Nessie’s body has been caught on camera, a monster hunter claims, after a mysterious black hump was filmed rising and sinking in the water.
Eoin O’Faodhagain was watching for the mythical beast via webcam when he spotted something in Loch Ness roughly the size of a small car.
He said: ‘I was intrigued when I spotted it, and said to myself ‘what the hell is that moving out there causing such a disturbance?’
‘I noticed a large wake moving steadily across the loch, more than half a mile out from the shoreline.
‘On occasions, a large black round hump was visible out of the water in front of the wake.’
For a moment, he dismissed it as a boat.
But then something unexpected happened – it disappeared beneath the water.
He said: ‘At first I thought it might be the black rubber speedboat out of Fort Augustus that zips around, bringing tourists out onto the loch at terrific speed.
‘But observing this black round hump, it appeared and disappeared throughout the entirety of the video clip.
‘At the end, the wake just fizzled out and the loch returned to its calm nature.’
For Mr O’Faodhagain, 60, it left only one explanation.
He said: ‘You could not compare this sighting to a boat, as when it ended there was nothing to see on the surface – only flat calm water.
‘My instinct then was this could possibly be a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.
‘I assume the hump-shaped object is a front body part of the creature, and the rest of it is beneath the surface.
‘The creature moved briskly with a purpose in mind.’
The sighting was captured using a webcam maintained by Visit Inverness Loch Ness (VILN) at Shoreland Lodges, near Fort Augustus on the loch’s southern shore.
To gauge the size of the hump, Eoin compared it with another image taken by the same camera, showing the Spirit of Loch Ness – a 21-metre long tourist boat.
He said: ‘The Spirit of Loch Ness uses that far shore route when it leaves Fort Augustus, and it always looks like a squeezed-up square.
‘The creature’s hump sticking out of the water was quite large, especially taking in the distance from the webcam to the object.
‘At times in the video, I would estimate the black round hump to be four to five feet out of the water, and 12 feet long.’
Mr O’Faodhagain often logs on to watch the water from his home in County Donegal, Ireland.
Over the years, he’s racked up multiple entries in the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register.
But even to him this latest encounter stood out.
He said: ‘This is not a regular occurrence on Loch Ness.
‘It was there, then it was gone as quick, then the loch returned to its calm tranquillity.’
The VILN webcams can be watched live online at visitinvernesslochness.com
What IS the Loch Ness Monster?
Rumours of a strange creature living in the waters of Loch Ness have abounded over the decades, yet scant evidence has been found to back up these claims.
One of the first sightings, believed to have fuelled modern Nessie fever, came in May 2, 1933.
On this date the Inverness Courier carried a story about a local couple who claim to have seen ‘an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface’.
Another famous claimed sighting is a photograph taken in 1934 by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson.
It was later exposed as a hoax by one of the participants, Chris Spurling, who, on his deathbed, revealed that the pictures were staged.
Other sightings James Gray’s picture from 2001 when he and friend Peter Levings were out fishing on the Loch, while namesake Hugh Gray’s blurred photo of what appears to be a large sea creature was published in the Daily Express in 1933.
The first reported sighting of the monster is said to have been made in AD565 by the Irish missionary St Columba when he came across a giant beast in the River Ness.
But no one has ever come up with a satisfactory explanation for the sightings – although in 2019, ‘Nessie expert’ Steve Feltham, who has spent 24 years watching the Loch, said he thought it was actually a giant Wels Catfish, native to waters near the Baltic and Caspian seas in Europe.
An online register lists more than 1,000 total Nessie sightings, created by Mr Campbell, the man behind the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and is available at www.lochnesssightings.com.
So what could explain these mysterious sightings?
Many Nessie witnesses have mentioned large, crocodile-like scutes sitting atop the spine of the creature, leading some to believe an escaped amphibian may be to blame.
Native fish sturgeons can also weigh several hundred pounds and have ridged backs, which make them look almost reptilian.
Some believe Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur – like an elasmosaur – that survived somehow when all the other dinosaurs were wiped out.
Others say the sightings are down to Scottish pines dying and flopping into the loch, before quickly becoming water-logged and sinking.
While submerged, botanical chemicals start trapping tiny bubbles of air.
Eventually, enough of these are gathered to propel the log upward as deep pressures begin altering its shape, giving the appearance of an animal coming up for air.
