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Nessie: The Surgeon's Photograph EXPOSED
- GenresCryptozoology
100 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1999
11 people want to read
About the author
David Martin
956 books22 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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October 21, 2021
This book is surprisingly difficult to find, even in cryptozoological circles. Even though it is one of the most important books in the field as it conclusively proved the famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster sticking its neck up out of the water - supposedly taken by London surgeon Kenneth Wilson - to be a hoax. I personally borrowed the copy I read from a friend, who might be the one person I know in real life more knowledgeable about cryptid/supernatural/UFO stuff than I am.
The book is concise but contains everything you need to know about the case and the detective work involved in proving the Surgeon's Photo of the LNM a hoax. What surprised me the most was that all the evidence had been out there in plain sight by the mid-1970's, but apparently it wasn't until the 1990's that two journalists put the dots together in this book and brought the conclusion to an audience outside the faithful readers of trashy British tabloids. The most tell-tale sign being that Kenneth Wilson told different stories about the day he supposedly photographed the monster to each new journalist interviewing him. I was also struck by how easy it was for the authors to track down the hoaxers, who used Wilson as a fall guy who would submit the photo (of a model Plesiosaur head and neck attached to a toy submarine) to the newspaper. Wilson apparently spent the rest of his life living and working in former British colonies in Africa, where his name and wasn't inseparably tied to the Loch Ness Monster.
Another thing that surprised me was that one of the authors turned out to not be a skeptic but a believer in the reality of Nessie, considering deliberate hoaxes the number one obstacle to the general public taking cryptozoology seriously.
The book is concise but contains everything you need to know about the case and the detective work involved in proving the Surgeon's Photo of the LNM a hoax. What surprised me the most was that all the evidence had been out there in plain sight by the mid-1970's, but apparently it wasn't until the 1990's that two journalists put the dots together in this book and brought the conclusion to an audience outside the faithful readers of trashy British tabloids. The most tell-tale sign being that Kenneth Wilson told different stories about the day he supposedly photographed the monster to each new journalist interviewing him. I was also struck by how easy it was for the authors to track down the hoaxers, who used Wilson as a fall guy who would submit the photo (of a model Plesiosaur head and neck attached to a toy submarine) to the newspaper. Wilson apparently spent the rest of his life living and working in former British colonies in Africa, where his name and wasn't inseparably tied to the Loch Ness Monster.
Another thing that surprised me was that one of the authors turned out to not be a skeptic but a believer in the reality of Nessie, considering deliberate hoaxes the number one obstacle to the general public taking cryptozoology seriously.
Displaying 1 of 1 review