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It is often claimed that persons who report encounters with cryptozoological creatures “just want attention.” It’s an odd claim – while such people certainly do get attention, it is very rarely of a sort that rational people would desire. Take Doug Wilhide, the subject of a front-page story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on June 2nd, 2000. The previous day, that same paper had published a letter he’d written them, claiming to have seen an alligator in Lake of the Isles, a scenic body of water in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. Now, this was an unusual claim, to be sure. But it probably didn’t automatically deserve the headline, “Is the ‘alligator in Isles’ story a croc?” Or the Peter Pan references contained within the article. And there certainly wasn’t any reason to tell us that Wilhide’s daughter and fellow alligator-spotter, Anduin (whose name, in these multicultural times, gave pause to nobody), was named after a river in Lord of the Rings. Unless we were meant to think, “Jeez! Only weirdoes read Lord of the Rings!” Which we most likely were, in those pre-Peter Jackson days.

Trouble was, his story wasn’t really all that incredible.

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As a boy, I spent three years as a member of the Cub Scouts (the junior organization to the Boy Scouts of America). This afforded me many opportunities to be deep in the woods with large groups of other young boys. And thus I was able to observe the tendency of young boys, when deep in the woods, to become convinced that said woods were populated by animals that were, shall we say, not entirely accepted by conventional science.

One such animal – and I use the term rather loosely – was the Bull Weevil. The Bull Weevil, I was told with great gravitas at the beginning of one camping trip, was a horrible, maneating beast; it had eerie, luminescent red eyes, and terrible, hideous fangs and talons. Apart from these features, however, it was essentially humanoid. It was therefore, basically, an ogre, a bogeyman of the forest, just waiting for its opportunity to turn a rather commonplace scout camping trip into a morbid, supernatural tragedy.

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There was a Jackalope on my block when I was a boy.

But first, some background:

The word “Jackalope” – referring to an antlered rabbit – was coined by the American pioneers; it was a creature of their tall tales. Though on a basic level, according to these tales, the Jackalope was simply a species of rabbit that sported deerlike antlers, its attributes would be…embellished from story to story. Sometimes it was said that male Jackalopes would become incorrigible during rutting season, attacking anything whatsoever in order to impress the females; bison, taking pity on the rabbits, would step out of their way when thus attacked. Sometimes it was said that Jackalopes loved alcohol, and would raid human camps for it. They couldn’t live in holes like other rabbits, due to their antlers; they had no fear of predators for the same reason. And so on. Some storytellers went so far as to ascribe anthropophagy (man-eating) to the species, though one imagines that the Jackalopes would have a bit of difficulty taking their prey. The pioneers, it seems, had what you might call “fertile imaginations.”

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We have mentioned the tendency of human beings to see things according to their preconceptions. And it would appear that the esteemed opposition to the Loch Ness Monster idea is every bit as susceptible to this phenomenon as the pro-Nessie crowd. In the short time after the Holmes video hit the net, a mind-shattering array of alternate explanations were put forth. To some people, the object in the film looked like a seal; to others, a fish. Some thought it was the reflection of an airplane. Some thought it was a length of tubing being dragged along. Or an otter. Otters are nice!

What this broad variety demonstrates is fairly clear: The image is not clear enough to be certain just what it might be. Anything that could be an otter or the reflection of an airplane is something that is hard to identify for certain. Most commentators, therefore, had the basic sense to qualify their statements. When engaging in a debate, armed with such uncertain data, a simple “it looks like this to me” is only reasonable.

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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:

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