by Chrystina Trulove-Reyes

Created on: July 18, 2008   Last Updated: August 29, 2008

The water sparkled like someone had poured glitter on its surface. Along the beach of the loch (the Scottish word for lake), a man walked, a camera in his hand as he enjoyed the wonderful autumn day. It was Sunday and Mr. Gray walked leisurely, not expecting anyone or anything to be around the lake at that time.

The harmonious silence that only nature could create was suddenly broken by the sounds of splashing, as if something large had fallen into the loch. Going to investigate, Mr. Gray was shocked to see a large tail striking the water repeatedly. Quickly gathering his wits, Mr. Gray took a sequence of pictures before the thing from the loch disappeared into the murky gray-green waters. Out of the five pictures that Mr. Gray had been able to take, only one picture came out. He sent that one picture to Professor Kerr of the Glasgow University, who's skepticism of the image, while understandable, fell on the deaf ears of the residents that lived in Lewiston, who believed that there was something more to the picture.

A picture taken a year later only confirmed the belief of the residents; something was living in the waters of the lake. While Mr. Gray's photo had been the very first to have, supposedly, been taken of the creature of the loch, it was quickly pushed to the back of people's minds in favor of this clearer, better developed picture now known as the Surgeon's Photo.'

While sightings date back to 500 A.D., the photos instantly alerted people to a possible mystery residing in the lake and word spread much like an infectious disease. Today, thousands of tourists travel to Loch Ness in hopes that they may catch a glimpse of the legendary creature and maybe stop in Lewiston to hear the tales of the various sightings, or to meet an eyewitness.

So, the question now turns to what else can the monster' be? The speculation of what the creature could be, ranges from a dinosaur, to other mythical creatures, to normal creatures with mutations, to inanimate objects, and finally, to creatures that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The first in this long list of creatures is called a plesiosaur. The plesiosaur was a marine dinosaur which existed during the late Cretaceous, early Jurassic periods. This dinosaur matches almost identically to the descriptions, given by eyewitnesses, of the monster of Loch Ness, with a long neck, small head, four flippers and a large but blunt body. The thing that discounts this creature is that the last of its kind was supposed

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