Cryptid Hunting and the Scottish Highlands
Loch Ness, Scotland
This post was originally published March 9, 2017.
I bet everyone thought I was joking. I bet they thought: Ha ha, Brittney is going to hunt down the Loch Ness Monster. Isn’t that a silly thought? No. I went there. I booked a tour and got on a boat with sonar and now I am besties with Nessie. You probably can’t verify that with her though cause, y’know, she’s shy.
It was a time investment well worth making. I woke up early and found my way to Starbucks, as it was the only place open at 7 am, then I stepped onto a tour bus to make the 4.5 hour long ride from Edinburgh to Loch Ness. You might be surprised to hear that the ride was not bad at all. The tour guide’s name was Paddy. That’s P-A-D-D-Y not P-A-T-T-Y because P-A-T-T-Y is the name for a woman or for a burger of which he is neither. Between our group singalongs of Scottish music, he entertained the tour group with witty recounts of history, and I learned that the Highlanders would rid their kilts of lice by dousing them in urine and Sean Connery saved the land that used to be owned by the creator of James Bond.
I passed many beautiful sites, both natural and man-made. In Falkirk, there was a desire to draw more people to the area, so a sculptor drew upon Scottish folklore to create an unforgettable attraction. Kelpies are shape-shifting sprites that live in water, and when they are hungry, they leave the water and take the shape of the most beautiful stallion imaginable. They wait by the side of a road or a field for a person to come. The person has to stop. They have to touch the horse—the most beautiful thing they have ever seen—but when they do, their hand gets stuck. The Kelpie drags the person into the water to drown then be devoured. There are now two giant metal horse heads in Falkirk. We did not stop for fear of being eaten.
We did, however, make stops for a great view of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland, and at Glencoe, a lovely place in the Scottish Highlands with a not-so-lovely history. In 1692, after a Jacobite uprising, the army was under orders to make an example out of the MacDonalds clan. 38 people were killed in the middle of the night, while the rest went running up the mountains naked. Another 40 people were estimated to have died from exposure after their homes were burned. The waterfalls prove that the mountains still cry over the MacDonalds’ untimely deaths.
The climax of the tour was at Loch Ness, where I shoved fish and chips in my mouth then hopped on a boat to explore the lake. The first documented appearance of the Loch Ness Monster was in the 6th century, when she was said to have been chowing down on people who went out on the lake. Either she got her fill of human flesh early in the first millennia or she’s turned vegetarian because she hasn’t been eating anyone recently. From the deck of the ship, I could see the harsh waves of the deep water and several suspicious looking sticks. I also saw wild goats roaming on the rocky hillside and a large land strip that is undeniable proof of Nessie having tried to escape the lake and sliding back in. Below the deck were multiple screens displaying the density of the space beneath the boat and a full bar—a combination that practically guarantees monster sightings. I was below deck when I saw her. Nessie and all her majestic beauty. She bobbed right past the boat I was on, and I managed to capture the whole experience on the video embedded below.
And people say she’s not real.