Loch Lochy "Lizzie": Eric Robinson's party sees a 30 to 40 foot creature near Glen Fintaig, 1960

Loch Lochy lies in the Great Glen, in Lochaber, a few miles from Spean Bridge. The River Lochy joins it to Loch Linnhe, and it shares the glen with Loch Ness. Its own monster has a name. Lizzie. Reports go back to 1929, when two gamekeepers followed a creature for about a mile.

July 1960. Eric Robinson and his family were staying in a caravan near Glen Fintaig, on the south-east shore of the loch. Out on the water they saw what looked to be a standing wave in the centre of the loch.

Robinson fetched binoculars. Through the lenses, the wave became something else. A large living creature. As it started to move south, a huge back rose and looked to roll over. A fin or paddle then appeared. The animal rolled in the water, exposing a huge flipper. Then it sank out of sight.

Nine other people saw it too. The witnesses judged the main body at 15 to 20 feet, with an overall length of 30 to 40 feet. It was dark on top, with a light underside. No one described a head, a neck or humps. No one recorded a sound, or how long they watched.

The account survives only in later retellings. The Official Loch Ness Fan Club and the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register carry it in nearly identical words. Blogs and cryptid sites repeat it, and none says where the story first appeared. No contemporary newspaper report has been found, and there is no first-hand statement from Eric Robinson. Even the count shifts, and one retelling speaks of ten people and gives no name at all.

There is a further puzzle. That same retelling credits an Eric Robinson with a separate sighting on Loch Linnhe in 1954. A three-humped creature moving across the loch at about 30 mph. Whether this is the same man, a second encounter or a confusion between the two lochs remains unsettled.

The same year, the naturalist Maurice Burton was reportedly sent a photograph taken on Loch Lochy. It showed a dark mass in a patch of foam. The object reportedly sank seconds after the picture was taken. Nothing ties it to the Robinson party, and the photograph has been difficult to track down. In April of that year, Tim Dinsdale shot his film at Loch Ness, and stories from 1960 may have blurred together since.

No official investigation has been found, and no hoax has been alleged for this case. The debate rests on general points. The witnesses themselves first took the shape for a standing wave. Sceptics note that size is hard to judge through binoculars on open water with no reference point, and an estimate of 30 to 40 feet across a loch about three quarters of a mile wide carries a large margin of error. The sources say nothing about wind, weather or boats, either way.

Lizzie sightings kept coming. Anthony and Margaret Sargent at the Corriegour Hotel in 1975. A sonar contact in 1997. A wash filmed near Letterfinlay in 2021. The Robinson account remains among the most vivid of them, and among the hardest to trace back to its source.