The term "monster" was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1933 by Alex Campbell, the water bailiff for Loch Ness and a part-time journalist, in a report in The Inverness Courier.[9][10][11] On 4 August 1933, the Courier published as a full news item the assertion of a London man, George Spicer, that a few weeks earlier while motoring around the loch, he and his wife had seen "the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life", trundling across the road toward the loch carrying "an animal" in its mouth.[12] Other letters began appearing in the Courier, often anonymously, with claims of land or water sightings, either by the writer or by family or acquaintances, or stories they remembered being told.[13] These stories soon reached the national (and later the international) press, which described a "monster fish", "sea serpent", or "dragon",[14] eventually settling on "Loch Ness Monster".[15]
On 6 December 1933, the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published in the …show more content…
Binns acknowledges that this account is the most serious of various alleged early sightings of the monster, but argues that all other claims of monster sightings prior to 1933 are highly dubious and do not prove that there was a tradition of the monster before this