The Mysterious Monster of Loch Morar

When it comes to lake monsters by far the rock star is the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland's Loch Ness. However, this is not the only loch in the country said to harbor its own monster, and here we will look at Nessie's lesser-known sibling. 

Lying out in the Rough Bounds of Lochaber, Highland, Scotland is Loch Morar. While not quite as famous as its cousin Loch Ness, it is still quite the body of water, being the fifth-largest loch by surface area in Scotland, at 26.7 km2 (10.3 sq mi), and the deepest freshwater body in the British Isles with a maximum depth of 310 m (1,017 ft), making it even deeper than Loch Ness. Like much of the area, the lake is steeped in history and folklore, and much like its more well-known cousin, the loch is said to be home to a mysterious creature that has so far managed to elude science. 

Folklore about something strange in the Loch goes all the way back to the 19th century when the creature was often described less like the lake monster it has become and more like what one might liken to a mermaid. At the time, “Morag,” as the creature has come to be known, was thought to be a water spirit in the form of a half-fish, half-human woman with flowing hair that prowled the depths of the loch looking for trouble. She was not seen as something anyone wanted to encounter, as she was thought to be an omen of impending death. Alexander Carmichael, a prolific gatherer of folklore at the turn of the last century, has gathered a plethora of early stories about her from people living near the loch, and says of this folkloric version of Morag:

“Morag is always seen before a death and before a drowning. There is a creature in Loch Morar and she is called Morag. She is never seen save when one of the hereditary people of the place dies. The last time she was seen was when Aeneas Macdonnell died in 1898. The Morag is peculiar to Loch Morar. She is seen in broad daylight and by many persons, including church persons. She appears in a black heap or ball slowing and deliberately rising in the water and moving along like a boat water-logged. The Morag is much disliked and is called by many uncomplimentary terms.

Great distress. Like the other water deities, she is half-human, half-fish. The lower portions of her body is in the form of a grilse and the upper in the form of a small woman of highly developed breasts with long flowing yellow hair falling down her snow white back and breast. She is represented as being fair, beautiful and very timid and never seen save when one of the Morar family dies or when the clan falls in battle. Then she is seen rushing about with great speed and is heard wailing in great distress, bemoaning and weeping the loss of the House of Morar laid desolate. The Morag has often brought out of their houses at night the people living along the shores of the lake and in the neighbourhood of her haunts, causing much anxiety to the men and much sore weeping to the women.”

However, as much as this sounds like pure fantasy and legend, there were apparently many people witnessing strange dark shapes in the loch since at least 1867, when a Father Allan McDonald wrote in his journals that there were “many eyewitnesses” of a monster in Loch Morar. The creature was usually described as a large, dark mass, sometimes serpentine in shape and sometimes more amorphous, usually lurking just beneath the waves and moving at a slow rate. Apparently, by the early 20th century people of all walks of life and those of good standing were seeing this thing, and an excerpt from William T. Kilgour’s unwieldily titled "Lochaber in War & Peace: being a record of historical incidents, legends, traditions & folk-lore with notes on the topography & scenic beauties of the whole district” says of the creature:

“Morar Loch – the deepest lake in the three kingdoms – has gained the reputation of harbouring a monster so mysterious and uncanny that the dwellers in these parts live in perpetual terror of it. ‘Morag,’ as the apparition has been christened, is said to have been seen by a number of persons of unquestionable veracity. One of them in recounting his experience alleges that early on a summer morn when rowing across the loch, he happened on nearing the further shore, to catch sight of ‘Morag’ — ‘a huge, shapeless, dark mass, rising out of the water like an island.’ It suddenly disappeared, and the disturbance of the water sent a ripple towards his boat, which caused it to roll slightly. The belief is prevalent among the residents by the lake, that the sea monster in Loch Morar never rises save when some MacDonald or a Gillies is about to exchange the barren hills of Morar for a fairer and more salubrious clime.”

It would not be until the mid-20th century that reports like this would start hitting the mainstream, partly because of the remoteness of Loch Morar in comparison with its more heavily populated and visited sibling Loch Ness. One of the first news reports to come out about a monster in Loch Morar hit the press in 1948 when nine people out on the loch in a boat claimed to see a serpent-like creature that they approximated was 20 ft long on the loch. A report on the sighting in the Pittsburgh Press reads:

“Scottish Monster Sighted On Loch.
GLASGOW – It’s back, folks – the ‘monster’ of the Scotch lakes. A party of nine on Loch Morar, deepest lake in Scotland, called the attention of boatmen John Gillies to an unusual object a quarter of a mile away. ‘Through my binoculars,’ says Gillies, ‘it appeared about 20 feet long and had prominent humps. Neither head nor tail was visible.’”

In 1968 a barman from the Morar Hotel by the name of John MacVarish was boating on the loch when he allegedly saw a “black, smooth-skinned creature” swimming across the water with its neck extended five or six feet out of the water, topped with a “small, flattish, snake-like head.” He would say of his sighting:

“I saw this thing coming. I thought it was a man standing in a boat but as it got nearer I saw it was something coming out of the water. I tried to get up close to it with the outboard out of the water and what I saw was a long neck five or six feet out of the water with a small head on it, dark in colour, coming quite slowly down the loch. When I got to about 300 yards of it, it turned off into the deep and just settled down slowly into the loch out of sight. The neck was about one and a half feet in diameter and tapered up to between ten inches and a foot. I never saw any features, no eyes or anything like that. It was a snake like head, very small compared to the size of the neck-flattish, a flat type of head. It seemed to have very smooth skin but at 300 yards it’s difficult to tell. It was very dark, nearly black. It was 10am, dead calm, no wind, brilliant sunshine. I saw it for about ten minuets travelling very slowly: it didn’t alter its angle to the water. It looked as if it was paddling itself along. There was very little movement from the water, just a small streak from the neck. I couldn’t really see what was propelling it but I think it was something at the sides rather than behind it.”

A rather famous report came out the following year, in 1969, concerning two local men by the names of William Simpson and Duncan McDonell. The two men had been out fishing at the loch when heard a splash behind them and saw something moving at great speed towards their boat. Simpson would say of what happened:

“As we were sailing down the loch in my boat we were suddenly disturbed and frightened by a thing that surfaced behind us. We watched it catch us up then bump into the side of the boat, the impact sent a kettle of water I was heating onto the floor. I ran into the cabin to turn the gas off as the water had put the flame out. Then I came out of the cabin to see my mate trying to fend the beast off with an oar, to me he was wasting his time. Then when I seen the oar break I grabbed my rifle and quickly putting a bullet in it fired in the direction of the beast.. Then I watched it slowly sink away from the boat and that was the last I seen of it. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a large monster, maybe more than one, in Loch Morar.”

That same year an unnamed fisherman in Meoble Bay saw a “monster lizard” just lying on the bottom in about 12 feet of crystal clear water. It was described as being about 20 feet long and gray-brown in color, with a snake-like head and four legs with three toes on each foot. That same year there was another amazing encounter that was related to the blog “Loch Ness Mystery” by a witness named Tricia, who says her experience occurred sometime in the last week of August of 1969. The witness says her and her family spent a lot of holidays out at Loch Morar, where they rented a cottage by the beach. The strange experience took place as she was out fishing one day with her father and siblings, and she describes what happened as follows:

“We travelled for what seemed like hours to us on this small boat with an outboard motor and two oars on the Loch. My memories of this journey are very clear, I was intrigued with the scenery and how we were in such a remote, mystical area. I wondered how people got to the few houses I saw at both sides of the Loch. I do remember one very large house sitting in the trees to my right on our way down the Loch and wondering what type of folks lived there.

After what seemed like a long time we decided to stop at a shingle cove on the left as we travelled down the Loch. We had lunch and Dad and my brothers fished from the side of the Loch, I can tell you that my Dad on these fishing expeditions lost all sense of time and indeed would walk away from us and forget we even existed.

On this particular occasion, my mischievous brother untied the empty boat and I quickly retrieved it (tearing my toe nail off on a rock for my good deed). One of the oars fell from the boat and floated off before I could retrieve it. Eventually my Dad returned, I reckon this was around 5 pm. I remember while we were on the shingle beach, a fishing boat went past us and we waved to the folks on board, after a while the same boat passed us on their way back and we waved again. We packed up and started off back up the Loch to return home, my Dad was a very calm and placid man but on this occasion he was upset with my brother regarding the one lost oar.

Ten minutes or so into the journey, at which point we were in the middle of the Loch, and to my recollection both shores were equidistant, the outboard motor packed in. We as kids were not particularly concerned with this because we were used to this type of event.  My Dad regularly took us on fishing expeditions to many other lochs, sea and rivers where outboard motors would pack in and be fixed by him.

As we sat patiently while he worked on this motor I looked to my right and spotted two or three protrusions from the water, about two feet high. I thought these were rocks at first, but I remember having a feeling of unexplained fear. I turned to my sister who was sitting next to me and said "Look over there, what is that?" at which point my Dad said "Shut up, Patricia!" with gritted teeth.

This was upsetting to me as my Dad was very rarely angry at us kids and we were taught all our lives never to say "Shut up!" to anybody. This was a golden rule in our house. My Dad had, of course, spotted the same protrusions and kept this to himself,  I and my sister stared at this sight in the water in confused wonderment.

My brothers at this point were oblivious down to their age and preoccupation with trying to untangle the fishing tackle which my dad had tasked them with. I said again "Dad, what is that in the water?" to which he replied again "Shut up!" in an angry voice. This prompted my brothers to look over and join in the debate. The feeling of fear was now with us all. Some time later, my Dad explained to us his mind was not only on trying to fix the motor but also trying to figure out how he could get us to shore safely away from this unexplained "thing" in the water. I am smiling as I write this but also empathising with his thoughts. He must have been frantic, he did however on the outside remain calm for our sake! 

The upshot is, he finally got the motor going. As we started to travel, the mysterious protrusions (which had stayed with us for the duration of time it had taken Dad to fix the motor in the same position),  disappeared below the water leaving a slight swell, which we felt in the boat. We trundled along again for which felt like hours till we reached the jetty where we had started out from.  On landing, there was a flurry of activity and our Mum was crying and very agitated. She, of course, was witness to two fishermen relaying to a crowd of folks, including reporters, their experience on the Loch that same day, some hours before.

From my recollection, they also had an up close and personal experience with (I presume) the same "thing" we had witnessed. They however, said this "thing" had hit their boat and they hit back with an oar and a gun shot. As we landed, there was a boat with folks on board ready to launch to come and look for us. My Dad apologised profusely to these folks. He told us kids not to say word about our sighting as he explained later he did not want it to be seen we were jumping on the two fishermen's bandwagon, but also he did not want people thinking we were nuts.

We are an ordinary family with nothing to gain from me telling our story. Between us we are business folks, professional managers and a social worker. My mum is retired from the police force and my Dad was a hardworking, self employed electrician.”

Very strange, indeed. In 1971, a local resident by the name of Eden Gillies was out at his cottage on the shores of the loch when he noticed a huge creature in the water about half a mile from his home. It was described as being black in color, with a long neck, small head, and two or three humps. A few years later, in 1975, two brothers on a bird-watching expedition were driving in the area where the Morar River flows out of the loch into the ocean barely a mile away, when one of them saw what he described as a 20 foot-long creature with a snake-like head, smooth, brown skin and powerful hindquarters rise from a shallow pool of water and plunge into the loch.

In 1977, the first real evidence of the creature came forward in the form of a pair of photographs taken by Ms. M Lindsay. While pretty in inconclusive, they show a dark mass that seems to change position from one image to the next, and the second photo seems to show two humps. By now excitement of the creature was so high that The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau had expanded its search to include Loch Morar, with several high-profile expeditions embarking to capture evidence of the monster, without luck. 

In 2013 there was a flurry of sightings of Morag. In one, Alistair MacKellaig was out fishing with friends when they all saw Morag from a distance of only about 50ft, describing the creature as a “classic three humps moving through the water with the head underwater.” That same year a couple having a picnic in front of Swordlands Lodge on the banks of Loch Morar saw something large "zig-zagging" in the water near the shore in Meoble Bay. Perhaps the most well-known 2013 sighting was made by tourists Doug and Charlotte Christie who were staying in a B&B on the shores of the loch on holiday. They would say they saw the beast three times during a stay at the Kisimuil B&B by the loch. Charlotte would explain the experience:

“I could not believe my eyes. I am not the type to get excited unduly but this just couldn’t be explained. It was a large black shape on the loch that looked just like a bit of a ­submarine and around the same size. I thought it was a whale. We saw it three times in the space of two days. The ­longest sighting was about 10 minutes before it submerged again. Doug shouted to me asking if there was a rock out in the middle of the loch. I laughed and shouted back that the loch was almost 1000ft deep and there were no rocks near the surface. But sure enough, there was a largish black object, maybe two, very close together, in the middle of the two-mile-wide loch. I have seen otters in the loch but this was no otter, much bigger and almost ­motionless.”

The owners of the B&B where the Christies were staying, Michael and Catherine MacNeil, also witnessed one the Christie's sightings. There is also the sighting of 58-year-old factory boss Alistair MacKellaig, of Mallaig, Inverness-shire, who says:

“I was fishing with a group in a boat and we all saw Morag and only about 50 yards away. It was the classic three humps moving through the water with the head underwater. We were left astounded and a wee bit fearful at what we had seen and how close we had been to it. I bumped into Michael the other day and firmly believe that what he, his daughter and guests saw was what we witnessed but they saw Morag at a far greater distance than we did. I am sure others have seen Morag in the past 23 years but feel too embarrassed to say so.”

That same year there was yet another encounter with Morag, this time by a Scott Justice of East Kilbride, who says:

“It was at 1.45PM - my wife and I were both sitting at the front of Swordlands Lodge at Loch Morar having a picnic having walked the 5 miles or so having parked the car at the end of the road at Bracora when my wife spotted something in the water near the shore at Meoble Bay. It zig zagged for a couple of minutes near the shoreline before disappearing. It just suddenly seemed to appear….it was too far away unfortunately to see it clearly enough- I wish I had taken a better camera or even my binoculars to get a better view. We watched the water for another 20 minutes or so but didn't see anything else unusual.”

He managed to get a photo of the creature, which you can see here. As recently as 2019 Loch Morars’ superintendent Viv DeFresnes saw two large, unknown shapes crossing the loch in the summer of 2019, showing that the creature is still lurking about out there. However, compared to the more famous Loch Ness monster there are relatively few sightings of Morag. This is most likely because Loch Morar, despite only being 70 miles from its more well-known sister, is comparably sparsely populated and remote, with the southern side, and about one third of the northern side, accessible only by foot or by boat, or in some places by bicycle. Yet despite its more low profile, Morag seems worth noting when looking at monsters in the lochs of Scotland. Interestingly, there are also supposedly monsters lurking in Loch Lochy, Loch Arkaig, Loch Oich, Loch Linnhe, Loch Quoich, and Loch Shiel, although Nessie is by far the most famous of all. 

There has been lots of speculation on what Morag can be, just like with the Loch Ness Monster. From giant eels, to prehistoric monsters or merely logs, waves, and other misidentified mundane phenomena, the theories really run the gamut. Whatever it is, Morag still remains at large, and while not as famous as its Loch Ness sibling, it still manages to generate intrigue and speculation to this day.