Encounter Atlas

Creature index / Lake and sea monsters

Loch Ness Monster

Also called Nessie, Niseag

Scotland's long-necked lake monster, the world's most famous cryptid.

Loch Ness is 23 miles long, more than 700 feet deep and so full of peat that visibility is a few feet. A new road along its north shore opened in 1933, and that spring a local couple reported a whale-like animal rolling in the water. Nessie mania followed.

The 1934 "Surgeon's Photograph" showed a slender neck rising from the loch; in 1994 it was revealed as a hoax made with a toy submarine. A 2018 environmental DNA survey found no reptile DNA but lots of eel DNA. Sightings still come in every year.

What witnesses report

  • Long neck and small head above the water
  • One or more humps
  • Large, unexplained wakes on calm days

Famous cases

  1. 1933Mackay sighting
    Loch Ness, Scotland
  2. 1934Surgeon's Photograph
    Loch Ness, Scotland
  3. 2018Loch Ness eDNA survey
    Loch Ness, Scotland

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Related

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