Into the Deep - Loch Ness, New Updates and the Journey Forward (guest: Ken Gerhard)

Welcome to Supernatural Circumstances, the podcast where we take you down the rabbit hole into the fantastic world of the strange, the paranormal, and the unknown. I'm Morgan Knudsen. And I am Mike Brown. It's time to dim the lights and settle in. Come along with us on this week's adventure. On our 50th episode. Our 50th episode. And what a cool thing to be talking about for our 50th episode. I think the Loch Ness Monster was my very first cryptid other than Bigfoot, if that makes any sense. That was the thing that I became interested in sort of around the same time. Because my family has roots in Scotland and all that kind of thing, the Loch Ness Monster became one of those things that I love to talk about. The Loch Ness is, like you, it was my introduction to cryptids as well when I was a kid. And I distinctly remember, and I think I still have it, this hardcover book that I found in this little bookstore in BC, actually. And yeah, and I remember seeing the cover. And the cover was of the famous Nessie photo, the black and white photo of him, kind of like the Surgeon of Photos. 1934, yeah. That one, yeah. And so that one was on the cover. And I remember going, okay, what is this? And I had the same light go off inside me that I had when I started to understand that spirits were something tangible. And it was just this glow that happened where I'm like, oh my God, okay, what is this now? And I distinctly remember that. Before you send us emails and read us on the Surgeon's photograph, we know it's been debunked. Oh, yeah. But there's other sightings that are really, really fascinating. And they started in 565. So Nessie has been around, kicking around for a very long time. Yeah, I think people don't realize how far back this goes. We think about that photograph, and I think that's the iconic image that pops into people's head. And they think, well, it's during that time period. No, it goes way further back than that. And there have been multiple investigations into Nessie over the years, and a few of which our guest this week has been involved in. So let's get to Ken Gerhart, because we've got a lot to talk with him about. Yeah. Oh, do we ever. Today, I know I am going to learn something new, because as much as I love cryptids, my knowledge about sea monsters is not probably where it should be. But I know, Ken, now that you're here, I know it is going to be through the roof by the time we're done. So thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me on, Morgan. It's always an honour and a pleasure to speak with you. Oh, we feel the same way, believe me. All our conversations are always so good. And Bike and I both just admire the heck out of what you do and bring to the table. And I'm super excited to talk about Loch Ness and Nessie, because it's had such a phenomenal history. And I think the majority of people know about what the Loch Ness monster is, in general. They kind of have an idea based on movies and stuff. But I don't think a lot of people know where the research is today, and what's moving forward. But I want to talk first a little bit about the loch itself and its strangeness, its topography. This is not just a lake with a smooth bottom. Is that right? Yeah, it's a fascinating topography. So Loch Ness is part of the Great Glen in Scotland, which was created during the Permian, like 300 million years ago, when the two layers of the earth's crust kind of moved and shifted. And they created this huge rift, very deep. Think about it like a sheer cliffs dropping down to kind of a very sharp distance. It was filled up with glaciers during the Pleistocene. And then, of course, they melted about 11,000 years ago, and it filled up with water. And it was at one point connected to the ocean because the melting was such. But it's a cold lake. It's a deep lake. It's very narrow. It's only about 22 and a half miles long by about a mile to 1.7 miles wide. Oh, geez. But think about what we just talked about in terms of the depth, because you have these very steep towering walls that go down. And the 754 feet has been the long scientifically accepted maximum depth, but recent years there have been contacts or depth readings of over 800 feet. The water's very dark. A lot of peat sediment rolls down those steep cliff walls into the loch. And it's cold, about 42 degrees most of the water, most of the time, never freezes. But it's an oligotrophic lake, which means that it's nutrient poor. Because there's so much sediment in the water, the sun doesn't penetrate very well. And that prohibits things like plankton from growing, the building blocks of an ecosystem. So it's been estimated there's 20 to 30 million tons of fish, eels, trout, salmon, pike, char, about 11 species. But that's still not a lot of fish when you consider how much, we're talking about, I think it's 263 billion cubic feet of water. Yeah, that's a lot of water. Come on. You can fit all the humans on earth in Loch Ness three times. So it's- Wow. So yeah, but it's a fascinating ecosystem because of that. It is connected to the North Atlantic on both sides by canals and lochs and rivers, lakes, lochs. But there's no evidence of underwater caverns connecting into the ocean and some of these kind of longstanding trees. But anyway, so it's an interesting habitat. It is similar, and we can get into this in a few minutes, about how the ecosystem in Loch Ness is similar to other lakes around the world where similar monsters have been reported, like Okanagan and Champlain and some of those others. So yeah, so that's kind of the ecosystem of Loch Ness. Oligotrophic, nutrient poor, cold, deep, water's very dark and stained. So there's a lot of history to Loch Ness as far as preacher, and it goes back quite a ways. This is true with a lot of cryptids. But if you look at, in terms of like Gaelic folklore, you have things like the water kelpie, which is a shape-shifting water spirit, and those traditions exist in the rivers of Scotland. And there are other beasties that are said to, you know, and yeah, this is again, fairly uniform for folklore traditions around the world. Most cultures have water monsters of one type or another. But in terms of the oldest sighting or the one that people referenced the most, it goes back to 565 or perhaps 580 AD and involves an Irish missionary named St. Columba, who was over there in Scotland trying to convert the Picts, P-I-C-T-S were the local people at that time around Loch Ness, trying to convert them to Christianity. And supposedly he had this harrowing encounter with a creature that rose up from the depths. It had killed one person, and then it was about to attack one of his guys that was swimming across the river. And he invoked the name of God, the sign of the cross, and basically said, go thou foul beast, go back. And it basically repelled this monster. So that, you know, that tradition has long been linked to Loch Ness, although it actually occurred in the river Ness, several miles away. So that's one misconception. And furthermore, there was a historian named Charles Thomas who wrote an interesting paper where he said that, you know, a lot of stories about the one I just described about St. Columba were basically very common at that time and were essentially religious propaganda or metaphors that were meant to illustrate the power of God. You know, you could repel a sea monster or whatever you had to do in the moment. So I don't know how, you know, it is interesting that it's in the river Ness. And then he describes a water beast, although there's not a great physical description other than it had a bunch of sharp, razor sharp teeth or something like that. So yeah, but, you know, and then in modern times, of course, Loch Ness really got on the map in 1933. And beginning in 1933, there were many famous sightings of the Loch Ness monster. And it was in the Scottish newspapers, first the local papers. And then when it got picked up by the London papers, that's when it became kind of like a worldwide topic. And so a lot of people think about Loch Ness in terms of the 1930s, way back then, a lot of famous sightings, as I said. First one was a lady named Aldi Mackay on April 14th, 1933. Then you had the Spicer Land sighting that year. MARY Yeah, and there was a road that got put through as well. And that was one of the reasons for what I can understand as to why there was suddenly so many sightings is that finally a road was built right by the loch. Yeah. PAUL Yeah, you're absolutely right. There was a road along the, a winding road around the southern end of the loch. But they built this highway called A82, still there. And not only did they build it in 1933, but as they were building it, they were doing a lot of dynamiting and they were also clearing away all the brush. So even the local people that lived around Loch Ness didn't always get a good view of the loch as there were so many trees and brush and things that you couldn't, unless you went down to water's edge. So you're right. There's definitely a correlation there between the road being built. And in fact, the Mackays were driving on that exact road when Aldi had her sighting. There've been different resurgence just through the years, and we can talk about those, about the 1960s, 1970s. But it is an ongoing phenomenon. And I guess that's what we're really going to talk about today is the fact that there are still sightings, there's still evidence surfacing, and it's still a mystery worthy of investigating. To me, it's such an interesting tale because, of course, we've got all these photographs, of course, that people are coming up with and people have tried a myriad of things to try and get to the bottom of it. I want to claim that as a pun, but even down to in 1975 and 1976, there was even the Loch Ness Phenomenon Investigation Bureau that was formed to conduct scientific research in the Loch Ness Monster. And that was disbanded after a while. And there was a sonar image in 1991 that was captured by Operation Deep Scan. There's been so much. And then, of course, by the time you get to 2003 and things like that, the BBC is in on it. They did a major search for the Loch Ness Monster using new sonar. Again, nothing came up. 2007, Discovery Channel does a research project. Nothing. So all of this keeps happening. In your opinion, Ken, do you think that there's something there? You know, I'm fairly convinced by the evidence. And, you know, I relate it to big picture, the other lake monsters and sea monsters around the world, which I think must be the same species that they exist. The physical descriptions are very similar and the habitats are very similar. But you're right. You hit a lot of key points there. The Loch, I mean, there were expeditions starting in 1934. Sir Edward Mountain paid guys to stake out around the Loch. So that was one of the first major expeditions. And then interest kind of waned during World War II for obvious reasons. And there were still sightings locally. And then things kind of got going again in 1960 when a guy named Tim Dinsdale, an investigator, got a film, the Dinsdale film, which is the first film of a moving object in the Loch, still controversial. But that kind of revived interest in the 60s and brought in some universities there in England and other studies. And then you mentioned the 70s is when it really, well, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau really started in 62 and it ran for 10 years. Yeah. 10 years, a guy named Dennis James, a politician, Sir Peter Scott, Roe v. Mackle. And that went on for 10 years and that was a well-organized volunteers. You know, many people stationed around the Loch with cameras and things, other experiments. And then when that petered out, then the Academy of Applied Science in Boston, a guy named Robert Rines got involved. And that's when you got the so famous underwater photos, the flipper photo and the gargoyle headshot and all those, that revived interest. In fact, there was a press conference in 1975 in England where all these guys got together, Robert Rines, Tim Dinsdale, Alex Campbell, who'd written the first article about the Loch Ness Monster and basically made a scientific argument that yes, it was real. They gave it a scientific name, Nesoteris rhombotrix, and it didn't convince the world. They thought it would, that we have enough evidence here. There is an unknown animal in Loch Ness, but that kind of died out again. But then you mentioned deep scan in the 90s. And most recently, of course, we did a big search last weekend of August of this year. So we're trying to, and when I say we, it's obviously, I'm just a tiny part of it, but you've got local investigators there, a guy named Alex McKenzie is kind of leading the charge. And then you have the old timers still there, like Steve Feltham and Roland Watson and some of those guys. So it's, you know, it's, like I said, we still have, we still don't have a definitive answer. Now there have been some good debunkings in terms of the surgeon's photo being debunked, the famous shot that most people think of with the Loch Ness monster was most certainly proven to be a hoax in 1994. And, you know, in 2018 and 19, a guy named Dr. Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago in New Zealand did a DNA study, 250 samples from the loch and didn't find any, you know, anything dramatically unknown. So that, you know, every few years there's kind of a big debunking and then there's new evidence. So it kind of goes back and forth, you know, it's like, you know, it's a fascinating saga. It is super fascinating. And the new technology and the new, the ideas, the collaborations are coming together to support this. What do you think is the most positive, I guess, evidence that you've seen that there is absolutely some kind of animal living in the loch? I think the sonar evidence is the most convincing to me, where I would say maybe a combination of the eyewitness accounts, not all of them, because there are certainly people that misidentify things. Look, it's a weird loch in terms of visual anomalies. There are wave effects because it's very narrow. So boat wakes roll against each other and create wave effects. The wind, debris floating in the loch, sometimes animals like seals get into the loch. So there's misidentifications. There are hoaxes, many hoaxes, people just making up stories and faking evidence that's happened, photos through the years. But there are a number of really consistent eyewitness reports. They don't typically describe the head and the neck that we think of in the insurgents photo. That's kind of red herring. Most people describe a big hump, like a whale's hump, that extends about five feet high out of the water, 10 to 20 feet long, very wide, smooth skin, dark skin. That's what Aldie McKay described in 1933. Actually, when I was in Loch Ness recently, I got to interview a guy named Willie Cameron and his father, Ian Cameron, had perhaps the most important sighting because it was him along with eight other independent eyewitnesses watched this thing for an hour. Wow. It was a big whale-like hump. Ian was down fishing with his buddy and they saw this whale-like hump surface and they watched it for an hour as it zigzagged across the loch, submerged, changed directions. There were other people there on the same beach. And then across the loch, there was a guy named Ted Holliday, an investigator that was out there that saw it along with some other people at the Klansman Hotel. And so that was a pretty powerful report in terms of being very corroborated. So tell us about your trip to Loch Ness, your recent trip. What brought you there? What did you do there? Wow. It was kind of a last minute thing and I was very fortunate. A local production company called Dragonfly Films, and they've recently done a couple of really great cryptozoological documentaries about the mystery big cats in England, which are very famous, the Beast of Exmoor and Surrey Puma and all those. I'd been talking to them for a while. I appeared in their big cat documentary and one of the guys, Tim Witter, just messaged me and said, what would it take to get you here with us? And we want to film you. We're making a documentary about this expedition. And I said, well, just get me over there. And they graciously did and took very good care of me. So we were filming a documentary for a TV show called Weird Britain that they produce, and that's going to be appearing locally in England on Blaze, which is a subsidiary of the History Channel. So maybe it'll air here. So I was kind of at their beck and call, but they also allowed me to be involved very much in the group effort. There were about 200 volunteers that showed up. Wow. Again, this was organized by the Loch Ness Center or Exhibition Center, which is in Drumnadrocket, kind of a Nessie museum, started by Adrian Shine. And Alex McKenna is kind of the young blood researcher. And he put the whole thing together. He said he was surprised. He was only expecting about, he put the call out for volunteers for a search. He was expecting maybe 30 people, and then he got 200. And then the worldwide media got ahold of the story and it kind of blew up into a huge media event. So we were there for a few days. Alex was mostly working on a hydrophone, which is an underwater microphone set up. So he's working on documenting sounds, unknown sounds, beneath the depths. That's kind of the same thing that people would use when recording whale songs. Exactly. So he's doing it very scientifically in terms of trying to document all the known sounds from Loch Ness and relating them to whatever fish species or phenomenon occurs there. So he was doing that. He stationed, he had 19 stations around the Loch that he assigned the volunteers to for observation purposes. There were people doing underwater ROVs, sonar, and on the final night of the investigation, Dragonfly Films arranged for me to fly a drone over Loch Ness at night with thermal imaging or FLIR technology. So I have a hypothesis that Nessie, if it exists, may be a warm-blooded or endothermic species. So we wanted to see if anything broke the water. Maybe nocturnal, but we didn't get anything on the water, just some heat signatures on the shore. So that was it. And I got to interview some eyewitnesses that were there and that had showed up from previous sightings. And actually the last day, the last morning we were there, we caught wind of a recent, two of the volunteers had possibly seen the monster and videotaped. Oh, wow. This was in Fort Augustus next to the old Abbey there on a very famous beach called Margaret Monroe Beach, which is actually known for a Loch Ness sighting of a woman named Margaret Monroe that claimed she saw it on land. So we went down there, we interviewed the couple, last name Whitney, and they had a video. It was very, whatever the object was, it was very far offshore. So when they noticed it, they started to film with their phone, but it looks like two humps and possibly a third appendage sticking up there, moving kind of slowly, very high up out of the water, the humps. So it was hard for me to relate it to debris, although I can't say for sure. So that was exciting that we had that kind of a recent sighting. There was also possibly another sighting I think I've heard recently, maybe one of the other observers. I don't think there were any anomalous sonar contacts. I haven't heard of anything like that happening. It rained the whole weekend, so it was kind of challenging, but I guess that's one of the rainiest places in Scotland or the United Kingdom. And the media was well-represented. I ended up doing interviews with, of course, British media outlets, US, including NBC and CBS, Swedish, Japanese, German, Italian, French. It was like everybody was there. So it was exciting in terms of trying to revive the spirit of the search. There's so much interest and passion about this. I mean, Mike, how many times have you and I talked about just some of this stuff going or seeming to go under everybody's radar? And to see it celebrated like this just makes my heart so happy. Yeah, me too. I love it. I mean, it's one of those stories that as a kid, you hear about it and you see that surgeon's picture and those kinds of things, and you start to have fantastic ideas about it. But the amount of investigation and the number of sightings that have happened over the years is just phenomenal. People are seeing something. I seem to say this on every show, but what the heck is it? What the heck is it that they're seeing? I mean, I live close to Okanagan, like, well, close, a few hour drive, and I've been up there and I've researched it a bit. And I did an episode on my other show, Dark Poutine, about Ogopogo. And one of the things that they think perhaps it might be in Okanagan Lake is giant sturgeon on the lake, the way the light hits their scales and that kind of stuff when they're flipping and flopping around. Maybe that's what's going on. I'm looking here on, you know, I hate to say it, but Wikipedia, I looked at Wikipedia and it looks like there's European sea sturgeon as well in Loch Ness. Do they grow as large there as they would here? Because I know, like, giant sturgeon in British Columbia are massive. I don't know about how many have been found, if any, in Okanagan, but I know, is it Kootenay Lake? I think there have been a couple of really massive 10 or 11 foot sturgeon that have been found there. Okay. So that is Asa Pencer transmontanus, yeah. Pacific Northwest. Now the European sturgeon are actually bigger, beluga beluga. Wow. They can get to be, the world record, I think is like 27 feet long and 3,000 pounds or something. But here's the thing, there has never been a documented sturgeon caught in Loch Ness. And in fact, the European sturgeon are so rare throughout the United Kingdom that there's actually, I learned this researching my book, there's actually a decree that anyone who catches a sturgeon in the British Isles has to present it to the King and the Queen. Wow. Oh my gosh. That's like a big deal. So it's possible. And that is certainly one of the theories Adrian Shine supported at Loch Ness was a sturgeon. It's not impossible that a huge sturgeon could get into Loch Ness. Steve Feltham, who's been camped alongside Loch Ness for 31 years and has the world record for the longest vigil in Loch Ness. And I had the honor of meeting him at last when I was there. He thinks that the most likely candidate right now, and he's open to changing his mind, is something called the Wells catfish, Silurus glanus, which is a giant catfish found throughout many parts of Europe that can grow to be seven feet long and about 300 pounds. Of course, the giant eel theory hypothesis is accepted by many cryptozoologists that there's some type of eel. We know there's tons of eels in Loch Ness, but typically they're only a few feet long. So there's this hypothesis that some eel may get to like monster sizes, like 15 feet, 10, 15 feet longer, 10, 15 feet longer, longer. Well, I know Dr. Travis Taylor at one point too, I think he said it in Search of Monsters. He was suggesting that the lock, because it's got seismic activity, might be opening and closing gaps to get back to the ocean. Do you think there's any credibility with that theory? So things might be coming from the ocean into Loch Ness, if that's what you're asking me, although it would be through shallow rivers and things at times. But the long held notion of underwater caverns or openings to the ocean does not make sense for two reasons. One is that Loch Ness sits 50 some feet above sea level. If it were connected to the ocean, it would drop down to sea level. And also the water has been vigorously tested for any signs of salinity. There's no salt water in there. But things could come up through the rivers and the canals and the same is true for Okanagan, believe it or not. It is connected to the ocean by a long winding tributaries and rivers that connect to the Columbia River. So that's actually something we could discuss is that there are sightings of these monsters in the ocean as well, right? There have been sightings of, quote unquote, sea serpents or sea monsters for centuries. Yeah. Do you think that might be nexus? Yeah, I do think. I do think we're talking about the same thing. It's the humps, the smooth humps, which move in an up and down undulating and a vertical motion, which is very distinct. The long horse-like head and a long neck has been described with regard to both. And just the size we're talking about, which is estimated to be like, I don't know, 30, 40, 60 feet long. So yeah, I think that these animals probably do live in the oceans and only travel into these rivers and lakes at certain times. And maybe that's why they're not seen more often. That makes a lot of sense. I know, too, with this subject matter, we can't not touch on it, which is, of course, the Lazarus effect that I think a lot of people bring to this subject, that this is some kind of prehistoric creature like the stelechanth. Like an Echelleviosaur or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And the megamouth, for example, that wasn't found, I don't think, until the 70s and it's massive and whatnot. Could that be something that we're looking at here? Or is that just kind of become a bit of a folk tale? Well, it's certainly the most romantic notion. Everybody loves the imagery of the plesiosaur, which is the prehistoric marine reptile with the long swan-like neck and the small head and the four flippers, basically described as a snake being threaded through a turtle is probably the best description. But it's got a very dragon-like aura. It's kind of cool when you think about Loch Ness and some of these other places. The problem, zoologically speaking, with a reptile like a plesiosaur is that, of course, they are cold-blooded, ectothermic, and probably would not adapt well to very cold water, which is where these lake and sea monsters are typically reported. And they were also pretty active predators, carnivores. So they were air breathers. They weren't adapted to cold water that well. At least the species we know of from the Cretaceous were all kind of warm water, shallow warm water species. Well, and if they're air breathers, you'd think there would be a lot more sightings, too. These guys would be at the top a lot. Yeah. Constantly. Even alligators and crocodiles, they poke their nostrils up above the surface every once in a while. But some of the physical descriptions, and a lot of people, I think, get this notion because of the early alleged land sightings of Nessie that happened in the early 30s. And they described George and Spicer and his wife and a guy named, wow, oh gosh, again, Arthur, is it Arthur Grant? Yeah. But check it out. One of the things that I talk about in my, and this isn't my idea, it's just something that I've kind of kept alive, is the possibility that these animals could be warm-blooded and possibly mammals. And that is because they're described as moving, as I said, up and down, like they undulate up and down on the surface of the water. Like a seal might kind of. Right. In fact, all aquatic mammals undulate this way. Seals, whales, to whatever extent they can, otters. So that's a mammalian characteristic. Fish and reptiles undulate side to side or horizontally. That's how they flex when they swim. Totally. And also warm-blooded animals would do better in cold water, obviously. One of the leading candidates, in my opinion, and again, this is not my idea, but there was this ancient lineage of snake-like whales known as basilosaurs or archaeocetes. I think they evolved in the Eocene up into the Oligocene. So like 30, 40 million years ago, they had a very long snake-like body. They died out supposedly. But who knows? I mean, to me, that makes more sense than the Plesiastor. Still a long time for something large like that to have existed without us having fossil evidence or evidence. But they fit the profile. It checks a lot of boxes for me. Again, warm-blooded, smooth skin, which is what most people describe, whale-like skin. Many people describe the up and down undulations when they surface. Whales are known to travel from the ocean into fresh water on a regular basis. They can make that adjustment fairly well. I guess those are the main things. I mean, they would still be air breathers. Whales are, obviously, but some can hold their breath for a very long time, up to four hours. So that's one possibility. A couple other candidates I'd just like to throw out there real quick, unless you guys want to get into some of the supernatural stuff, I guess that would be the next level. Oh, let's do it all. Let's see. An amphibian. There were giant amphibians in the prehistoric times. Now, amphibians like frogs, newts, and salamanders actually do better in cold water. And more importantly, they don't have to surface for air because they can actually absorb oxygen through their skin. It's called zontaneous water break. Zoologically speaking, a massive amphibian would make a lot of sense. Another interesting theory that was put out in the 60s by Ted Holliday, the guy I mentioned earlier who had the sighting with Ian Cameron, he thought it could be a giant mollusk, like a snail. Because something like that would live on the bottom of the loch, presumably eat a lot of waste, detritus, and wasted, rotting vegetation, things like that, that would be available. And yeah, they have gills. They don't need to come to the surface. And there's no real size limit in the water for a mollusk. I mean, look at the giant squid. The biggest mollusks in the world, they can be like 50 feet long. So I'd say it's kind of a far out hypothesis, but I like the way he was thinking outside the box. Like, okay, people are thinking plesiosaur and all these other things, giant eel, but what about something a big sea snail that comes to the surface every once in a while? I love that theory. I love what people are bringing to the table, like you were saying, sort of outside of the box, like, let's put dinosaur aside and let's look at what we've got. And there's so many animals in our current experience that could fit the bill under the right conditions. I think this is really interesting. Yeah. It's fun to speculate. That's what we do. All we can do without the hard evidence. And you were mentioning, too, the lot of supernatural theories, of course, that are out there, because that's what tends to come with the territory with this stuff. And even people have suggested, as far as I know, things like time slips and stuff like that. There seems to be a whole pile of different, really bizarre theories out there in regards to this critter. Yeah. Yeah, there are. And admittedly, I'm not a huge advocate of a lot of those theories with regard to this phenomenon. I am open-minded, of course, to the supernatural, metaphysical. I think there's definitely some validity to all that stuff. So, you could start with, as we mentioned, Scotland has been inhabited for centuries by different ancient groups, Vikings and the Picts and the Gallic people that had all kinds of traditions of shapeshifting water spirits and things like that. So, I guess if you give any validity that there's something to those stories of water kelpies and the such. More recently, you've got to point to the area, which has already got a mystical feel when you're there. It's got the rolling highlands with the hills with the low-lying mists and clouds and the ruins of old castles. It's a pretty cool area. There are theories about people conjuring Aleister Crowley, of course, and actually had the opportunity to tag along with the film crew there to Bolaskine house where he lived. They shot a segment there and it does overlook the loch. Maybe the Loch Ness Monster was summoned by someone like Aleister Crowley or something. People talk about these other dimensions and time slips and portals. Is this area of the world somewhere where there's an opening, a thinner veil to another time or another reality? There's a lot of faraways. Now, Ted Holiday, who I just mentioned, this is interesting. He started out as the giant slug guy, but he later wrote a book called The Goblin Universe called The Dragon and the Disc, where he basically finally came around to feeling that the Loch Ness Monster was supernatural because he could never get a photo of it, even though he had had sightings that other people couldn't. There just seemed to be such- The aquatic version of Bigfoot? Yeah. Some people think that. I don't know. As far as the time slip, and I've heard this suggested because I've investigated other prehistoric cryptids, like these flying pterodactyls that people have reported and less commonly dinosaurs running around, but they always seem to be very specific archetypes. My answer or argument to that time slip hypothesis would be, well, why aren't we seeing all kinds of prehistoric animals if these time slips are happening? We should be seeing woolly mammoths and- Yeah, sure. T-Rexes. There have been millions and millions of species on the planet for a long time. Why just this one thing? Yeah, exactly. Just a couple of different types that keep resurfacing. Now, this is another cool thing I want to bring up with regard to belief in dragons and how dragons around the world, how it's the most widespread archetype in terms of different cultures around the world having some type of dragon-like creature. Now, if you're a skeptic and you want to make a sociocultural argument for things like the Loch Ness Monster, you could look at the fact that we have these many dragon traditions around the world. These dragons are typically portrayed as being chimeras and possessing the characteristics of different types of animals, but specific types of animals, usually serpents, winged creatures, and big cat, claws, paws, cat-like heads. Sure, yeah, yeah. So, would you say that's fairly accurate that a lot of our dragons, at least Western dragons, combine these different types of animals? Totally. Sure, yeah. What do all of those types of animals have in common in terms of our early human ancestors? Well, there would have been a lot of animals that we hunted. Yeah, but switch that around, Morgan. They hunted us. They hunted us, right. They hunted us. Those were all the major predators that our early humans going back to Africa, big snakes, things swooping down from the sky, big cats. So, there's a theory that maybe the dragon archetype in general is something that has become ingrained in our DNA, but it's something that we carried with us since those early times. And by combining sometimes those different predators into one super predator, which becomes our ultimate monster, nemesis, the dragon is the ultimate predator, right, that humans greatly fear. So, I don't know. So, Loch Ness, part of the mystery could be connected to this ancient cultural memory that we have of dealing with these kind of dragon-like creatures. That's so interesting to me. We talk a lot on here about the idea of where psychology meets these creatures, and we just recently actually finished an episode about a strange fog and the psychology of how fog has come down through the eras to create stories. We create stories and folklore about these creatures coming out of the fog, because fog was always something that was dangerous. I mean, predators can hunt in the fog. If you're out there, you're in trouble and whatnot. I always think it's so interesting, the role that we play as people and as storytellers and the psychology that we put in to kind of morph these tales. We mentioned Dr. Lynn McNeil here a lot, because we had a great conversation with her about the Jersey Devil in our last season. I will bring it back again always, is that she said something that was so profound, I ended up putting it in my book, The Gift of Instinct, which is folklore can be true, it can be false, but it always gets something right. That was so profound to me. I think, again, it applies here too, where there's probably an undiscovered, unknown creature in the lock. All of these stories and all the psychology around the stories has turned it into something almost magical to me. It's just really cool. Absolutely. Again, I think you guys said you wanted to cover all the bases, so we're just talking about all the possibilities here. You make a great point there, Morgan. I think a lot of our cryptids are examples of what is known as composite identity, meaning that there are different things involved, sometimes all coming together to kind of create this mythic aura or legend. I think in a lot of the cases, there actually is a mysterious animal involved at the root of it. Then you get all these other factors involved, as you suggest, the folklore and people's imaginations, and people wanting to make up stories and hoax things, or people just misidentifying and imagining that they're seeing things. I think all of these things become part of the evidence, why we can't accept all alleged evidence when it comes to these unknowns, right? Right. Yeah. But yeah, I'm with you. I think that there's usually – I actually worked with Dr. – well, I met Dr. McNeil at a TV shoot one time. I guess we were doing an episode together, and I'm sure she was talking about all this stuff. But there are certainly – once people hear there's a monster in Loch Ness, well, the obvious next step is that they're going to be looking for a monster, right? That explains at least some percentage of the reports, probably. Yeah. Well, and talking about Dr. McNeil, she had even said about this subject – she said if there was ever a time the Loch Ness monster was going to be documented, we're living in it. And I think she's dead right. At least, I hope she's dead right, because I'm on board with you, Ken. I think there's something there. I think there's some sort of physical – I do think it's a physical animal that's there. I don't know what it is. I've got no clue. I definitely think your theory is one of the best I've ever heard. But I don't know. Mike, what are you thinking? I'm aligned with both of you, yeah. So yeah, there's something there, again, but what the heck is it? I just want to – this is always my question. It seems like this is the question that I ask so many times. What the heck is that? But that's the question we've got to ask, I think. I think that is the question, and that's what keeps these quests about our world living and viable and magical and keeps the passion in it. I think the day we stop asking questions is the day it's over. So I love it. Ken, thank you so much for being here. Tell people where they can get your book as well, The Essential Guide to the Loch Ness Monster and Other Aquatic Cryptids. Yes. Well, thank you again for having me on, guys. It was definitely a fun conversation. All my books are available on Amazon.com. You just type in Ken Gerhard. It'll take you to my author page, and you can find them there. If people like autographed copies, they can contact me on social media. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. If they're willing to pay for the postage and purchase the book, then sometimes we can work that out as well. I just want to leave people with that last thought that you guys had. Even to the most skeptical listeners out there, scientifically speaking, it's highly improbable that things like the Loch Ness Monster exist, but it's not impossible, and that's pretty cool. Oh, yeah. That's perfect. This entire field is about possibilities. It really is. It's about possibilities. As I was saying, as soon as we close down possibilities, then we're in a culture that's in trouble, I think. Thank you so much, Ken. This has been amazing. I always feel so much more educated after I talk to you. I really do encourage everybody that's listening, go get his books. They are so full of information. You will learn obtuse amounts of info about things that you can never imagine about this world, and I highly recommend. We love you, and thank you for coming. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll talk to you soon. Ken is always so interesting whenever we talk to him. I love it that these guys that we talk to are actually out there, boots on the ground, or boots in the muck, I guess, in Loch Ness, and investigating these things, and really looking into them, and not saying, this is a real thing, but let's figure out what this is. It is a perfect attitude to have with this stuff, because there's so much out there that, as we know, we don't understand, and we don't know, and as soon as we start to lock ourselves into that perceptual box, you know you're in trouble, right? You know stuff is going to start coming off the rails. But Ken, like you say, these people that have their boots on the ground, that are doing this and keeping the science up to date, which I think is so important, instead of rehashing all the things that have happened, it's all about, well, what do we do now? Where does this go from here? You know, like, I just feel like I'm a broken record, because I'm always just like, ooh, we can talk about this, and ooh, I really love talking about it. I'm like a kid in a candy store with this stuff that we're doing, really. Well, it is, it's so much fun, and you know, and I think that's why people flock to this subject matter, because it's fantastic, and it's fun, and who knew that so much was out there, even when we're kids, we're always told, oh, no, no, that doesn't exist, oh, that was fake, oh, that's not real. And then you find out, wait a minute, there are people out there that do this, they do this for a living, and they're enmeshed in the reality of what's out there, and that to me is magic, it's so cool. Right? Growing up as a little kid in Nova Scotia, this stuff was so otherworldly for me, it was so out of my reality that it just seemed like, how can I ever get involved in something that cool, and here I am. It's like, what? How do I get to do this? It's so fun. It's so much fun, and you know, every time we have somebody back, it's like, again, there's just this new information that's coming out, and speaking of which, Ken's DNA study did come back, since we had him on the show, and they did not find any trace of Nessie, however, on October the 7th, little ways later, there was some pretty cool sightings that popped up again, and it was from somebody named Sash Lake, who was visiting Scotland's Loch Ness, yeah, October the 7th, and this is what he said, he said, I was leaving on a coach, admiring the view, while the coach was driving past the loch, it started to rain, and a light fog rolled in, my view and vision was partly limited due to the trees alongside the loch, but something caught my eye for approximately 5 seconds, and made me jump out of my skin, yeah, I saw a huge black mass hump in the middle of the loch, roughly the size of a double-decker bus, I would say it was around 75 to 100 yards away, I was confused and in disbelief, I jumped my feet to get a better look, trees completely blocked my view for about 5 to 8 seconds, then there was a clearing in the trees, and when I looked back to where I saw the black mass, there was nothing there, what, yeah, and this is the 9th sighting of Nessie, to be recorded by the official Loch Ness Monster Sighting Registry so far this year, this year, okay, this year, and only 4 days before his lake sighting, on October the 3rd, another resident, a fellow by the name of Richard Storey, he was on the high walk from Fort Augustus, when he saw an unidentified creature swim from the bank of Loch Ness to its centre in the morning, and the creature reportedly disappeared below the water before resurfacing again, wow, so what is going on, I don't know, is it a log, is it a sturgeon like we talked about with Ken, who knows what it is, or is it something more, you know, until we know for sure, we don't know, and the interesting thing is too, I think that when Ken did the DNA test, what actually came back was algae, I thought that was really interesting as well, because here you do have diverse life within Loch Ness, and what comes back is algae, so I don't know, it kind of lends back to the conversation that we were having about these creatures or whatnot maybe being some kind of manifestation, you know, whether it's a flesh and blood creature in the loch, or is this something that we're projecting, is this something that's coming from people that has manifested there, because of our focus on it, I mean, there's so many possibilities here, it's so cool. This is exactly what I was talking to the guys on the Ghost Story Guys podcast the other day about, how is this something that we're manifesting, that we're seeing, that we're sort of, you know, putting our psychology into in some way, it's very very interesting how people are seeing things, and it seems like it's happening more and more and more, but is it people want to see things because the world is so messed up right now, do you know what I mean? Maybe there's more sightings of things because people are looking for something, maybe, perhaps, to distract themselves, or even something to come save us, I mean, maybe that's what all the alien talk is about, we need to have something to come, and maybe give us a little tap on the nose and say, you know what guys, chill out. Well, that's always a good thing, I think, especially in this day and age, for everybody to just chill out, oh my gosh, but you know, I think with a lot of this, I kind of wonder, speaking of the idea of distractions, you know, and things like that, what caught me about this sighting, and a lot of the Loch Ness sightings, is something that we see within parapsychology as well, which is people being very at ease, they're doing something very mundane, you know, like, you know, riding the coach, or, you know, doing the dishes, or, you know, fishing, or, you know, whatever, and then that's when the experience happens, and, you know, we've known for a long time in parapsychology that this is something, when the brain's relaxed, it allows this stuff and these experiences to happen, and so that's what makes me wonder about things like Nessie, is, you know, maybe it's not just, you know, wishful thinking, for example, but there's something about that relaxed state that allows us to see things that normally we wouldn't see when our brain is busy. Well, my brain's busy all the time, so there's probably no chance of me seeing anything spectacular, although I have seen my cat who passed away numerous times. You have. I have seen Donner, you know, his tail going around corners and all kinds of things like that, I even have seen, you know, full body of him underneath my desk, and, you know, I just said hello to him, thinking it was my other black cat, Egg, but then I go into the bedroom and there's Egg sleeping on the bed, and it's like, well, who was the black cat that was underneath my desk? And I go back and there's no black cat under my desk. What the heck? Anyway. Yeah. You know? No, totally, totally, and that, you know, that I think is, I think we have to be in that relaxed, almost meditative state in order for some of this stuff to pop up, and to me it's interesting that that seems to be when this cryptid stuff pops up too, you know, even Sasquatch sightings and things like that, you know, people out hunting or, you know, sitting in their tree stand, you know, relaxing, whatever, and then all of a sudden they start to see something. So it's neat that it sort of translates into this world of cryptids in the same way that it translates into hauntings. Definitely. And before we go, we want to thank all our dearest listeners for being with us for 50 episodes. We can't believe that we've done 50 episodes already. It just seems like just yesterday we started doing this, so wow, 50. It just makes my heart so happy, and to hear everybody's comments and feedback and whatnot that you guys send in and post, and it just means the world, like, just to know that you guys are just as excited about this as we are, and we can't wait for the next 50. There you go. So thank you for joining us on this eerie expedition, dear listeners. And remember, the line between the natural and the supernatural is often a thin one. Until next time, stay curious, friends. Supernatural Circumstances is a co-production of Entity Seeker Paranormal Research and Teachings and Good Egg Studios. This podcast is part of the Curious Cast podcast network. Theme music by Corey Johnson of Catalyst Records in Edmonton, Alberta. You can learn more about Morgan Knudson at entityseeker.ca, and learn more about me, Mike Brown, and listen to my show, Dark Poutine, at darkpoutine.com. Feel free to email the show at supernaturalcircumstances at gmail.com.