Lizzie of Loch Lochy: the three-humped creature seen from the Corriegour Lodge Hotel

Loch Lochy is about 10 miles long and roughly three-quarters of a mile to a mile wide. Karl Shuker calls it Scotland's third-deepest loch, at about 531 ft. It is linked to Loch Ness through Loch Oich and the Caledonian Canal. Its monster has a name. Lizzie. Sightings stretch back decades. In 1929 two gamekeepers near Spean Bridge watched "a large living creature" through a telescope. Older folklore tells of a water horse, the "Lord of the Lake."

On the east shore, beside the A82, stands the Corriegour Lodge Hotel. A former Victorian hunting lodge. In 1996 its co-proprietors were Lorna Bunney and her husband Rod.

About three weeks before the main sighting, Lorna Bunney was at her kitchen window. She saw what looked like a boat's wake. But the wake was "too fast." The ripples were "too close together." She ran to the kitchen door. It was, she realised, "some kind of creature." "I've never seen anything like it before," she said.

September 1996. Guests were having dinner. A group rushed to the dining room's picture window. Among them were Derick and Lindsay Burney of Hornchurch.

"At first we thought what we were seeing was an upturned boat," Derick Burney said. It was dark. It was about twelve feet in length. It had three humps and a curved head. It moved backwards. Then it moved in circles, in full view of staff and guests. It "wasn't a seal or any other mammal we've ever seen before." Catriona Allen, an Aberdeen University psychology student, watched through binoculars. "It certainly wasn't a seal, otter, porpoise or dolphin," she said.

Some accounts file the same event under the nearby Letterfinlay Lodge Hotel, where staff and guests saw "an unidentified creature moving in a strange fashion through the waters of Loch Lochy opposite the hotel."

The sighting prompted what the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club calls "the first expedition to look for Lizzie." July 1997. Club president Gary Campbell led the team, with diver Cameron Turner. On the first day, sonar picked up an object of 18 to 20 ft at 160 ft depth, out from the Letterfinlay Lodge Hotel. The boat turned to follow. About two minutes later the contact returned at 200 ft. Then it was lost over a trench more than 300 ft deep.

A follow-up in September 1997, run with the Sun newspaper, "yielded similar results." Campbell later said the results "leave us with more questions."

No hoax claim has surfaced. Cryptopia notes that an innkeeper's story can be dismissed as "good for business," yet the guests' independent sighting gave Lorna Bunney's account unexpected support. The witnesses themselves weighed and rejected a boat's wake, an upturned boat, a seal, an otter, a porpoise and a dolphin. The sonar evidence has its limits. Some readings showed depths of over 2,000 ft in a loch about 531 ft deep. Photos of the sonar screen showed nothing.

Lizzie keeps coming back. A long black shape near the Corriegour Hotel in 1975. A black fin or paddle near Letterfinlay in 2021. An upside-down U shape that dived in 2023. And in September 1996, a dark, three-humped shape that circled below a dining room window while guests and staff looked on.