A Monk Started the Loch Ness Myth 1,500 Years Ago | The Loch Ness Monster Ep 347

10-13-26

Episode Transcription

Hey, man. What's up, dude? Uh, having a good time. Love being here. Are we doing, um, how great and how great Britain became great Britain? Um, I guess you could say like in a way, kind of like it's not, yes, it's not exactly, but it's been a full week since you guys have been here. And last time he was like, Oh, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna, you might be able to guess the topic. And I've been guessing every day for a week. Um, I'm curious, I'm curious. He said I was close. He said I was close with, uh, when I was talking about, I asked about Brexit. And I asked about the Irish potato famine thing. Yeah. Yeah. Are they group potatoes, the famine? Um, um, is it just the enlightenment? No, don't tell you? Yeah. Uh, hey, man, have you ever heard of I should have known it was the Loch Ness monster. I should have known it wasn't close at all. No, it's close. It's it's close geographically. Sure. Um, yes, I have heard of the Loch Ness monster. This came up in a conversation with someone recently. And they're like, have you guys an episode on that? And I was like, actually, no, we why? Yeah. So here we are. We're talking about old Locky. Oh, Loch Ness monster. If we're all just dust in the waves, yeah, I just will be the biggest dust in the world. What's the actor is the richer Alan? Whatever name is. Yeah, you could bring him up a lot. It's because I look at my arm. I'm like, I feel like, yeah, I feel like look like this guy in my head. That's what I look like. Things I learned last night. Just kind of one of those where I think everybody, everybody, yeah, everybody has an idea of the Loch Ness monster. If you don't for audio listeners, it was a picture of Tim when he was younger. And I do think everybody's seen this picture. Like I think everyone's seen the black and white. Like, it's a duck. Is it? It's a duck. Kind of thing, you know. But it's interesting because this actually goes back to a long time. 565 AD. Yeah. Which is interesting. So let's just tell this first story we've got. So 565 AD, uh, Saint Columbus. Uh, he is a name that should make a comeback. Columbus. You know, I'm going to name my first son, Columbus. Columbus. Columbus, Myers. Columbus, Myers. Honestly, there's something about that. Columbus sounds like this is going to, I don't know how to say this. No, no. Columbus sounds like the kid named grade who's gigantic. The plays in the football team, you know, that like he just, he, his family just moved here. Yeah, this year. Yep. And he's way bigger than every other kid in eighth grade. ours was Jared. Jared. What was yours? Columbus. No, ours was, I can't remember that guy's name. The girl Channing. She was 13 feet tall in fifth grade. It is interesting because for the girls, it's just whoever grows first. Right. Like, whatever it's like, hey, you're going to start the volleyball to you. Yeah, you made it. Yeah. And then, and then by the time you get to high school, it's like she's actually the shortest one. No, she's the one else catches up. Oh, yeah, ours was, our, her name was Leanne and she was, she lit it like once we're in high school, she was average height. But she just got to her height way faster than everybody else. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But we had a couple of kids who were like gigantic. Yeah. Yeah. We had. Jared was, I mean, in fifth grade, he was probably like six to like 280. There was a kid. Now, I'm looking back. There was like, there was a guy in my class who I think he was doing steroids. I'm not even joking. Like, he guy schooler. In high school. No, I think he got, he was on steroids. He got pretty big. I remember in high school, there was a group of guys, we would go in the off season, we would do six a.m. workouts. Yeah. And all I did was abs. Have I told this story? I don't think so. And my, stab me if I told you, I used to do a lot of ab workouts. All I did was abs. No, for real. I did. We, the whole intent, it was like glasses in junior year. We started in January. We went until May six a.m. every day. We would go to the school, jam. We would work out. And there was like six or seven of us. And I'm not exaggerating when I say literally all I did was abs because I wanted to have a six pack that summer. And I remember being so frustrated when May rolled around because like I could do a ton of sit ups. But like, you couldn't, you didn't understand how six packs were fun. Yeah, you could not see a thing. Sure. And I remember talking to the trainer at school and being like, why can't you see it? And he's like, we'll tell me about your diet. And I was like, well, it's Doritos. What was the, what's that red sauce that you buy? El Pato. El Pato. Yeah. And he goes, what? He was like, he's like, yeah, you're going to have to knock that off if you want. And you're like, I don't want abs. I'm not kidding. I stopped going to the workouts. I'm like, oh, that's what it takes. Oh, I got to stop. I was like, oh, I got to stop. I just stop. I have to like help Doritos every day. I never mind. I don't want that. But there was this, there was like one of the kids that we went with. I will never forget. This was junior year of high school. Yeah. He started taking creatine. Yeah. And I thought that that was like a class B narcotic. I was like, I was like, you do what? I was like, oh, I have something at home. I should start, I should start that this month. Yeah, I was like, I was like, hey, should I do steroids? I take you that day or night. And it's kind of like, I'm kind of joking. I mean, why not? I'm kind of feeling like, why not? You're doing Botox. Why not get another injection? Why not just move to the next phase? Honestly, bro, like, do the Botox, do the Steroids, do the Steroids. Do your GLP ones just start poking, man. Should I just do it? Are you afraid of needles? Yeah. I was going to say I was like, I can't do blood draw. I can do, I can do shots. I can do, you know, I don't like to look at it. But Steroids is in your butt. So you don't have to look at that. And like, when I got the Botox, I closed my eye. I can't see the needle. You don't want to see it. Interesting. Do you think you can do a tattoo? No. I don't want, I don't have any desire for that. But is that because you're scared of it or is that because you don't want it? Both. I think, I think, I don't think I'm scared of it. I think I could do a tattoo. No, I just don't. I'm more afraid of how I'll feel when I'm in my 50s about the mistakes I made years before. I mean, I feel that way about mine. I love all my tattoos, but there are days where I look at it. I'm like, that's so stupid. Why do I do this? This is so stupid. Yeah, but I also feel that about everything in my life. There's so much stuff that I'm like, I love my life. But every day I look at some stuff and I go, why did I, why did I do this? Why did I do that? Why did I do that? So stupid. Anyway, so I'm not going to do Steroids. Yeah, say Colombo say Colombo did Colombo. That's why he got a Saint title because he was doing Steroids. The ST stands for Steroid. The bit was so dead. Tim, I tried to get us back on track and you were like, I got to do one more like one about one more. One more. It's a bit like. So say Colombo, say Colombo, he is, he is in Scotland due missionary work. Yeah, and he ends up going and meeting some locals who were five 96, five 65 and he meets a group of locals who were bearing crazy to think that people were just there. You know what I mean? Like do you think about how many people have existed over time? It is bonkers and like, we have like, you know, we grew up with Bible stories and they condensed a couple of thousand years into one book. And so we kind of just, it's all just one to us. But then you just think about how much time has passed. Yeah, it is crazy. It kind of makes you go like, why wouldn't I do Steroids? If we're all just dust in the woods. Yeah, what's the word? It might as well be the biggest dust in the world. I don't know, dude. I don't know. The biggest dust in the world is crazy. What's the actor is the Richard Allen, whatever name is? Yeah, you've been bringing him up a lot lately. It's because I look at my arm, man. I'm like, I feel like I feel like this guy in my head. That's what I look like. No, I actually want to do it. So I'd have to do steroids. So he's doing mission work in Scotland. He comes across a group of locals who were bearing a man who had been killed by a water monster while swimming in River Ness is what they call that at the time. Yeah, because Loch Ness is an interesting lake. I don't know if it looks kind of like a river. It's like a long. Yeah. And if you're in the middle, you don't know that it ends up there. Yeah. It's just this really long thin lake. Yeah. And it is connected on both ends to rivers. And so that river does outlet to the sea. Right. And then there is another river on the other end that outlets to another lake. That's very similar. The lakes around here are really weird thin lakes all over the place. Sure. And so he's up there and they're bearing this guy who was killed by a water monster. And so a water monster. Yeah. That's the story he's told. And so while he's there, there is another monk that traveled with him. And Columbus said, why don't you swim across the water and see if we can get that monster out of there. And they're like doing a funeral. And he's like. Yeah. They're like out there like. Our friend who we love and miss. And then you just hear. What are you guys doing? He got rope attached to him. He just swimming out in the middle. We're going to get the monster. Yeah. We're going to try to find this water monster. Super interesting stuff you guys are talking about. Starting to wrap. We'll try to be quiet. I hope you're not. I'm sorry for your loss. Bob down on the water. Bob. Bob. Bob. Bob. That's it. Hmm. I think I'm going to name my son. That's a good name for kid. Bob. Bob. He could go by Robert for long. Robert for long. All right. I'm so sick of everyone named being named Columbus. Bob. There's four Columbus in this town, dude. Let's switch it up. Bob. It's short. What do you think? Bob. I like it. So he's swimming out there. And then the sea monster surfaces and rushes the swim with the loud roar at the monk. With a loud roar. With a loud roar. Okay. And so Columbus raises his hand, makes the sign of a cross and commands the monsters. There's go, no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once. The creature stops instantly as if the description is as if it was pulled back by a rope. And then it flees in terror and all the locals there that were at the funeral started praising God and they converted on on sight. And so we actually have a picture of this event. Okay. This is probably when do you think this was drawn this? Yeah. This is probably a contemporary drawing. Like I would think this is probably drawn relatively recently within the last like 50 years. Okay. But there are plenty of like artistic renderings of this event. This story. How was this story recorded? It was recorded by in a biography of St. Columbus called the Life of St. Columbus, which was written by a dominant of Iona, which was written between 697 and 780. So more than 100 years after his life. So how reliable this account is, they're a little questionable. By a dominant. Adam. A dominant. A dominant. A dominant. A dominant. A dominant of Iona. Yeah. So probably not a super reliable account. Super weird. Bob. Rupert. Robert. Probably not a super reliable account. But here's the thing. It kind of got cemented in like local folklore. Yeah. Of course. That's what I'm saying is like, you know, it gets passed around and also everyone converted. Yeah. And also everyone became Christians. Everyone who saw it became a Christian. That's just like kind of detailed it. Like my mom would throw it in. And everyone who was there became a Christian. They're like, oh, oh, cool. Okay. And so for what's interesting is as far as like recorded history is concerned, we don't have anything else from that point until the early 1800s. 1300 years. Yeah. Of just silence. As far as the historical record is concerned. Okay. It does appear as if there is like folktale of it. Because once this starts to reappear in historical records, it's like, oh, there seems to be a history here. Because in 1817, there is like a story of a sea serpent that is sighted there with multiple humps slithering through the lock. And then in 1820, fossil pioneer Mary Anning discovers the first complete Plesiusaur skeleton. Plesiusaur? Plesiusaur. And so the Plesiusaur, we pull up when it was around and discovers it. Yeah. So she discovers the first we're at full skeleton. She she found it in southwest England on the coast of southwest England. Okay. Where's that at? Right area. Okay. Because this is in inverness is is northern UK. So this is I mean, maybe can a hand was right. Maybe the dinosaurs did coexist with us. So this is this is northern sky. What do we have any pictures of what that full skeleton looks like? Like this. But without the skin or the muscle or any of the blood vessels or tendons or anything inside there. We have pictures of the fossil. Oh, you're killing. That's really funny. I didn't know this, actually. I guess I didn't know until I went to Pompeii. Yeah. They're like fossils aren't bones. No, yeah. They're rocks formed around the bones and fossilized. Also, yes, and or it's we found like their molds that we then poured plaster into the fossil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because the bones like the cavity. Yes. And so so like I guess when I went when I first heard of Pompeii, I thought there were people inside of these things. And that's now what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were buried. Their bodies are rooted. They're gone, but the cavity is still there of where they were. Yeah. And so then they poured plaster into the cavity and now it's a mold. Now you see it. Yeah. I didn't know that. And that's where a lot of fossils are. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. How how big is this? I mean, they range in size. So like the smaller of the pleasiest or let me pull this up. The smaller length ones. This looks pretty Loch Ness Monstery. They do fit the the vibe pretty pretty pretty good. It doesn't say in this Wikipedia article. Hold on. How long they are? Yeah. Anywhere from 10 to 16 feet. Okay. So length. Yeah. Loch Ness Monstery. Yeah. They do have a larger relative, the Alasama Sores. Yeah. Alasama Sores. Which is 43 to 46 feet long. Similar look. Like it looks very similar. Also found in that region. I don't think it was found in that region. Okay. But so the pleasiestore, what's interesting is and this, I should say, this immediately kind of catches on is like, oh, maybe that's the monster in Loch Ness. Because if you look at the top ography here, while technically there was no way for it to get in the lock today, if we start to raise the sea level a little bit to the era of the dinosaurs, it starts to get to the point where this was like ocean water. Yeah. Especially, I mean, there's probably a tiktotic movement too, so a lot of these mountain ranges are probably not there also, but the point remains. That location was probably underwater during the lifespan of the pleasiestore. Okay. Hey, we just reduced the price of our Patreon to $6.99 a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts. You get to join the discord. You get early access. Whichever reason you're joining for, we wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price. And so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do. And so, but also, you know, the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean, like, what, you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're poor. And we are. We are. And, uh, no. But if you can't join us on Patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show. And thanks for for being here for this episode. The problem with this theory is the pleasiestores were in extinct like 60 million years ago. So, right. So the odds of unless you're kind of like, yeah, you're right. And the odds of one surviving the lake are pretty slim. Uh, and yeah, the, the lake is so small. Someone, we made fun of Ken Ham and someone in the comments was like, I can't believe you guys would do that. You can't, but you can believe all the stuff that Ken Ham says. He's very make fun of you can't believe that we make fun of it, but you can believe that stuff. So, uh, no. So the pleasiestore, somebody did the math of the size of the pleasiestore versus how much food it would have to intake to maintain the size of it. Oh, sure. Compared to the amount of fish that we know exists in the lock. And they said that it's barely a large enough supply to feed one pleasiestore regularly. Even like the small like 16 footer. Yeah. And so, and that's because like, it, it's not like, oh, it would need because every day it has to intake so much. It would go through the full supply quicker than it would replenish replenish the supply. Right. Right. So it ended up starting itself because it ate too much. And so for a pleasiestore to survive 65 million years, there needs to be multiple to reproduce. And the supply just doesn't match up of fish and Loch Ness. So I can't be a pleasiestore, basically, is what they're saying. Okay. There's not, there's not enough food for it to survive in there. Unless there is something else we don't know more mysterious about Loch Ness. Unless there's a cave where we keep the founding documents of America hidden in the Loch Ness. So some other theories have been proposed. Okay. But before we get to those, I think it's important to get to a guy by the name of actually, let me guess his name. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I thought you were just going to put up a picture and be like, actually, you guess? No, I was going to say 1933. We needed to go to an event in 1933 because this is important. Okay. This is an event that like revives the storyline in the zeitgeist. Like it had always been like, there's monsters here. This is kind of like the Roswell moment for Loch Ness. Oh. And so this is the photo, right? Yeah. Well, no, close. But April 15th, 1933, there is a woman here. Let me just get the article. I'm going to read it. Read this extra version. Yeah. Video that lady who got attacked by an order. Yes. If we ever thought about maybe this is an order because that looked pretty brutal. I mean, I mean, it could have been in the 536 AD thing. Yeah. I'm a big strong honest. Don't want to die by order attack. How do you want to die? I haven't thought about it. Have you thought of the ways you don't want to die? Oh yeah. Have I told the story about how I choked on a boneless swing one time? I had a near to other experience where I choked on a boneless swing. And in my head, I prayed one. I said, God, please not like this. And then I was like, what am I even choking? There's no bone. One of my even choking on right now. I was on an Applebee's. Yeah. I looked around and I was like, no, we're not here. You know. And then I'd like literally had to do the thing where I was like pushing myself against the table. I got it. But no, I didn't get to the point where I was flailing asking for help. I like shoved myself into the table. Yeah. And got it dislodged. Interesting. But there was a moment there. Yikes. Where I thought on my tombstone, they were going to say the unlimited boneless wings got them. Got you know, got got. And that's message for Applebees. The only way to make money off me in an unlimited boneless swing is to kill me. All right. Because if you give me unlimited wings, I'm going to take you for a ride. And you know what? Matter of fact, I think you need to sue them because those boneless wings are a choking hazard. And there was no label. What was I choking on? It was probably just a chunk of the breading. I guess. I didn't didn't chew well enough. Yeah. I was just inhaling. Yeah. Sorry for that sound. That was not me. That was Tim. I want to be. I want you to know. Jared did that. He's trying to blame me for it. Tim stopped. Speaking of weird mouth noises. 25 minutes in a few weeks ago, you made me laugh really hard at something. Yeah. And I choked. I fully choked. And then for the rest of the episode, I couldn't get it back. Yeah. I was. I throw. And everyone was really mad about it, dude. And I'm really sorry. Comment. All the comments are like, hey, stop. I drink some water. I did. I drink a lot of water. And I couldn't stop. And God, I'm just so funny. Yeah. I'm sorry. Jared's just so good. Sorry about it. I laughed it. He just killed me when the rest of the episode. It's Jared's fault that I was like that. He's not going to say anything else. So that way, I don't choke. But the irony about this is this bit is going to make me laugh really hard eventually because it's going to get really uncomfortable. And I can't handle that. And then I'm going to choke laughing. And then I'm going to be clear about the rest of the episodes. I'm here. We're good. We're good. I just keep going. So they. So the Inverness Corrier puts out an article relaying the events that were released. This is the paper. This is the paper in the furnace. And they say that on Friday of last week, a well done. Is that not what I said? Yeah, you said Corrier. I was like the Corrier. The Corrier. The Corrier. The Corrier. The Corrier. On Friday of last week, a well known businessman who lives near Inverness and his wife, a university graduate had to clarify that. Well, I have to get some qualifications. She's smart. Yeah. Yeah. When motoring along the North Shore, the lock, not far from eight, a brachian peer. Sorry. Here's the thing. The font of this. This is like a scanned Yeah, it's hard to read from yeah, the early 1900s. We're startled to see a tremendous upheaval on the lock, which previously had been calm as the proverbial milk pond. The lady was the first to notice the disturbance, which occurred fully three quarters of a mile from the shore. And it was her sudden cries that stopped and drew the husband's attention to the water. And basically they said that there they saw a creature that was rolling and pledging for fully a minute, resembling a whale on the water. Okay. And so they they tell this story, seeing something that looks like a whale thrashing in the water basically. And this event kind of goes buckwild this article. I don't know what's funny about that. You were looking in the eyes and going buckwild. Do you know what that means? No. Okay. I think it means crazy. Okay. So blackwild urban dictionary. Yeah, it's crazy out of control. That's what it is. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, even in urban dictionary, it's not bad. All right. Buckwild. It's just you looking in the eyes and going and this story with buckwild, which is just not a normal thing to say buckwild to say I'm going to go put some really inappropriate definitions on it. So also I feel like it's very millennial to check urban dictionary. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. That's fair. That's fair. It's like it's like let me check urban dictionary and text cha-cha. Yeah. Yeah. So the later that year, so that that story was 1933 in the summer of 1933, in November of that year, someone puts out the very first photograph. We actually can't find this photo, but it was found that that first photo allegedly of it was just a water bird, like a crane or a swan or something. And so that quickly became discredited. But there was kind of this fervor that was developing. People are going to find out what this is. Yes. And so in December 1933, Big Game Hunter by the name of, actually I'll show you this picture you can guess. At Big Game Hunter, this guy was hired by the Daily Mail. What do you guys, what do you think this guy's name is? Marmin. Close. Marmin. No. Marmin. Marmin. Marmin. No. No. Big Game Hunter. Marma Duke, Weatherell. Marma Duke. I know. I know. I know. He was hired by the Daily Mail to go capture a photo. Looks. He looks like he hunts for big animals, you know? He does. And he doesn't sleep while he does it. He actually hasn't sleep since he started this career. Is this a fake monkey on his camera? Is that a real monkey? I am not sure. I think it's a real monkey. One of those like Zabuma food looking monkeys. I like that you like a lemur. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the audio listener, I'll go lemur. Yeah. I mean, if you're like, what is a lemur is like Zabuma food? Oh, so now we skip six steps. We have to retake those steps because Tim's dumb and we're like. Oh, God, not like this. Not about this. Oh my gosh. Not about the moment. We're going to have a moment. So he goes and he goes to try to capture a photo of it. And he's been some time. As you do in your hair. Yeah, it looks very British and that's not common during. He goes to the lock. Yeah. Trying to capture some footage of the lockness monster. Is he take that infamous picture? No. He goes, he can't find it. But instead, he manages to capture some footprints along the shore. Okay. And so they ship, they ship those off the daily mail prints. Someone very quickly recognizes the footprints and says, Hey, those are hippo footprints. And I actually know for a fact that hippos right now, because this is super common, were to use his asterisks, their feet. And so he just took his hippo foot and put on the original picture. He took his hippo foot that he had and was just putting footprints in the in the beach. And then took a picture of that and put it out and everyone was like, Oh, this guy's a liar. And so the daily mail drops the asterisks. Yeah, isn't that weird? Huh. Hey, October 22nd, we're doing Tillin Live as part of the Fountain City Comedy Festival here in Kansas City. You got to Tillin.com slash live for more information. You get passes. This is going to be more than just us. Oh, yeah. It's like legitimately not an advertisement right now. The festival's pretty sick. Like there's a really great lineup. A lot of really good comics. This thing's been growing a lot the past couple of years. So really cool to be the part of it. And so hopefully we'll see you there. Are you seeing hippos following boats? I guess. What do you mean you guess? I mean, I'm you say that. And I'm like, I'm like, I can't recall. But at the same time, I do kind of have a picture of my head of one of them just kind of like with its head and its back sticking out the water just swimming along. No, no, no. Let me show you a video. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what they're jumping where they're like freaking they're chasing. Oh, it's a Fox News clip. Let me get out of here. I don't want you to have any views from me. Look, and then they just disappear. Then they come back up. Yeah, they're like dogs chasing cars. hippos are scary. They're huge. Whoa, here it comes. Here it comes. You seen that it's destroyed watermelons? It's crazy. They just chump through a watermelon. They're huge. So yeah, so he thought, hey, this will be convincing. And the Daily Mail dropped. So it was a whole thing. And he was pretty mad about it. And so in January 1934, he or no, in April 1934, he hires a surgeon. And the surgeon sends the Daily Mail a photo that he takes on the surgeon. The locksmiths. Yeah. And it was this photo. And this photo, we actually had this. So this is taken by a known fraudster. No, this is taken by a well-known, well-reveared surgeon who was hired by a known fraudster. That's what I'm saying, though. You know, I mean, like the fraudster gives him this. Yeah. Yeah. So the fraudster frauded this. Yeah. And they know about the pleasy store. And so here's the thing. We had the, this is a cropped in version of the image. This is the one you see everywhere, but we have a wider image. And when you see this wider image, you start to realize how small this is next to the wakes and the water. Yeah. Kind of get a frame. And what we actually know, and we have known for a long time, actually. Is that this is a duck? Is that this is a toy submarine that they took a little bit of wood clay. And they formed that head to look like a pleasy store because we already knew about the pleasy store. There was already the myth that it was a sore. So the fraudster. And they pushed this out into the lake. And they took that photo. And because he was like, he's like, I want to get a good photo, and I want to kind of stick it to him. And so this, even though we know now, infamous photo, this infamous photo is a toy submarine made to look like a dinosaur. And did he admit this? Eventually, how do we know that? Somebody in his group revealed the story. And so we know now. But here's the thing that has been known for a long time. And it has not really dissuaded any believers because the the storyline existed before this photo. Sure. It wasn't like this photo was the first appearance of the mythology. Right. Right. And so that what the believers say is like, oh, yeah, that is a myth. That is not real. That's a fraud. But the the Loch Ness monster is still. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he made that up. But day. So we put a submarine out into the water, a little clay head. And we took a picture of it. And everyone there became a Christian. And a little while after that, another journalist, and this kind of became a thing for a little bit. And people were faking stuff. While an Italian journalist, he received a story about a fisherman who captured who caught a strange fish in Loch Ness. And he was going to break the story. But he's like, there's not really a lot to this story. And so he just edited the strange fist to the Loch Ness monster. And kind of he's founded on that mythology of it to stretch it and make it a story. So started being some things like that that would go on to kind of stretch the story. But what's interesting is in the late 80s, a marine biologist by the name of you guess. Oh, yeah, I like this guy. He looks like he belongs in the sea. Shamish. Oh, I like that guess. I like that guess, actually. Yeah, what's his name? Adrian Shine. What is it? Adrian Shine. I like the name Adrian too. Yeah. If you're if you're listening, he's a guy, one of those guys who his beard doesn't stop. It goes all the way around the top of his head. And he's got a, is he got his hair and a ponytail back there? Yeah, he's got long flowing hair. Yeah. So this is hot Santa. Yeah, this is kind of hot Santa. He's thin, he's got a green suit on. And it's a tailored light. It's like a good suit. Good. And he's like sitting on the bridge. He's sitting like he belongs on this boat. Yeah, yeah. He's sitting like, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the wind is blowing his beard and his hair. It's very majestic. I mean, you can tell, like you can just tell from looking at this picture underneath his arms are probably super hairy. He's spent 50 years studying Loch Ness, not specifically, like he's a marine biologist, not a nessie person. Okay. And so he's like, he's like, I've studied the lake. I know what's in the lake. I know what's here. Yeah. And so he was like, I want to, like, there's this mythology that there's something going on. He's like, he's like, we had the technology. We can figure out what's going on in this lake. What year is this? 87. He puts together an operation deep scan. This was a million dollar project operation. And what they did is they took a flotilla of 24 boats and fired sonar to the bottom of the lake and just drove information across the whole lake to capture a full image of operation deep scan. And so we actually have photos of this and progress, which in real life, it looks a lot less majestic than that. Then that picture, this looks like it was going to be like a freaking super cool. The Star Wars Imperial Armada. Yeah. And the real life photo is they can't even drive in a straight line. This is just freaking lake of the Ozarks on any weekend. Yeah. But yeah. So they went out across. They did this scan. And what's interesting is we get a full picture of the bottom of the floor and everything. So even if like something's died, we would see anything in there, at least from a large lump. And they did handle they did capture a handful of anomalies that were larger than a shark that they were like, we don't know exactly what this is. And so they did this whole thing. They took note of where these anomalies were located. And then they went back again and a handful of them were still there. So they were like, okay, this is probably like a rock or some debris that's caught on something. But a few of them were not in the location that they expected so they had moved. And so it's still possible that that's debris. It's also possible that that's some other like there is a river that feeds this. So it's possible some other large marine sea creature could have got in there. Yeah. And then got out and they don't know for sure what they are. But there is it's also possible. There's the Loch Ness Monster. It could be the Loch Ness Monster. And so he did this in his kind of conclusion is that we have no real good evidence that there's anything in there that could be the Loch Ness Monster from this. And so shortly after that, let's see what was this? Oh, this was quite a long demo after that. 2018. Another professor, excuse me, guess his name? Archibald. Oh, close. Neil. Neil Gemmell. Neil Gemmell decided to do a large-scale DNA scan of the lake. Sure. To understand what the lake. If you show me that, I would have said, Neil. He looks like the vocalist of the smashing pumpkins to me. Yeah. Yeah. He does look like if Bill Burr shaved, which is what the vocalist of the smashing pumpkins looks like. Yeah. He does look like the vocalist from smashing pumpkins. So he does this DNA study. Related. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Sorry, Bill. Have you know that story? I know that thing got mad about something. Bill got mad about it. Okay. The guy from the smashing pumpkins thinks it's funny, but Bill got annoyed. He was like, you're not my brother. Well, there's like, they don't know their dads. They don't know their dads, and they look a lot alike. Oh, yeah. And so there's like an online theory that they're really living. They don't. I said to the email that James Corden, and I was like, you think, do you think we're really funny to say that to random people. We don't look at anything like, hello. I'd be like, picture attached. And Gordon James Gmail. Picture attached to my DNA, and also a picture of myself. Today's newspaper. So, okay, what did he find in this DNA stuff? So he comes out and he says, there's absolutely zero reptile, sturgeon, or catfish DNA found in the lock. But the interesting thing is there are extraordinary amounts of European eel DNA. And so they, what they hypothesize is through doing a little statistical analysis, they said that there's probably a one in 50,000 chance that there is a one meter eel somewhere in the lock. And they said that this stock of how many eels must be in the lock for that large of a DNA sample to be president. It's almost a guarantee that there are at least one if not multiple meter long eels swimming around three feet. Yeah. So they're not in the lock, which that's big enough, which if you saw that peeking out of the water, you're looking for a lock nest monster. Potentially, that could make you think that something's three feet, three feet. Yeah. How thick do you think an eel is? Some eels are pretty thick. I've seen snakes sticking up from the water and I go, I don't go, oh my gosh. That's the lock nest monster. Yeah, but there's not something about, like if you're out, if you're a link of the Ozarks, there's no mythology about a monster being in there. If you have a lot of lock nest, there's the mythology. And so there's kind of the suggestion of I hate when I see snakes on the water. Yeah, there's nothing worse. That freaks me out. Nothing worse. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing worse. Nothing worse. There's nothing worse than seeing a snake on the water. Sorry, my pediatricians have been telling me that. Nothing worse. I'm not seeing my S's and say more S words. It's a Nessie 8. The pediatrician. Yeah, you're just saying more S words. It's pre-repeated. A pediatrician. My, my assistant. Please leave us a review. And join us on Patreon. We're a very good at podcasting. No, I do think I do think there is something about the power of suggestion and something about like you expect to see that thing there. And so we brought this up. I don't know if this is last episode of the episode before or I was I said I've been asking people with the last of you see a demon in your room. And I and I like genuinely the last time this has happened to me was I was in high school, but especially in that era of my life, like that was an expectation I had. I'm gonna see a demon. I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna see a demon. That's an expectation that I have. I was like really big in like the Pentecostal spiritual warfare world where I was like I'm just surrounded by the demons at all times. And so like that was like where my brain was. And so I saw them everywhere I went. But I didn't actually. There's no demons here. I was supposed to sleep without any. So there's no demons after me. Everything I'm facing is just the consequences of my own actions. No, but there's something. I'm in so much credit card debt because I'm being attacked by demons. Hello, can you please forgive my credit card debt? It's the demons fault. And I think if you're I think if you're a load of just you hear that you kind of have to be like, Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, well, you're not accountable for your mock that out. No, there's something to that where it's like if your brain is in that headspace. Sure. And you're in a place where you expect to see that thing. If something is close enough, your brain fills in the gaps. Sure. And so I think that there is this, I mean, now 1500 year mythology around. We haven't done another scan. Not to the scale of the deep scan. Basically, where we're at at this point is it seems like this initial story was just a tall tale from the monk thing from the 500s from the 500s. There's just some tall tale. And that built a myth. Yeah. And that myth eventually was revived. I also think it could be one of those things where it's like, you know, a bigger sea animal or something that came into the lock. And then left. Yeah, when there wasn't more food for it. Yeah, I mean, the lock is a ridiculously deep lock, right? I think it's like 700 feet deep. And I don't know the the river that feeds. Yeah. And we grew up near the lock of the Ozarks and or table table lock lock. Table lock lock. Table lock lock. They will lock lock. The lake is deep enough to support large my life. Could they get through? Could they get in? Maybe if like the river swelled and stayed at a high enough average depth. Sure. Yeah. That's why I would be like, okay, once every 100 years, you see something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that like that's conceivable for sure. Sure. And I think it's also possible that there are like larger fish or because I do genuinely think like if a fish were to grow to the right size or an eel were to grow to the right size, I think your brain would just kind of say, that's lockness monster. Or a tree branch has been suggested a little bit. Oh, sure. And again, if you are expecting to see that and the weather conditions were just right, you know, it's just rocky enough. The water's just just rocky enough than maybe your brain just fills in the gaps and says that's that's what that is. But ultimately, I do think this is a true story, though, that the, yes, the monk cult. Halt. Thou shalt not pass. I love that he's a, it's do not touch the man. Do not touch the man. Return to the sea. And everybody. Also, I like that he uses friend as bait. That's crazy that this monk was like did not there. Go out there. Go out there. For what? For what? He knows there's like dead guy being buried behind him. We tell his friend. Another theory is that it was a circus elephant because circuses were common in that era and that's let the elephant swim in the water. And this is what an elephant looks like when it's swimming. So it's pretty lockness monster. It's pretty lockness monster. It feels kind of small though. Of course swans and yeah, that's what I thought the original picture was. And if that's far away, and it's a rainy cloudy day, like, you know, and if it's a big and you're kind of dumb. Yeah. You're just driving drunk next to the lockness. Also, if you were supposed to be wearing glasses and you didn't wear glasses. Sure. Nobody had glasses. Did you see that? Have we talked about that guy? He said that. It was a podcast recently. They're clipping their role. He said, I think most of like the dragons and monsters from like any time before the current era was just people couldn't see because we didn't also we talked about in our ghost episode. The number of ghosts that it's just like you just had candlelight of course. You know, of course you see flickering things and stuff in the corner. Yeah. Yeah. And you lived in a world where you constantly saw things that you never saw before. Like right now, it is so unnatural for me to know about giraffes. I should not know about giraffes. That's true. And so the so buff you before we had this like globally connected world to see, to travel was to see things you have never seen before. And then you go back and tell people about that. And then they would tell people about that. And so it's like it's really understandable how these mythologies arose because people just didn't see things like we do. We see too much. That's interesting. I shouldn't know about hippos. Yeah. I shouldn't know about the devil getting fiddled off. Hey, thanks for being here for this episode of Things On The Last Night. If you liked it, please share it. Tell somebody about the show. Please, please, please spread the mythology of Dylan to the world. And then we also did an episode about eels. When we recorded the episode, there was some information that now exists that did not exist then. We at the time of recording that episode science did not know where eels came from. Yeah. And so we talked about the whole the theories that existed throughout all the history. And then have we done an update on that before? I don't think we have. Oh, well, bummer. And so go check that out. It's a great episode. Also, next week's episode is available right now on Patreon. Please join us. We do monthly hangouts. We would love to see you in the hangout with us. This one's going to be fun because it's October, Halloween time. Yeah. And so join the hangout. Come say hi. Introduce yourself and come hang out with us. So we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Okay. Great.


Imagine you’re at a funeral in the Scottish Highlands in 565 AD. You’re mourning a friend who was just killed by a water monster, when suddenly a monk shouts, “Hey, why don’t you swim across the lake and see if we can get that monster out of there!” And one of you… actually does it. This is where the legend of the Loch Ness Monster begins — and somehow it only gets weirder from there.

Grab a snack (maybe not boneless wings, we’ll explain later), because this episode of TILLN went deep. Pun absolutely intended.

A Saint, a Sea Monster, and a Mass Baptism

The oldest known Nessie sighting comes from Saint Columba — a name Jaron is now convinced sounds like “the gigantic eighth-grader who just transferred to your school.” According to the Life of Saint Columbus, Columba was doing missionary work in Scotland when he came across locals burying a man killed by a “water monster” in the River Ness.

So naturally, Columba told a fellow monk to swim across the water as bait. When the beast surfaced with a terrifying roar, Columba raised his hand, made the sign of the cross, and commanded it: “Go no further. Do not touch the man.” The creature reportedly froze “as if pulled back by a rope” and fled in terror. Everyone present immediately converted to Christianity.

Here’s the catch: this story was written down over 100 years after Columba’s death by a man named Adomnán of Iona. So… reliable? Eh. But it planted a seed in local folklore that would lie dormant for nearly 1,300 years of total historical silence.

The Dinosaur Theory (And Why It Doesn’t Add Up)

Fast forward to the 1800s, when sightings suddenly pick back up. In 1820, fossil pioneer Mary Anning discovered the first complete Plesiosaur skeleton — a long-necked marine reptile that looks suspiciously Loch Ness Monster-y. At 10 to 16 feet long with that iconic serpentine neck, it fit the legend perfectly.

Could a surviving Plesiosaur be lurking in the loch? Loch Ness is bizarre — a long, deep, river-like lake connected to the sea on one end. Scientists did the math, though, and here’s where the dream dies: Plesiosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. And even if one had survived, there’d need to be a whole breeding population to keep the species going. The problem? The loch barely holds enough fish to feed a single Plesiosaur. It would eat through the food supply faster than it could replenish, essentially starving itself to extinction. Case closed. Mostly.

The Famous Photo Is a Toy Submarine

Now for the big one. In 1933, a businessman and his university-graduate wife (the paper made sure to mention she was smart) reported seeing something whale-like thrashing in the water. The story went, in Jaron’s words, “buckwild.”

Enter big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, hired by the Daily Mail. He couldn’t find the monster, so he faked footprints using a dried hippo foot (apparently a common item back then?). When the paper exposed him, Wetherell got petty. He recruited a respected surgeon to submit the photo — you know the one, the black-and-white silhouette everyone’s seen.

Except it was a toy submarine with a little clay head molded to look like a Plesiosaur. A member of Wetherell’s own group eventually confessed. The most iconic cryptid photo in history is a bath toy. And yet — believers shrugged, because the myth existed long before the photo did.

Sonar, DNA, and Giant Eels

Modern science has taken real swings at the loch. In 1987, marine biologist Adrian Shine (described by Tim as “hot Santa”) launched Operation Deep Scan — 24 boats blasting sonar across the entire lake. They found a few anomalies larger than a shark, some of which moved between scans. Spooky, but probably debris. Or, you know, maybe not.

Then in 2018, professor Neil Gemmell ran a full DNA analysis. The verdict? Zero reptile, sturgeon, or catfish DNA. But tons of European eel DNA — enough that there’s almost certainly at least one eel in the loch over a meter long. Picture a three-foot eel poking out of dark, choppy water when you’re already expecting a monster. Your brain fills in the rest.

So What’s Really Going On?

Jaron and Tim landed on something genuinely fascinating: the power of suggestion. For most of human history, people constantly encountered things they’d never seen before. Giraffes, hippos, dragons — all equally unbelievable to someone who’d never left their village. As Tim put it, “I shouldn’t know about hippos.” We live in a world that’s over-seen; they lived in one that was wide open to wonder.

Nessie is probably a 1,500-year-old game of telephone that started with a monk, got revived by a hoaxer, and lives on because we want it to. From boneless wing near-death experiences to hot Santa marine biologists, this is Jaron and Tim at their rambling, hilarious best — and honestly, the real monster might just be our own imaginations.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning and laughing a lot while you do, you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!

Sources

I have strong sources for both central claims. Both Wikipedia pages are confirmed live and authoritative, covering the 565 AD St. Columba story and the 1934 surgeon’s photograph hoax.

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