I’ve just read a really interesting opinion piece on The Guardian website by Philip Hoare that questions if the internet has killed the Loch Ness Monster. I can somewhat identify with Hoare’s feelings that the mystery and wonder brought forth by monster stories gracing the headlines has disappeared. A memory that always stands out strongly for me was being a young child when a monster scare broke out in the village I lived in. I can remember being at Primary School but I forget my exact age, but I do know that it was before the internet was a thing in my house. The local paper was (and still is) The Wiltshire Times and they ran a story on a Big Cat that had been seen prowling the fields near my house and right next to the warehouse that my mother worked in. I will filled with pure fascination and terror that can never be replicated by a story breaking on the internet.
However I’m not so keen to consider this a terrible thing. I believe that any decent Paranormal researcher, Fortean, Cryptozoologist or whatever they identify as wants to know what is really causing what is or has been witnessed, whether it be a ghost, monster or UFO sighting they are dealing with. There are, of course, those who revel in the pseudo-scientific and the answers they fancy that aren’t necessarily logical, but don’t be mistaken in thinking that they represent every researcher out there. The majority of researchers I know are rational thinkers who aren’t led by their biases.
When a new monster sighting occurs we now have masses of information at our finger tips. More than that even… we have the experience of so many others at our finger tips too. I have witnessed the buzz of activity borne when it is reported somewhere in the world that a strange beast has been spotted, caught on film or captured. Communities of people who were never connected before the internet swap notes and speculations, the reporters and eye-witnesses are easy to track down, experts around the world – biologists, marine biologists, ecologists – are contactable immediately, and we can examine what happened and where it happened in great detail because all the details we need are often online. More often than not researchers can discover what it is that has really happened – whether it be hoax, misidentification or the next new discovery of a real monster that has never been seen before! If it’s going to happen, then I truly believe that now is the time.
Before the internet made it possible to connect to the bigger world I was a young girl who clung to mystery as though it were essential, not because I loved the mystery but because I loved the ‘what if?’. Today modern technology and social media make that ‘what if?’ easier to answer. Before, there were ‘what if?‘s that went unanswered and led me down the path to becoming a pseudo-scientific ghost hunter, and as a result I wasted so much money and time on the wrong questions. So yes, although it is a shame that a lot of the mystery in these stories is now lost by the instant media that our world has come to know, I feel it has been replaced with something much more valuable and important – the ability to answer the mystery once and for all. I know of nothing more wondrous that resolved curiosity.
On a parting note – I visited Drumnadrochit last year, and Nessie is looking as well as she ever did 😉
photo credit: Artist unknown (if you know, let me know)
There will always be monsters, at least the rumor and stories of monsters. I don’t imagine anytime soon anyone will be driving around Loch Ness and NOT look, even if just a glimpse.
Perhaps we can retain these ‘beasts’ such as Nessie and Bigfoot in modern fairy tales as we have done with Dragons and ‘the little people’.
with more people than ever having a camera on them at all times, a webcam (or many?) pointed at the Loch, you’d think there would be more sightings – but that has not proven to be the case. The heyday for the ‘monster’ was 80 years ago (with a brief spike about 40 yrs ago), but I don’t anticipate anything further. Now the monster is like the Kardahsians – famous for being famous.
You do realise there are numerous sightings every year, right?
Hayley during the Nineties I was working in the Lake District at that hotel that looks out over Lake Windermere in fact and I encountered two people who’s stories tell me much of what’s going on out there’s still completely bypassing the internet.
The first we’ll call The Witness.
He was working as porter there with his best mate me brother and one day he spotted cops pulling in the drive. The next thing anyone knew he was putting a bathroom towel over his head and try’n’o sneak past the coppers disguised as an Arab which they instantly spotted and made a grab for him forcing him to dive in the lake and start swimming for it.
The thing was he’d almost reached the other side when all of a sudden he started swimming back happily allowing the cops to catch him.
At a later date I happened to ask him why he’d turned back and all I got out him was an abrupt look of cold horror as he stared into space eventually followed by a phrase which sounded something like “that thing in there”.
As far as I know I’m the only person who’s mentioned versions of this story on the internet on two previous occasions which means The Witness for reasons best known to himself’s never wanted to own that story.
Contrast The Witness to The Anti-Witness.
At that same hotel I was mates with a fellow Scouser who somehow’d cottoned onto me having a background of unusual experiences of my own hence he’d be endlessly needling me about people who see and believe in weird things needing to see psychiatrists etc to which I’d only respond he was probably right.
As luck would have it while he was taking a cigarette break I noticed a weird white sphere moving across the sky behind him and observed aloud “Hmm you don’t see many of those round these parts…” the idea being to make him think I was seeing something along the lines of rare types of bird and therefore something of distinct interest to him and a lot of the other lads at the hotel but instead of turning around to look up he now immediately began shuffling his feet and scuffing loose gravel doing anything in fact to avoid looking.
Finally after an extended period of these shenanigans he finally turned to look up at a different part of the sky to that I’d originally indicated although by a curious coincidence it was precisely where the sphere’d moved but just at the moment it was finally disappearing out of sight.
“Where’s this thing you wanted me to see?” he asked to which I replied “It doesn’t matter now it was prob’ly nothing anyway.”
The point of these stories being there’s an assumption out there everything that happens ends up on the internet but that assumption ignores the fact there’re now more TV channels than ever but people watch far less TV than in the days when there were just a few.
Even when a skeptic’s presented with a solid gold opportunity to see something out the norm somehow they’ll conspire to miss seeing it almost as if they’ve adapted their sixth senses to prove there’s no such thing as sixth senses!
Well, you don’t know many decent skeptics then, do you.