Loch Ness

The beast in the River Ness

The oldest written account is in Adomnán's Life of Columba, completed between 697 and 704, about a century after Columba died in 597. Columba came to the River Ness and found a man being buried. The mourners said he had been "seized and most savagely bitten by a water beast" while swimming. When Columba sent a companion to swim across for a boat, the beast surfaced and rushed at the swimmer "with gaping mouth and with great roaring." Columba told it, "You will go no further. Do not touch the man; turn back speedily," and it fled "as if pulled back with ropes."

Adomnán gives no year and never calls the beast large. The year usually given for the episode, 565, is Bede's date for Columba's mission to the northern Picts.

The Courier report, 1933

The modern legend starts on page 5 of the Inverness Courier for Tuesday, May 2, 1933. Credited "From A Correspondent," the report described a businessman and his wife who, driving along the north shore near Abriachan Pier, saw a creature "rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale." The paper did not name the couple. They were Aldie Mackay, manageress of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, and her husband. He told the loch's water bailiff, Alex Campbell, who wrote the report. The old hotel now houses the Loch Ness Experience.

The Surgeon's Photograph

In December 1933, the Daily Mail sent the big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to the loch to look for the creature. The Natural History Museum found no significant difference between his footprint casts and a mounted hippopotamus's foot. On April 21, 1934, the Mail printed a photograph of a long neck and small head above the water, credited to a London surgeon, Robert Kenneth Wilson.

In a letter dated April 27, 1962, Wilson told Maurice Burton, formerly of the Natural History Museum, that he had "never claimed that this photograph depicts the so-called 'Monster,' others did that, though to some extent with my connivance." On December 7, 1975, the Sunday Telegraph's Mandrake column found Wetherell's son Ian, then 63, behind the bar of the Cross Keys pub in Chelsea. Ian said the photograph showed a model: "we made it from one of the little toy submarines you could buy for about half-a-crown."

Marmaduke Wetherell's stepson, Christian Spurling, told the researchers David Martin and Alastair Boyd that the model was a toy submarine with a neck and head he had built from plastic wood. He signed a confession on July 11, 1992, witnessed by Martin and Boyd, and died in November 1993. The Sunday Telegraph published their findings on March 13, 1994. Richard D. Smith argued in Fate magazine in 1995 that Spurling's account does not ring true.

Searches and sightings

In October 1987, Operation Deepscan swept the loch's deep basins with 19 sonar boats side by side, picked up three contacts of interest, and could not regain any of them. A BBC survey in 2003 used 600 sonar beams and found no trace of the monster.

Environmental DNA from 250 water samples, collected in June 2018 and reported by the University of Otago on September 5, 2019, found no reptile, shark, catfish, or sturgeon DNA and "a very significant amount of eel DNA." Neil Gemmell, who led the project, said the team "can't discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness."

Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness Project says a floating log can appear to swim against the wind because the water carrying it flows upwind in an internal seiche. As of October 2026, the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, which counts reports back to 565, lists 1,180 sightings, 15 of them from 2026. The latest, dated August 21, 2026, describes a black creature about 6 meters long that stayed at the surface for about 20 seconds.

The Loch Ness Experience was called the Loch Ness Centre until 2026. In late October 2026, it was open daily from 10am to 5pm. Storytellers in 1933-style dress lead the 1-hour tour, which leaves every 15 minutes. Booking online at least 24 hours ahead saves up to 15%. Parking at the Experience is free. On display is a hippo-foot ashtray that the Experience links to Marmaduke Wetherell's 1933 footprints. Its Deepscan cruise, named for the 1987 search, takes 12 passengers and sails hourly from late March to early November.

Urquhart Castle, about 2 miles from Drumnadrochit, opens daily at 9:30am and closes as early as 4:30pm in winter and as late as 8:15pm from April through August, with last entry an hour before closing. In October 2026, adult tickets were £14 online and £16 at the castle, and once the online tickets sell out the castle sells none on the day. Parking is free, but a space is guaranteed only to people who book online.

Boat tours also leave from Dochgarroch Lock and Clansman Harbour (Jacobite), Drumnadrochit (Loch Ness Cruises), and Fort Augustus (Cruise Loch Ness, which runs all year).