The mysterious Loch Ness Monster has puzzled people ever since 1933 when the first ‘sighting’ happened in the Scottish Highlands.
Often described as large, long necked, with or without humps, its existence is yet to be proven.
It’s been a while since ‘Nessie’ made headlines, but the mythical monster was recently ‘spotted’ on 4k drone footage captured by a 54-year-old Scottish camper.
Or was it?
Adventurer Richard Mavor operates his own YouTube channel Richard Outdoors. It features films packed with great camping tips and outdoor adventure advice and footage and, until recently, alleged footage of a mysterious creature swimming just below the surface of the water near the banks of the loch.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he told the Daily Record.
“I had to rewind the footage several times and have watched it several times since. I don’t know what it is but it certainly has the same shape as previous sightings of Nessie.
“The more I watch it I think, ‘Crikey! There really wasn’t anything in the area that it could be’.
“It’s the same shape as the previous Nessie sightings. There was no driftwood or anything like that, so who knows.”
It all sounds so believable.
Read: Book in a date with Nessie
“We had just parked up and I thought I would get some nice shots on the beach for my YouTube,” he continued.
“I didn’t notice what I had picked up until others told me to watch out for it.
“It could be a trick of the light but we can’t be sure.”
It seems though Nessie experts are sure. At least about the ‘trick’ part of the footage, which has been debunked by experts.
One such expert, Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous monster-hunting vigil on the loch. Mr Feltham lives on the shore of the loch and has been watching for Nessie for nearly 30 years.
He said when he first viewed the incredible footage, he felt a feeling of “deflation”.
“There appears to be no natural movement in the object, and an unlikely degree of illumination, I have spent many hours as a passenger in a microlite flying low over the loch trying to spot a silhouette in the dark waters, and things just do not show up that clearly, it looks almost like the object is illuminated,” he tells Daily Record.
Read: Highland Fling: My journey through remote Scotland
YouTube channel ParaBreakdown analysed the video and backs Mr Feltham’s suspicions. It says the footage has been digitally altered with the addition of a ‘toy plesiosaurus’.
“Now the video has been proven beyond any doubt to be a simple hoax,” says Mr Feltham.
“Mavors had actually used a small section of the drone footage elsewhere in his holiday video, but the clip he duplicated did not have the Nessie image superimposed onto it, whereas the drone sequence did.”
The two versions of the same clip don’t add up, says Mr Feltham.
“It’s utter nonsense, a schoolboy mistake in the world of hoaxing, never show the investigators your ‘before and after’ workings.
“Someone quickly found the online image of a plesiosaur that he had used to create the Nessie shape, which he simply superimposed onto his drone footage.
“When a researcher asked to see the original footage, he had unfortunately deleted it already; more red flags.
“Lie upon lie upon lie.
“The mystery around what he has done has been completely solved, it’s a poorly executed deliberate hoax and now all that is left is for him to own up.”
Read: Five things you can only do in Scotland
Fellow Nessie expert Roland Watson runs the Loch Ness Mystery blog and agrees the image is fake.
“Various people have looked at this and it is beyond reasonable doubt it is CGI using a picture of a plesiosaur,” he says.
This latest ‘sighting’ of Nessie comes almost 80 years after the first modern sighting, when a local couple claimed to have seen “an enormous animal” on the loch’s surface.
There have been over 1150 sightings since, none of which can be proven.
“Sadly, this does not help the cause of solving the real mystery behind thousands of sightings over centuries,” concludes Mr Watson.
Have you been to Loch Ness? What was the Nessie scene like? Why not share your experience in the comments section below?
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