It's Daddy's Birthday

Today was my father's 81st Birthday. Very many thanks to all of you who have sent cards, presents and good wishes. He had a quiet day at home with several visitors and copious amounts of chocolate birthday cake and sherry.

He was particularly pleased with the rude card that Oll sent him and the sweet one Corinna sent.

On a less happy note, he has been unwell again in the last few days, and the doctors have diagnosed a partially collapsed lung. We don't know the cause yet, but are awaiting blood tests and a chest X Ray.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers

Welcome to the Future

Dear Friends,


I realised today - with horror - that it is now three weeks into 2006 and I haven't made a posting. In mitigation, an awful lot seems to have happened - we have had an eventful few weeks and been rushed off our feet. First Graham, then me, then Mark have been ill, and my elderly father (whom regular readers will know that we look after on a full-time basis) has been extremely unwell. On at least one occasion we
thought that he was heading to meet his maker, and the whole period has been fraught. Whilst on the subject of bad news, we had heating failure between Christmas and New Year and four of our frogs have died. Both Mark and I were very upset when we found out, but I suppose that this is all part of the way things are.

On a more cheerful note, we had our annual Council meeting in early January, Mark Martin and Chris Moiser joined us for the meeting, and have thrashed out a pretty good schedule of events for 2006.

CHANGES TO COUNCIL

Sadly Elliot Saunders has resigned due to ill health and his place as Electronic \Information Manager and Forum Moderator has been taken by Oll Lewis - also from South Wales. There should be some amusing comment about swapping Elly for Olly, but I can't think of one.

EXPEDITIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS

The Golden Frog project is continuing apace, and we now have records of little yellow hopping batrachians from all over the UK, but most excitingly, three separate ponds within a few miles of our HQ in rural North Devon.

In July an expedition, currently comprising of Richard Freeman, Chris Moiser, and Lisa Dowley will be travelling to the Gambia. On June 12th 1983 amateur naturalist Owen Burnham and his family were walking along Bungalow beach when they came upon the fresh carcass of a huge sea creature. It was around 16 feet long with a crocodile like head, four flippers, a bulky body, and a tail. It was brown with a white underside. The jaws had 80 sharp teeth. The animal had no blow hole like a whale would and lacked scales. Its skin was rubbery. The

description fits no known animal. Owen did not have a camera but took detailed notes and made sketches. These were later published in BBC Wildlife Magazine. Two locals turned up and hacked off the creature’s head to sell as a curio. Owen and his family realised the importance of the specimen and buried it above the tide line on the beach were the hot sand would preserve it.

We have Owen`s map and know exactly were to dig for the creature. We need not transport the whole carcass back to England. If we find it we can take samples and our friend Dr Lars Thomas of the University of Copenhagen can arrange for DNA tests to be run on them.

We are also hoping to return to Loch Ness in the autumn to continue our attempts at searching for evidence of giant eels. Depending on finances, we may also be returning to the United States at some point as well, probably to liaise with Chester Moore or Ken Gerhard on one of their many projects.

Whilst on this subject, Ken and Lori are presently in Belize carrying out their second expedition in search of the mystery bipedal hominids of the area. We wish them good luck in their endeavours, and want them to know that our thoughts and prayers are with them.

WEIRD WEEKEND

This year's event will be held over the weekend of 17-20 August, at the Woolfardisworthy Community Centre here in North Devon. Before you all wince and assume that to reach us will be a monumental task, akin to that of reaching Lake Tele in the Congo, let me reassuere you. We are only a mile and a half from the main A39, we are 18 miles from Barnstaple Railway Station, but will be running a FREE shuttle service to and from the station over the weekend, and there are plenty of cheap hotels, campsites, and B+Bs. We shall be circulating an accomodation

list in a week or so, but meanwhile - to whet your appetite - here is the current speaker list for the event:

TIM MATTHEWS: Dragons from a Velikovskian viewpoint
RONAN COGHLAN: The Goatman Cometh
PAUL VELLA: Analysing the Patterson Bigfoot Film
LIONEL BEER: the search for Camelot
RICHARD FREEMAN et al: Gambia 2006 Expedition
CHRIS MOISER: tba
BOB MORELL: The cryptozoology of ancient Egypt
IAN SIMMONS: Space is the Place - Extraterrestrial Mythologies in Modern Music
MATTHEW WILLIAMS: Mystery animals and crop circles
JEREMY HARTE: tba
GORDON RUTTER: Imaginary Zoo - Animal Fakes and Frauds
LARRY WARREN: Rendlesham Forest revisited

Plus Exhibitions and Workshops from:

PAUL CROWTHER AND CHRIS MOISER: Analysing big cat footage (Workshop)
CHRIS MOISER AND MARK FRAZER: Hints on practical fieldwork for big cat investigators (Workshop)
ANTHONY JAMES (CREATURAMA): Make your own Monsters (Workshop) Creaturama 2006 (Exhibition)
MARK FRAZER: Big Cats in Britain (Exhibition)
SAM SHEARON: Cryptozoological Art (Exhibition)
OLL LEWIS: `The Dumbo Squid` - a tool for catching aquatic predators (demonstration)
MATTHEW WILLIAMS: Make your own crop circle (workshop)
FOOLISH PEOPLE THEATRE COMPANY (tba)
CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY: 15 years of the CFZ (exhibition)
CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY: cfz at the movies (Cryptozoological documentaries featuring the CFZ will be shown throughout the

weekend)

The event will - as usual - start with a FREE cocktail party at the CFZ on the thursday evening, and there will be an open house for people wanting to visit us and meet the team all day on the friday. Doors open at the Community Centre at 6.00 and the speakers will start at approximately 7.30.

More speakers and attrractions are at the TBC stage and will be confirmed as being added to the bill in the next few weeks.

Tickets for the three days are £20. Book now to avoid disappointment as numbers are strictly limited.

PUBLICATION SCHEDULE

* Animals & Men #37 is very nearly ready. All material has now been received, and we hope that it will be going to press imminently. We hope that A&M38 will be out in the spring, A&M39 in time for the WW, and that we shall reach the big four-oh by Christmas.

* The inaugural `Big Cats in Britain` Yearbook is currently being proofread by Suzi Marsh, and we hope to go to press in a week or so. It includes papers by Chris Moiser, Mark Frazer, Jan Williams and others. Full details will be posted in the next week.

* `Fragrant Harbours; Distant Rivers` by John Downes (Senior) is now complete, and will be with the printers within 24 Hours. From the back Cover:

"Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), once wrote that “There is properly no history, only biography”. His dictum has quite possibly never been illustrated better than in this book. Many excellent books have been written about Africa during the second half of the 19th Century, but this one is unique in that it presents the stories of a dozen different people, whose interlinked lives and achievements have as many nuances as any contemporary soap opera. This is the story of how ordinary people achieved extraordinary things and shaped the face of the continent we know today.

This is also believed to be the first book of its kind which explains how the events in China and Hong Kong which surrounded the Opium Wars, intimately effected the events in Africa which take up the majority of this book.

John Downes, born in Plymouth in 1925 served in the British Merchant Navy during the closing days of the Battle of the Atlantic, and then came ashore to marry Mary in 1947. This led them to adventures in Nigeria and Hong Kong, during which John – quite accidentally – found himself following in the footsteps of one of the main characters in this book; Frederick Lugard – the architect of modern Nigeria."

* The CFZ Yearbook 2005/6 is now in prepation. It will include articles by Richard Freeman, Chris Clark, Chris Moiser, Jon Hare, Oll Lewis, Neil Arnold, Ruby Lang, Lisa Dowley and others, and we will have full details in the next few weeks.

* `The Island of Paradise`, my new book, which covers my 2004 expedition to Puerto Rico and includes a radical new theory concerning th4e chupacabra is over half written and we hope that it will be published in the spring together with the 30th Anniversary Collector's Edition of `The Owlman and Others`.

* Other reprintings due in the next few months include `The Blackdown Mystery` by yours truly, and the first three volumes of the collected editions of Animals & Men.

FUNDRAISING

Suzi Marsh very kindly organised an evening of local bands in Barnstaple just before Christmas and £200 was raised for CFZ funds. Thank you very much my dear....


As you can see, the CFZ is very much alive and well as we enter our fourteenth year, and the future looks very bright indeed.
As always we are in desperate need of donations of time, money and expertise. The CFZ makes quite a lot of money but, boy, do we spend it fast! We are currently carrying out research all over the world and every penny earned goes straight into these projects. We do not ask for money for personal gain. We are all capable of supporting ourselves, but if we are to continue our programme of research we MUST have more money and more manpower. If you are interested in cryptozoology (whether or not you are a member of the CFZ) and feel that you can help, send donations via PayPal or feel free to email me on jon@eclipse.co.uk.

Until next time, many thanks for all your support ,
God Bless
Slainte Mhor


Jonathan Downes,
(Director, Centre for Fortean Zoology)
Myrtle Cottage
Woolsery
Bideford
North Devon
EX39 5QR

01237 431413

A Very Happy Christmas to you all

Its now Christmas Eve, and I am at Corinna's house in Lincolnshire. I just want to thank you all for all you have done during 2005. It is very much appreciated I can tell you. Thank you to everyone who has sent cards and even presents to the CFZ - again, I am overwhelmed by your kindness.

Let's hope that 2006 can be another special year for us all.

God Bless

Jon

THE CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY ANNUAL REPORT 2005

THE CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY
ANNUAL REPORT 2005

“Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been.”

The Grateful Dead: Truckin’

Dear friends,

It seems incredibly weird that the CFZ is just about to enter its fifteenth year – a decade and a half of cryptozoological research. It seems that every year, when I sit back to write this report, I find myself looking back on the proceeding twelve months and wondering how we possibly ever managed to fit so much in!

It has been an odd year – beset by personal dramas – but it has been a successful one.

The first few months of the year went according to plan. The General Council meeting in January sorted out a great deal of the administrative problems that we had been having, and the publication of my book Monster Hunter opened the doors for a new range of CFZ books. Out were to go the old spiral-bound, home-made books, and in was to come a new range of perfect-bound paperbacks. The entire CFZ Press range was to be revamped with new material, extra pictures, and new artwork by Mark North.

Graham – later assisted by Oll Lewis – took over the job of running the ailing and elderly CFZ forum and has turned it into a thriving cyber-community which spills out into a `Virtual CFZ’ in the animated chatroom ‘Habbo Hotel’. It is all getting very strange.

We spent much of the next three months working on Richard Freeman’s book; Dragons; More than a Myth and everyone who visited the CFZ during the late winter and spring of this year found themselves roped in to working on the project! My girlfriend Corinna, my cousin Pene, and Oll Lewis (a new CFZ recruit from South Wales), all found themselves working on the index, and proof-reading, of this mammoth work. Well over a quarter of a million words long, the book is the first scientific study of dragons for over a century, and when it finally appeared in early July it was well worth the wait. However, by then, the world of the CFZ had changed forever.

In May, Richard, Chris Clark, John Hare and Dave “Davinian” Churchill went to Mongolia on the largest and most ambitious CFZ expedition yet: The search for the fabled Mongolian deathworm. They were in Mongolia for a month, during which Mark North – who had sadly been made redundant – found himself living almost non-stop in Richard’s room in Exeter and working on the dragon book and also our first crypto-novel – Chris Moiser’s While the Cat’s Away.

I spent much of May at Corinna’s house in Lincolnshire working on my next book (The Island of Paradise – my second book about Puerto Rico), and planning CFZ events for the second half of the year. In early June, the day after Richard returned, we had the second council meeting of the year, with the ranks being boosted by Oll Lewis and Lisa Dowley. Work started on capitalising on the successes of the Mongolian expedition – they had not actually found the deathworm, but had amassed more eyewitness testimony than ever before on the subject, and had also found reports (hitherto unknown in the west) of dragon-like creatures in the Gobi Desert - when something happened that was to change the CFZ for ever: My father was taken seriously ill.

Corinna (who happened to be visiting me that weekend) and I went up to see him and were shocked by what we saw. He was so ill and emaciated that there was no way that he could be left alone any more. Three days later Graham and I – thinking, I must admit, that my Dad would not live more than a few more weeks at most – moved in to the old family home in North Devon. I must be a better nurse than I realised, because six months later we are still here!

As many of you will know, it has long been my plan to move the CFZ to a rural location and to set up a proper visitor’s centre. Over the years I have been only too aware that some people have been somewhat disappointed when they saw the physical reality of the CFZ. A Japanese TV crew once came to film us about something, and almost the first thing that they said was: “But we thought you had a centre!”

We did – and do. The CFZ is now unquestionably the biggest cryptozoological research organisation in the world. We are the largest publishers of cryptozoological material in the world, and each year we undertake at least one major foreign expedition. But it is unquestionably true that – until now – visitors have come to see a rather grotty mid-terraced house in an unprepossessing Exeter housing estate. Now, this is all about to change.

My old family home is a rambling house in over a third of an acre of land in rural North Devon. It has outbuildings and a large conservatory as well as a fine old garden. Since June, I have been living here full time again for the first time in a quarter of a century. Graham has moved in as well, and we are joined by Mark North, Richard Freeman and John Fuller on shifts. In August we started moving the main CFZ Office, and I am proud to announce that I have reached an agreement with other family members that when my father finally dies, the CFZ will buy out their interest in the property, and we will finally have a visitor’s centre.

There will be a museum, a library, a laboratory, and room for our collection of exotic animals. There will be a permanent display of our ongoing researches, and what’s more, the village has an outstanding Community Centre that we can use for a nominal fee. Within the next few years we will be able to fulfil one of our major objectives, and the planned centre will be a major resource for cryptozoologists across the globe.

In August we left the village and came back to Exeter for the sixth annual Weird Weekend. It was the most successful event to date.

In Richard’s words:

“If the Fortean Times UnConvention is a wine bar then the CFZ’s Weird Weekend is sitting back on the sofa with a six-pack and watching re-runs of League of Gentlemen.

This year’s convention was again held at the Cowick Barton pub in Exeter. The pub was close to capacity, as the event has grown so much over the last three years. Far from the embarrassing early years when speakers rivalled attendees in numbers, the Weird Weekend is now thriving and can lay claim to being the biggest Fortean gathering in the UK outside of London.

There were 14 talks in all but as with anything you are involved in organizing you never have time to truly appreciate it. I missed many of the lectures this year as I was off behind the scenes doing this, that and the other.

Nick Redfern travelled all the way from Texas to give us two talks. The first was on the Texas Bigfoot. Most of us think of Texas as desert and scrub but in the east, on the borders of Louisiana, there are huge forests and swamps. After the Pacific North West and Florida, Texas is one of the real BHM hotspots in the US.

Nick also spoke about his new book ‘Bodysnatchers in the Desert’ (sounds like a 1950’s B-movie!) and his theory that the ‘aliens’ at Roswell were deformed human children used in altitude experiments by the US government and Japanese scientists pilfered by America after WW2. It makes a damn sight more sense than little grey men.

Over from Ireland was one of my favourite Fortean authors, Peter Costello. His books ‘In Search of Lake Monsters’ and ‘The Magic Zoo’ were benchmark works that inspired a generation of researchers. In his talk he looked back over his distinguished career searching for lake monster in his homeland and in the UK.

Speaking of Ireland I think that when you look in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for said country there should be a picture of Ronan Coghlan grinning cheekily whilst holding up a bottle of porter. One of the weekend’s highlights was the talk by everyone’s favourite twinkly-eyed rascal. The subject was mermaids. Not high up on the list of beast likely to actually exist, I hear you cry. Well you could be wrong. Ronan provided a convincing argument for the existence of an aquatic primate. Not quite the fish tailed, blonde beauty of myth but a more ape-like beast.

That line between man and beast was also blurred by Jon Hare in his talk on Sumatran weretigers. This was Jon’s first ever lecture but you wouldn’t know it from listening to him. His was widely regarded as the best talk of the weekend. He covered obscure martial arts from the Sumatran jungle that involve fighting on all fours and thinking like a tiger (Jon must be one of the few Westerners than have ever practised this art.) Forget the image of a tiger-human hybrid; this is something much stranger, involving beliefs in tiger ancestry and possession by tiger spirits.

On a less threatening note, the lovely Gail Nina Anderson looked at the portrayal of fairies in art. She showed that this was less of a reflection of true fairy lore and rather a projection onto them of the current trends and fashions. Contrary to the popular image, fairies almost never have wings and are often both ugly and malevolent. I was, however, amazed to find out she doesn’t like Richard Dad’s painting ‘The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke’, one of the few portrayals of fairies as disturbing creatures.
Chris Moiser (who wandered around carrying a life-sized toy panther) examined the fortean fauna of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. These stretched far beyond ‘The Lost World’ and included an elephant sized, subterranean bear in the Peak district (I wonder what he had been drinking when he thought that one up?)
My old mate Steve Jones dealt with strange creatures associated with holy wells and springs. These ranged from fish and snakes to dragons and great wyrms. As always he was seen walking abroad with his mighty horn (er drinking horn that is).
My own humble offering was a recounting of the CFZ expedition to Mongolia.
Some of the treats I missed included award winning author Jeremy Harte on Fortean happenings recorded in medieval literature, and Simon Sherwood on black dogs. David Farrant gave us his theories on the nature of the paranormal. Richard Ingram looked at conspiracy theories.
But it wasn’t just lectures. John Harrigan gave an intense and disturbing theatrical performance in the alter ego of Dr Bleach. Raised in a graveyard with corpses as friends he roamed the audience giving out deformed dolls with messages inside, like diseased fortune cookies. The performance was a prologue for Dark Nights of the Soul, a six-part horror / cryptozoology / fortean / occult anthology play being held at the Horse Hospital in London.
Sam Shearon provided a menagerie of cryptid artwork in a jaw-dropping display of artwork. The reputedly-haunted Monk’s Room in the Cowick Barton was given over to Sam’s amazing paintings of monsters that looked so real that you half expected them to lunge out of the canvas and sink rows of stiletto-like teeth into the soft flesh of you face or stomach.
Other delights included Bob and Sid’s excellent Apra Book stall, CFZ awards, quizzes, much drinking, a Russian restaurant, and extreme right wing phallic ray guns. And the best thing? Not hide nor hair of rescue mediums, healing crystals, psychic questing, or guardian angels”.

We raised nearly £1,000 for CFZ funds and this year was so successful that we are forced to look for a larger venue, so next year’s event will be held at the aforementioned community centre here in Woolsery. The following speakers have already been confirmed:

Gordon Rutter
Bob Morrel
Lionel Beer
Chris Moiser
Paul Crowther
Paul Vella

And there will also be an exhibition from Mark Fraser, and workshops from Paul Vella, Paul Crowther, Oll Lewis and Chris Moiser.

The `Foolish People` Theatre Company will also attend for the second year running, and we hope that within a month or so we shall be able to announce further speakers and attractions. The village is easy to find and we shall be laying on a complementary minibus from Barnstaple railway station, as well as cut rate deals with local hotels, camp sites and B+Bs.

In the autumn the CFZ made its first foray onto the legitimate stage with Richard Freeman’s high profile collaboration with the aforementioned `Foolish People`.

Richard writes:

“Those of you at the last Unconvention may have seen the Foolish People theatre group stall. I was lucky enough to see their excellent production Ruined Steel earlier this year. As it turns out John Harrigan, creator of the group is interested in cryptozoology! Foolish People’s next project is a co-production with the CFZ.

An ark of six plays featuring six classic monsters is being written by John. Entitled Dark Night of the Soul they are to feature Richard Freeman as a narrator much like Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone with Jon Hare as his able assistant. Richard is writing notes for the plays and suggesting story themes. The six plays will feature dragons, basilisks, were-tigers, vampires, the Wendigo, and little people. See Foolish People’s website www.foolishpeople.org for more details.”

In November Richard and I spent several days at Loch Ness, courtesy of the American magic duo Penn and Teller. We were filming a segment for the show Penn and Teller: Bullshit! which will be shown sometime next year. We have come in for some criticism for appearing on a TV show that will not add anything to the sum total of cryptozoological research, but as I said at the time:

I will not be at all surprised if P+T do take the piss. It was always a serious possibility, but I think it was worth it because we not only got paid a heck of a lot of money which was badly needed to swell CFZ coffers (100% of my fee went into the CFZ funds as usual), but got to make good relationships with Adrian Shine and Willy Cameron.

It has not been a bad year. It has not been the easiest that we have had, but we are in a better position than we were twelve months ago, and that is the main thing. The only real downside to the year has been the fact that our publication schedule has been delayed somewhat. We have published four new books and four re-issues, but only two issues of the journal; and the Yearbook has been held up until the spring.

Issue 37 of Animals & Men is very nearly finished and will be sent out in January, but I am awaiting some important information without which it would be difficult to publish. Also coming soon in the new year is the long awaited Big Cat Yearbook edited by Mark Fraser, reissues of The Blackdown Mystery and the first two volumes of A&M reprints and a deluxe 30th Anniversary edition of The Owlman and Others.

There will be a General Council meeting in January and we will then be able to announce the expedition and investigation schedule for the year. As always we are in desperate need of donations of time, money and expertise. The CFZ makes quite a lot of money but, boy, do we spend it fast! We are currently carrying out research all over the world and every penny earned goes straight into these projects. We do not ask for money for personal gain. We are all capable of supporting ourselves, but if we are to continue our programme of research we MUST have more money and more manpower. If you are interested in cryptozoology (whether or not you are a member of the CFZ) and feel that you can help, send donations via PayPal or feel free to email me on jon@eclipse.co.uk.

Until next time, many thanks for all your support this year….
God Bless
Slainte


Jonathan Downes,
(Director, Centre for Fortean Zoology)
December 8th 2005
Myrtle Cottage
Woolsery
Bideford
North Devon
EX39 5QR

Just a Quicky

Things are beginning to wind down now as we approach what is euphemistically described as the `festive season`. Mark is going home for three weeks next week, Graham will be manning the office (and looking after my Papa) over the Christmas week itself when John Fuller will be off, and I will be with Corinaa for about a week.

I have been unwell again recently so many apologies again for not having posted much on here sinceour return from Loch Ness. I have also been neglecting the CFZVolunteers list recently, but both Graham and I have been acting on the information that Trystan and Craig sorted out forus re.meta tags a few months ago, and although I am somewhat opart of the walking wounded at the moment the future looks pretty good...

It has not been a bad year. It has not been the easiest that we have had, but we are in a better position than we were twelve months ago, and that is the main thing. The only real downside to the year has been the fact that our publication schedule has been delayed somewhat. We have published four new books and four re-issues, but only two issues of the journal; and the Yearbook has been held up until the spring.
Animals & Men 37 is pretty well finished but we are awaiting some final bits and bobs and so it will not be sent out until early in the New Year.
Also coming soon in the new year is the long awaited Big Cat Yearbook edited by Mark Fraser, reissues of The Blackdown Mystery and the first two volumes of A&M reprints and a deluxe 30th Anniversary edition of The Owlman and Others.

There will be a General Council meeting in January and we will then be able to announce the expedition and investigation schedule for the year. As always we are in desperate need of donations of time, money and expertise. The CFZ makes quite a lot of money but, boy, do we spend it fast! We are currently carrying out research all over the world and every penny earned goes straight into these projects. We do not ask for money for personal gain. We are all capable of supporting ourselves, but if we are to continue our programme of research we MUST have more money and more manpower. If you are interested in cryptozoology (whether or not you are a member of the CFZ) and feel that you can help, send donations via PayPal or feel free to email me on jon@eclipse.co.uk.

Until next time, many thanks for all your support this year….
God Bless

It ain't Nessie-cerally So!!! (Part One)

It has always been one of the great ironies of the CFZ that despite fast becoming the best known cryptozoologists in the world, we have - to date at least - done very little investigations regarding the world's best known monster. Earlier this year, CFZ stalwart David "Geordie Dave" Curtis paid for a three person CFZ expedition to Loch Morar in Scotland to start work on investigating a theory propounded by Richard Freeman and myself that some sightings of lake monsters across the world may be giant eels.

The European eel (Anguillia anguilla) lives in freshwater until it reaches sexual maturity when the reproductive imperative kicks in and the elongate fish swim down to the sea where (according to most sources) they cannot feed, and swim down to the Sargasso Sea in the South Atlantic where they mate, spawn and die. The larval eels (known as leptocephelae)are the shape of leaves and about the size of a little fingernail. They sweim up the Atlantic to coastal waters where they metamorphose into tiny eels called elvers. These swim up the rivers and the cycle begins again. Howeverr, it has been suggested that occasionally an elver becomes sterile, and so when its peers have attained a length of 4-6 feet and sexual maturity, the biological imperative does not kick in and the eunuch eel (as theyhave been dubbed) stay in freshwater and continue to grow.

This is partly hypothesis, but it makes a fair amount of sense and would certainly explain some of the lake monster sightings which have taken place across the northern hemisphere. For years one of the main stumbling blocks for a viable population of giant animals living in any of the monster-haunted lakes (with the possible exception of Lake Okanagan in Canada, and some of the lesser known lakes in Siberia and Tibet), is the sheer lack of biomass in the waters. There just simply isn't enough food to support them. Another problem is thatthe prehistoric giant reptiles were all e=air breathers, and would have to surface to breathe, and presumably come onto land to breed. There are just simply not enough sightings of these creatures to support such a hypothesis.

If, however, our hypothesis is true then we can scratch both of these objections immediately: They obtain their oxygen from the water, and they are occasional visitors or mutations rather than an unknown species of animal.

Richard's methodology during the Loch Morar expedition was simple: "We used nylon rope with empty plastic milk bottles as floatation devices. We tied one end to a tree or rock. We then lased another length to the bottle connecting the two lengths. At the end of the second length, 20 feet or so beneath the float was the bait. This was a mixture of mussels, fish guts, herring, cow liver and Van Den Eynd Predator Plus, a fish-attracting chemical. The mixture was placed in Hessian sacks so it could permeate through.

Sadly nothing touched the bait, but the floatation devices worked a treat. We suspect that it may have been too early in the year and the creatures may have been torpid. Most sightings have been in warm weather and calm conditions."

In October we were approached by an American TV Company who were making the second season of a show called "Penn and Teller's Bullshit" which features the two legendary stage magicians (who are also rumoured to be members ofthe art-rock band `The Residents`), looking at claims of strange phenomena. Would we be interested in going to Loch Ness? We agreed on the condition that we were able to do the investigation our way.........

Loch Ness (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Nis) is a large, deep freshwater lake (known in Scotland as a loch) in the Scottish Highlands, extending for approximately 37 km (23 miles) southwest of Inverness. It is the largest body of water in the geologic fault known as the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north to Fort William in the south. The Caledonian Canal, which links the sea at either end of the Great Glen, uses Loch Ness for part of its route.

Loch Ness is one of a series of interconnected, murky lakes in Scotland that were carved by glaciers during previous ice ages. Quite large and deep, Loch Ness has exceptionally low water visibility due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil.Loch Ness is the second largest Scottish loch by surface area at 56.4 km2 (21.8 sq mi) but due to its extreme depth is the largest by volume. The loch contains more fresh water than all that in England and Wales combined. At its deepest part, 226 m (740 feet), London's BT Tower at 189 m (620 feet) would be completely submerged.

As the legendary Loch Ness investigator Adrian Shine was to confirm to us later in the week, there is practically no empirical evidence for the existance of the the archetypal long necked lake monster in any of the Scottish lakes, there is a firm body of evidence to support the hypothesis that there are occasional sightings of large fish. Some of these are described as being like 'Upturned Boats' and are - in Shine's opinion at least - probably stray sturgeon, others are more elongate, and these are what Richard and I believe may be huge eunuch eels.

Although once upon a time Richard and I used to travel together a lot, and undertake investigations all around the country, times have changed and it wasn't until we were sitting together in the departure lounge at Exeter Airport thatI realised that we hadn't been together on a trip that involved just the two of us since our infamous hunt for the Wallaby Slasher of Cleveland in August 2002! That is not to say that we haven't investigated anythingn - since then Richard has been to Mongolia and Sumatra (twice), and I have been to the States four times and Puerto Rico (once). However it was fun o be back together on the track of unknown whatsits, and we were quite excited about the prospect of the journey ahead.

This is neither the time or the plce to bore on about the rigours of air travel in the 21st Century.I seem to have spent much of my adult life on aeroplaces travelling between one place and another. We left the CFZ in Woolsery just after 7 am - and didn't check into our Edinburgh hotel until nearly twelve hours later. Only jusat over two of those hours were spent in the air - the rest were taken up hanging around in airport bars and baggage check-ins.

However it was great to spend some time with Richard again after so long, and on the whole it was a reasonably enjoyable experience.

When we finally got to the hotel it was full of men in kilts drinking whisky!

No, Honestly!

In one of the most bizarre fortean coincidences that have happened to me in a long history of weird fortean coincidences, we had arrived right in the middle of the alchohol fuelled obsequies for Iam Cameron - the person who went down in history for havingthe longest unbroken `Nessie` sighting in history.

In his own words:

"mid-summer, June 1965. I, along with a friend, was on the south shore of Loch Ness, fishing for brown trout, looking almost directly into Urquhart Bay, when I saw something break the surface of the water. I glanced there, and I saw it, and then it wasn't there, it had disappeared.

But while watching, keeping an eye, and fishing gently, I saw an object surface. It was a large, black object—a whale-like object, going from infinity up, and came round onto a block end—and it submerged, to reappear a matter of seconds later. But on this occasion, the block end, which had been on my right, was now on my left, so I realized immediately that while in the process of surfacing, as it may, it had rotated. And with the predominant wind, the south-west wind, it appeared to be, I would say, at that stage drifting easily across.

So I called to my friend Willie Frazer, who incidentally had a sighting of an object on the Loch almost a year ago to the very day. I called him, and he come up and joined me. We realized that it was drifting towards us, and, in fact, it came to within I would say about 250, 300 yards.

In no way am I even attempting to convert anybody to the religion of the object of Loch Ness. I mean, they can believe it, but it doesn't upset me if they don't believe it. Because I would question very much if I hadn't the extraordinary experience of seeing this object. If I hadn't seen it I would have without question given a lot of skepticism to what it was. But I saw it, and nothing can take that away."

Richard stayed up drinking with Ian's son Willie and other family members, but after dinner and a couple of beers (yes, gys - only a couple), I went to bed. My hard drinking days are behind me now, and the next day I had to hire a car, and drive to Loch Ness. There was too much ice on the roads for me to risk a hangover...


TO BE CONTINUED

Sorry Oll

The worst thing about this stupid damn moderating system is that it is confusing. Oll Lewis tried to post a message of support and I deleted it by mistake.

However, as far as Exeternews is concerned..... screw him!

On a brighter note, Animals & Men 37 is well under way, and I am about half way through the Loch Ness report I promised u all weeks ago

love

j