According to reports from around the world, prehistoric monsters are found not only in the ocean depths, but also in the most common freshwater bodies. In Scotland, for example, there are many lakes in which monsters and various other monsters live. Moreover, it is not recommended to approach Loch Morar for several centuries. Because the morag living in it, although it does not offend people, emits terrible groans and has a frightening look.
In Ireland, numerous witnesses claim that they saw creatures in Lakes Bray, Bren, Glendlock, Mac and Nif, exactly like the plesiosaurs from the books. Three Irish priests saw a similar animal on Lough Rea: On May 18, 1960, Daniel Murray, Matthew Burke and Richard Quigley were fishing in a boat. The silence was suddenly broken by a huge, flat-headed creature that approached them. It was about thirty meters from where they were sitting. All three of them clearly saw him, which they swore in front of their fellow villagers.
In Sweden, a monster lives in Lake Storsh that hunts at night for late outdoor enthusiasts. And recently, on the shore, clearly imprinted huge footprints were discovered, which the animals of this area could not leave: the fauna there is not distinguished by its diversity, and all its species are known in abundance.
In Chile, a giant lizard is said to be hiding in the waters of White Lake. A similar monster probably lives in Lake Waitorek (Australia), as the locals have repeatedly said, observing some giant creature in the depths.
In Canada, in Lake Manitoba (northwest of the city of Winnipeg), according to legends and modern eyewitness reports, relic animals of medium and large sizes live. The Indians, who have observed them since time immemorial, claim that they have a flat body, a snake head, dark skin and three humps. And they add that there is a whole family of them: a male, a female and several cubs. In the 1950s, local fisherman Oscar Frederickson fished out of the water a skeleton that scientists identified as "belonging to an eight-foot creature that went extinct many millions of years ago."
Flathead Lake, Montana (USA) is also home to monsters that resemble prehistoric long-necked lizards. In any case, there are plenty of people describing a mysterious creature of "yellow color with a cow's head on a long graceful neck."
In the east of Iceland, not far from the town of Egilsstadir, there is Lake Lagarflout, in which the Lagarflout snake lives. The first mention of it dates back to 1345. Since then, many eyewitnesses have claimed to have seen the 90-meter monster peacefully basking on the shore, crawling through the trees and floating in the lake. The serpent did no harm to anyone, but meeting with him is a sign of future troubles.
According to an old legend, a certain girl was not enough ‚her gold ring, she wanted to enlarge it and chose a magical way for this: she put a worm on the ring and went about her business. The explanation of how the worm was supposed to stretch the ring remained in the depths of the Middle Ages … It is only known that when the young lady returned for him, instead of the enlarged ring, she saw a huge worm. Out of fright, she threw both the decoration and the reptile into the lake. Since then, the Lagarflout snake has continued to grow and occasionally scare people.
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In a word, there are probably hundreds of such places on earth. However, the popularity of Loch Ness in the north of Scotland can be envied by all fresh water bodies of the world. For several decades now, the Loch Ness monster, or Nessie, has not left the pages of the Western press. Now in one, then in another magazine or newspaper, a new article appears about this lake and its mysterious inhabitant, which attracted the attention of the whole world to a small reservoir.
The search for the giant Nessie has been going on for more than one century. In the ancient legends of the Scottish port city of Inverness, there are many stories about the Loch Ness snake. According to scientists, Loch Ness was formed millions of years ago. Local folklore is full of stories about a monster that lives in the dark depths of the lake. According to legend, it has a long neck, massive carcass and a small head. It is curious that the plesiosaurs, which became extinct millions of years ago, fully fit this description. Some researchers, based on this similarity, argued that the Loch Ness monster is an accidentally surviving "shard" of the planet's distant past.
Nessie's existence is spoken of not only in myths and legends. This is also recorded in one document of 565: a certain Abbot Jonah wrote about Loch Ness and the mysterious "water beast" living in it, which killed people. Only once did people manage to reason with the monster. Saint Columbus of Ireland sailed on the lake with his disciples. Suddenly, a strange-looking animal, similar to a giant frog, appeared from the water. According to the stories of his disciples, Saint Columba ordered the monster to stop and not touch them. And, oddly enough, it obeyed and disappeared under the water.
All local residents believe in the famous creature. From each old resident, the curious can get "accurate" information and detailed descriptions of "old Nesen", as they familiarly call the monster. Still would! Thanks to a unique relic, this small town in the past has turned into a thriving tourist center. Many cafes and first-class hotels are built along the banks of Loch Ness. Every tourist traveling in Scotland will certainly come to see the legendary lake.
It all started with a seemingly insignificant incident. In the summer of 1933, a certain engineer A. Palmer, walking along the coast in the morning, suddenly heard a deafening splash. He told about it this way: “I thought that a storm suddenly began, but not a single leaf moved on the trees. Looking at the lake, I saw strong waves on its surface - a seething whirlpool several hundred meters in circumference. At first I could not understand its reasons, but then I saw some very long and dark object that surfaced in that place from the depths of the lake …
About a hundred meters from the shore, I saw a flat snake head. On either side of it were moving some strange-looking outgrowths that I can only compare with the tentacles of an octopus. The mouth of this head, which looked like a black shell, opened and closed every twenty seconds - the monster, emerging from the depths, could not catch its breath. It rested in this position for about half an hour, then slowly sailed to the southeast."
Another incident happened with a local resident John McKay and his wife - they also saw a strange creature in the water. According to Mrs. McKay, she has never seen such a huge animal. A giant black body appeared above the waves, then went under the water. Her husband forbade her to tell anyone about it, since no one would have believed them anyway. But the wife could not restrain herself and reported what she saw to the neighbors.
No one then attached much importance to either Palmer's "visions" or Mrs. McKay's story, which could easily be explained by a play of imagination. However, the events that followed were absolutely startling. Over the next few weeks, several hundred people saw the monstrous snake simultaneously and separately! During this time, 118 cases of the appearance of a strange snake-like creature near the coast or in the distance on the surface of Loch Ness were recorded.
Another eyewitness - a certain Ross - stood on the shore of the lake. Suddenly, he saw straight ahead of him a huge head of a monster the size of a car wheel, which looked at him from the water.
Mrs Lennan and her niece could see even a thick mane on the monster's neck, and numerous thorns on the tail, which protruded vertically from the water. Miss Howdy spotted Nessie from the balcony of the cafe: he looked like a huge fat worm. Some people allegedly saw a snake even on the shore.
Soon an article appeared in the local newspaper, in which the version was put forward that this creature was a prehistoric animal that had accidentally survived in the deep waters of the lake since the Ice Age. The agitated researchers immediately began looking for Nessie. The search unfolded on a large scale. Many documentaries were filmed, and some of the films clearly showed a living object moving at more than 10 miles per hour.
In 1970, researchers used underwater photography for the first time, thanks to which they obtained an image of the upper body, head and neck of the monster. However, the most striking thing was that all eyewitness accounts, films and photographs were descriptions of completely different animals.
This allowed us to make the assumption that more than one prehistoric monster lives in the lake. With the help of deep-sea sonars in 1997, at the bottom of the lake, a giant crack 300 m deep and 9 m wide was discovered. A version was put forward that this crevice is somehow connected with other bodies of water, and underwater creatures can swim from one lake to another, hiding from people.
Numerous reports have drawn the attention of serious scientists to Loch Ness. The New York Zoological Society has announced a £ 5,000 prize to anyone who gets the monster. Circus entrepreneur Mills has promised an even higher fee - £ 20,000! From Africa, seduced by a large reward announced for the capture of a giant sea serpent, the lion hunter M. Whitwell arrived. He spent many days and nights on the shore of the lake, looking for a fantastic creature, but, having achieved nothing, returned back to Africa.
The specialists were more persistent. Their ships and boats literally furrowed the lake up and down (Loch Ness is 38 km long and 3 km wide). Planes on low level flight circled over the lake for days, but the mysterious monster literally sank into the water. Loch Ness snake enthusiasts say that, frightened by the noise of numerous engines of expedition ships and aircraft, it dived to the bottom of the lake, where it lurked.
Recently, the issue of the Loch Ness snake has been revived in the Western press again. Again, eyewitness reports are cited, and special conversations are organized with them on television. In some foreign magazines, photographs of this mysterious creature were placed, though not very clear. Similar monsters have been found in other lakes in Scotland, such as Loch Morar and Loch Shin. In Loch Morar, a giant snake was recently seen by the captain and passengers of a motor boat, near which the monster suddenly emerged from the depths. Both the lakes mentioned, in which megasmies live, are rumored to be deep: about 300 m. They rise only a little above sea level and in the past had wide outlets into the ocean.
A large number of facts, stories, legends, photographs, drawings and other materials about the Loch Ness creation are collected in the book of the English scientist Constance White “More than a legend. History of the Loch Ness Monster . This book is a call for serious scientific research on the legendary inhabitant of Loch Ness, which, according to the author, is of great interest to science.
It must be said that the author's arguments are very convincing. If we discard all the folklore and fictional versions inevitable in such cases, then the Loch Ness serpent will appear before us in a more real, from the point of view of a zoologist, light. According to the author's carefully selected and, if possible, cleared of fiction data and drawings made according to the words of observers, the Loch Ness snake outwardly resembles a thick worm (however, about 20 m long!) With a thin neck and small head. He swims, wriggling with his whole body, but not in a horizontal, but in a vertical plane. Therefore, observers most often happened to see the loops of his steeply curved body sticking vertically out of the water; moving, "humps" protrude from the water, then plunge into it again. In the photograph, the creature swimming near the surface also appears as a series of separate black bumps towering above the water. Some lucky reporters have even managed to photograph a snake's head sticking out of the water.
Nevertheless, until now, the question of the Loch Ness snake remains unresolved. It is possible that scientists are faced with the amazing fact of the discovery of a relict lizard, all of whose relatives died out 70 million years ago (some directly associate it with the Mesozoic plesiosaurs-cryptoclydes, the remains of which were found in Scotland).
Attempts have been made more than once to establish the "identity" of the mysterious Nessie. They say that the famous conqueror of the ocean depths of the mid-20th century, William Beebe, was going to sink to the bottom of Loch Ness in his bathysphere to see what was happening there. But this idea was not realized: the water in the lake is too muddy, and nothing can be seen at a distance of several meters. Therefore, British scientists, who are now trying to establish the reasons for such persistent rumors about the monstrous inhabitant of Loch Ness, have refused the services of scuba divers. It was decided to "feel" the lake with an echo sounder.
The Scottish authorities hastened to declare Nessie persona grata: from now on, no one dares either kill him or harm him for any purpose. There is a hope that in the near future this one of the loudest sensations of nature - or human fantasy will finally be resolved.
Pernatiev Yuri Sergeevich. Brownies, mermaids and other mysterious creatures