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Welcome, before we begin, to ‘The Hidden Menagerie,’ a column dedicated wholly to cryptozoology. Because you demanded it! Sorta.

On Saturday, May 26th, 2007, a man called Gordon T. Holmes took a short film of something that he apparently saw. Within a week, news of this footage was a worldwide affair, because Mr. Holmes claimed that what he saw was the Loch Ness Monster. (You can read and/or see more about this here, and here, and here and here.) But putting aside, for just a moment, the question of what he saw, let us consider: What does the film show?

Well, it does not show final, definitive proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster – I’d like to lead with that. Capital-S Skeptics, people who are entirely certain that there assuredly is not a Loch Ness Monster, work themselves into a special froth over the idea that such-and-so “doesn’t prove anything!” And I would like to put their minds at ease. Nobody’s saying this proves anything. Well, some people probably are, but they are no real threat to the rule of reason, such as it is. So calm down. If this were conclusive proof of Nessie’s reality, it’d be in such heavy media rotation by now that even I’d be sick of it. It could, however, be suggestive of Nessie, without proving anything. So:

What the film does show is a dark, perhaps slightly elongated shape, moving along the surface of some water, not in time with the waves on said water. Regrettably, beyond this, nothing certain may be said. In particular, the film has no good reference for the size of the object. If one were to be shown this video, without any context whatsoever, there would be no real reason to guess that it showed a colossal monster of the waters. An otter, maybe? An eel? And as such, it is not an especially good piece of Nessie evidence, in and of itself; there are a lot of better pieces of evidence – photos, sonar contacts, etc. – than this.

However! It is not yet necessary to entirely throw out the video. While it is useless out of context, luckily, it does happen to come packaged with a context. Mr. Holmes, it seems, had himself a Loch Ness Monster sighting, to which this video is adjunct. And that’s something. (No! Not proof! We know!) He claims, for example, that the thing in the video is 45 feet long. Now of course there are lots of sightings, and of course they don’t prove anything either. But a video of any sort with an apparently honest sighting is at least interesting.

Every sighting in the world of a cryptozoological animal runs up against the same, basically insoluble problem: credibility. If someone tells you they saw, say, a deer, you believe them, ‘cause why not? But if they tell you they saw Nessie, well, Nessie may not even exist, so one has to decide whether or not to buy it. Or, ideally, to decide neither way. Still, there are things that can sway even the most open-minded sort.

I’m just going to keep this simple: According to his own website, Gordon Holmes claims to have seen an ABC, or Alien Big Cat – one of the large cats occasionally seen in traditionally big-cat-free areas, especially Britain; these are another important cryptozoological subject. Further, he claims to have recorded “Fairy like images,” of which you may read in his “Fairies on Ilkley Moor: The Evidence.” And I’m not going to get into the time travel thing.

Okay.

Let’s say, just for sake of argument now, that both Nessie and the ABCs are real. Let’s go right ahead and say that fairies are real, too, though I my own self see no reason to believe so. All three of these things being real in our construct, we must nevertheless admit that they are thin on the ground. Pretty hard to go out and see, yes? Otherwise maybe someone somewhere might’ve proven that they exist. And we are meant to believe that this gentleman has seen all three? And filmed two?

If all three existed, then of course it would be technically possible to see all three in one lifetime, if barely so. But honestly, a Nessie sighting strains credibility. A Nessie sighting, an ABC sighting, and a Fairy sighting – put ‘em all together, and they pretty much kill credibility dead. Now, I don’t actually mean to say that the man’s a liar. I think he has the endemic human condition of ‘coloring his perception with his expectations.’ So what we have is a video that’s useless out of context, and a context that just can’t be responsibly believed. I’m pleased for the increased attention to the Loch Ness Monster. I just wish it were for a better reason.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under The Kessen Run. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.