From Myth To Hoax Episode 38 The Surgeons Photo Robert Wilson

Back in the old days, if you took a photograph of something, it pretty much meant you had indisputable proof of the existence of that thing. Talking about UFOs, fairies, and ghosts. If you had a picture of it, then it was real. Back in the early parts of the 20th century, there wasn't a lot of knowledge about how photos could be manipulated. If people didn't know about photo manipulation, then they usually didn't know how it was done. It might have been sorcery for all they knew. And we're not talking about double exposures or compositing here. You could fool people by simply in-camera tricks. Some people would take a car's hubcap, throw it up into the air, snap a picture of it, then pass it off as a convincing proof of UFOs. Knowing what we know now, it's hard to believe that the surgeon's photo of the Loch Ness Monster, possibly the most famous photo of any cryptozoological creature ever, could ever be considered to be real. After all, the claim was that the creature in frame was this huge beast sticking its head out of the water. The belief was that it was some type of plesiosaur or some surviving relic of the dinosaur era. But just taking one look at the uncropped photo, the one where you can clearly see the shore on the other side of the picture, you can tell that the quote-unquote waves in the photo are actually just ripples from some rather small object being tugged along by someone off-camera. In fact, the quote-unquote creature depicted in Robert Wilson's 1934 image turned out to be nothing more than just a toy submarine with a bit of wood and clay stuck to it. However, it is the most enduring and recognizable photo of any cryptid ever, certainly the most memorable of the Nessie photos. The story behind it, which held for decades, was that Wilson was looking at the Loch when he saw the monster rise out of the water. He grabbed his camera and snapped four photos. Only two of the exposures came out clearly. The first shows the head and back while the second shows a similar head in a diving position. It's the first photo that became so well-known. It soon ran in the daily mail and that in turn helped create a tourist industry for the area which carries on to this day. But this is just one photo and a long line of supposed evidence and sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie as she is sometimes called. According to the legend, there's supposedly a giant sea monster that looks like a dinosaur living in the Loch Ness Lake. Though this famous image was taken in the 1930s, the legend dates back to centuries before. Way back in 565, the 6th century, an Irish monk encountered local residents burying a man that was said to have been attacked by a water beast. Then, from time to time, additional stories would crop up in the region. One such account occurred in 1852 when villagers brought out actual pitchforks to battle a sea serpent. It turned out to be just a pony taking a bath. In 1881, a man reported to police that a large creature surfaced out of the Loch and propelled itself within 50 yards of the shore. Then, in 1933 and 1934, there were several sightings of sea creatures in the Loch, prompting an investigation by the Daily Mail resulting in an article about the monster with a now-classic photo accompanying it. This initial investigation actually might have been the catalyst for the creation of the hoax to begin with. It didn't come out until 1994, 60 years after it first graced the pages of the Daily Mail. But Christopher Sperling verified the photograph to be a hoax by admitting his involvement in its production. Sperling was the stepson of Marmaduke Wetherill, a famed big-game hunter who had been hired in 1933 by the Daily Mail to find the Loch Ness monster. Wetherill returned from his expedition with evidence of the monster showing footprints leading from the lake's shore to the water. However, Natural History Museum researchers concluded the tracks had been made with a dried hippo's foot, which were popular umbrella stands at the time. Humiliated, Wetherill retreated from public view, but he began to hatch a plan to get even. After Sperling revealed the photograph as a hoax, he explained that Wetherill had enlisted his help to create a model of the monster's neck and placed it on a toy submarine. Conspirators in the hoax were Sperling, a sculpture specialist, Ian Wetherill, his son, and Maurice Chambers, an insurance agent. The toy submarine was bought from an F.W. Woolworths, and its head and neck were made from wood putty. After testing it in a local pond, the group went to Loch Ness where Ian Wetherill took the photos near a local tea house. When they heard a water bailiff approaching, Marmaduke Wetherill sank the model with his feet and later said, Presumably, it's still somewhere in Loch Ness. Maurice Chambers, the insurance agent, gave the photographic plates to Robert Wilson, a friend of his who enjoyed a good practical joke. Robert Wilson was chosen to give the photograph to the media because of his trusted reputation as a doctor, hence the title of the Surgeon's Photograph. Of the photos developed, he sold the first one to the Daily Mail, who then announced the monster had been photographed. And so the legend grew. Millions of people began to flock to Loch Ness in hopes of seeing the creature for themselves and perhaps even getting their own photo as well. But of course, nothing absolute has ever been discovered. This is despite numerous attempts using some of the most sophisticated equipment and science available. It's been suggested that the monster was a sea otter, a large eel, or some other unidentified breed. But the prevailing belief is that the monster is a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that swam in the water and is believed to have been extinct for some 65 million years. But there's a big problem with that theory. There's never been any plesiosaur bones found at, around, or in Loch Ness Lake. Ever since the 1970s, scientists have dredged, scooped, scraped, and even explored the floor of Loch Ness for bones, but no bones of dinosaurs have ever been discovered. Sonar scans of the lake have also come up empty. In addition, it's believed that the lake could never support and sustain a plesiosaur. It's projected that the lake contains about 22 tons of fish. It sounds like a lot of fish, but for a giant plesiosaur, it will be nowhere near enough. The lake is also too cold for reptile. There are only a few species of reptiles that live in Scotland, and a cold-blooded animal can't live there unless it's adapted. Plesiosaurs were tropical creatures. These suggestions supporting a plesiosaur living in Loch Ness Lake simply fall apart the more you know about the area's history. The most damning argument states that if there was a plesiosaur living in the lake, it would have had to have moved into the lake relatively recently. The lake was completely frozen and covered in ice 18,000 years ago. Despite all the logistical reasons against a dinosaur living in the lake, Stuart Campbell of the British Journal of Photography examined the famed photo. The original version of the surgeon's photograph shows a dark band along the top of the image that provides a sense of scale between the monster and the lock. In the version published by the Daily Mail, the image is substantially cropped in, blurring the subject's shape and skewing scale to suggest it was larger. After comparing the versions, Campbell concluded that the object in the water could only have been about a few feet long at most. In fact, according to the confession, the submarine purchased from Woolworth's was a It could be that the rise in popularity of the Loch Ness Monster was spurred on by the rise in popularity of dinosaur and monster movies at that time. It was in 1933 that the movie King Kong was released, showing prehistoric creatures alive and well. Shortly after the release of that film, the first modern Loch Ness Monster sighting happened. What's surprising is that the myth persists to this day. Yes, people are still looking for it. Despite the confessions and evidence against it. After all, the Loch Ness Monster draws a million people a year to the region and pulls in an estimated $31 million or £25 million to the local economy. The enduring mystery of the Loch Ness Monster probably has little to do with finding the truth and more to do with the ingrained human fascination of the unknown.