The accompaning article
reads:
The man
who took the picture said that yesterday he saw the huge 40 ft. long
monster on the side of the lake about 100 yards away and snapped it
with his camera.
He later showed the picture of
the weird animal -said to resemble a dinosaur- to local people who had
never before had any real proof of the existence of the
monster.
SEEN
BY GIRL
The visitor who wished to remain anonymous,
was driving on the main road past the lake. Near Mulrany, 10
miles away he had given a lift to two girls from Mullingar. As
they were passing the lake one of the girls drew the drivers'
attention to the huge animal on the side of the lake about 100 yards
away.
"Despite advice by the girls I immediately
stopped the car and took a picture of the animal, and drove off again
in a hurry," he said.
"The animal seemed to be
about 40 feet long with a head like a greyhound and a long tail," he
added.
"When I mentioned the strange animal at
my hotel the developed photograph became the center of attraction and
I discovered that I had stumbled on something important and proof of
something Achill people had been looking
for."
Most likely it was the photo
that beaconed media attention. Usually the chronological sequence of
newspapers involvement in such matters starts with an area or regional
paper picking up on local word. After the town or county paper
prints a story, larger publications will sometime catch wind of the matter
and either reprint the information in abbreviated form or in some cases
such as this one, send a reporter to investigate first hand. With
that in mind it's likely that there had been a previous article written on
the Achill Monster by a separate newspaper. This may seem trivial
but all too often stories get crossed and details sometimes become
distorted when traveling from one paper to another. Case in point
being this first story which is something of a hydra with at least three
separate versions in circulation:
-
The girls, Mary
O'Neill and Florence Connaire (the article does not include
full names so I'm lost as to where or by whom they were obtained), were
in the businessman's car driving along the road when one spotted the
beast ON SHORE. The girls were not frightened only wished to move on but
the driver waited to take the photograph.
-
In a much different
account the girls, now a Mary Callaghan and Bernie Sweeny,
were returning from a dance in Keel late one night when they were
offered a ride. Right as they were about to enter the car Bernie
noticed a black shiny object swimming in the moonlight. She
screamed and in a state of fright ran down the road away from the car
leaving Mary and the driver clueless. When Bernie finally pointed
to the lake the motorist only saw a rippling ring on the
surface.
-
In what appears
to be a sensationalized variation for the previous one, Bernie's
fright is the result of a big, shiny, black monster running towards
her. She takes off fleeing down the road leaving a shaken Mary
pointing at the lough. The driver only sees something quickly
disappearing into the water.
The first version, which is
closest to the account cited in the newspaper, would comply with the
photograph since it appears to have been shot during the daytime.
The other two were either colorful mutations from the original story or
possibly related to an entirely separate incident which became
confused with the original. Either way, somewhere "Mary" (whether
it's O'Neill or Callaghan, the paper doesn't say) was quoted as
saying:
"It looked
just like a dinosaur. It moved a bit and I would say it was about
20 feet long."
Combining the
statements of the driver and these two brief sentences of "Mary," we're
only able to gather that the 'monster' was huge, it looked like a
dinosaur, with a greyhound's head, a long tail, and it was somewhere
between 20 and 40 feet.
The
Photograph
During a visit to the National
Library in Dublin I was able to view the photograph on microfilm.
Though still hazy, certain features were discernable that only became lost
in replication. Thus my judgment of the picture is from having
had the advantage of viewing a more distinguishable
image.
Naturally any photograph
of such nature is going to be perceived skeptically but even looking at
the picture with an open mind there are several red flags that stand out
immediately. Most evident is the strong likeness the head has to the
shape of a classic plastic dinosaur toy complete with trademark gaping
jaws. If we forgive the artificial likeness then there is still one
very big problem: the size. The figure appears to be standing
above the lake which would place the beast in a stature compatible
with Godzilla. As the majority of the lough is in view then the head
by itself would have to be at least 20 feet long. Further
incriminating is the ever-so-convenient pyramided "bush" concealing every
part of the gargantuan beast except his T-Rex head. (At least I
assume it's a bush but at the time of its publication there seemed to be
an understanding that it was actually the creature's back.) The
figure is most likely a modified toy dinosaur suspended in the foreground
yet staged so as to appear as a giant in the background. The picture
almost definitely a hoax and a bad one at
that.
Beast in the Headlights
The photograph and
its accompanying story may be fraudulent but there's no reason why that
should damage the credence of other reports. Most notable being a
land sighting by John Cooney who was reputed as a sober, honest and
trustworthy individual as claimed by the local parish priest and fellow
townsfolk who vouched for his sincerity.
According to
Cooney, two months prior to the businessman's alleged sighting he had been
driving alongside the lough with his friend Michael McNulty when a
creature seemingly "out of this world" passed in front of their
vehicle. Described as 8-12 feet long and about 2 1/2 feet tall, the
animal bore a long thick tail with a head like a greyhound or sheep on top
of a long swan-like neck. The observation took place at night with
the animal illuminated by the van's headlights before it disappeared into
the vegetation.
The Evening
Herald article continues:
AT
TWILIGHT
Two
months ago a local part-time decorator, Mr. John Cooney (40), of Achill
Sound, was passing in a car on the main road near the lake at twilight
when a large animal, similar to the one described by the Dundalk
visitor, crossed the road in front of him-going towards the lake.
He drew the attention of another man in the car to the animal but they
were too scared to pull
up.
Mr. Cooney
related: "I found it hard to convince people in Achill that I had seen
this strange animal which had looked like a type of dinosaur. Now
I am glad that the visitor has seen the animal, and can produce proof of
it.
[There is no
indication that Cooney had actually seen the photograph when this
quote was taken. Had he, his reaction would have been interesting as
the photo severely contrasts the description and sketch he would later
produce for Jan Sundberg.]
A
Keel resident said: "The Dundalk visitor showed me the picture which was
only four inches, by three inches in size. I could clearly
see the animal in the picture and with the aid of a magnifying glass the
animal looked to be over 40 feet long. I would not believe it only
for the picture."
Frightened Him
A local newsagent, Mr. Denis McGowan, Achill
Sound, said: "Two years ago a British angler came into my shop in a
frightened condition and told me he had seen some strange animal in the
lake while fishing there and that he immediately packed up his gear and
ran away."
The
Fisherman
Sightings of the
creature in water were reported but only one offered any details. An
English angler was fishing off the shore of Sraheens Lough when the calm
surface of the lake began to boil and from it emerged a long neck with a
small head. With a black shiny body in trail, the creature swam
towards the fisherman at great speed. The man reportedly discarded
his gear and ran all the way to Achill Sound.
Gay Denver's Land Sighting
Cooney and McNulty
weren't the only ones to walk away with sighting of the animal on
land. Three weeks prior to the photograph, while cycling home from
Mass 16 year old Gay Denver spotted an odd creature along some trees 50
yards from the lake as it climbed up a turf bank near the
woods.
"When I stopped and looked through an opening in the rhododendrons, I
had a shock. Crawling out of the
water came the strangest animal I have ever seen.
It was much bigger than a
horse, black in colour with a long, slender and sheep-looking
head, long neck and tail. It moved like a kangaroo and its
hind legs were bigger than the front ones. When the nasty-looking
thing entered
the beach, I left the area as fast as I
could."
Denver felt the
photograph properly represented his monster which possessed, "a humped,
bumpy back just like that, and a small head."
Apparently, what appears to be a "bush" had been interpreted by
Denver as the animal's back. If this is what the photographer was
intending for his "dinosaur", then the figure looks as though it were
trying to represent the sail-finned Dimetrodon or a bizarre misassembled
Stegosaurus. Either way, some sort of quadruped dinosaur with a
large arching back. However the photo does not show any sort of long
neck as mentioned by Gary Denver and John Cooney.
Cooney's
Sketch
In 1975 Jan Sundberg of GUST fame
visited Achill as an independent journalist. John Cooney
described his encounter to Sundberg and offered a sketch displaying a
slender bipedal dinosaur-like creature. Sundberg spoke to several
locals who acknowledged there had always been a strong traditions of a
sort of monster existing within the region.
Cooney's
drawing was presented to Dr. Carl Pleijel of the Swedish Natural Museum
who was at first uninformed as to its significance. Dr. Pleijel
identified the creature in the sketch as a Coelophysis,
an
early Jurassic carnivore who's size and description to some extent matched
that of Cooney's animal. Dr. Heuvelmans felt the comparison was
noteworthy enough to spot mention in his Les derniers dragons
d'Afrique (Paris: Plon, 1978). Dinosaur or not, the general
descriptions surrounding the Achill creature were certainly unique from
the more traditional configurations affiliated with Irish water
monsters.
A rough
photo taken during a visit to Sraheens Lough, Achill Island in
Fall of 1998. In order to capture the entire lake in one
shot I tried climbing the mountain spine situated behind the
lake. By the time I'd reached a height where the majority of
the lake was visible in a single shot, darkness had
fallen.
What to Make of
Achill?
Achill Island had
carried previous references to strange water creatures even before the
excitement stirred during the early 1960s. In the 1930s Sraheens
Lough was reputed as the home of a "water-horse" and even before then
strange creatures had been sighted on rare occasions though few details
have survived to present times. A water-horse may very well have
been responsible for the flap except that some sightings claim the beast
had a long swan shaped neck; a feature foreign to
Each'Usiage.
The
"dinosaur" theme attached to the phenomena appeared to be present prior to
the photograph's publication. I'm inclined to suspect that the
Dundalk visitor had heard the stories circulating about the monster and
its "dinosaur-like" resemblance and then went about producing the
phony image, perhaps originally as a mere joke. The outline of the
monster seen on the photograph soon became a sort of indirect local mascot
inspiring handcrafts and souvenirs.
A
miniature model of the Achill creature, conveniently bearing a
strong resemblance to a stegosaurus, sold by local
merchants. (© Peter Costello
1974)
The Achill Monster
managed to remain an issue for years to come. Sometime during the
1970s a group of foreign students did an examination of the lake and
supposedly found strange tracks along the shoreline. And somewhere
along the line it was claimed that local farmers were mysteriously losing
sheep. Whether either of these alleged instances has any correlation
with the supposed presence of a water monster is left to the
imagination.
During a visit to Achill Island
in winter of 1998 I was informed that at sometime in the early or mid-80s
a hoax was conducted regarding an alleged 'monster' on the
island. The culprits responsible for this bogus claim were actually
said to be members of the Tourist Board who were willing to embrace some
rather unorthodox strategies to attract visitors. The plan backfired, I'm
told, as parents complained of frightened children. The same
instigators would later try another ploy claiming gold had been discovered
on the island and even go as far as to stage a mock debate over the radio
arguing for and against mining.
On a final note:
research colleague Gary Cunningham has uncovered references to Achill
Island being home to a very unusual form of otter, possibly the same
animal as the Dobhar-Chú. Could it be that this elusive creature
thought to have gone extinct in the past 300 years was still living along
the thick jungles and uninhabited regions of Achill
Island?
Peistes@Yahoo.com
-Nick Sucik
2003
