Kerry Barrett, author of The Missing Wife, tells us about her fascinating research into Loch Ness and why she now believes in the monster…
Back in 2020, in that sliver of not-quite-normal life we had in between lockdowns, my family and I went to Scotland on holiday.
My then 10-year-old son was desperate to go to what he calls “the Loch Ness” and find the monster. So off we went to the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre in Drumnadrochit, which is housed in what was once the Drumnadrochit Hotel.
In The Missing Wife, Hannah finds a job at the Drumnadrochit Hotel, where the proprietor is the one who spots the beast in the water and triggers the frenzy of monster hunters arriving at the hotel.
The exhibition walks the fine line between exploring the scientific possibility of Nessie existing, and the many crazy theories that have grown up around the myth.
I left Drumnadrochit with a story idea bubbling in my head, and a conviction that Nessie was a fun story and nothing more.
But…
When I came to write Scarlett’s and Hannah’s stories, I listened to podcasts about the Loch Ness Monster and other creatures from folklore like Bigfoot (the study of these stories is called cryptozoology, which is an excellent word!).
I discovered there are other water monsters, including Mokele Mbembe who lives in the Congo River. In fact, just as Lucas is investigating in The Missing Wife, there are even other monsters in Scottish lochs, including Morag the monster from Loch Morar, and the monster of Loch Lochy, which was seen by 10 people all at once in 1975.
I listened to all the scientific and not-so-scientific theories about what the Loch Ness Monster could be.
And a strange thing happened.
I started to believe.
Loch Ness is enormous – it’s 23 miles long and a mile wide – which is why Scarlett’s plan in the story to run all the way round comes to an abrupt halt! It takes more than two hours to drive all the way round and, though there is a walking route, it usually takes around five days to walk the 80-mile circuit.
The loch is very deep. In its deepest points it’s twice as deep as the North Sea. It’s Britain’s largest body of fresh water and it contains more water than all the lakes, rivers and reservoirs in England and Wales put together. It’s too cold for even the hardiest wild swimmer to take a dip.
The water is black and peaty, and the currents are strange with wakes moving across the surface of the loch when there’s no boat. Once you’re there, it’s easy to believe there could be something living in the depths.
In the story, Tobias tells the tale of the first sighting of the beast, back in the year 565, when the Picts were living in Scotland. Columba, an Irish monk, came across a group of men burying their friend who had been killed by an enormous beast in the River Ness while fishing.
Intrigued, Columba bravely sent one of his friends to wade into the water to see if they could tempt the monster out of the depths. The monster appeared, and Columba made the sign of the cross to ward it off and, the story goes, banished the creature to Loch Ness.
The story was passed on down the generations but didn’t make a splash. Instead, it was Urqhuart Castle on the shores of the loch that was the scene of all the drama as it was fought over by the MacDonald and Grant clans.
Apart from a brief flurry of interest from a few Victorian explorers, Nessie was largely forgotten until the sightings in 1933 put her back into the spotlight, where she’s stayed ever since.
You can check out all the sightings – 2019 was a bumper year for spotting the Loch Ness Monster, with 2020 not far behind – on the register http://www.lochnesssightings.com/ which now also records sightings in other lochs. You can even watch the Loch Ness webcam and see if you can spot anything yourself.
And as for me, well, I’m a committed Nessie believer. As GK Chesterton wrote: “Many a man has been hanged on less evidence than there is for the Loch Ness Monster.”
The Missing Wife by Kerry Barrett is out in ebook now and paperback 19th January.
