The Spicer Land Sighting of the Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness. Summer 1933. That spring, Aldie Mackay's sighting had set off a wave of reports. No one had yet described the monster on land. George Spicer, described as a London businessman, was on holiday with his wife in their open 12 h.p. Austin. They had been as far as John o' Groats and back via Inverness. On Saturday 22 July they were driving from Dores towards Foyers on the old General Wade military road, today's B852. A hot summer day. Mid-afternoon. About 20 mph.

Past Dores, somewhere near the crofting township of Whitefield, something came down the bracken-covered hillside on their left. First a neck. Long and thin, it moved "up and down in the manner of a scenic railway." Then a body, fairly big, with a high back. It crossed the road ahead "in a series of jerks."

The couple later described it to Rupert T. Gould. The neck was "contorted into a series of half-hoops." The creature was "of a loathsome-looking greyish colour, like a dirty elephant or a rhinoceros." The whole looked "like a huge snail with a long neck." A dip in the road hid its lower body. They saw no legs. Something seemed to flop up and down, and Spicer first thought it was carrying "a small lamb or animal of some kind."

Spicer sped up. By the time the car reached the spot, the animal had gone. It had lurched towards the loch, about 20 yards away. They heard no splash. Behind it lay a trail of broken undergrowth.

The Inverness Courier published Spicer's letter on 4 August 1933. "I saw the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life," he wrote. About five days later, a newspaper article suggested a plesiosaur. Nessie had become a prehistoric reptile. William McCulloch cycled to the place the Spicers pointed out. The foliage, he said, "looked as if a bulldozer had gone through it."

Gould interviewed the couple separately in London and published a drawing made under their direction in 1934. Ted Holiday corresponded with Spicer and in 1969 placed the crossing just before Whitefield. In May 1955 Mrs Spicer confirmed the story to Constance Whyte, who put the body at about 4 feet high and 10 to 12 feet long. Across the retellings the figures grew. Fifty yards became 200. A length of 6 to 8 feet became about 25. The lamb became a tail.

The Courier itself wondered whether the couple had seen "a large otter carrying a young in its mouth." Maurice Burton and later Steuart Campbell proposed deer, perhaps distorted by heat haze. In The Skeptic in 2010, Aleksandar Lovcanski argued that haze on a hot afternoon could have turned an otter into something huge. Ronald Binns suggested Spicer invented the story for publicity.

Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero pointed to King Kong, very popular in London in August 1933, whose brontosaur snatches creatures in its jaws. Charles Paxton disagreed. The plesiosaur image, he noted, appeared before the film was shown in Scotland. The Loch Ness Mystery blog answers each theory and remains confident of the Spicers' honesty.

In 1938 the Spicers were still certain. "We know what we saw, we did see that thing and it wasn't anything small." No photograph exists. The family later regretted that the Spicers' son, who often had his camera with him, had skipped the Scottish holiday that year. What remains is a letter, two drawings and a long neck that Nessie has never lost.