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The first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster occurred in the sixth century when Adomnán wrote in the Life of St. Columba about a “water beast” that attacked a man who was swimming in the water.
The sighting that catapulted the Loch Ness Monster into the public consciousness, however, took place in 1933. A woman named Aldie Mackay told the Inverness Courier a story about how she and her husband claimed to have seen the creature.
“The creature disported itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron,” read the article. “Soon, however, it disappeared in a boiling mass of foam. Both onlookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing, for they realised that here was no ordinary denizen of the depths, because, apart from its enormous size, the beast, in taking the final plunge, sent out waves that were big enough to have been caused by a passing steamer.”
The new Loch Ness Centre aims to continue the hunt for Nessie
Fast forward 90 years to 2023 and a new Loch Ness Centre will officially open on June 10 to further the legend of the creature.
“The real story and the truth is that Loch Ness has phenomena that nobody can yet find the answer to. So we don’t say there is a monster or there isn’t a monster,” Juliana Delaney, Chief Executive of Continuum, which carried out the refurbishment of the Loch Ness Centre, told the Daily Record.
“But what we do say is something is happening here. Something unusual is happening here.”
Delaney added, “I want the search to be ongoing. I don’t want the search or the research to stop. That’s really important, I don’t want the Loch Ness investigation to stop.”
She continued, “I want the search to be ongoing. I don’t want the search or the research to stop. That’s really important, I don’t want the Loch Ness investigation to stop.”
Considering the Official Loch Ness Monster Register has recorded over 1,100 official Loch Ness Monster sightings and there have been at least that many more that have gone unrecorded, the investigation doesn’t appear like it will be ending any time soon.