An American visiting Scotland last month believes he may have unintentionally recorded the Loch Ness Monster emerging from the fabled waters. Nickolas Weigand was traveling on a tour bus down the shore of the famous Scottish location on May 18 when the alleged sighting happened.
His report became the fifth “official” Loch Ness Monster sighting recorded on the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register in 2026.
Nickolas Wiegand stated in his report that he “was only looking through the viewfinder of my camera rather than the lake itself at the time of the filming.” He said he was traveling down a road next to Loch Ness at a rather high speed when he took the images (which can be viewed on The Inverness-Courier website).
“Because our tour was limited on time, I did not have time to watch my recorded footage until after the tour was over,” he added.
“After careful review of the footage, I discovered something mysterious and unknown deep in the water quite far away from shore. In the footage and in the still photographs I captured from the video, you can clearly see a dark image of something breaking the water surface as we drove by.
“The object is relatively large, gauging the distance from where we were on the bus to the distance of the water, using road signs on shore to gauge what was the size of whatever was in the water.”
Previous Loch Ness Monster sightings in 2026
The Loch Ness Monster sighting by Nickolas Weigand occurred only a few weeks after three other encounters in late April.
On April 25, Holly Palmer of Worcestershire reported that around 2 p.m. she and Scot McMillan saw something in Loch Ness while traveling on the Jacobite Cruise boat.
Two days prior to that sighting, Margaret Sunstrum and Joan Sweeney, visiting from Ontario, Canada, were driving along Loch Ness, and we were traveling south at just after Dochgarroch Lock on A82. One of the women “spotted a large shape crest the water that she thought looked like a whale.” Both women then witnessed an “S shaped wake extending for quite a distance.”
Then, two days prior to that Loch Ness Monster sighting, Sara Gubicza and her husband, visiting the loch from America, reported seeing what looked like a white shark fin moving in the water at 7:55 a.m. “The fin size was about an 18 inch triangle and it was whitish gray,” she reported. “As far as how fast it was moving, I’m not really sure as I was on a bus riding by when I saw it. It seemed to be right in the middle of the loch.”
The five “official” Loch Ness Monster sightings are just one short of the total for all of 2025. The sixth sighting, which was “unofficial,” was captured by long-time Nessie Hunter Eoin O’Faodhagain in March. O’Faodhagain, a frequent livestream watcher, recorded the Loch Ness Monster sighting while viewing a webcam feed operated by Visit Inverness Loch Ness and located at the Clansman Hotel on the loch’s coast.