A Loch Ness Monster hunter says the mythical monster may have a terrible twin, after capturing jaw-dropping footage of two huge shapes prowling through the water.
Eoin O’Faodhagain, 60, was watching Loch Ness via webcam last Friday when he spotted something in the water that had him seeing double.
Two huge wakes were visible on the surface, moving side by side away from the camera, before they combined and vanished.
Mr O’Faodhagain said: ‘I was amazed at this spectacle, I could not get my head around the size of both wakes and the amount of disturbance they were causing.
‘I expected to see two powerboats on the surface, but there was nothing to see. Then the penny dropped: some sort of live creatures were responsible for these large wakes.’
He continued: ‘There are two defined wakes on view here, so there are obviously two creatures responsible for them.
‘If they are Nessies – well then, there are two Nessies.’
And Mr O’Faodhagain is in no doubt that Nessie is the best explanation.
‘I have never witnessed seals making wakes of this magnitude,’ he said.
‘And I cannot make a case for an otter, as you would not see an otter rising a few feet out of the water like that.
‘Because of the fact that the wakes fizzle into nothing, we can assume that this event has nothing to do with human activity.
‘It is self explanatory that some unknown creatures are involved in this sighting.
‘Nessie is the only rational explanation for these two large wakes fizzling out into nothing, whatever species she belongs to.’
Mr O’Faodhagain made the sighting using a webcam maintained by Visit Inverness Loch Ness (VILN) at the Airanloch Bed and Breakfast, on the loch’s northern shore.
And he has some ideas about what might have brought the Nessies to the area.
He said: ‘They must be involved in behaviour linked to either feeding or courtship or some sort of family bonding.’
Eoin often logs often logs on to watch the water from his home in County Donegal, Ireland.
Over the years, he’s racked up multiple entries in the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, including one in July.
But even to him, this was a unique sighting.
‘The two large wakes are special in regard to Nessie sightings in my opinion,’ he said.
‘If St Columba, who made the first Nessie sighting, had witnessed these wakes in the fifth century, he would have definitely believed something sinister and monstrous was approaching him.’
Alleged sightings of the Loch Ness monster have captured people’s imagination for centuries. The earliest sighting of Nessie dates back all the way to the 7th century.
The mysterious beast first caught the world’s attention when a sighting of the monster was published in The Inverness Courier in May 1933. A year later the supposed first picture of Nessie was taken by a London surgeon called Robert Kenneth Wilson.
The picture supposedly showed the creature’s head and neck.
It was published in the Daily Mail in April 1934 and for 60 years many people considered it to be proof of the monster’s existence. However, by the 1990s most expert concluded the photograph was part of an elaborate hoax.
Sightings of the amphibious creature continue to this day. Over the years, Mr O’Faodhagain has racked up multiple entries in the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register.
But new restrictions concerning webcam sightings have kept his recent contributions off the record.
The VILN webcams, which captured the footage, can be watched live online at visitinvernesslochness.com