First 10 years, Steve says he moved around a lot to get a feel for all the different spots around the loch. He eventually settled on Dores because he liked the style of the place. Not to mention the view. And the place seemed to like him back by embracing his unusual pursuit and giving him the name Steve the Monster.
Though Dores appears to be quieter than say, Drum, Steve says it’s an unpredictable place. He sees all sorts of ‘odd s ituations’ turn up from around the world, including a one- time early morning visit from the Chinese State Circus doing a press bit for a performance in Inverness. They are ‘situations’ most people don’t get to experience while standing on their front porch sipping their morning coffee.
When he arrived in 1991, Steve says he thought the answer would be plesiosaurs. But he’s long stopped searching for a pre-historic dinosaur.
Still, he adamantly believes there is ‘something’ in the
loch. And he has some interesting theories, like perhaps Nessie is some sort of wels catfi sh (a catfi sh on steroids). They can weigh over 300 pounds, live for 100 years, and were released in the area for sport during Victorian times. Though there is no record of them being released in Loch Ness, it makes arguable sense.
He says it can’t be a giant eel on account of how it moves in the water – like a snake. Anyone who knows anything about Nessie knows that she moves more like a whale (up and down, not side to side).
Steve isn’t a fan of some of the people in the area who make a point to discount all of the sightings. People who seem to have an explanation for everything. And he doesn’t believe that everything to date has been a deception, as they would have you believe.
Some sightings are merely mistakes – a piece of wood fl oating in the loch that looks like a monster. Others still,
remain unexplained. And Steve is case in point. He told us he saw something that he likened to a torpedo. It moved against the waves, and it was very fast and very brief. Which, to us, didn’t sound anything like a random log.
Despite his sighting and his lifelong search for Nessie, Steve believes it’s not all about the monster. It’s about the energy of the place.
He says that the loch has a sort of ‘energy’ that draws people in. An energy you can’t explain, but you can’t ignore. And whether you come for the monster, or for something else entirely, people keep coming back to Loch Ness. Some, like Steve, never leave. And if that’s not magical, we don’t know what is.