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Great Water Monsters and Mer-Folk

Water-dwelling beasties abound in Scotland. Monsters and mermaids frolic and swim in our lochs and seas from the Highlands to Lowlands. Some are shy, while others seem to bask in the limelight.

The one thing that connects them is that they've all been spotted. They've all been recorded and noted. And, furthermore, there are people out there who believe they exist.

No review of Scottish beasties could start anywhere else but with the Loch Ness Monster, or "Nessie" to her friends (and there are many of them). She has appeared in legend since the sixth century, but the building of a new road around the loch - just southwest of Inverness - in the 1930's brought her international fame. Sightings of this long, humped lady have been frequent ever since she was famously sighted in 1934 by a London surgeon who had the foresight to snap off a couple of photos – and the sense to sell them to a daily paper.

Nessie's less well-known cousin is "Morag", who is said to inhabit Loch Morar, northwest of Fort William along the west coast near Mallaig. There have been fewer sightings around Loch Morar, being altogether more remote than Loch Ness. Yet when she has been seen, descriptions are very similar to Nessie.

Take the most famous sighting of Morag. It was 1969 when two local people - Duncan McDonell and William Simpson - were fishing in the loch. Suddenly they saw a long creature approaching their boat at great speed. It rammed them, and fearing they were to be capsized, the terrified fisher-folk started shooting. The beast disappeared into the depths of the loch but left them with the impression that it was between 20 and 30 feet long and had three humps. Sound familiar? Well it does to Neil Bass a biologist and member of the Loch Morar Investigation Team who spotted a "hump-shaped black object" and is convinced it's another Nessie.

Across Scotland there are monsters aplenty lurking in deep, dark water. So, just what's going on? Is it collective hysteria or is there really something down there? There have been a number of theories put forward to explain the animals' existence but the current top five claim they are either:

• A zeuglodon – put forward by biologist Roy P Mackal who thinks the monsters are a type of giant prehistoric snake-like creature thought to have become extinct about 20 million years ago.
• A plesiosaur – very similar to the above. Just substitute the word plesiosaur (a water-dinosaur) for zeuglodon.
• A log – what more is there to say, except that there are plenty of trees in Scotland.
• A sturgeon – biologist Adrian Shine thinks these creatures are nothing more exciting than a great, ginormous sturgeon - a freak-fish if you like.
• A bona fide monster – yes, yes, well, all right, it's possible.

Another creature currently living in Scotland's lochs is the kelpie, or water-horse. These watery quadrupeds wait by lochs for unsuspecting mortals. Should you ever mount a kelpie, then prepare for a watery doom, as the kelpie will canter into deep water and drown you. They can also take on human form, so should you spot a brooding man by the side of a loch with seaweed instead of hair, then you'd be well advised to run away. Fast.

The kelpie is transposed in the Highlands into the Each Uisge (sea horse), who lives in seas or lochs. If you see one, do not approach. Their fur is like Velcro and once you lay so much as a pinkie on its hide … then it's off to the deep with you. There he will devour you from top to toe, leaving only your liver to wash up on the shore as a warning to others that the Each Uisge has struck again.

Kelpies are not the only watery beasties living in Scotland. We are also awash with tales of finned people and mermaids. Finned people have often been sighted in Orkney close to their home at Eynhallow village. They are dark and swarthy with long fins, which they can cunningly disguise to look like cloaks. They are also rather modern, in that they are twinned with the underwater city of Finfolkhaheen – where they go to spend the winter.

Finmen often harass local fishermen and are known to abduct local men to provide husbands for their finwomen who had a vested interest in finding a mortal husband. If they did not, they have to settle for marrying a local finman and degenerating from a beautiful woman into an ugly crone. Marriage to a mortal man ensures their lovely looks last forever.

Similar to finpeople are mermaids, who have been bewitching mortals with their beautiful singing voices and exquisite beauty for hundreds of years.

If documentation is proof of existence then you could be fairly assured of the presence of fish-folk in our midst. The Aberdeen Chronicle is particularly fond of mermaid sightings, but stories have appeared in the London Times as late as 1809.
From the archive

What is interesting with all the reports is the consistency of the description. The mermaid is always young, beautiful, with soft white skin and long dark hair. Surprisingly the person reporting the sighting is not an old drunk who has left his glasses in the pub, but is often an upstanding and respected member of the community.

If you're beginning to think that there might be something in these fishy-stories, then you'll need to explain why it is that the mermaid is often to be found speaking Latin or singing hymns. Presumably she's been well educated at the "Underwater Church Academy" for young mermaids.

    * The last reported sighting of a mermaid in Scotland was in 1947 on the isle of Muck when an 80-year-old fisherman saw a mermaid combing her hair.

    * The most famous sighting was in 1900 by Alexander Gunn, who insisted he saw a mermaid in Sandwood Bay. He died in 1944 still believing in what he saw.

The Congressional Research Service is located within the Library of Congress. The Library is one of the three branches of Congress. This group of researchers is subject regularly to visits by foreign dignitaries. Mr. Dodge and Ms. Smith were at the time of this story, part of the CRS, Office of Science Policy. I have attempted to reconstruct this account as accurately as possible.
 
Since Mr. Dodge speaks Russian with questionable fluency, it was his duty one-day, to host a group of scientists from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, located in Moscow. The Institute was, and still is, affiliated closely with The Moscow Aeronautical Institute (MAI). The MAI in the 1960's through the 1980's conducted all of the "Blue Sky" (Way-out!) aviation research and development for the former Soviet Union and was housed in a four-story government building.
 
One of this group of visiting Russians to the CRS was a very pleasant and aristocratic young man (his identity will not be compromised for this account). He became very fascinated and comfortable with Mr. Dodge's very small (6ft by 8ft) office that housed no less than ten filing cabinets, desk, chair, endless books and documents. He liked the "layout and loose" condition. When I first saw this same office, I would tend to describe it as "a small structure that could pose as a fire and health safety hazard". I would guess that this was part of the reason all of the visitors in this group eventually felt "at-home" in this small room. As a direct result to the melt down of the cold war and new found friendships in the making within this tiny little room, a bottle of fine Russian Smirnoff Vodka soon appeared along with a liberal amount of orange juice. At this point they proceeded to get drunk and began swapping stories.
 
Somewhere in the middle of all this (at what point and how is still unclear), the young man began to unravel a yarn (all of which was in Russian) that when translated, went like this:
 
Under the Kruschev and later Andropov regimes, the former Soviet Union was firmly committed to creating a device like a UFO (a flying saucer!). The intent at that time was not to threaten, but to scare the "shit" out of the United States by hovering this craft directly over Washington, D.C.
 
Therefore, the most brilliant Soviet minds of the time were convinced, the young man included that the only available tool to reach this goal was with existing Soviet flywheel technology.
 
So, a team from the Academy of Sciences and the MAI, setup a "test bench" on the bottom floor of the MAI building. The bench was approximately six by six meters square of solid concrete with six stantions buried in the concrete floor. On the bench, they fabricated and eventually horizontally mounted a six meter diameter by 30 centimeter thick solid high alloy steel flywheel with a six meter long and 30 centimeters in diameter shaft powered by what was described as an electric 50,000 horsepower motor. (Note: I am a little skeptical of the horsepower rating; however it must have been big to account for what happens next).
 
The group calculated that this wheel would be stable up to 20,000 RPM. The first series of tests were conducted and where very successful at obtaining their design speed. In addition, strain gauges that where attached to the bench confirmed that the flywheel at that speed, did in fact "lift the flywheel and motor up" defying known laws of gravity.
 
The next step in the testing process went something like this:
 
The group unanimously decided: "Well hell! Let's put it up to 50,000 RPM!"
 
An so they did?|
 
Although the actual speed will probably never be known for sure, somewhere around 40,000 RPM the giant flywheel "became unstable and unbalanced". At this moment, the young man began yelling at everyone to evacuate the premises. The next few moments are too much to even conceive.
 
The motor and flywheel decide they can no longer exist together. The flywheel, shaft and test bench separate from the giant motor and began spinning like a "toy top" on the floor of the MAI test laboratory. This huge spinning assembly at first wonders around throwing papers, furniture, books, etc. then moves the three meters or so towards the windows facing the courtyard. The newly formed object still spinning at almost 40,000 RPM crashes through the windows and spills into the courtyard wondering around at first then heading directly at the first floor windows of the Soviet Pravda newspaper office some 50 to 60 meters away. On its way across the courtyard, everything in its path is thrown out of the way (leaves, bushes, etc.). People are running everywhere to get out of the way. I can only imagine what the people who were working in the newspaper office where thinking as they looked out their windows at this massive thing heading towards them. At some point during the crossing of the courtyard, the people who were watching this event unfold, decided their office was about to meet the same fate as the MAI laboratory did. Panic finally set in and everyone went every direction imaginable.
 
As the giant spinning flywheel cyclone thing crashed through the windows of the Pravda newspaper offices, chairs, desks, books, typewriters, and tons of paper where flying everywhere. You would think everything would end about now. That was not to be the case. No one can be sure how fast the flywheel was spinning at this point and as far as I can tell no one tried to find out.
 
The spinning flywheel assembly found its way into the basement and Pravda's main historical archive room. "It ate up 15 years worth of the Moscow Pravda newspapers, caused a fire and destroyed shelving before the whole mess lops over some one and a half hours later."
 
This story as far as I can research is factual. If it were not for the intellectual properties contained within even the smallest particulate of the vodka produced by the Smirnoff company, I would not have believed a word of this?

Source: rense.com
http://www.rense.com/general41/grat.htm