Here’s a thread on another famous/infamous bit of modern #monster lore… the so-called Muppet #LochNessMonster photo, taken on 21st May 1977 by Mr Tony Shiels. As usual, it has a really fun backstory, follow me as we explore it in this thread…

It’s a remarkable colour photo, surely one of the best ever taken of #Nessie! As a kid, it was one of my favourite Nessie images, and here’s my own drawing of it. I should add that part of this is explored in my 2017 book Hunting Monsters. Anyway… #cryptozoology #LochNessMonster

Mr Shiels said that he was standing at the foot of Urquhart Castle when he noticed the LOCH NESS MONSTER and managed to snap two photos (yes, two. Read on)...

It was, he said, smooth and glossy, with powerful muscles, and that the portion out of the water was about 1.5m long (which is large). There’s a white blob at the base of the neck (remember that feature) [the version of the photo used here is distorted in the vertical]. #Nessie

It was, Shiels said, visible for 4-6 seconds, but he also said that other people looking in the same direction simply didn’t see it. These photos of Urquhart Castle are mine.

The photo is today best known as the Muppet photo and mostly seen as an amusing hoax, depicting a model. I think that this is exactly what it is. But because referring to it as a ’Muppet’ might be biased or unfair, I’m going to refer to it as the 'Shiels Photo' from hereon...

As mentioned, the Shiels Photo isn't a one-off, but 1 of 2 which show the monster with a different neck posture. The 2nd image isn't well known but has been included in a few books, most notably in Janet & Colin Bord’s Alien Animals of 1980 where both images occupy whole plates.

Shiels said in interview that there was originally a whole strip of these photos but that several of them vanished after being passed to a picture editor. The 2nd image only survives in b&w, apparently, since the original slide was lost in the post...

... It was being sent to Boston, which must mean that it was heading to Robert Rines, the lawyer well known for his involvement in the #LochNessMonster saga and his analysis of various supposed #Nessie photos. A glass copy-plate of the second photo was later dropped and smashed.

A few books and articles state that the photographer was Anthony (or Tony) Shiels and leave it at that, as if there’s nothing more to see here: a normal, respectable person took the photos. But Shiels wasn’t just a normal member of the public....

This is Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels, an artist, psychic entertainer, surrealist, stage performer and the self-proclaimed Wizard of the Western World! Born in 1938, Shiels is still around.

Shiels wasn’t new on the scene in May 1977 but was already known for various shenanigans involving monsters, the paranormal and the psychic arts.

He’s also associated with Morgawr (an alleged sea monster from Cornwall, supposedly photographed in 1976, and seen by Shiels in ‘76 too), the Cornish owlman (bought to attention by Shiels in the summer of 1976) and more.

Indeed, anyone paying attention in 1977 would have known that Shiels had already claimed to have seen water monsters much like his 1977 #Nessie...

Look at these Shiels illustrations of a sea monster he supposedly saw off the coast of Mawnan, Cornwall, in November 1976. Notice that the monster’s head doesn’t look like a head at all…

This, you see, is connected to the fact that Shiels had a somewhat… unusual take on what his 1977 #Nessie photo represented. Rather that it being the head and neck of a plesiosaur-like animal, he proposed that the object in his Loch Ness photo was…

… the proboscis-like structure mounted on the head of a new kind of giant freshwater squid, which he termed the Elephant squid, or Dinoteuthis proboscideus.

In 1984 in Fortean Times, Shiels proposed that Dinoteuthis had inflatable humps on its back, an ability to change colour, and the ability to crawl on land (this explaining the land sightings of the #LochNessMonster). Remember the white blob? This as part of the squid’s eye!

If you’re a squid nerd, you might know that the name Dinoteuthis had already been used for another animal: namely, a giant squid (Architeuthis) specimen washed up on the Irish coast in 1673...

Shiels therefore opted to give his elephant squid a new name: Elephanteuthis nnidnidi. The weird species name is a reference to other stuff in the Shielsverse which I won’t explore here.

Did anyone take any of this seriously? In his 1986 book Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, Graham McEwan seemingly regarded Shiels’s squid proposal as a great idea, even saying that it could explain other #LochNessMonster accounts...

... like the Spicer incident of 1933 (see my other #LochNessMonster thread: https://twitter.com/TetZoo/status/1278322629406076928).

But Shiels has reviewed in interview that he was aiming to play a game otherwise common and widespread in #cryptozoology: that of ‘creature building’, whereby experts claim that sightings and reports match a specific pet idea they have for a given mystery animal.

I and colleagues ( @thejohnconway and @cmkosemen) covered this aspect of #cryptozoology in our 2013 book The Cryptozoologicon.

Indeed, is _any_ of this meant to be taken seriously? At times, Shiels said that the white blob was a floating can of Guinness, his favourite drink, and he has also made reference to the fact that it seems hardly coincidental that the word Guinness has ‘Ness’ in its name.

Guinness and Loch Ness are also both black.

Also worth noting is that some people say that the object in the Shiels photo is slightly translucent: that the waves on the water surface are visible through the monster. I can see this myself in some versions of the photo (I’ve crudely aimed to depict it here)...

... but I’m not sure if it’s real or an optical illusion. If it _is_ real it could be a consequence of photo manipulation, it’s been said: maybe the image of the creature was superimposed onto an image of a body of water.

Shiels, incidentally, apparently said at one point that the translucency could be explained by this image actually showing THE GHOST OF NESSIE. Again, this makes it sound as if none of this is meant to be taken seriously.

However, I currently don’t think the translucency is real, as I don’t think that this is how the image was made. The reflection on the water looks realistic, and the model looks large relative to the size of the ripples, so...

... the most likely way it was made was that a model, perhaps mounted on a floating platform, was launched onto a body of water (perhaps the loch itself). A technical study of the object’s size hasn’t been performed (to my knowledge), but I don’t think it looks as large as 1.5m.

Given that the 2 surviving photos show different neck postures, the model must have been flexible. In another hoaxed monster photo connected to Shiels (the ‘Mary F’ Morgawr photos), the model was said to have been made from plasticine. Maybe the Shiels #Nessie is plasticine too.

The Shiels Photos has had a mixed reception from authors who’ve written about the #LochNessMonster. Quite a few rejected it outright as an obvious hoax, and anyone familiar with Shiels and his antics was surely dismissive immediately. However...

The most respected and supposedly sensible of #LochNessMonster researchers – the late Tim Dinsdale – actually regarded the photo as genuine, and was sufficiently impressed by it to feature it on the cover of the 4th edition of his successful book The Loch Ness Monster.

I wrote about Tim Dinsdale and his legacy here: http://tetzoo.com/blog/2019/8/24/books-on-the-loch-ness-monster-3-the-man-who-filmed-nessie-tim-dinsdale-and-the-enigma-of-loch-ness

The fact that Dinsdale was seemingly duped by Shiels doesn’t reflect well on Dinsdale’s ability to assess evidence, I have to say.

In more recent years, Shiels has become best known for his ‘Sea Heads’ project: it's about rugged coasts, forms of art that interact with the landscape and evoke response...

And I think that we might apply a similar explanation to Shiels’s 1977 #Nessie photo. It's some sort of art project, designed to evoke response in the media and among the public, and put out there to invoke wonder, be fun, and deliberately be controversial and perhaps unnerving.

If you enjoyed this thread, I co-curated a museum exhibition on SEA MONSTERS at the @TheNMMC #Falmouth. It doesn't feature Nessie but is devoted to her marine kin. It should open as soon as things return to normal :)

My #cryptozoology book - Hunting Monsters - examines many other cases of this sort. It seems to be out of stock at the moment, though the kindle version and an audiobook are available ... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hunting-Monsters-Darren-Naish/dp/1784285919/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=