Clouds of incense smoke swirled around the man in the long hooded cape as he chanted magic incantations in an ancient language. He was standing in a large room in the southwest wing of a long, single story house, inside which stood a crudely constructed oratory. The large wooden structure was painted white and black and lined in part with huge mirrors, all the better to keep the magical energy
concentrated in one place. On the ground was painted a large circle, triangle, and pentagram, and in the center of it all stood an altar lined with a single human skeleton. For the past several weeks, the man had been feeding, laying offerings of blood and small birds onto its ribs. Over time, the offerings had turned into a viscous black slime which coated the bones and dripped from the altar onto the floor in thick piles of ooze. Dotted around
the skeleton. Incense and candles burned, the smoke and flames fluttering in the chill night air, which flowed in through an open doorway at the north end of the room, while outside, thunder rumbled and heavy clouds scudded across the midnight sky, just perceptible through the dark was a large terrace covered in fine river sand, below which a lawn dropped down, first to a graveyard, and beyond that to
the shores of a vast, black watered loch. The man was Alistair crow the year was eighteen ninety nine, and the location was the southeastern shore of Loch Ness. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith for those unfamiliar with his story. Alister Crowley was born in eighteen seventy five to a wealthy, god fearing family in Leamington, Spa, England. Crowley's parents were fundamentalist Christians, but he preferred to indulge
in somewhat more esoteric pursuits. Educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Crowley focused his attention on mountaineering and poetry. Then, in eighteen ninety eight joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ritual magic society whose members included the Irish poet W. B. Yates. After being trained in ceremonial magic, Crowley pronounced himself a prophet entrusted with wrenching humanity into the twentieth century, whether it would
ultimately prove true or not. He would go on to become one of the most notorious occultists of his generation, about which you can hear more in season one, episode ten of Unexplained. Essentially, Crowley saw the ancient art as ceremonial magic, which he spelt with a K, as a technique for contacting spiritual entities, be they demons or guardian angels, which he believed could be utilized to attain sacred mystical knowledge and ultimately help you to develop and expand your
sense of consciousness. To realize this, Crowley planned to perform a complex ceremony described in an ais ancient text called the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abrameln, the age of fourteenth century Egyptian who taught an ancient system of occult knowledge. The ritual would take eighteen months and require Crowley to adhere to a strict regimen that included celibacy and abstinence, as well as regular incantation sessions at all
hours of the day and night. In order for the ritual to be successful, Crowley would also be required to summon the twelve Kings and Dukes of Hell and assert control over them. He began the ritual in a flat in London, but having endured too many interruptions, Crowley decided he needed somewhere far more secluded, away from the distractions of the city and his nosy neighbours, and so in eighteen ninety nine he made his way first to Invernesse and then to the shores of Lochness in the Highlands
of Scotland. There he came across Boleskin House. Deciding it was everything he'd been looking for, he promptly bought it and moved in. A few months later he began the ritual. Lochness was an interesting choice for Crowley's magic Ritual. Over ten thousand years old and formed by glacial erosion near the end of the last Ice Age, Lochness is the UK's largest body of fresh water, twenty three miles long, just under two miles wide, and reaching depths of just
under eight hundred feet. The tea colored tannins that leech from the surrounding peatlands is what makes its water so dark and opaque. For centuries long, was effectively one of the most remote and isolated parts of Britain. It may be of little surprise, then, perhaps, to discover that rumours of some kind of monster stalking. Its black waters have
a long history. In an ancient biography of Saint Columba, an Irish monk credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland, written in the sixth century CE, it is stated that while traveling across Scotland, Columba saved a man from the jaws of a water beast as he termed it as he
crossed the loch. The mysterious creature was said to have come hurtling towards Columber's boat, only for the saintly monk to hastily make the sign of the Cross, which then apparently caused the beast to retreat as if pulled back by ropes. In the centuries that followed, the superstition that mythical creatures inhabited Loch Ness abounded among the local community,
but were rarely discussed elsewhere. In seventeen twenty seven, a road was built right along the eastern shores of Lochness, during which workers reported seeing a leviathan of some kind on two separate occasions, disturbing the surface of the water, with leviathan being an archaic term for both whales and sea monsters more generally quite what they were referring to
here is not entirely clear. All in all, with a number of similar reports occurring over the next two hundred years, many locals were left with an ingrained belief that something strange lurked in the dark waters of the loch. Despite the newly constructed road along the eastern shore at the close of the nineteenth century, Lochness was still tricky to access,
making it an ideal setting for summoning powerful forces. To deter locals from being too curious about what he was doing, Alister Crowley is said to have posted signs around the edges of his Burleskin estate warning of an evil water monster, as well as letting people know that he was throwing a sacrificial sheep into the loch every Sunday to feed it.
Anyone venturing close enough to the house at the time might also have glimpsed the fabled terrace, which he is said to have covered in fine river sand when he practiced his ritual magic. Perhaps they might too have seen the peculiar footprints in it said to have appeared there on the nights when Crowley was allegedly so successful in
summoning the dukes and kings of hell. These spirits included the dark lords Lucifer, Satan, Belliol, and, according to some, most significantly for subsequent events, Leviathan, not a whale or general sea monster more recently associated with the word, but something altogether more horrific. Thought to be an embodiment of chaos. Leviathan is described in ancient Hebrew texts as being a
gigantic sea serpent. As Crowley began performing his ritual day after day, it was said that a sense of malignancy and foreboding enveloped the domestic staff and all who later visited the house. The building and grounds became peopled with shadowy shapes. Semi solid figures could be glimpsed materializing and then de materializing in different parts of the house, especially
in the early hours of the night. One housemaid, unable to bear it any longer, reportedly left, while one man doing some work on the property was said to have been driven mad. One week, Crowley claimed he wrote some names of demons on a receipt from a local butcher's shop. When he next asked a servant to collect meet for him, he was informed that at some point in the intervening days, the butcher had accidentally severed an artery and bled to
death in his shop. As has been well documented, a few months into his ritual, Alister Crowley received an unexpected summons from one of the Masters of the Golden Dawn, the secretive magical order to which he belonged, with a command to go and meet him in Paris. Immediately, reluctantly, Crowley suspended his elaborate ritual without first trapping or banishing the malignant entities he was said to have summoned, leaving them out in the open and free to do whatever
they pleased. One bright summer's day in nineteen thirty, Sandy Gray, an expert fissure and boater from the village of Foyers on the southern shore of Loch Ness, was out fishing with two companions. After a good few hours, the trio had had little luck when suddenly they saw a large salmon leaping through the air toward their boat. It was followed by a strange disturbance in the water behind it that created a wave about two and a half feet high,
causing their boat to rock violently. It reminded Gray of an incident sixteen years previously, when still a teenager he'd been fishing on the loch when he saw a large black object around six feet wide, first draw near to the surface before sinking rapidly, leaving a swirling vortex on the water's surface. It was as if a creature with the bulk of two adult elephants had surfaced and then retreated.
Gray later explained. Going back to that summer's day, in nineteen thirty, Gray and his two friends reported their unusual incident with the salmon. Their story was published in the local Inverness newspaper, The Northern Chronicle, on August twenty seventh, nineteen thirty, with the headline A Strange experience on Loch Ness. This appears to be the first newspaper report of a mysterious creature in Lochness. It wouldn't to be the last. Three years later, Sandy Gray was working as a local
bus driver. While driving along the lochs western shore, he saw a large, dark shape moving across the water's surface at speed. He jamped his foot down on the accelerator and tried to keep up with it, only for the shape to speed on ahead and disappear soon after. The Aberdeen Press and Journal wasn't noted for its in depth
coverage of events beyond Aberdeenshire. Famously, in April nineteen twelve, the paper had run a front page report on the sinking of the Titanic with a headline that read simply Aberdeen man drowns at sea, but a report of Sandy Gray's latest unusual encounter appeared on its front page in May nineteen thirty three. There, whatever Sandy had supposedly seen was referred to as the loch Ness Monster, and the
name stuck and the sightings kept on coming. Another warm summer's day, this time in July nineteen thirty three, A mister George Spicer and his wife were taking a drive along Lochness East Shore Road, shortly after passing through the town of Doors at the northern end of the loch. They were just coming up to a slight rise when what they described as an extraordinary looking creature suddenly shot out across the road, moving in a series of jerks.
It was said to be a loathsome looking grayish color, like a mud covered elephant or rhinoceros. Its body was comprised mainly of a long, thin neck which undulated up and down and contorted into a series of hoops. At its base was a much thicker body and something flopping up and down, which they assumed to be some kind of tail. They saw no head or any kind of arms or legs. It looked, they said, like a huge
snail with a long neck. They watched dumbfounded as it wriggled across the road and then disappeared into the waters of the loch. The couple had barely taken stock of what they'd seen as they pulled up quickly by the side of the road. As they strained to catch sight of it again, they saw nothing but placid water lapping gently at the shore. This rare account of the monster out of the water was published a few weeks later in the Inverness Courier. In its wake, the myth of
the loch Ness Monster began to grow. A short time later, British national paper The Daily Mail, decided to hire some one to capture it. Marmaduke Weatherall was an actor and big game hunter. For two weeks, the flamboyant Weatherall oversaw a search at the loch involving boats and airplanes. Local volunteers were asked to stand watch at numerous points around the loch, equipped with flares that they were instructed to light immediately if they saw anything, though weather or wasn't
able to capture the creature. He offered some photographs of questionable evidence, as well as a plaster cast of what he claimed was a mysterious nine inch wide footprint found in the mud on the shore near the town of Foyers on the east side of the loch. However, after an examination at the Natural History Museum of London, the footprints were found to be fake, having been made by
a single hippopotamus foot. In November, Sandy Gray, this time accompanied by his brother Hughey, took a walk down to Loch Ness with a camera. The brothers found a spot on a low ridge overlooking the loch and took a seat for a moment. Together, they gazed out at the gently rippling waters while bright sunlight glistened on the surface. When suddenly Sandy spotted something, a strangely elongated, snakelike protuberance
in the water about two hundred yards away. Huey took five quick shots before the object slipped under the surface, or so they told journalists at the Scottish national newspaper The Daily Record, as they handed over the photos for publication. Four of them were little more than blank exposures, but the fifth appeared to show, albeit blurred and grainy, a long, seemingly undulating shape sticking out of the water. A group of photographic experts were brought in to assess the image
and found no evidence of tampering. A few days later, the picture was published under the headline is this the Lockness Monster? This image would be quickly forgotten about when another stunning photograph emerged. It became known as the Surgeon's Photo. Due to its taker's reluctance to be named, he was identified only as a gynecological surgeon who was visiting the loche one day when he spotted the thing rearing up from under the surface. The man managed to snap four images.
Two were two blurry to discern anything, but the others showed in stark detail what appeared to be some kind of long necked aquatic creature slowly moving through the water. It looked not too dissimilar to the head and neck of a plesiosaur, a creature that had gone extinct sixty six million years ago. Unsurprisingly, the photograph created a sensation and appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the globe. It even prompted a debate about the apparent monster in
the British House of Commons. Caught up in the excitement, the Times of London sent retired naval officer Lieutenant Commander Rupert Gould to Locke Nest to conduct an inquiry. Initially a skeptic, Gould collected fifty one witness accounts, including those of Missus and mister Spicer, who had been so startled by the peculiar gray thing that had wriggled across the road in front of them, after which she became convinced there was a large sea serpent living in the loch.
His book, The Lochness Monster, published the following year, remains one of the most comprehensive on this early period in the subject's history. Others, such as self styled Britain's circus King Bertram Wagstaff Mills, were determined to capture it. Mills offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds around two million pounds in a day's money to anyone who could bring it to him alive to the Olympia Exhibition Centre in London, where a large steel cage was waiting for it. Thankfully,
the creature remained misdefyingly elusive. In the summer of nineteen thirty five, bus driver Sandy Gray, whose apparent creature sighting five years before at first so ignited the public imagination, was back once again fishing on Loch Ness when he was startled by a big black object rising out of
the water about one hundred yards away. Sandy watched on in horror as the head and neck appeared, rising as he later claimed, nearly two feet out of the water, and behind the head he saw what he described as a series of small ridges, seven in number, and what he assumed to be the huge tail of the creature. Sandy described the head as resembling a horse's, but being small in relation to the huge size of the body. It reminded many of the much fabled Kelpie, a horse
headed shape shifting creature of Scottish folklore. Gray is said to rode back to shore as fast as he could, then hurried to the local post office, where he alerted post office manager Missus Cameron and a gardener named mister Batchen. Moments later, they stood on the banks of the loch, where they spotted the creature once again, apparently moving in single, heavy lurches through the water, heading toward inver Morriston on the far side of the loch, before vanishing from sight.
Over the next few years, as far more terrifying monsters revealed themselves and the world slipped into war, visions of mythical Scottish sea creatures soon faded from the headlines. During the war years, Sandy Gray moved to Inverness, but he often returned to his home village of Foyers on Lochness's southern shore to visit his mother and brother and to go out fishing. It was a cold Tuesday morning in February nineteen forty nine when Sandy set off from the shore,
bouncing through the waves his motor boat. The experienced boatmen headed out into the middle of the loch, aiming for one of his favorite fishing spots on a relatively calm and clement day. Later that afternoon, however, a violent, unexpected storm swept over the loch. Soon gale force winds whipped the water into an angry churn. That evening, Sandy failed
to return home. Friends and family formed a search party and ventured down to the loch to look for him, but before long, darkness forced them to abandon the search. The following morning, when the search had resumed, it had just gone nine a m. When one of the team spotted Sandy's boat upturned and badly damaged on a small stretch of beach near his mother's house, and beyond that,
lying on some rocks nearby was Sandy's body. Some suggested Sandy's boat had most likely capsized in the storm and he drowned as a result before being swept onto the rocks. Others wondered how could it be that such an experienced boatman could have died in that manner close enough to the shoreline to be swept onto the rocks. The true
cause of his death remains a mystery. Aleister Crowley died two years before Sandy, in nineteen forty seven, at the age of seventy two, never having returned to the shores of Lochness. Could some believe what Crowley had done there back at the turn of the century had survived long after he left. It was some time in the nineteen seventies that reports of a monster on and around Lockness
ganter's surface once more. Frederick ted Holiday, an English journalist and author who spent hundreds of hours watching the Loche claimed to have cited NeSSI as the creature became affectionately known. On four occasions. He claimed that even when there were several witnesses along the shore during a sighting, the creature
invariably appeared in a location obscured from cameras. In a nineteen seventy two book he wrote on the topic of monsters, including NeSSI, Holiday made the suggestion that perhaps the creature wasn't in fact a physical thing, but rather some kind of supernatural entity, something conjured up by Alistair Crowley, even as some have suggested, and he wasn't the only one who felt that NeSSI might be a paranormal phenomenon. The
reverend doctor Donald Ormond also believed the same thing. Back in nineteen sixty seven, Ormond was caravanning in Rosshire, in the northwest of Scotland. While walking one morning along the shores of a nearby loch, he apparently witnessed a great, frothy disturbance in the water. Expecting to see a submarine suddenly rise up, he was aghast to see it was instead some kind of aquatic animal with at least two humps.
As he would describe it later. Ormond's strange encounter would set him on a path that eventually led him to another experience in Norway, where he again apparently encountered some kind of aquatic beast out in the wild. Like Holiday, He soon came to the conclusion that these creatures, the apparent Lochness Monster included, were all paranormal in nature and deeply evil. As an experienced exorcist, he began to wonder if he could turn that experience toward the sea creatures instead,
starting with the so called Lochness Monster. After consulting a Benedictine monk, Ormond mapped out the shape of a crucifix over the loch and made a note at the geographical location of each point of the cross. Then, on June second, nineteen seventy three, he traveled out to the loch for real. To each of his recorded points. There, he shouted an incantation into the air designed to banish any malignant entities
from the region. When he'd finished with each point, Ormond climbed into a small boat and rowed out into the middle of the loch to where the two sections of his imaginary cross intersected. There, surrounded by the black water and the near eight hundred feet depth of it below him.
He cried out, I adjure thee, though ancient serpent, by the judge of the quick and the dead, by him who made thee and the world, that thy cloak thyself no more in manifestation of prehistoric demons, which henceforth shall bring no sorrow to the children of men. When the Reverend returned to shore, he was reported to have felt drained and fell into a deep sleep soon afterwards, satisfied that his exorcism had been a success, and for a while it seemed it was, But before long the creature
was back. You've been listening to Unexplained Season seven, episode three, Under Blackwater, Part one, The second and final part, will be released next Friday, August twenty fifth. This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard mc clain smith. Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard mc clan smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard mc lean smith. Unexplained.
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