Spooky seismic lakes – Loch Ness and its monster

Loch Ness is known for a monster and for its location in the Great Glen, the most obvious tectonic feature of Scotland. Fault lines are associated with several spooky themes. For this entry into the Spooky Geology canon, I’m going to touch on some of the popular, paranatural ideas about fault-associated lakes. In this part 1 of 2, I’m tackling the oft-repeated relation between seismic activity on the Great Glen Fault and the Nessie legend.

There are some water bodies that exist above (and because of) an existing fault underneath, which conjures some spooky folklore. While all water bodies may be considered liminal areas between worlds, or passageways for the dead, those over faults are extra spooky because of the exaggerated ideas people have about what tectonic faults look like and how they behave. So let’s begin by touching on these fault-y ideas.

Faults and spookiness

Fault zones, in general, are already associated with three major spooky ideas:

• Lights – Earthquake lights are probably a real thing, but not in the way most people think of them. If they exist in one or more forms, they occur very rarely. We do not understand the mechanism and there is not a large body of convincing, reliable evidence. I’ve done extensive piecing together of what does exist in this post. They are spooky and still mysterious.

• Tectonic Strain Theory – This is the idea by research scientist Michael Persinger who proposed that ghosts, poltergeists, UFO sightings, and general strangeness may be the result of localized and transient geophysical forces associated with seismic areas under tectonic stress. This theory is not credible, yet it persists as a “sciencey” idea, popular with paranormalists because Persinger was a scientist and they can cite his research, which appears credible. The details are too much to go into here so I’ll save it for another post someday.

• Breath of the gods – Faults in Greece and Turkey have characteristics that result in transmission of hydrocarbons to the surface. A few of these places were known to be ancient locations of temples or ritual spots which were undoubtedly constructed due to the geological activity that occurred there. Examples include the Oracle at Delphi and the Hieropolis’ Plutonium. Only a few faults have this exciting characteristic.

Geomythology of Loch Ness

It is such joy when two of my favorite subjects overlap. Here is my opportunity to talk about spooky geology + cryptozoology! I feel I am uniquely qualified for this. For this discussion, we reenter the familiar sphere of geomythology and head to Scotland.
An extreme version of Nessie, circa 1933, a plesiosaur type that came ashore to steal sheep. According to TetZoo, this depiction, made into desktop wallpaper and sensationalizing the Spicer sighting, is by Gino D’Achille.
Geomythology is the study of legendary stories that appear to modern observers to be an attempt by a pre-modern culture to explain a natural geological event. The cultural story can have a kernel of truth that suggests people of that time and place recognized a geological cause in a creative sense.

Geomyths are subjective in their translation and application. In other words, interpreting facts and making assumptions are a necessary part of making geomythological connections. Therefore, the process is tricky and fraught with pitfalls, particularly for those with an over-eager propensity for correlation.

Luigi Piccardi, a geoscientist who researches and writes academically about geomythology, proposed in 2001 that sightings of the Loch Ness monster may be related to seismic activity. On its face, this was a sciencey idea that seemed plausible. Piccardi suggested that waves, bubbles, and noises created by the fault activity could be mistaken for unseen monsters in the water. He also connected the cultural idea of faults as sacred places, and lakes as having supernatural creatures, to the lore of Loch Ness.

The Great Glen Fault

Loch Ness is part of a chain of lakes along the Great Glen of Scotland. The glen is a trough that cuts an obvious track through the country from SW to NE from Fort William to Inverness. It is a surface expression of the underlying Great Glen fault (GGF) and subsequent glacial action. The fault is very old, over 400 million years old, representing a suture of two land masses into what we now call Great Britain. The GGF is a strike-slip fault, but because it is so old, the movement of the fault over these eras is not clear.

Note that England does not appear in this graphic but is connected at the southern boundary.

Piccardi’s explanation, first proposed at a 2001 geological conference in Edinburgh, then followed by a paper in 2014 (see references below), was popular with the news media. He framed it as “a simple natural explanation” for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. However, it fell flat with many who knew about the seismicity of this area and about the long and colorful history of Nessie sightings.

Significant quakes on the GGF are not that common. However, the consensus from geologists is that the GGF is likely still seismically active. Between 1768 and 1901 several earthquakes were felt around Inverness, including one of the largest recorded in Scotland at M=5.1 in 1816. But because there was no precise measuring equipment in place, it’s unclear where the epicenters were or if they were the result of movement on the GGF or on other faults outside the glen. Nothing much happened after 1901 until October 4, 2013 when an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.4 occurred close to the village of Drumnadrochit, near Loch Ness. Reports described “a loud rumble” or “explosion”.

Piccardi cited the large quakes around Inverness from 1816 (M=5.1 and M=4.7), and in 1890 (M=4.5 with several aftershocks around M=3) as evidence of the Nessie-tectonic connection. He also referred to a quake in Inverness in 1934, close to the time when the Loch Ness Monster legend was really taking off. (That quake was later relocated off the GGF.) He pointed out that the Inverness Courier reported on that quake in the same issue as a monster sighting. It’s unclear if it occurred at the same time as the quake. This is the closest we get to a correlation and it is not that impressive.

Saint Columba and the Monster

For his primary evidence, Piccardi referred to the account of Saint Columba banishing a “monster” in the Ness River in the 6^th century (which wasn’t written until more than a century later). A translation says the monster appeared with an awful roar. Piccardi supposes that this noise could be the sound of an earthquake. The other bits cited from this account as evidence of monster=earthquake are even weaker – a door opening by itself and the saint’s loud voice (I could not see any reason to mention the latter one). We will never know if the monster tale was coincident with an actual earthquake, or if Columba’s monster story had any truth to it at all.

While cryptozoologists love to roll back in time to say that the Columba story is evidence of a monster of long ago, scholars consider the story of the Saint rebuking the monster as a typical story of Christianity conquering the pagan sentiment of the lands. Indeed, Columba met with the King of the Picts, the native people of the area in the Middle Ages. It’s highly probable he was there, but the monster story was far more likely to have been propaganda than evidence of an unknown creature.

A vaguely described, man-eating river monster is just not similar to the modern accounts of Nessie, no matter how much cryptozoologists would like it to be. The Columba story is not evidence for a 6th century encounter with the creature.

This mural in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery depicts the Picts being converted to Christianity by Saint Columba.

Seismic activity as a source of Nessie sightings

It is certainly possible that even tiny seismic events can create upwelling, turbidity, or waves that people may interpret as a monster surfacing. However, this could reasonably account for only a handful of sightings in Loch Ness. The Highlands area now has a multitude of seismic sensors in place to catch quakes below M=1. The most obvious evidence for this claim – a time correlation between Nessie sightings and seismic activity – has not materialized.

Instead, we can be quite certain that most of the Nessie “sightings” can be attributed to a long list of mundane potential causes – boat wakes or wind waves, mistaken animal identification such as birds, fish, or deer (and the waves they create), or floating logs or vegetation.

2013 “Nessie sighting” by David Elder

Piccardi kept giving media interviews about his tectonic Nessie geomyth even though robust evidence was lacking. I recall hearing about it in 2001 and thinking it was a weak idea then. It never got better. Piccardi wasn’t well versed in cryptid tales and how they evolve; they aren’t that simple, especially to dismiss. The seismic Nessie story got publicity, though. History of geology writer (for Scientific American and then Forbes), David Bressan, also didn’t put any stock into the idea either. In 2013, Bressan wrote that Piccardi was aiming to get more attention paid to geomythology as a field but knew little about Nessie/cryptids. I totally agree.

Conclusion

What is the verdict on Nessie and seismic activity? A resoundingly negative.

Piccardi attempted to show that there was 1.) a basis for the seismic activity at Loch Ness, 2.) that historic earthquakes could have been source of, or at least enhanced, the monster legend, and 3.) that seismic activity might account for monster sightings today. While 1 may be true to an extent, I reject 2 and 3. The GGF is not active enough now, nor in the past, to have had a substantive influence on the Nessie legend. Piccardi attempted to line up a few known quakes with locations of monster sightings but they didn’t correlate in time, which is critical to make a solid connection.

Using the Saint Columba story is really reaching in several ways. First, the monster=earthquake connection is flimsy. And, the story itself is fictionalized. Even though it’s beloved by cryptozoologists, the ancient description of the creature, even though vague, is substantially different from modern reports. Instead, the actions by Columba represents a morality tale of Christianity triumphing over “evil” Pagan belief. It is not credible evidence of a long-existing mystery animal in the loch.

Finally, there is no basis to state that a rumbling sound, a main feature of small earthquakes, is associated with the monster in the lake from its entry into popular culture in the 1930s to the present. Anomalous waves are the most common association with the monster. These are regularly generated by several other mundane sources in the loch, but not notably via earthquakes. A reasonable correlation between seismic events and Nessie is absent.

The geomythological idea of seismic activity as an explantion for Nessie is sunk. It’s a fun idea, though, that keeps getting repeated even by people who should know better. Of all the many causes for the development of the Nessie legend and it’s sustaining popularity, we cannot fault the fault.

References

Allen, M. (2019). The long and moving story of the Great Glen Fault. Mercian Geologist. 19(4), pp. 216-223.

Galloway, D.D. (2014). Bulletin of British Earthquakes 2013. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/14/062.

Musson, R. M. W. (2007). British Earthquakes. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 118(4), pp. 305-337.

Piccardi, L. (2014). Post-glacial activity and earthquakes of the Great Glen Fault (Scotland). Mem. Descr. Carta Geol. d’It. XCVI, pp. 431-446.

Piccardi, L. (2001). Seismotectonic Origins of the Monster of Loch Ness (abstract). Earth System Processes – Global Meeting (June 24-28, 2001).

#cryptids #earthquakes #geomythology #GreatGlenFault #LochNess #LochNessMonster #Nessie

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