If the workaday hotel, chamber of commerce, and travel booking people are personally uninterested, and/or strongly disbelieving about potential of the local cryptid, they might well NOT be interested in having serious research done. Disproving the local legend could hurt business.

Better to have a nice, murky legend to draw the casual souvenir-buying tourist in.

That rather sad TV documentary about the search for a Norwegian lake monster comes to mind.

Here’s to real research, and real searchers!

(No, nor did I go because it was on the road to Inverness…)

If you want a decent loch try Lomond for scenery, Tay for history and Marree for nature.

Oh, and Morar for monsters…..

If these people who follow travel writers want to hie off to that dump, they can leave the better lochs to me, thank you kindly.

As for ‘Folkloric tradition’ Loren, where does the Water Horse (cant spell gaelic, I’m sorry) come into it? The Kelpie is a creature that lives in the water, it disguises itself as a real horse to catch people to eat. (if you can think of a beast more unlike nessie you get a prize)

Loch ness has NO water horse tradition, I think the creatures stuck to the smaller lochs (hench the popular name ‘loch of the beast’) they are also found in Man, wales and Ireland.

A few years ago I got a call from a producer for a Travel Channel show, asking about the Lake Champlain monster. I told her I was willing to talk with them, but that I approached the topic as a mystery to be investigated and actually researched. It quickly became clear that they just wanted a superficial fluff travel piece, not taking it seriously, so I declined to participate.

“By the way, has anybody EVER heard of this person before? Exactly who is she and what makes her, even a wee bit, qualified to even start talking about the mysteries at the Loch? HHHHMMMMM, I think it’s a good example of “talking head” syndrome!”

Gee. Ya THINK?

And here we see another example of the stultifying denial of the sense of wonder which makes most people, in my opinion, almost impossible to converse with about anything of true interest and depth.

What would one expect a travel writer to write about this? What does one think that writer was asked to do? “Hey, here’s a chance to write about [snicker] Nessie. [Chuckle] [Implied statement: you know what to do. You're a TRAVEL writer. Don't mess with that.]

Does one really think that a travel writer would be asked, by a travel company, to engage this topic? Despite what should be obvious to anyone with a brain: that engaging this topic would be THE MOST FUN [and oh by the way interesting] WAY TO COVER IT?

The “million visitors a year, who spend roughly $12-million on Nessie-related memorabilia” are THE SOLE REASON this idiot is in that vicinity, THE SOLE REASON there is any tourism at that dreary locale at all. THEY ALL COME FOR NESSIE! Trust me, I’ve been, and there isn’t much that could make one stay long other than Nessie. There are many, many, many more scenic, and quiet, and evocative, and lonely, and gorgeous, locales in the Highlands; I took off from Ness to find those, with extreme rapidity. (I regret not being more engaged in the Nessie question at the time but there you are.)

So: this lady, who needs to be Taken Seriously to keep her fun, boring, stultifying little touron-writer gig, goes there with an inherent need to Be Serious. To debunk this silly story. And to write about the real reason to go: all the accommodations that are founded to their very last gold-leaf whatever on the Nessie question.

Dumb lady. Boring assignment. Missing the point, the fun, the whole essence of travel while we’re on that. But, given the vast majority of people I have met in my life: is it reasonable to expect anything else?

People. Whatcha gonna do?

[I know this is Loren's exact point. But some people need to be slapped twice for giving in to being, um, normal.]

Huh? Where exactly has this writer been?