George Edwards Nessie Hump Photograph Hoax

George Edwards had been searching Loch Ness for about 26 years. Fascinated since the age of 13, he spent around 60 hours a week on the water as skipper of Nessie Hunter IV, running Loch Ness Cruises out of Drumnadrochit. He believed. "I won't stop going out onto Loch Ness until they put me in a box six feet under," he told ABC News. His reasoning was simple. The monster was first seen in 565 AD, and nothing lives that long. So there must be several, offspring of the original.

2 November 2011. Early one morning. Edwards was heading back to Temple Pier. "I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and immediately grabbed my camera," he said. He moved to the back of the boat and watched. A single dark grey hump rode above the water. "It was slowly moving up the loch towards Urquhart Castle." It was far off. Probably about half a mile, he guessed, though distance is hard to judge on water. For five to ten minutes he kept watching. Then it sank below the surface and did not reappear. To Edwards, the animal probably looked "kind of like a manatee, but not a mammal."

The picture surfaced on 3 August 2012 in the Daily Mail, then spread to the Huffington Post UK, Shortlist, LiveScience and ABC News. Edwards said it had been independently verified by a team of US military monster experts. Steve Feltham, who has watched the loch from Dores beach since 1991, first called it "the best photograph I think I have ever seen."

Benjamin Radford was less impressed. Writing for LiveScience, he noted there was nothing in the frame for scale. The hump could be anywhere from about 5 to 50 feet long. He also asked why five to ten minutes of viewing produced only one photo. His suggestion was a floating log, and he pointed to the commercial incentive behind a monster reading.

Feltham soon changed his mind. He identified the object as a fibreglass hump used in the 2011 National Geographic documentary The Truth Behind the Loch Ness Monster, in which Edwards had appeared. Dick Raynor published his own examination, finding that the location and weather Edwards gave did not match those of the day. Tony Harmsworth, former head of the Loch Ness centre, accused Edwards of fakery. In 2013 Darren Naish revisited Nessie photos on a Scientific American blog and doubted this one too.

October 2013. Edwards came clean. "There is no doubt at all the pictures are fake," he said. "It's just a bit of fun." The military verification, he admitted, was part of the story he had invented. "I have no guilty feelings at all about what I have done." He was "quite happy to join the rogues' gallery along with the surgeon who produced the best known picture image of the monster," a nod to the Surgeon's Photograph. Feltham called him "nothing more than a faker and a liar." Willie Cameron of the Clansman Hotel saw it differently. Fakes, he said, help keep interest in the story alive.

The case is now catalogued by the Museum of Hoaxes, run by Alex Boese. Questions linger over Edwards' other claims. Raynor says Edwards privately admitted a 1986 photo was faked, yet Edwards still insisted it was genuine after his confession. Raynor also disputed "Edwards Deep", an 812 ft depth near Urquhart Castle that Edwards reported in 1989 and called "Nessie's Lair". Even after confessing, Edwards said he still believes unknown creatures may live in the loch.