptile or other species
of mammals that had been
known to have attacked
men and ships?
- I would not be willing
to put it in any category
on the basis that there hasn't been any
aggressive behavior on
the part of this animal
or this image that has
been seen in this area.
It might be that, if it
exists, it is a filter feeder.
It feeds upon the tiny
organisms that swim or float
in the water.
Or if it is something like
an eel-like organisms,
it could eat the fish
or it could eat on plant
material, it could be a grazer.
So it might not be a predatory animal.
And if it's not predatory,
there would be no basis for
seeing aggressive behavior.
- [Interviewer] What known
sea life could be categorized
as possible monsters?
The stories have come done
for centuries of attacks
on ships and men by mammoth sea creatures.
- There are some candidates
in the fish world,
types of fishes, that might
qualify for the status
of monster, but this is a
name that we would apply
on the basis of man and
his sightings at sea.
If you will consider
some of the early days
of the mariners out on the ocean,
they were sloshing through
the seas on these boats,
heavily laden with sails,
and all they saw for days on end
were the ocean, the blues and the grays.
What if, alongside of their boat,
a fish that was twice the size
of the vessel suddenly appeared?
And what if it were not the
colors that they were seeing?
It would make a very strong
impression upon them.
And there are such fishes.
There are fishes that we
call the ribbon vicious.
And one of these is the oarfish.
They are reported to
reach lengths of 35 feet,
they are a foot and a
half to two feet deep,
and they look like a ribbon.
They are bluish silver
with scarlet crimson fins,
and the fins, they're
modified in the front part
of the head in these
fishes to be two or three
feet in length.
They're scarlet red.
And if one of these
fishes suddenly appeared
at the surface, right
alongside your vessel,
and erected this scarlet
crimson dorsal fin,
you'd be impressed, you'd be startled.
And you would think,
at first, what is this?
It's so thin, and it might
just disappear immediately.
And with that short glimpse,
with the brilliant colors,
with the strange shape,
some of these fishermen would go back
and write these stories.
And they would turn to the ship
and they would probably be afraid.
And if you can imagine then,
if there were relatively
few people that saw it,
and they embellished upon the
story, for whatever reason,
then the myth that there
is some large unidentified
animal in the sea grows.
And the larger it is,
probably the faster it grows,
and always is equated that
it is going to harm man,
or it's there to do some harm,
and this helps build the
image that they were afraid,
and it thrashed at the boat
or something of this nature.
Therefore, these fishes,
the ribbon fishes,
are really logical candidates
to serve as the fishes
that are depicted in
some of our early books
and literature on sea monsters.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] Maybe Loch ness is a mirror,
looking back over the shoulder of time.
(tense music)
After an unexpectedly early storm,
which delayed the expedition
for three days and nights,
the divers and technicians
were anxious to get
out into the water.
The submarine, which had
been moored to a concrete
anchor placed in the
steep side of the loch
by previous expedition,
sustained only slight damage
to its rudder assembly.
But crew members were confident
it was not serious enough
to cause further delay.
Divers were sent down to
help position the submarine
and to explore the water
conditions in Urquhart Bay.
This bay had a history
of being a favorite spot
and the monster had been
seen here many times.
They went deeper, moving
through the dreamy water
toward the caverns.
Seconds tick slowly by.
The big question on everyone's mind was,
had the storm made the monster restless?
If it had, then there was
a good chance it would be
active and hopefully
trip the sonar device.
(tense music)
Peering into the cavern entrances,
divers strained for sign of movement,
a water plant uprooted or
torn, anything unusual,
anything at all?
Suddenly, a shore technician
picked up a short rasping
sound, coming from one of
the underwater microphones.
It came again, louder this time.
Guided by sonar from above,
the submarine slipped through
the water toward the target.
(dramatic music)
(tense music)
What you are about to see
again, in slow motion,
is an aquatic animal five
times as big as the submarine,
gliding through the water,
repelling itself with huge
flipper like appendages.
This is the first known motion
picture film of its kind.
And so we have come closer
than man has ever been before.
There is every reason to
expect that the answer
is very near.
But when the Phantom of
Loch Ness is finally known,
some part of it will
remain a mystery forever,
buried deep within the heart
of the Scottish Highlands.
(soft music)
human being walked upright,
to modern man, he has had
an insatiable appetite
for the superstitious and
a fear of the unknown.
History is filled with
legends of wild beings,
of creatures and monsters to
feed man's sensation of fear.
Nessie, the monster of
Loch Ness, has underscored
these emotions and
stimulated man's curiosity
with a fervor that knows no bounds.
What you were about to witness is unique,
for the first time you will
see the actual underwater
film of a monster, or
whatever creature it is,
as it swims by our submerged
motion picture camera.
Whether it is a plesiosaurus
from 100 million years ago
or a modern underwater
creature science has
yet to determine.
For the first time, you will
see man's attempt to break
the barrier of fiction and
come up with scientific
proof that a monster, or a monsters,
do lurk in the muddy depths of Loch Ness.
Every scientific means at
man's commands is being
used today to lure the
creature from its lair.
From underwater signals created
by a synthesizer, to sonar,
miniature submarines,
and lone divers with
powerful search lights.
The drive to establish once and for all
the creature's existence
has brought people from all
over the world, and they are
risking their lives daily
for just such a fleeting
glimpse of some huge form
of sea life beneath the
surface of Loch Ness.
(gentle music)
(ominous music)
(suspenseful music)
(gentle music)
As man faces unknown dangers
in his pursuit of a legend,
he is hampered by the
lack of physical evidence,
other than testimony of sightings
and a few distorted photographs.
He's driven on by legends,
stories of the monster dating
back from the 12th century,
by tales of mysterious
happenings at the loch.
Even fantasies of strange
beings from outer space
who might have implanted
some new form of life
on our planet.
All this mystery urges him on to pursue
his relentless search to satisfy
his curiosity, to find
something, anything at all,
that will give an inkling,
the slightest clue as to the
monster's actual existence.
We will, in this film,
attempt to explain the basis
and background of the legend,
and try to establish logical theories
as to what the creature
could be and how it might
have come into the loch.
Interviews with people who
have actually seen the monster
will lend credence to its existence,
and undisputed photographs will
corroborate those sightings.
But the proof, the actual
motion picture film
of a creature, may be the
final answer to the legend
of Loch Ness.
(ominous music)
This is John Cobb, attempting
a world speed record,
on the morning of his death.
(boat engine roaring)
(people murmuring)
If Cobb knew the reason for
the crash remains a mystery.
And now the answer may be known only
to the creatures living within the dark,
cold silence of the loch.
(tense music)
The town of Inverness on
the northern end of the loch
is part of the spiritual,
as well as the geographic center
of the Scottish Highlands.
It is located in an area
known as the Great Glen.
And here, beneath the
surface of these deceptively
shining waters, is one
of the greatest and most
elusive mysteries of the world.
This is the home of the Loch Ness Monster.
The loch is actually a narrow trench,
a mile and a half across
its widest point and some
22 miles in length.
During the great Ice
Age, these Highlands were
covered with a layer of
ice estimated to have been
4,000 feet thick.
Slowly, huge glacial
mountains of it began to slip,
gouging steep valleys and
lake beds in its path.
And so Loch Ness was born.
Urquhart Castle was destroyed
by its own occupants
during the 17th century,
to keep it from falling
into enemy hands at the time
of the Jacobite Rebellion.
Far below its crumbling
battlements and ghostly towers
are the deep underwater
caverns in which the monster
is said to live.
And records tell of
prisoners in chains listening
to sounds coming from
beneath the dungeon stones.
Stories about these
caverns are centuries old.
At one time it was thought
there were extended
underground passages to the open sea.
And it was through
these twisting corridors
the monsters came.
Eventually, they grew
too large ever to return,
and remained to haunt the
loch and its perpetual gloom.
But somewhere in that gloom is the answer,
and each dive is like a
corridor leading into it.
It's ironic that the first sightings
of the Loch Ness Monster should
have been made by a saint.
Ancient scriptures tell us
that St. Columba, the man
who brought Christianity
to Scotland, chastised
the monster for having devoured
a parishioner who chose
to ignore a sermon.
Perhaps this was meant
simply as a moral tale,
suited to the needs of a
tempestuous fifth century.
But isn't it curious that
Saint Columba chose to tell
his story of the water monster,
having it take place in what
is now the famous Loch Ness?
Today, 1400 years later,
the legend still lives and priests
at the benedictine abbey
carry the traditions
of Saint Columba into the modern world.
(bells ringing)
- Well, a few of the monks have seen it.
I had the boys investigating
this a year or two ago,
and we found that about
a third of the monks said
they had seen it.
And about a third of the villagers.
I think if you went all
around Loch Ness you might
find that a third of
the people had seen it.
- [Narrator] Most of the
sightings of the monster
have occurred along this road.
The houses and farms through
this countryside face
out onto the loch.
And as a matter of record,
more than 4,000 sightings
have been reported
since the turn of the century.
Alexander Campbell, a
retired fish and game warden,
has over 50 years' experience
of living and working
on the loch.
- Yes, indeed, I saw it 18
times. The first year was 1934.
And that was my best sighting,
because I saw a head, neck,
huge hump, which I estimated 30 feet long.
- [Narrator] In a way
characteristic of a man
whose work consists of assembling fact,
Police Commissioner John Cameron speaks
of his own experience,
- But the impression I got
was the huge size of it.
Now, I have been in
most parts of the world,
Indian Ocean, Pacific
Ocean, and flown over quite
an area of sea and quite
familiar with sharks, whales.
And I've been a fisherman
since I was eight.
And I never saw anything
in the water like it.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] The first known photographs
of the Loch Ness Monster were
taken in the fall of 1933
by Dr. James Lee.
The creature was seen
swimming through the water
with its head erect,
displaying three distinct
humps on its back.
It dived suddenly, when it
heard a sound on the road.
What followed was an epidemic
of journalists, cameraman,
amateur scientists, crowding
the shores of the loch.
There was even a big game
hunter, Mr. A.L. Wetherell,
who had the misfortune
to discover and identify
huge footprints which
later proved to be a hoax.
He had neglected to
notice that the two prints
he found were of the same left foot.
Some people simply made their own monster.
Whenever man discovers anything new,
there's always been something
in him that makes him
want to put it into a
box and take it home.
The monster was no exception.
Overnight there were schemes
to capture it and put
it on tour with a troop of circus acrobats
and dancing girls in some
sort of monster follies.
By year's end, the carnival
atmosphere had begun
to dissipate, leaving a small
core of dedicated minds.
They came from the universities,
the geographic societies,
the camera clubs, and ladies auxiliaries,
all hoping to spot the legend.
Then, in the spring of 1934, were taken
the most astonishing photographs
of the Loch Ness Monster
the world had ever seen.
News was splashed across
Europe and around the globe.
Here was unquestionable evidence.
Summer brought the first
major organized investigation.
During this investigation, many special
photographic techniques were developed,
because of the extreme weather
conditions on the loch.
It was extremely difficult
for investigators
to authenticate their findings,
because each new sighting
and photograph was
a single aspect of the animal.
But none of them could describe it or show
it in its entirety.
- We're not spending all
this time and money trying
to prove that there's a
large unidentified species
in Loch Ness, we know that.
We've seen it and we know it's here.
What we are trying to do
now is identify the species.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] With the support
of Sir Edward Mountain,
the investigations took
on a new legitimacy.
Each morning trucks and
vans rolled expectantly
out of the Highland fog
to set stations up on both
sides of the loch, all
carrying the latest equipment.
(suspenseful music)
- I think the evidence myself,
and I've been interested
in this for 30 years,
is so conclusive that it does exist.
And so many people have seen it.
But I would prefer to put
it the other way around
and say that once your eyes
have given you evidence
of a large creature,
you must then go and look
for what it eats and try
and study its habitat.
- [Narrator] Fishermen know
that to catch a big fish,
it's necessary to lure
them with smaller fish.
This was the first
attempt to troll the loch,
And captain Eustace Maxwell
hoped that by lowering
these baited nets, evidence
would be found telling us
what the Loch Ness Monster has for dinner.
Zoologists can estimate an animal's size
and bone structure from its diet.
Because of the many reputable sightings,
it was decided that there
was more than one monster,
perhaps a whole family of them.
And if so,
then it might be possible
to recover skeletal remains.
But drawing in the nets,
this hope was soon lost.
It would seem the loch
never gives up it's dead.
(boat horn honking)
Occasionally, archeological
discoveries are made
from diggings along the shore.
- But today you've had
a brief look at this,
now about five minutes,
what do you make of it?
- Well, I think that
this may well be a bone,
a very large bone.
And one's first impression
is that this may be part
of a femur of some large animal.
- [Interviewer] Now, what
part's that? That's the-
- [Researcher] The thigh bone.
And certainly a very large object,
I'm fairly certain that
it is made of bone.
- [Interviewer] What makes you think that?
- Well, the texture of
the object, its weight,
and the fact that, if you
look very carefully at it,
you will see what
appears to be bone canals
running throughout the
structure of the object.
It has the typical appearance of bone,
from which the organic
matter has dissolved
over periods of time,
leaving just the ash intact.
- How old would you say it is?
- It's impossible to say,
but it could be very,
very old indeed.
- Could it be, do you think,
part of any animal that might
have lived in these waters?
- It's certainly not a part
of any animal that we know
of in times today.
It's much bigger than any
piece coming from, say,
a large mammal, such as
an elephant or rhinoceros.
- Bigger than that?
- But it's bigger than that.
And if indeed is a bone,
and then I would think that
it comes from some animal,
either that is not known to
science, which is existing now,
or perhaps some prehistoric
animal which is not alive
but which once did exist on the Earth.
- [Narrator] Although the
shark is normally considered
to be a marine animal,
one that lives exclusively in salt water,
there is at least one major exception,
a South American lake
shark that has completely
adapted itself to fresh water.
The shark itself is one of
the most successful animals
in the long evolutionary journey.
It has survived intact
from its beginnings nearly
300 million years ago.
Normally, the shark
would not be considered
as having anything to do
at all with the legendary
animal in Loch Ness, but
because of its apparent
ability to adapt itself to fresh water,
and the fact that there
is a type of shark,
known as a bull shark,
which very closely resembles
an eel with its long
tapered body and small head,
scientists are reluctant
to dismiss it entirely.
The bull shark usually has a
maximum length of eight feet,
although a few have been
reported at nearly 25 feet.
It is not particularly ferocious,
though the behavior of
sharks is never really
predictable and researchers
are seldom anxious
to spend much time in a tank with them.
But it is the scientist's
job to be absolute
in his judgment as possible,
and so the shark must be
considered a candidate
until positively proven otherwise.
Exposition Park in downtown
Los Angeles, California,
a far cry from the cold,
eerie dampness of the home
of the Loch Ness Monster
in Scotland's mysterious Loch Ness.
(birds chirping)
Nestled between the famous
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
and the University of Southern California
is the Los Angeles Museum of
Natural History, home base
for Dr. Robert Leibenberg,
curator of the museum's
huge ichthyology department.
His extensive studies of
sea creatures have taken him
to the most remote parts of the world.
- [Interviewer] Dr. Leibenberg,
in your personal opinion,
is it at all possible that
some kind of sea life could
be what we have come to know
as the Loch Ness Monster?
- The possibility that life exists
in the deep ocean
that is not yet discovered
is very possible.
We don't have the gear or
the facilities right now
to look into all of the ocean to determine
what lives there.
The Loch Ness is just
a small sea or a body
of water that's been locked off.
And if we could drain it,
we could see what was there.
So that our abilities to
look into that body of water
and say, yes, something occurs,
or no something does not
occur are really limited.
So the possibility is that
something could be there,
we haven't found it yet.
Or it's all been a figment
of our imagination.
- [Interviewer] Doctor, assuming
that there is a living creature residing
in the deep waters of Loch
Ness, what would you say
it could be?
- That's a good question.
I'm not really sure what could be there.
There are some candidates,
for instance, a large eel,
one of the fish-like vertebrates
could be there and seen.
It could be a type of marine mammal.
And there have been some
photographs published of one
of the whales or dolphins
that has been lying
on the surface for some
reason, holding up its fin.
And this fin does look
like some of the sightings
that have been made of the
supposed creature that lives
in Loch Ness.
There's also the possibility
that it could be some
large vertebrate or some
large animal that none of us
are aware of.
There is that vague possibility
because we just haven't seen it.
But I think the logical
candidates would be,
if something occurs there,
something such as a large marine mammal,
one that's been landlocked in the area,
or a another type
of fish-like vertebrate that breathes,
that removes oxygen from
the water and stays hidden
most of the time down in
deep waters and for some
reason only comes to the
surface on relatively
few occasions, and it's
been on those few occasions
that a sighting has been made.
- [Interviewer] Would there be
a way for an aquatic mammal,
fish, or reptile, or
whatever we choose to call
the life in the loch,
to have migrated centuries ago
through a subterranean cavern when small,
and to have grown too large
to regain access to the sea?
- It's really quite difficult
to tell the providence
of an animal, where it comes
from, but it's possible,
not impossible, that some type of animal
some time ago
has been or has invaded
this area and subsequently
been trapped in there by some movements
of the Earth or a landslide
or something of this nature.
The Earth itself is constantly moving.
The continents are slowly
creeping around the globe
in a slow drift.
And we can detect that
through earthquakes,
and we can visually see that the Earth
is in the process of moving.
And in approximately three
years, all of the planets
in the solar system are going to line up.
And during this period,
there may be quite a bit of activity,
of earthquake activity.
There may or there may not be,
we just don't know what's going to happen.
And these earthquakes
could resolve in shifting
land masses and they could result in the
movement of earth, so as
to trap bodies of water
and their included animals,
that they cannot get
back into the major part of the ocean.
The marine mammals have been on the Earth
for a short time,
speaking evolutionarily,
they're one of our recent
animals in the ocean, or one
of the more recent animals.
So they differ from something
like the coelacanth,
which has a long fossil
history and has been here
for millions of years.
And we know that from
finding their remains
in the rocks of the Earth.
But they went for a
long period undetected.
We didn't catch them. We didn't find them.
And then all of a sudden in
1939 one was suddenly caught.
Now, rather than not, we can
take something like this,
the coelacanth, as a living fossil,
and relate this in some way
to Loch Ness, I don't know.
This is an entirely different problem.
The Loch Ness differs in that
there have been sightings.
There have been people that
say there is something there.
The coelacanth was a different story.
It was preserved in the
rock. We knew it existed.
We knew it probably had
become entirely fossil,
but all of a sudden it was found.
So we had no hunches,
no thoughts about it.
It just turned up all of a sudden.
And so that made us really, wow.
Here's something that just
occurred that we thought
was fossil a long time.
So it made quite an important
discovery to look at it,
to see how its internal structures looked,
how it was put together,
because we didn't have this information,
we had only the remains in rocks.
Again, going back to Loch
Ness, it's all word of mouth.
It's all something people tell us.
They all see something,
but is it real? What is it?
And we have no basis to
go back and say, aha,
it was a fossil, there is
some record in the fossil,
or there is a record of skeletal remains
in the fossil record, we don't have that.
So it's a problem
of enormous magnitude,
a gulf that we have to bridge here.
On one hand, we know that
the oceans, probably,
in deep waters, contain animals
we have yet to discover.
There are things down there
we just don't know exist.
We have to go out and look for them.
On the other hand, we have Loch Ness.
We have, what supposedly is an animal,
and we can't put a tag on it.
We cannot identify it.
We couldn't tell you
whether it was a fish.
And we couldn't tell you
whether it was a vertebrate.
And there are people that will
say there's nothing to it.
That it is all reflections.
It is all some type of
abnormality during filming
or sonic aberration
that if it were there,
we would know about it.
And since there's no way to
really document the records.
So you have on one hand that we don't know
whether something exists or not.
And we have on the other
hand the discovery of things
that we thought were long
since gone and putting
them together may indicate
that there might be something there.
- Sightings are rare,
and anything out of the ordinary is cause
for great excitement.
- Wanda! Wanda!
Something's right there.
- Where? Where?
- By that white house, to
the right to the white house.
That's been moving.
- You couldn't get it?
- No.
Rest of this, just-
- Yes. Wait.
To the right. You see, it's still there.
Still there and it's
moving, moving to the left.
There it is. Have you got it?
Have you got it?
- Yes. Yes.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Film companies
were eager to make
Nessie a star, but due to her reluctance
to show up for rehearsals,
they were forced to build their own.
Producers had some difficulty
in casting the picture,
because actors were not
willing to appear next
to such terrifying machinery.
A local boy scout troop from the town
of Inverness began an
expedition of their own.
Special merit badges were
created for the event.
Promoters were quick to ride the new wave
of public interest, and
there was a rush to get
many company names associated
with the events on the loch.
Some companies even sponsored
their own expeditions.
It quickly became apparent
that something had to be
done to protect the ecology
of Loch Ness and the monster itself.
Someone announced a bounty on Nessie.
Local constables had to keep a sharp eye
out to prevent any mishaps.
This is Tim Dinsdale, an
English aeronautical engineer.
The time is 1960.
In Europe the war had passed,
leaving the monster in several years
of relatively peaceful anonymity.
Peaceful, that is, until a certain morning
in April when Mr. Dinsdale took pictures
of it with a motion picture camera.
(ominous music)
The authenticity of this film has been
absolutely established through analysis
by the Joint Air Reconnaissance
Intelligence Center
of the Royal British Air Force.
In addition, the footage was screened
through a computer
enhancement process developed
by the United States' space program,
especially for use on the
Moon and Mars expeditions.
A growing list of
sophisticated equipment began
to assemble on the loch,
as well as the inevitable practical jokes.
The body of a sea cow was
smuggled in and planted
along the shore.
A Birmingham musician, John
Sly, wrote a special song
to try to coax the great
beast into poking its head
out of the water.
The monster did not appear,
failing to respond to Bach,
Beethoven and the Beatles.
(bells ringing)
It was obvious that a
major new expedition ought
to have official government sanction,
and that the issue should be
brought before the members
of the House of Parliament.
Such a move would then
lend an air of reliability
to the project.
Norman Collins, a top
British corporation executive
urged members of the business
and scientific communities
to join with him
in soliciting financial and technical aid.
It was necessary to
abolish, once and for all,
the image of the monster as a fantasy
and a drunken fishermen's dream.
At this time, a controversial storm shook
the British Museum of Natural History.
A feud developed among
the museum's officers,
when a member with an
international reputation
was dismissed from his posts
because of his interest
in support of the Loch
Ness research teams.
- [Man] I find it very hard to
believe that it is an animal
in the organic sense.
- And if not a beast, what's that?
- And these occur all over the world,
these juxtaposition between
the great set and then
the sort of flying object,
and the same occurred in China,
it occurs in places like in
Ireland, and the carvings
are there, these sort of humps
on this flying object in front of them.
- [Narrator] The last bear in
the Highland forest was shot
sometime during the 1880s.
Before then, they had been
plentiful in the uplands,
roaming freely through the woods,
playing and fishing in the streams,
and along the shores at the many lochs.
(bears growling)
Bears are excellent fishermen,
and they've been known to
catch as many as 25 salmon
in a single hour.
Investigators on Loch Ness
have long asked the question,
how is it possible for
the monster to withstand
the extreme temperatures
at the bottom of the loch,
where it apparently stays
for most of the cold months?
Some scientists feel that it is able to do
this because it has the
ability to partially hibernate,
like the bear.
And they are currently
involved in research
that is trying to find a link between diet
and the hibernation process.
They know that Loch
Ness is full of salmon,
which comes down from the
mountain streams and rivers,
and that there are several kinds of trout.
The diet of the Loch
Ness Monster is similar
to that of bears,
then researchers feel
it may soon be possible
to make certain tentative estimates.
Through the magic of research,
the investigators of
Loch Ness will solve more
than a single mystery.
These bears, though they've
been gone from Scotland
nearly 100 years, may help show the way.
One of the most persistent
theories about the monster
is that there is no monster at all.
What is seen are simply the manifestations
of the monsters within ourselves.
No doubt, due to the particular quality
of ever-changing light on the moody water
and the sudden leap of
waves under the wind
visual illusions sometimes occur.
Occasionally, the water will
look pleasant and serene,
but experienced divers who have slipped
beneath its sparkling waves
can testify to the hazards
of the dark peat-shrouded currents.
Underwater there is enormous
pressure on a man's body,
and it limits the depths
to which he can dive.
For the Loch Ness investigation bureau,
the submarine was an obvious next step.
(crane whirring)
For several years, the bureau had been
making plans for obtaining the use
of a submarine, and there was much
excitement when it finally arrived.
(people chattering)
Strangely enough, the
actual depth of the loch
is mysteriously unknown.
For years it was thought to
be roughly 700 feet deep,
but a submarine using a depth
sounding device recently
took a reading of 975 feet,
suggesting the possibility
of great holes in the floor of the loch.
Previous dives had brought back report of
caverns, like huge
cathedrals, near the castle.
And there is speculation
today that by exploring
the entire 24 miles of the
loch's floor, using specially
built submarines with
powerful strobe lights,
an entry may be found into a
subterranean world existing
below the loch.
Members of the Pisces submarine crew
repeatedly brought up
stories of exotically colored
fishes and eels.
And several times the
entire two-ton submarine was
simply swirled around like a bath tub toy,
as it rested on the bottom.
Earlier, they'd been tracking
a fast moving object,
only fleetingly visible
in the ghostly streams
of the lights, but each
time they drew near,
the object would flash
away in a manner completely
unlike any animal known
to marine biologists.
To quote one of the technicians,
we're convinced it was not
a school of fish or anything like that.
We just don't know what it was.
The Pisces was also equipped
with a hand or claw.
There was still hope that some part
of an animal's skeleton
could be found on the bottom
of the loch,
and the claw was constructed
to handle objects
of tremendous size and weight.
Robert Love, an American
electronics expert,
personally undertook the
responsibility of designing
a sonar plan to work with the
Loch Ness investigation team.
Since the war, techniques
were invented for detecting
and tracking enemy submarines and floating
underwater mines.
Many of these same techniques
were employed to hunt the monster.
Sonar had a new target.
(ominous music)
(sonar beeping)
Signals were sent out into
the water by the submarines,
which registered on the equipment
onboard the surface boat.
These signals were then transmitted
into a kind of silhouette.
In this way it was possible
to tell how big the object
was and how fast it was going,
much the same way a bat squeaks,
then listens for the echo
to find its way in the dark.
The Biological Research
Center in the Bahamas
reported certain types
of octopus whose behavior
suggested the creature in Loch Ness.
An investigation team
was sent to capture one
of these types for study.
There is enough evidence
for biologists to state
that octopus exist that are so huge,
two of them side-by-side would cover
an entire football field.
Although there are no
known octopus that live
in freshwater environments, it is possible
that caverns may once have led to the sea.
The creatures than may have been driven
into the caverns by predators
and eventually found
their way to the loch.
If any survived, they
might slowly have adapted
to the brackish water of the
loch and begun a new life,
safe from all natural enemies.
So much is unknown about
the Loch Ness Monster
that scientists are literally
working in the dark,
and they must examine
each new possibility,
no matter how remote.
Unlike the Abominable Snowman
of the Himalayas and
the notorious Big Foot
of the Pacific Northwest,
the Loch Ness Monster has
become an institution and
is always a major part of,
not only local celebrations,
but festivals throughout
the British Isles.
(upbeat music)
Some forms of tourism, however,
they stir up resentment on
the part of the local people.
As controversial as the legend may be,
it is still part of Highland heritage.
Over the years one of
the favorite explanations
is that the monster is
actually a seal or a sea lion.
Sea lions make tremendous bursts of speed,
possibly accounting for the long wakes
that suddenly appear in the water.
But tests have shown that
the wakes made by sea lions
are very different than
those created by the monster.
The sea lion might account
for some of the evidence.
But again, the reason this
is completely unlikely
is because sea lions always
give birth on ice flows
or on land.
An occasional live
water birth might occur,
but survival would be very rare.
If the Loch Ness Monster
was some kind of seal,
then there would never have been a mystery
in the first place,
because sightings on land
would be frequent and common.
Whales, the largest mammals on Earth,
have been suggested as the
real legend of the loch.
Not only could they qualify in size,
but when swimming in groups,
their backs do resemble the multiple humps
usually associated with a monster.
But when whales surface from a long dive,
they blow huge quantities of
steam and water into the air,
something the creature has
never been known to do.
The modern world does
not believe in dragons
and sea serpents, and so we laugh at them,
or does the answer take
us back 250 million years.
Wing Commander Basil Cary's wife, Fredi,
first saw the monster when
she was a small child.
She's demonstrated a remarkable
psychic affinity for water,
its spirits and its creatures.
- I taught them water divining
for two different firms of architects.
Generally I taught them map dowsing,
they'd give me a
large-scale map of the area
that I'm going to and I can
go over that with a pendulum
and a non-magnetic pencil until I find out
where the water is,
and then I can take my stick pen and go
along and I know where to
go to look for the water,
you see, it saves a lot of travel.
- [Narrator] When I asked could
she help locate the monster?
- Oh yes.
I told them I had to put the cameras
and where the creatures
are, and they've got photos.
But the thing is, I know where
they live anyway, roughly,
'cause I've watched the
loch so often that I know
where the things live and
I know what the habits are,
and I know what they do.
And so in any case,
I'm able to tell them where
the things live more or less,
and then what they do.
- [Narrator] Some people
stand at the water's edge
each morning and evening for years,
and never catch a glimpse of the creature.
Others have seen it many times.
No one's luck is the same.
- [Interviewer] Once again, Dr. Laufenberg
at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Natural History.
Doctor, can you tell us
about scientists' recent deep
sea discoveries and how these
sea animals have evolved?
What can be told of their
longevity, if anything,
and from their continual
existence in the sea?
- Life in the sea basically has two forms:
those that float or swim,
and those that live on or in the bottom.
And since man has been around,
he's walked the seashores
and picked up forms of life,
so that we have a fairly
good grasp of the types
of life that occur near shore.
However, out to sea and in deeper waters,
these areas remain relatively unexplored.
We're just beginning to do
the explorations of them.
So that it is in the deep sea,
in deeper waters,
that the archaic animals are found,
those animals that have a
long history of life on Earth.
And it's fair to point out
here that if we took one group,
such as the mollusk,
the clams and the snails and all
of their allies, there's
a pretty good indication
that these, has slowly,
over long periods of time,
invaded the deep sea from shallow waters.
- [Interviewr] Doctor,
what species of sea animals
have existed from prehistoric times
and are still found to exist today?
- As a species, rather than an individual,
probably the best known
fish that would fit
this category is the coelacanth.
It has been around,
preserved in the rocks,
for more than 150 million years.
And we knew about this
fish as one of the archaic
fishes that was instrumental
in the colonization
of land through a swamp-like habitat
to become a vertebrate.
And we thought they were long since dead,
that they had become extinct.
But in 1939, there was one caught
by a commercial fishermen,
and he saved that fish
and got it to a museum
and it resulted in the
spectacular discovery
of a living coelacanth.
- [Interviewer] Can we assume
that there is more than one
creature in the loch, which
could account for over 4,000
sightings over the years?
- If you assume that there are
animals living in the loch,
yes, then it's logical to assume
that there is more than one.
However, it should be
considered that there might
be relatively few
animals if they do exist,
and the sightings could be of a very few.
And if this is a locked area,
that the animals cannot escape
if they indeed occur there,
and there are a few of them,
perhaps they have a reproductive method
that ensures continuation of them
for long periods of time,
such as they may have
internal fertilization
and produce few young and
have no real predators.
There's nothing in there
that is going to kill them.
- [Narrator] It takes an uncommon stamina
to endure the long waiting.
Frank Searle knows what it's like.
- I'm not here to prove
that there's something
in Loch Ness, I'm here to
identify what is in Loch Ness.
We have 1400 years of
acceptable written records
to tell us that there's
something in Loch Ness.
For the first five and a
half years I lived in a tent
on the loch side,
spent almost every hour of
daylight out in a small boat.
I've clocked out now
22,000 hours of watching,
15,000 hours of it from a small boat.
- [Narrator] But the trek
into the unknown requires
more than sacrifice.
One must be ready for luck when it comes.
- It's very difficult to get
pictures because you only
see these animals for a short time,
perhaps a seven or eight seconds would be
the average sighting.
So you realize that you've
got to have a camera
in your hand all the time ready to go,
use a camera like a gun.
This is why so few people get pictures.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] None of these
photographs have been retouched.
The original negatives have been examined
by the finest scientific laboratories
in Europe and the United States.
You are seeing only what is here,
just as Frank Searle saw
it through the camera lens.
A few see in the monster
a more pervasive evil.
This is Dr. Armand, an eminent clergymen
and renowned Exorcist.
- I adjure thee, thou ancient serpent,
by the judge of death, by him
who made thee in the world,
that thou look thyself
no more in manifestations
of prehistoric demons.
- [Narrator] The words ring like an echo
from St. Columba's day.
- Be gone now hideous demon
unto thine appointed place
and return no more
to plague the servants of almighty God.
- [Narrator] And with the courage
of Shakespeare's ancient kings,
the minister defies the wind and who knows
what unearthly creation.
Another mystery of Loch Ness,
the infamous Boleskine House.
(tense music)
(dogs barking)
- He himself left a number of
his spirits that he raised,
sort of knocking around the
place when he left here.
I think most of those are sort
of finally pushed off now.
One of the most interesting ghosts,
or whatever you wanna call
it, that inhabit the place,
is one of a chap called Simon Lord Lovat
who was chief of the
Fraser clan at the time
of the Jacobite rebellion,
or whatever it was,
the Battle of Culloden in any way,
which most people would have heard about.
He was finally beheaded for treason
in London, the Tower
of London, and his head
at the time of his execution
was supposed to have
fallen into a basket.
And in fact, didn't, it
rolled off across the floor.
And the story goes that
at the time of his death,
that he was thinking
of himself in the heart
of the Highlands, which we are
just about in the geographical dead center
of the Highlands right here.
And his head still rolls
up and down the corridor
outside this room here.
And can be heard at night.
I've heard it myself several times.
(thunder rumbling)
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Aleister Crowley,
by his own preference,
liked to be called The Great Beast.
Looking out over the grounds
of Boleskine House, past
the graveyard, one cannot help but wonder,
if he saw himself as a kind of alter ego
to that great beast under the black water.
In his strange life,
might he not have communed
with the monster itself,
as he claimed to do so
often with the raised souls
of the dead hovering off the silent stones
of the ancient crypts.
(gentle music)
Chicago, perhaps the
city that might answer
those who waited anxiously
through the years to solve
the great mystery.
The atomic age began
here at the university,
creating a terrible light
more brilliant than 1000 suns,
but it brought with it more
than the technology of destruction.
It brought the power to heal,
and an even greater gift,
the ability of man to
prob the darkness among
the stars and the secrets
beneath the deep oceans.
Professor Roy Mackel is a major scientist
in his field and is
recognized internationally.
For over 20 years he's conducted research
at the biology center at
the University of Chicago.
(uplifting music)
And now, a new idea has to
be tried, a new approach,
a hydroponically triggered
sonar plate has been developed,
enabling a submarine to track the monster
without first disturbing
it with the intense strobe
lights used in normal camera operations.
A pre-expedition trial has been conducted
at an undisclosed location,
and a new factor had
entered the scene, time.
In order for the experiment to work,
it was necessary to begin
before bad weather hit the loch.
Winter was coming to the Highlands.
Sound carries surprisingly
great distances under water.
To avoid startling the monster with noise,
a series of visual signals was devised
with a small electronic float placed
over the area of operations.
In coordination with the divers,
technicians scouted
instrument locations on land,
stringing more than two
and a half mile of cable
and generator wire.
Special devices were
inserted in the regulators
on the divers' air tanks
to muffle the sounds
of the bubbles.
Total silence was the
key to this operation.
The monster had been
known to dive suddenly,
at the slightest noise.
A sensitive plate was put
in position so that it would
not be accidentally set
off by the submarine,
which was to hover nearby.
It had taken more than
two years to develop
an electric motor capable of operating
the submarine quietly
enough for this experiment.
The question was, would the great bulk
of the monster gliding
through the water create
enough vibration to be picked up
by the underwater microphones?
If so, it would trigger the
signal to the sonar crew
and alert the submarine.
There was only one way to find out.
The expedition was ready now,
to go down into the actual
waters of Loch Ness.
What kind of an animal will they find?
Will it be some new creature,
one that man has never seen,
or will it be something that has managed
to evolve unchanged since
the dawn of history,
a creature from the dinosaur
age that time forgot?
(animals cawing)
(ominous music)
(animals roaring)
(dramatic music)
We know for a fact that
creatures long thought
to be extinct do exist today,
virtually unchanged since the
age of the great reptiles,
250 million years ago.
Beginning a life from an egg no larger
than that of an English
Sparrow, the monitor lizard
of the Indonesian islands
grows to an average length
of 10 feet.
They weigh upwards of 200 pounds,
easily over-powering their prey,
which consists of anything
from small rodents to wild
pigs and sheep.
(soft, ominous music)
If the environment in which
an animal lives is cut
off from the intrusion
of other forms or more
dominant animals, then
it becomes a sanctuary,
a kind of harbor out of
reach of evolutionary storms.
Thus, on an island, for example,
or in a stable body of water,
that can remain indefinitely,
adapting over slow
centuries to minor changes
in climate and food supplies.
Distracted from it's
afternoon and search for food,
the lizard is wary when it
detects the scent of man
and lumbers off into the island brush.
But the most dominant animal
of all is man himself.
Despite his relatively small
size and vulnerable body,
his brain makes him master and he becomes
the unnatural enemy.
The prehistoric brain, however, is tiny,
operating on a simple
hunger-fear principle.
And that is why the animals
are so difficult to find.
They are dangerous and unpredictable,
reflecting the time of
their primeval ancestors.
When they are hungry, they
are no longer fearful,
becoming instead ferocious and intrepid.
Hours spent stalking
through the hot island
sun can be rewarded with nothing at all,
or a sudden rush of a hissing
200 pound reptile capable
of encircling a grown man's
waist with his powerful jaws.
(tense music)
(tense music)
Carnivorous habits of
the dinosaurs must've
been terrifying, especially
among creatures 30
and 40 feet long.
They were animals literally
designed for killing,
equipped with special horns and claws
and teeth for tearing.
Even the sky had its own unique terror.
(ominous music)
The instinct for the hunt
was an essential aspect
of prehistoric life.
Without it, no creature survives.
The predator is a beast
within a beast, alive
still, in the blood of a savage kingdom.
Due to the unlocated bottom
of Loch Ness, it's back
to the drawing board.
A means must be devised
to get scientists down
to the depth as yet
unfathomable to the modern
under sea craft, a method
for him to live deep beneath
the surface for extended periods of study.
Underwater science will, of necessity,
be forced to borrow from
outer space technology
or from the blueprints of oil and gas
companies continually
searching for the new deep
sea devices in their never
ending energy exploration.
And maybe we will find
the futuristic drawings
of popular mechanics
magazine and the tales
of science fiction writers
not too far fetched,
or even better yet,
we might draw from the master
of them all, Jules Verne.
Many adventurous companies
all over the world see
an abundance of minerals,
energy and food sources
hidden deep in the ocean.
And they are actually
constructing great depth
underwater craft to free these
vital needs for the world
from the bottom of the sea
needs and relieve the
pressure of land crops,
trying to feed the
millions of hungry people
in the world today.
New substances are being discovered,
stronger than existing methods,
which would aid in
equalizing the tremendous
pressure exerted on the hull
of an underwater machine
in the deepest parts of the ocean.
New breathing apparatus is
in the experimental stages.
All science and technology
will be called upon
to find ways of searching
into the unknown deep
ocean crevices of this new frontier.
It is this mass of information, of trial
and error, of experimental
frustration that will
someday bring forth the
necessary technology
that will enable scientists
to unlock the secrets
of a floor, if there is one,
of Loch Ness, and locate the layer
of Nessie, if she really does exist.
Dr. Lavenberg continues his discussion
of the evolution of sea
animals to terrestrial beings.
- We're pretty well convinced
that life originated
in the aquatic medium, in the sea.
Through billions of
years, the earth has been,
or the terrestrial parts
of earth have been leached
and the salts and material
have drained off in the ocean.
So when life originated,
it probably was fresher
water than that occurs today.
Less salts were in it.
As life evolved in the ocean,
it became more complex.
And then, in this sequence
of evolutionary events,
some of the animals that had
formed, like the coelacanth,
began to move into shallow
waters or swamp like areas.
And they were able to
survive in that habitat.
And that was the very
beginnings of the terrestrial
form of life.
These animals were able to
invade a hostile environment.
And one of the major changes
had to be that in terms
of the egg.
In the aquatic medium,
the egg is surrounded with
water and doesn't desiccate,
but on land it could dry up.
So that these animals at
first were in a medium,
in this watery medium, and tied to it for,
and tied to it in terms of reproduction
for that keeping the egg
moist so that it didn't die.
And we're one of the
major jumps then to get
into the terrestrial
environment was to have an egg
that was protected from drying up.
And once this happened,
this really enabled the animals
to invade and colonize
the terrestrial habitat.
- [Interviewer] Doctor,
no one has ever unearthed
any hard evidence of
a monster of the loch,
ever having killed anyone
or hauled an animal back
into the loch.
If Nessie is a benign creature
or a family of creatures,
does that lead to any
conclusion that it could be
from the fish family,
rather than from the
reptile or other species
of mammals that had been
known to have attacked
men and ships?
- I would not be willing
to put it in any category
on the basis that there hasn't been any
aggressive behavior on
the part of this animal
or this image that has
been seen in this area.
It might be that, if it
exists, it is a filter feeder.
It feeds upon the tiny
organisms that swim or float
in the water.
Or if it is something like
an eel-like organisms,
it could eat the fish
or it could eat on plant
material, it could be a grazer.
So it might not be a predatory animal.
And if it's not predatory,
there would be no basis for
seeing aggressive behavior.
- [Interviewer] What known
sea life could be categorized
as possible monsters?
The stories have come done
for centuries of attacks
on ships and men by mammoth sea creatures.
- There are some candidates
in the fish world,
types of fishes, that might
qualify for the status
of monster, but this is a
name that we would apply
on the basis of man and
his sightings at sea.
If you will consider
some of the early days
of the mariners out on the ocean,
they were sloshing through
the seas on these boats,
heavily laden with sails,
and all they saw for days on end
were the ocean, the blues and the grays.
What if, alongside of their boat,
a fish that was twice the size
of the vessel suddenly appeared?
And what if it were not the
colors that they were seeing?
It would make a very strong
impression upon them.
And there are such fishes.
There are fishes that we
call the ribbon vicious.
And one of these is the oarfish.
They are reported to
reach lengths of 35 feet,
they are a foot and a
half to two feet deep,
and they look like a ribbon.
They are bluish silver
with scarlet crimson fins,
and the fins, they're
modified in the front part
of the head in these
fishes to be two or three
feet in length.
They're scarlet red.
And if one of these
fishes suddenly appeared
at the surface, right
alongside your vessel,
and erected this scarlet
crimson dorsal fin,
you'd be impressed, you'd be startled.
And you would think,
at first, what is this?
It's so thin, and it might
just disappear immediately.
And with that short glimpse,
with the brilliant colors,
with the strange shape,
some of these fishermen would go back
and write these stories.
And they would turn to the ship
and they would probably be afraid.
And if you can imagine then,
if there were relatively
few people that saw it,
and they embellished upon the
story, for whatever reason,
then the myth that there
is some large unidentified
animal in the sea grows.
And the larger it is,
probably the faster it grows,
and always is equated that
it is going to harm man,
or it's there to do some harm,
and this helps build the
image that they were afraid,
and it thrashed at the boat
or something of this nature.
Therefore, these fishes,
the ribbon fishes,
are really logical candidates
to serve as the fishes
that are depicted in
some of our early books
and literature on sea monsters.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] Maybe Loch ness is a mirror,
looking back over the shoulder of time.
(tense music)
After an unexpectedly early storm,
which delayed the expedition
for three days and nights,
the divers and technicians
were anxious to get
out into the water.
The submarine, which had
been moored to a concrete
anchor placed in the
steep side of the loch
by previous expedition,
sustained only slight damage
to its rudder assembly.
But crew members were confident
it was not serious enough
to cause further delay.
Divers were sent down to
help position the submarine
and to explore the water
conditions in Urquhart Bay.
This bay had a history
of being a favorite spot
and the monster had been
seen here many times.
They went deeper, moving
through the dreamy water
toward the caverns.
Seconds tick slowly by.
The big question on everyone's mind was,
had the storm made the monster restless?
If it had, then there was
a good chance it would be
active and hopefully
trip the sonar device.
(tense music)
Peering into the cavern entrances,
divers strained for sign of movement,
a water plant uprooted or
torn, anything unusual,
anything at all?
Suddenly, a shore technician
picked up a short rasping
sound, coming from one of
the underwater microphones.
It came again, louder this time.
Guided by sonar from above,
the submarine slipped through
the water toward the target.
(dramatic music)
(tense music)
What you are about to see
again, in slow motion,
is an aquatic animal five
times as big as the submarine,
gliding through the water,
repelling itself with huge
flipper like appendages.
This is the first known motion
picture film of its kind.
And so we have come closer
than man has ever been before.
There is every reason to
expect that the answer
is very near.
But when the Phantom of
Loch Ness is finally known,
some part of it will
remain a mystery forever,
buried deep within the heart
of the Scottish Highlands.
(soft music)