Nessie: Echoes of the Past
Date: Wednesday, January 03rd, 2007 (CST )
Topic: Animals & Cryptozoology
 There are few mystery creatures that have captured the public’s imagination in the way that Nessie has. For generations, people have stood on the shores of Loch Ness and peered into the depths hoping to catch sight of this elusive creature.
Yet despite our best efforts, blurred photographs of an unidentified creature and unconfirmed sonar readings are all that years of searching for Nessie has produced, yet still the legend lives on.
For many years, people have speculated what this strange creature might be, with explanations ranging from a genuine monster to the theory that we are witnessing a replaying of past events locked within the memory of water, a theory that is looking increasingly plausible.
A Prehistoric Survivor
 Nessie is most commonly
explained as resembling a Plesiosaur, a Mesozoic reptile that lived
alongside the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Jurassic period until
the K-T extinction that marked the end of the Cretaceous Period.
According to paleontologists, the Plesiosaur was a fairly sizable
creature, the biggest measuring around 25 metres (82 feet) and weighing
around 150 tons. Plesiosaur fossils have certainly been found in the
United Kingdom, so the theory is not without foundation and some of the
photographs that people have taken do seem to show a creature with a
long plesiosaur-like neck, but could such a sizable creature have
avoided detection for so long?
The case against a
Plesiosaur existing in the loch tends to be based around the argument
that there would need to be not just one specimen, but several; enough
to sustain a viable colony through the ages. Of course the larger the
colony, the more likely the sightings of these massive creatures would
be. Plesiosaurs were thought to breathe air in the same way that whales
do, so surface sightings of Nessie should in theory be fairly common,
even in a lake the size of Loch Ness, which has a surface area of 56.4
km2 (21.8 sq mi) and according to bathymetric and seismic surveys
conducted in 1992, it has a depth of up to 250 metres (786 feet).
In truth, there have been
over 3,000 recorded sightings of an unidentified lake creature that
many claim is Nessie; the oldest dating goes back to the time of St.
Columbia who reportedly saved a swimmer from the jaws of the monster by
invoking the name of God. Whether or not this is a factual account or a
Christian myth is open to debate, however, there are too many sightings
to discount the possibility that Nessie exists outright.
 Ted Holiday, an author and
monster hunter who spent three years researching the Loch Ness monster
in the early sixties, put forward several alternative theories, one of
which was that the creature we know as Nessie was actually a type of
‘Tullimonstrum gregarium’, a creature commonly referred to as the Tully
Monster, whose fossil was discovered by Mr. Francis Tully in Illinois,
in 1958. The discovery of the Tully monster came just a few years
before Holiday began his research. Given the high profile nature of the
discovery, which received a lot of attention and the witness statements
which often described a serpent like creature, it is easy to see why
Holiday connected the two. Scientists who have worked on reconstructing
models of the Tully Monster describe it as being an active, swimming
carnivore. The scientists stated: “The flexible body was probably round
or oval in cross section. It may have been segmented, but some recent
work suggests that it was not. The tail had horizontal fins and a
dorsal fin; all three of the fins were triangular.” According to
Holiday, these creatures were once common across England as well as
North America, and formed the basis for the dragon legends.
Perhaps not surprisingly,
there are other explanations that may account for this strange
phenomena, some of which centre on the creature being anything but a
flesh and blood animal.
A Supernatural Entity
Holiday was also open to
other more supernatural explanations for Nessie and suggested at one
point that the Loch Ness monster could be a kind of demonic apparition
that is the result of what he terms the practice of 'dark arts'. His
theory was based in part on the fact that people witnessing lake
monsters often described a feeling of ‘horror’ at what they saw. This
idea was expanded upon in two books he wrote in the 70’s: “The Goblin
Universe” and “The Dragon and the Disc.”
 Certainly we know that
Aleister Crowley spent a great deal of time between 1899 and 1913
studying the occult and practicing magick at Boleskine House on the
South-Eastern shore of Loch Ness. However, Crowley’s activities at
Boleskine House do not necessarily equate with him being responsible for
Nessie’s appearance. The first modern day documented sighting of Nessie
was made twenty years after Crowley had moved on, by Mr. and Mrs.
Spicer on July 22nd 1933, although some unsubstantiated sources suggest
that Crowley actually observed the Loch Ness monster himself during his
time in Scotland. While the fact that Crowley may have witnessed the
creature surfacing in the loch doesn’t mean that he somehow created
it, he is known to have actively worked with entities that can best be
described as ‘inter dimensional’, including the beings we now know as
‘Greys’, so Holiday’s idea can’t actually be dismissed outright.
Instead, the fact that thought and psychic manipulation could create a
physical manifestation or create a portal into another realm of
existence becomes yet another consideration to take into account when
trying to understand the lake monster phenomena.
 Perhaps the main problem
with Holiday’s Dark Arts theory is that lake monsters are not just
confined to Scotland. In the US, sightings of an unidentified creature
called ‘South Lake Bessie’ have persisted in Lake Erie since 1817. In
1977, a creature similar to Nessie was reported in Lake Kos Kol in
Kazakhstan. Similar reports have been made in many countries across the
world, ranging from Alaska to China. It seems that a significant number
of great lakes have a resident monster, yet in every case there is a
complete lack of physical evidence that would indicate that this is a
flesh and blood creature capable of not only surviving against all
odds, but that is also able to breed and evade capture. If lake
monsters exist but are not physical creatures, then it may be necessary
to look for alternative means of understanding what they might be.
Aspects of Holiday’s theory
tends to find support from researchers such as Tim Dinsdale and
Jon-Erik Beckjord, who both believe that Nessie is a paranormal
phenomena, which accounts for the noticeable lack of physical evidence
that surrounds it. Beckjord based his observations on a film he took of
Nessie, where the creature appeared to be a white, shape-shifting
figure, quite unlike the reptile reported by many eye witnesses.
A Manifestation of the Collective Consciousness
 The idea that the group or
collective consciousness can create physical manifestations is an idea that
has influential support from those who have studied the work of French
esotericist Henri Corbin, psychologist Carl Jung and other notable
scholars including quantum physicist Michael Talbot, author of “The
Holographic Universe”. All support very similar theories that centre on
the idea that thought can manifest as a physical phenomenon.
On a wider level, this
theory could explain a whole range of paranormal, supernatural or
cryptozoological phenomena including Bigfoot and also more esoteric
concepts such as the creation of supernatural or magical beings such as
Tulpa and Golem. Whilst manifestations such as Tulpa and Golem are
deliberately created using occult knowledge, paranormal phenomena such
as lake monsters may well be a more spontaneous and temporary form of
apparition that is the result of the accumulation or channeling of the
collective consciousness. Research is beginning to indicate that the
appearance of lake monsters, not just in Scotland, but around the
world, could actually be a result of a build up of psychic energy
which, in certain conditions, triggers their appearance to those who
are in a relaxed and therefore receptive state of mind.
Quite what attracts this
collective psychic energy is uncertain, but it may be that water itself
provides a compatible medium that allows the psychic energy to
physically express itself. If this is the case, it would certainly
explain the predominance of lake monsters throughout the world.
Reflections of the Past
 Another theory that is
related to the idea of psychic energy and thought forms creating
apparitions is that the water itself is releasing or replaying its own
memories that it has accumulated through the millennia. Whilst there
are no longer plesiosaurs in our waters today, millions of years ago
there were. Could we be witnessing a replaying of those prehistoric
times?
According to traditional
physics, the idea of water possessing memory is impossible because on a
molecular level, water does not form any long-lived structures. Of
course, there are temporary formations that exist for a fraction of a
second such as the so called hydrogen bond, where molecules are joined
in chains, but nothing of a more permanent nature.
There are a growing number
of scientists who are beginning to question that paradigm. After
becoming interested in homeopath’s claims that water possessed memory
and in particular, that patterns of hydrogen bonds survive successive
dilutions, Swiss chemist Louis Rey conducted research into the
potential of water to possess a memory of objects immersed in it. The
scientist was shocked to find that his experiments actually yielded
some unexpected results that suggested that it did. Rey used a
technique called thermoluminescence which involves bathing a chilled
sample with radiation. When the chilled sample was later warmed up, the
stored energy was released as light in a pattern that reflected the
atomic structure of the original sample.
This finding points to the
possibility that something similar might be happening in our lakes.
It’s quite possible that currents may force the super cold water from
the depths of the lake to the warmer surface. If Rey is correct then
this phenomenon may help understand what Jon-Erik Beckjord filmed when
he recorded a shape-shifting apparition in Loch Ness.
 Rey is far from alone in
his unconventional appreciation of the undiscovered properties of
water. Russian scientist Stanislav Zenin has also conducted serious
research into the memory properties of water. This research centered on
the study of clathrates, stable compounds that can live up to several
hours and which are almost electrically neutral in distilled water.
Zenin discovered that it was possible to change the electroconductivity
of clathrates by breaking down the bonds between the clathrates'
elements using a magnetic stirrer. At this point, the water is classed
as being dead, but if a tiny amount (even one molecule) of any other
substance is added into water the clathrates begin to adopt its
electromagnetic properties. This finding was startling enough as it
seems to validate the claims of homeopaths, but Zenin took his research
one step further and conducted a series of tests to see if psychics and
healers could change the molecular properties of water using their
psychic abilities. They could. Water, Zenin discovered, seems to
respond to the power of thought.
Zenin defined water as a
“substance in phase-informative state with a structure suitable for
data storage”. It was, he claimed, “a biological information tank”. He
also identified two distinct types of memory, short term and long term.
Short term or primary
memory is a reversible change in the water’s structure and a reflection
of the new electromagnetic picture on clathrates' surface. In contrast,
long-term memory represents a complete transformation of the matrix
clathrates' structural elements as a result of prolonged information
influences. This means that anything can form a structure that is
recorded in the water if the water is exposed to the thoughts and
emotions for a sufficiently long duration. It doesn’t necessarily
require conscious effort; just prolonged exposure to the water is
enough to create an imprint that can be observed. It then becomes
possible to ask if the lake monsters we have all grown up with are the
result of long term memories held in the water that are simply being
replayed or released.
If water does indeed
possess memory, then in theory a large and ancient body of water such
as a lake or loch could retain an infinite number of memories that
under certain conditions we might be able to momentarily witness
manifesting as a type of ‘mirage’. The fact that photographs and even
film exist that show something albeit unidentifiable in the water
suggests that these sightings are far more than a random psychic event
that can be experienced only by someone with psychic abilities, this
phenomena can be filmed. Perhaps we need to look to science to consider
the possibility that our lake monsters are a phenomena that can be
studied and which will further our own knowledge of the unexplained.
The ancients have revered the hidden qualities of water for thousands
of years; perhaps we are on the verge of discovering why.
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