Speaker 1: Clouds of incense smoke swirled around the man in the
Speaker 1: long hooded cape as he chanted magic incantations in an
Speaker 1: ancient language. He was standing in a large room in
Speaker 1: the southwest wing of a long, single story house, inside
Speaker 1: which stood a crudely constructed oratory. The large wooden structure
Speaker 1: was painted white and black and lined in part with
Speaker 1: huge mirrors, all the better to keep the magical energy
Speaker 1: concentrated in one place. On the ground was painted a
Speaker 1: large circle, triangle, and pentagram, and in the center of
Speaker 1: it all stood an altar lined with a single human skeleton.
Speaker 1: For the past several weeks, the man had been feeding,
Speaker 1: laying offerings of blood and small birds onto its ribs.
Speaker 1: Over time, the offerings had turned into a viscous black
Speaker 1: slime which coated the bones and dripped from the altar
Speaker 1: onto the floor in thick piles of ooze. Dotted around
Speaker 1: the skeleton. Incense and candles burned, the smoke and flames
Speaker 1: fluttering in the chill night air, which flowed in through
Speaker 1: an open doorway at the north end of the room,
Speaker 1: while outside, thunder rumbled and heavy clouds scudded across the
Speaker 1: midnight sky, just perceptible through the dark was a large
Speaker 1: terrace covered in fine river sand, below which a lawn
Speaker 1: dropped down, first to a graveyard, and beyond that to
Speaker 1: the shores of a vast, black watered loch. The man
Speaker 1: was Alistair crow the year was eighteen ninety nine, and
Speaker 1: the location was the southeastern shore of Loch Ness. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith for those
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with his story. Alister Crowley was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five to a wealthy, god fearing family in Leamington, Spa, England.
Speaker 1: Crowley's parents were fundamentalist Christians, but he preferred to indulge
Speaker 1: in somewhat more esoteric pursuits. Educated at Trinity College at
Speaker 1: the University of Cambridge, Crowley focused his attention on mountaineering
Speaker 1: and poetry. Then, in eighteen ninety eight joined the Hermetic
Speaker 1: Order of the Golden Dawn, a ritual magic society whose
Speaker 1: members included the Irish poet W. B. Yates. After being
Speaker 1: trained in ceremonial magic, Crowley pronounced himself a prophet entrusted
Speaker 1: with wrenching humanity into the twentieth century, whether it would
Speaker 1: ultimately prove true or not. He would go on to
Speaker 1: become one of the most notorious occultists of his generation,
Speaker 1: about which you can hear more in season one, episode
Speaker 1: ten of Unexplained. Essentially, Crowley saw the ancient art as
Speaker 1: ceremonial magic, which he spelt with a K, as a
Speaker 1: technique for contacting spiritual entities, be they demons or guardian angels,
Speaker 1: which he believed could be utilized to attain sacred mystical
Speaker 1: knowledge and ultimately help you to develop and expand your
Speaker 1: sense of consciousness. To realize this, Crowley planned to perform
Speaker 1: a complex ceremony described in an ais ancient text called
Speaker 1: the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abrameln, the age
Speaker 1: of fourteenth century Egyptian who taught an ancient system of
Speaker 1: occult knowledge. The ritual would take eighteen months and require
Speaker 1: Crowley to adhere to a strict regimen that included celibacy
Speaker 1: and abstinence, as well as regular incantation sessions at all
Speaker 1: hours of the day and night. In order for the
Speaker 1: ritual to be successful, Crowley would also be required to
Speaker 1: summon the twelve Kings and Dukes of Hell and assert
Speaker 1: control over them. He began the ritual in a flat
Speaker 1: in London, but having endured too many interruptions, Crowley decided
Speaker 1: he needed somewhere far more secluded, away from the distractions
Speaker 1: of the city and his nosy neighbours, and so in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety nine he made his way first to Invernesse
Speaker 1: and then to the shores of Lochness in the Highlands
Speaker 1: of Scotland. There he came across Boleskin House. Deciding it
Speaker 1: was everything he'd been looking for, he promptly bought it
Speaker 1: and moved in. A few months later he began the ritual.
Speaker 1: Lochness was an interesting choice for Crowley's magic Ritual. Over
Speaker 1: ten thousand years old and formed by glacial erosion near
Speaker 1: the end of the last Ice Age, Lochness is the
Speaker 1: UK's largest body of fresh water, twenty three miles long,
Speaker 1: just under two miles wide, and reaching depths of just
Speaker 1: under eight hundred feet. The tea colored tannins that leech
Speaker 1: from the surrounding peatlands is what makes its water so
Speaker 1: dark and opaque. For centuries long, was effectively one of
Speaker 1: the most remote and isolated parts of Britain. It may
Speaker 1: be of little surprise, then, perhaps, to discover that rumours
Speaker 1: of some kind of monster stalking. Its black waters have
Speaker 1: a long history. In an ancient biography of Saint Columba,
Speaker 1: an Irish monk credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland, written
Speaker 1: in the sixth century CE, it is stated that while
Speaker 1: traveling across Scotland, Columba saved a man from the jaws
Speaker 1: of a water beast as he termed it as he
Speaker 1: crossed the loch. The mysterious creature was said to have
Speaker 1: come hurtling towards Columber's boat, only for the saintly monk
Speaker 1: to hastily make the sign of the Cross, which then
Speaker 1: apparently caused the beast to retreat as if pulled back
Speaker 1: by ropes. In the centuries that followed, the superstition that
Speaker 1: mythical creatures inhabited Loch Ness abounded among the local community,
Speaker 1: but were rarely discussed elsewhere. In seventeen twenty seven, a
Speaker 1: road was built right along the eastern shores of Lochness,
Speaker 1: during which workers reported seeing a leviathan of some kind
Speaker 1: on two separate occasions, disturbing the surface of the water,
Speaker 1: with leviathan being an archaic term for both whales and
Speaker 1: sea monsters more generally quite what they were referring to
Speaker 1: here is not entirely clear. All in all, with a
Speaker 1: number of similar reports occurring over the next two hundred years,
Speaker 1: many locals were left with an ingrained belief that something
Speaker 1: strange lurked in the dark waters of the loch. Despite
Speaker 1: the newly constructed road along the eastern shore at the
Speaker 1: close of the nineteenth century, Lochness was still tricky to access,
Speaker 1: making it an ideal setting for summoning powerful forces. To
Speaker 1: deter locals from being too curious about what he was doing,
Speaker 1: Alister Crowley is said to have posted signs around the
Speaker 1: edges of his Burleskin estate warning of an evil water monster,
Speaker 1: as well as letting people know that he was throwing
Speaker 1: a sacrificial sheep into the loch every Sunday to feed it.
Speaker 1: Anyone venturing close enough to the house at the time
Speaker 1: might also have glimpsed the fabled terrace, which he is
Speaker 1: said to have covered in fine river sand when he
Speaker 1: practiced his ritual magic. Perhaps they might too have seen
Speaker 1: the peculiar footprints in it said to have appeared there
Speaker 1: on the nights when Crowley was allegedly so successful in
Speaker 1: summoning the dukes and kings of hell. These spirits included
Speaker 1: the dark lords Lucifer, Satan, Belliol, and, according to some,
Speaker 1: most significantly for subsequent events, Leviathan, not a whale or
Speaker 1: general sea monster more recently associated with the word, but
Speaker 1: something altogether more horrific. Thought to be an embodiment of chaos.
Speaker 1: Leviathan is described in ancient Hebrew texts as being a
Speaker 1: gigantic sea serpent. As Crowley began performing his ritual day
Speaker 1: after day, it was said that a sense of malignancy
Speaker 1: and foreboding enveloped the domestic staff and all who later
Speaker 1: visited the house. The building and grounds became peopled with
Speaker 1: shadowy shapes. Semi solid figures could be glimpsed materializing and
Speaker 1: then de materializing in different parts of the house, especially
Speaker 1: in the early hours of the night. One housemaid, unable
Speaker 1: to bear it any longer, reportedly left, while one man
Speaker 1: doing some work on the property was said to have
Speaker 1: been driven mad. One week, Crowley claimed he wrote some
Speaker 1: names of demons on a receipt from a local butcher's shop.
Speaker 1: When he next asked a servant to collect meet for him,
Speaker 1: he was informed that at some point in the intervening days,
Speaker 1: the butcher had accidentally severed an artery and bled to
Speaker 1: death in his shop. As has been well documented, a
Speaker 1: few months into his ritual, Alister Crowley received an unexpected
Speaker 1: summons from one of the Masters of the Golden Dawn,
Speaker 1: the secretive magical order to which he belonged, with a
Speaker 1: command to go and meet him in Paris. Immediately, reluctantly,
Speaker 1: Crowley suspended his elaborate ritual without first trapping or banishing
Speaker 1: the malignant entities he was said to have summoned, leaving
Speaker 1: them out in the open and free to do whatever
Speaker 1: they pleased. One bright summer's day in nineteen thirty, Sandy Gray,
Speaker 1: an expert fissure and boater from the village of Foyers
Speaker 1: on the southern shore of Loch Ness, was out fishing
Speaker 1: with two companions. After a good few hours, the trio
Speaker 1: had had little luck when suddenly they saw a large
Speaker 1: salmon leaping through the air toward their boat. It was
Speaker 1: followed by a strange disturbance in the water behind it
Speaker 1: that created a wave about two and a half feet high,
Speaker 1: causing their boat to rock violently. It reminded Gray of
Speaker 1: an incident sixteen years previously, when still a teenager he'd
Speaker 1: been fishing on the loch when he saw a large
Speaker 1: black object around six feet wide, first draw near to
Speaker 1: the surface before sinking rapidly, leaving a swirling vortex on
Speaker 1: the water's surface. It was as if a creature with
Speaker 1: the bulk of two adult elephants had surfaced and then retreated.
Speaker 1: Gray later explained. Going back to that summer's day, in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, Gray and his two friends reported their unusual
Speaker 1: incident with the salmon. Their story was published in the
Speaker 1: local Inverness newspaper, The Northern Chronicle, on August twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, with the headline A Strange experience on Loch Ness.
Speaker 1: This appears to be the first newspaper report of a
Speaker 1: mysterious creature in Lochness. It wouldn't to be the last.
Speaker 1: Three years later, Sandy Gray was working as a local
Speaker 1: bus driver. While driving along the lochs western shore, he
Speaker 1: saw a large, dark shape moving across the water's surface
Speaker 1: at speed. He jamped his foot down on the accelerator
Speaker 1: and tried to keep up with it, only for the
Speaker 1: shape to speed on ahead and disappear soon after. The
Speaker 1: Aberdeen Press and Journal wasn't noted for its in depth
Speaker 1: coverage of events beyond Aberdeenshire. Famously, in April nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: the paper had run a front page report on the
Speaker 1: sinking of the Titanic with a headline that read simply
Speaker 1: Aberdeen man drowns at sea, but a report of Sandy
Speaker 1: Gray's latest unusual encounter appeared on its front page in
Speaker 1: May nineteen thirty three. There, whatever Sandy had supposedly seen
Speaker 1: was referred to as the loch Ness Monster, and the
Speaker 1: name stuck and the sightings kept on coming. Another warm
Speaker 1: summer's day, this time in July nineteen thirty three, A
Speaker 1: mister George Spicer and his wife were taking a drive
Speaker 1: along Lochness East Shore Road, shortly after passing through the
Speaker 1: town of Doors at the northern end of the loch.
Speaker 1: They were just coming up to a slight rise when
Speaker 1: what they described as an extraordinary looking creature suddenly shot
Speaker 1: out across the road, moving in a series of jerks.
Speaker 1: It was said to be a loathsome looking grayish color,
Speaker 1: like a mud covered elephant or rhinoceros. Its body was
Speaker 1: comprised mainly of a long, thin neck which undulated up
Speaker 1: and down and contorted into a series of hoops. At
Speaker 1: its base was a much thicker body and something flopping
Speaker 1: up and down, which they assumed to be some kind
Speaker 1: of tail. They saw no head or any kind of
Speaker 1: arms or legs. It looked, they said, like a huge
Speaker 1: snail with a long neck. They watched dumbfounded as it
Speaker 1: wriggled across the road and then disappeared into the waters
Speaker 1: of the loch. The couple had barely taken stock of
Speaker 1: what they'd seen as they pulled up quickly by the
Speaker 1: side of the road. As they strained to catch sight
Speaker 1: of it again, they saw nothing but placid water lapping
Speaker 1: gently at the shore. This rare account of the monster
Speaker 1: out of the water was published a few weeks later
Speaker 1: in the Inverness Courier. In its wake, the myth of
Speaker 1: the loch Ness Monster began to grow. A short time later,
Speaker 1: British national paper The Daily Mail, decided to hire some
Speaker 1: one to capture it. Marmaduke Weatherall was an actor and
Speaker 1: big game hunter. For two weeks, the flamboyant Weatherall oversaw
Speaker 1: a search at the loch involving boats and airplanes. Local
Speaker 1: volunteers were asked to stand watch at numerous points around
Speaker 1: the loch, equipped with flares that they were instructed to
Speaker 1: light immediately if they saw anything, though weather or wasn't
Speaker 1: able to capture the creature. He offered some photographs of
Speaker 1: questionable evidence, as well as a plaster cast of what
Speaker 1: he claimed was a mysterious nine inch wide footprint found
Speaker 1: in the mud on the shore near the town of
Speaker 1: Foyers on the east side of the loch. However, after
Speaker 1: an examination at the Natural History Museum of London, the
Speaker 1: footprints were found to be fake, having been made by
Speaker 1: a single hippopotamus foot. In November, Sandy Gray, this time
Speaker 1: accompanied by his brother Hughey, took a walk down to
Speaker 1: Loch Ness with a camera. The brothers found a spot
Speaker 1: on a low ridge overlooking the loch and took a
Speaker 1: seat for a moment. Together, they gazed out at the
Speaker 1: gently rippling waters while bright sunlight glistened on the surface.
Speaker 1: When suddenly Sandy spotted something, a strangely elongated, snakelike protuberance
Speaker 1: in the water about two hundred yards away. Huey took
Speaker 1: five quick shots before the object slipped under the surface,
Speaker 1: or so they told journalists at the Scottish national newspaper
Speaker 1: The Daily Record, as they handed over the photos for publication.
Speaker 1: Four of them were little more than blank exposures, but
Speaker 1: the fifth appeared to show, albeit blurred and grainy, a long,
Speaker 1: seemingly undulating shape sticking out of the water. A group
Speaker 1: of photographic experts were brought in to assess the image
Speaker 1: and found no evidence of tampering. A few days later,
Speaker 1: the picture was published under the headline is this the
Speaker 1: Lockness Monster? This image would be quickly forgotten about when
Speaker 1: another stunning photograph emerged. It became known as the Surgeon's Photo.
Speaker 1: Due to its taker's reluctance to be named, he was
Speaker 1: identified only as a gynecological surgeon who was visiting the
Speaker 1: loche one day when he spotted the thing rearing up
Speaker 1: from under the surface. The man managed to snap four images.
Speaker 1: Two were two blurry to discern anything, but the others
Speaker 1: showed in stark detail what appeared to be some kind
Speaker 1: of long necked aquatic creature slowly moving through the water.
Speaker 1: It looked not too dissimilar to the head and neck
Speaker 1: of a plesiosaur, a creature that had gone extinct sixty
Speaker 1: six million years ago. Unsurprisingly, the photograph created a sensation
Speaker 1: and appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the globe.
Speaker 1: It even prompted a debate about the apparent monster in
Speaker 1: the British House of Commons. Caught up in the excitement,
Speaker 1: the Times of London sent retired naval officer Lieutenant Commander
Speaker 1: Rupert Gould to Locke Nest to conduct an inquiry. Initially
Speaker 1: a skeptic, Gould collected fifty one witness accounts, including those
Speaker 1: of Missus and mister Spicer, who had been so startled
Speaker 1: by the peculiar gray thing that had wriggled across the
Speaker 1: road in front of them, after which she became convinced
Speaker 1: there was a large sea serpent living in the loch.
Speaker 1: His book, The Lochness Monster, published the following year, remains
Speaker 1: one of the most comprehensive on this early period in
Speaker 1: the subject's history. Others, such as self styled Britain's circus
Speaker 1: King Bertram Wagstaff Mills, were determined to capture it. Mills
Speaker 1: offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds around two million
Speaker 1: pounds in a day's money to anyone who could bring
Speaker 1: it to him alive to the Olympia Exhibition Centre in London,
Speaker 1: where a large steel cage was waiting for it. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: the creature remained misdefyingly elusive. In the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, bus driver Sandy Gray, whose apparent creature sighting
Speaker 1: five years before at first so ignited the public imagination,
Speaker 1: was back once again fishing on Loch Ness when he
Speaker 1: was startled by a big black object rising out of
Speaker 1: the water about one hundred yards away. Sandy watched on
Speaker 1: in horror as the head and neck appeared, rising as
Speaker 1: he later claimed, nearly two feet out of the water,
Speaker 1: and behind the head he saw what he described as
Speaker 1: a series of small ridges, seven in number, and what
Speaker 1: he assumed to be the huge tail of the creature.
Speaker 1: Sandy described the head as resembling a horse's, but being
Speaker 1: small in relation to the huge size of the body.
Speaker 1: It reminded many of the much fabled Kelpie, a horse
Speaker 1: headed shape shifting creature of Scottish folklore. Gray is said
Speaker 1: to rode back to shore as fast as he could,
Speaker 1: then hurried to the local post office, where he alerted
Speaker 1: post office manager Missus Cameron and a gardener named mister Batchen.
Speaker 1: Moments later, they stood on the banks of the loch,
Speaker 1: where they spotted the creature once again, apparently moving in single,
Speaker 1: heavy lurches through the water, heading toward inver Morriston on
Speaker 1: the far side of the loch, before vanishing from sight.
Speaker 1: Over the next few years, as far more terrifying monsters
Speaker 1: revealed themselves and the world slipped into war, visions of
Speaker 1: mythical Scottish sea creatures soon faded from the headlines. During
Speaker 1: the war years, Sandy Gray moved to Inverness, but he
Speaker 1: often returned to his home village of Foyers on Lochness's
Speaker 1: southern shore to visit his mother and brother and to
Speaker 1: go out fishing. It was a cold Tuesday morning in
Speaker 1: February nineteen forty nine when Sandy set off from the shore,
Speaker 1: bouncing through the waves his motor boat. The experienced boatmen
Speaker 1: headed out into the middle of the loch, aiming for
Speaker 1: one of his favorite fishing spots on a relatively calm
Speaker 1: and clement day. Later that afternoon, however, a violent, unexpected
Speaker 1: storm swept over the loch. Soon gale force winds whipped
Speaker 1: the water into an angry churn. That evening, Sandy failed
Speaker 1: to return home. Friends and family formed a search party
Speaker 1: and ventured down to the loch to look for him,
Speaker 1: but before long, darkness forced them to abandon the search.
Speaker 1: The following morning, when the search had resumed, it had
Speaker 1: just gone nine a m. When one of the team
Speaker 1: spotted Sandy's boat upturned and badly damaged on a small
Speaker 1: stretch of beach near his mother's house, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: lying on some rocks nearby was Sandy's body. Some suggested
Speaker 1: Sandy's boat had most likely capsized in the storm and
Speaker 1: he drowned as a result before being swept onto the rocks.
Speaker 1: Others wondered how could it be that such an experienced
Speaker 1: boatman could have died in that manner close enough to
Speaker 1: the shoreline to be swept onto the rocks. The true
Speaker 1: cause of his death remains a mystery. Aleister Crowley died
Speaker 1: two years before Sandy, in nineteen forty seven, at the
Speaker 1: age of seventy two, never having returned to the shores
Speaker 1: of Lochness. Could some believe what Crowley had done there
Speaker 1: back at the turn of the century had survived long
Speaker 1: after he left. It was some time in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies that reports of a monster on and around Lockness
Speaker 1: ganter's surface once more. Frederick ted Holiday, an English journalist
Speaker 1: and author who spent hundreds of hours watching the Loche
Speaker 1: claimed to have cited NeSSI as the creature became affectionately known.
Speaker 1: On four occasions. He claimed that even when there were
Speaker 1: several witnesses along the shore during a sighting, the creature
Speaker 1: invariably appeared in a location obscured from cameras. In a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two book he wrote on the topic of monsters,
Speaker 1: including NeSSI, Holiday made the suggestion that perhaps the creature
Speaker 1: wasn't in fact a physical thing, but rather some kind
Speaker 1: of supernatural entity, something conjured up by Alistair Crowley, even
Speaker 1: as some have suggested, and he wasn't the only one
Speaker 1: who felt that NeSSI might be a paranormal phenomenon. The
Speaker 1: reverend doctor Donald Ormond also believed the same thing. Back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, Ormond was caravanning in Rosshire, in
Speaker 1: the northwest of Scotland. While walking one morning along the
Speaker 1: shores of a nearby loch, he apparently witnessed a great,
Speaker 1: frothy disturbance in the water. Expecting to see a submarine
Speaker 1: suddenly rise up, he was aghast to see it was
Speaker 1: instead some kind of aquatic animal with at least two humps.
Speaker 1: As he would describe it later. Ormond's strange encounter would
Speaker 1: set him on a path that eventually led him to
Speaker 1: another experience in Norway, where he again apparently encountered some
Speaker 1: kind of aquatic beast out in the wild. Like Holiday,
Speaker 1: He soon came to the conclusion that these creatures, the
Speaker 1: apparent Lochness Monster included, were all paranormal in nature and
Speaker 1: deeply evil. As an experienced exorcist, he began to wonder
Speaker 1: if he could turn that experience toward the sea creatures instead,
Speaker 1: starting with the so called Lochness Monster. After consulting a
Speaker 1: Benedictine monk, Ormond mapped out the shape of a crucifix
Speaker 1: over the loch and made a note at the geographical
Speaker 1: location of each point of the cross. Then, on June second,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, he traveled out to the loch for real.
Speaker 1: To each of his recorded points. There, he shouted an
Speaker 1: incantation into the air designed to banish any malignant entities
Speaker 1: from the region. When he'd finished with each point, Ormond
Speaker 1: climbed into a small boat and rowed out into the
Speaker 1: middle of the loch to where the two sections of
Speaker 1: his imaginary cross intersected. There, surrounded by the black water
Speaker 1: and the near eight hundred feet depth of it below him.
Speaker 1: He cried out, I adjure thee, though ancient serpent, by
Speaker 1: the judge of the quick and the dead, by him
Speaker 1: who made thee and the world, that thy cloak thyself
Speaker 1: no more in manifestation of prehistoric demons, which henceforth shall
Speaker 1: bring no sorrow to the children of men. When the
Speaker 1: Reverend returned to shore, he was reported to have felt
Speaker 1: drained and fell into a deep sleep soon afterwards, satisfied
Speaker 1: that his exorcism had been a success, and for a
Speaker 1: while it seemed it was, But before long the creature
Speaker 1: was back. You've been listening to Unexplained Season seven, episode three,
Speaker 1: Under Blackwater, Part one, The second and final part, will
Speaker 1: be released next Friday, August twenty fifth. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard mc clain smith.
Speaker 1: Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
Speaker 1: mc clan smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
Speaker 1: the music, are also produced by me Richard mc lean smith. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on
Speaker 1: the show, is now available to buy world wide. You
Speaker 1: can purchase from Amazon Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
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