In Search of Aliens (2014) s01e03 Episode Script
The Mystery of Loch Ness
I'm in the Scottish Highlands, on Loch Ness, investigating one of the world's most enduring mysteries- the beast, the monster of Loch Ness.
Over the past few years, new evidence has come forth that I've found rather interesting.
Sightings of the legendary lake monster are once again on the rise.
And there have been accounts of similar cryptids from all over the planet.
Canada, for example, has Cressie and Ogopogo, Japan has Issie, and Cameroon has something called the "Mokele-Mbembe.
" All of these mysterious creatures appear in early local folklore, and some have suggested that they look like the offspring of a prehistoric creature called Plesiosaurus.
But could it be something from another world that came to Earth millions of years ago? And what if it's something even more incredible than that? Because, in my experience, nothing is ever what it seems.
My name is Giorgio Tsoukalos.
I explore the world that exists between reality and speculation, the known and the unknown.
What we've been taught by mainstream scholars is not the whole picture.
But I'm convinced that every day we are one step closer to the truth.
In Scotland, the word "loch" means "lake," and one lake here is the most notorious in the world.
For over 80 years, Loch Ness has been the place where monster hunters and cryptozoologists have been hunting for an allegedly prehistoric creature that shouldn't even exist.
In 1933, the Loch Ness Monster became a media sensation when a local newspaper reported a sighting of a beast of enormous size.
Almost immediately, dozens of researchers, hunters, and even Boy Scouts descended on the loch to attempt to capture the beast and claim a ?20,000 reward.
A year later, in 1934, fascination with the monster went worldwide with the publication of this famous image, known as the "Surgeon's Photo.
" It seemed to show some sort of a creature with a long neck gliding along the loch.
Since then, millions have come to Loch Ness in hopes of catching a glimpse of this so-called "monster.
" In fact, the creature they now call "Nessie" has become its own industry, and the town of Fort Augustus has played host to thousands of Nessie hunters over the years.
But one man could probably be called the greatest Nessie hunter of all time, because he's been watching the loch every day for more than 20 years, and he lives right on the shores of the loch itself- Steve Feltham.
Are you Steve? Certainly am, yeah.
I'm Giorgio.
Hello, Giorgio.
Great pleasure to meet you.
The locals have told me, if I want to learn more about Nessie, you're the guy to talk to.
This is true.
This is true.
What do you need to know? My area of expertise is ancient astronauts, so I'm not quite sure how Nessie fits into that realm.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
But it is a part of the unknown, and I'm always interested in exploring the unknown, and that's why I'm here.
Ah.
Um, yup, you've come to the right place, definitely.
Yeah? Absolutely.
Yeah.
This is great.
"NessieHunter.
com.
" Yup.
"Nessie-sery Independent Research.
" It's necessary.
Somebody's got to do it.
That's true.
So what about these things right here? Do you make these? That's how I fund hunting for the bigger ones.
Make a few of these.
Guaranteed accurate.
Prove it's not, get your money back.
There you go.
I love it.
So I'll sit here, make the models here.
This is my home.
Have a look, yeah, yeah.
This is great.
You know, essential ingredient- wood-burning stove.
Amazing.
So, up A piano.
Piano.
Essential, as well.
Observation area.
Excellent stuff.
This is my dream come true.
I'm living my life's ambition, to be fully involved in this hunt for this animal.
There's one thing over here.
Look.
Guinness Book of Records.
The longest Loch Ness Monster vigil.
That is great.
That's me.
I love it.
Guinness Book of Records.
Anyway, come back out here.
Get a seat, and I'll tell you all about it.
It takes a while to take it all in.
Loch Ness was created by a geological fault line called the Great Glen around 400 million years ago.
It is almost 23 miles in length, and in some places, estimated to be 745 feet deep, which is deep enough for two complete Statues of Liberty stacked on top of each another.
It is the largest body of freshwater in the United Kingdom.
Another interesting characteristic of the loch is the high amount of quartz found here.
Quartz is a stone that sometimes is associated with the ancient astronaut theory.
Because of its crystalline structure, some claim that quartz has the ability to convert the earth's natural electrical vibrations into usable energy by a property known as piezoelectricity, and many obelisks are constructed from granite, a stone that may contain high concentrations of energy-responsive quartz crystal.
One such example can be found at the Egyptian sun temple of Abu Gorab, which was known as the "Place of the Gods".
Egyptologists say that this was a place where the ancients connected with powerful energies.
But some say that these obelisks could have been used to transmit energy, possibly by vibration flowing through the obelisks.
Now, is it possible that the quartz content at Loch Ness is somehow connected to the sightings of the monster? That is what I'm here to find out.
Have you seen something where you thought, man, what was that? In the first year I was here, something went through the bay, like a torpedo.
And was it fast? Or how fast did it move? Very fast.
Very fast.
Covered the distance of a football pitch in less than ten seconds.
Really, really going at speed.
Then, a sort of spray of water off that.
Yeah.
Obviously I thought, what is that? I thought, right, brilliant, I'm on the right track.
Mm-hmm.
Next time I see that, I'm going to be ready, I'm going to photograph it, and here we are now, 23 years later, and I'm waiting for that next glimpse.
Still chasing Still chasing.
the elusive creature? Yes, still optimistic.
What are some of the most compelling sightings or reports that you're familiar with? The best thing I've ever heard of since I've been here was an echo chamber contact made by Marcus Atkinson about four years ago.
I can show you the image that he managed to take, a photograph of the screen.
Yeah, I would love to, yes.
I've got that here.
I can show you that.
Thank you.
I've got it I've got it here.
Look, look at this.
This is what he got.
So, Marcus was out on his boat, and this is 600 feet of water here.
Mm-hmm.
This is the bottom of the loch, and this object- they estimate that that's about a meter and a half, two meters wide, deep that way.
Uh-huh.
Right.
The thickness of this animal as it passes underneath the boat.
Marcus could explain this to you better.
I can take you to meet Marcus if you want.
So he's still around? He's Yeah, I can take you to see him, no trouble.
He still has the equipment? He can explain this much better than I can.
All right.
This is incredible.
An actual sonar photo showing what looks like some sort of a giant object or creature in the lake.
The most famous photograph of Nessie- the so-called "Surgeon's Photo" taken in 1934- was revealed to be a hoax in the 1990s, when artist Christian Spurling admitted he made a model to look like a giant sea creature.
But this sonar image is no fake.
And it might be the most compelling evidence yet that the so-called "Loch Ness Monster" really exists.
So what are some of the different theories that you've heard about the loch? Well, there's people that think this is a portal to a hollow earth.
There's one guy down the other end of the loch that thinks there's a spaceship on the bottom of the loch, and that it's all connected with that.
A portal to a hollow earth? A spaceship on the bottom of the loch? Incredible? Yes.
But maybe not as far-fetched as you may think.
The idea that the earth might actually be hollow was first introduced in the 1700s, and while I don't subscribe to these ideas, it was also believed that there were other beings and strange creatures living far below our planet's surface.
Now, the idea of a spaceship is also interesting, because many people have proposed that extraterrestrials may be hiding from us deep underwater.
In Native American folklore there is the legend of the thunderbird, one of which is said to reside at the bottom of Lake Elizabeth in southern California.
Stories dating back hundreds of years say that the thunderbird was often seen rising out of the lake, shiny and glimmering, breathing fire- like some kind of a spacecraft.
Another story exists in Cuzco, Peru, where locals say a silvery craft resides at the bottom of Lake Puray.
What if the Loch Ness Monster is not a monster at all, but maybe, as some people have claimed, an alien craft? It's far too early for me to make that determination, but I definitely know who I want to speak with next- the man who took that sonar photo.
I've got a rib boat right over there at the Dores Inn, so We can go by that.
Can we take it? Yeah, yeah, we can go straight across.
Yeah, it's easy.
Let's do it.
The Nessie hunter Steve Feltham and I are conducting our own hunt for the Loch Ness creature.
We're touring the loch with Captain Marcus Atkinson, the man who took the famous sonar image of something strange deep underwater.
It just might be the only definitive evidence that some sort of underwater creature really exists.
So I'm not even gonna wait, I'm gonna ask you flat out, have you seen something strange here in the loch? Well, yes.
I have.
Three or four years ago, in 2011, I was running a trip on our speed boats and down at the Urquhart Castle about 20 miles from here.
And the sonar was just ticking away.
Underneath the boat came my sonar image, and, um, it was a very, very mysterious photograph.
You probably got it.
Actually, I have the photo right here.
Steve gave it to me, and if you can tell me more about this, I'd be very interested to find out more.
What we're looking at here, actually.
The way that sonar works is as you're going through the water, you send out a click of sound.
And this click travels down through the water column, and as it contacts things on the way down, fish or the bed of the loch or whatever else, you know, you'll get an echo of it.
So a small fish, for instance, you'll get a small echo.
Big fish, you get a bigger echo.
Now, the boat is on the right-hand side of the of the picture, and I was coming in from the deep water.
So this is all deep water over here.
Well, first of all, start noticing all these fish- there's lots and lots of fish around here.
And then right in the middle, as I get closer into the shore, came this this object.
Now, the best way of looking at it is to measure the width of it.
That little lump there.
Mm-hmm.
These are five-meter graduations, that lump is gonna be a meter, a meter and a half in diameter.
Right.
That's a big thing.
This sonar image really blows my mind.
According to the measurements, the object would measure approximately 20 feet long and five feet thick in the center.
Almost identical to the descriptions of Nessie provided by many of the eyewitness accounts.
What is your opinion what this might be? Well, that's the $64,000 million dollar question, there, you know? I mean, what is it? I don't I don't know.
I've heard people say it's an algal bloom.
Bloom of algae.
But algae needs light.
This is nearly 80 feet down.
There's no light down there for algae to bloom on, so I instantly discount that.
I've seen loads and loads of shoals of fish and I've never seen anything like that sitting in the middle of it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that was actually my next question- how would this, what we see here, compare to some of the other aquatic life that Loch Ness definitely has? It's pretty big.
You know, I mean, you can see the dots around here.
These are little individual, probably, arctic charlies.
They're all very small.
I'd love to find out.
Mm-hmm.
I would really genuinely love to know what that was that was under my boat on that particular day.
Now, seeing that sonar photo and meeting Captain Marcus Atkinson- who actually took the photo- helped convince me that something strange may very well be happening right here at Loch Ness.
Over the years, there have been more than 2,000 reported sightings of Nessie.
It's still hard to say at this point what these witnesses are actually seeing.
So I really need to dig even deeper if I'm going to find out if there really is an ancient astronaut connection to this phenomenon.
Steve Feltham and I took a trip to the Loch Ness Centre.
Hello, Steve.
Good to see you again.
We're here to meet naturalist and historian Adrian Shine, who has been here studying the Loch Ness legends for the past 40 years.
So that's the submarine, huh? It certainly is a submarine.
Uh, this was last here in 1969, with a very brave American called Dan Taylor.
The vessel wasn't quite finished when it arrived.
And although it got to the point where it could submerge and just about surface, it couldn't do very much in between.
And the idea was that they would fire these biopsy harpoons.
These tubes held harpoons.
Would be fired to take tissue samples.
Of course it was 1969, DNA work had not as not gone as far as it has today.
But that was the idea, because, you see, it was the time when the surface surveillance that the Loch Ness investigation had been carrying out for ten years was really running out of steam.
For ten years, almost 1,000 people stood around this loch with big cameras.
And what they were setting out to do was to duplicate those classic pictures that I'm sure are in all our minds.
They failed utterly, and that is why people like Dan Taylor went underwater.
People like me went underwater.
I built my little submersible hide.
Mine was a passive wait-and-hide strategy, and it was somewhat cramped with air being passed down to me.
So, plenty of air.
But we failed utterly.
So the question arose, what next? Can you imagine yourself in one of these? I wish I yeah, I wish I'd been here in the days of such expeditions.
You know, it's a shame they're not going on any more things like that.
Well, you can start it again.
Get the funding, and, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I could.
Because this is 1960s, 1970s technology, and just imagine what could be done today.
We are looking at this subject in new ways, which are not necessarily technology-based.
What are they? But they are evidence-based.
They are ways of treating anecdotes as data.
And if you'd like to come and look at some sighting reports, I can tell you more.
Yes, absolutely.
Great.
That's quite an impressive volume.
This box contains some 300-odd of the sighting report forms that were drawn up by the Loch Ness investigation of the 1960s.
This is from 1963, I think.
And this one will show you, I suppose, the classic Loch Ness Monster as described.
Of course, eyewitness accounts of strange underwater creatures are nothing new.
One of the earliest dates all the way back to 565 AD, when, according to legend, an Irish missionary named St.
Columba banished a water creature from attacking Celtic tribespeople known as the Picts.
Today, the locals call this beast from their ancient folklore the Water Horse, or Kelpie.
Well, the Kelpie, or water horse, was a sort of, um, shape-shifting piece of bad news.
It would frequent rivers, lakes, lochs, and sometimes it would appear as a horse to a weary traveler- they might want to get on its back and immediately they stick to it, it charges into the water and eats you, and you go to hell, of course.
So it was bad news.
And even to speak of such things was bad news.
The fact is, people have been reporting a strange creature in and around the loch for almost 1,500 years.
The native people who lived here in the 6th century believed it to be a kind of shape-shifting water horse, and even carved its image on many stones that can still be found around the area.
Now, why would they spend so much time carving images of this creature if it was purely fictional? Well, I think the next place I need to go to find the answer is not here in Scotland but back home in America, because, believe it or not, the United States has its very own legends of a so-called underwater monster, in the form of a giant sea creature known as "Champ.
" I'm in Burlington, Vermont, on the edge of beautiful Lake Champlain.
I'm on my way to meet Katy Elizabeth, a local cryptozoologist who claims to have come face-to-face recently with Champ, Lake Champlain's own version of the Loch Ness Monster.
Like Nessie, there is no scientific evidence of Champ's existence- although there have been over 300 documented sightings.
Some people even believe that the two creatures are not only similar, but possibly even one and the same.
They think there could be some vast underwater tunnel or link between Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, even though they are more than 3,000 miles apart.
And what if the connection is even more astounding than that? That's what I'm here to explore.
All right.
Katy? Hi.
How are you? Pleasure to meet you.
I'm Giorgio.
How are you? Nice to meet you.
So this is the place, huh? Yes, it is.
All right, well, I can't wait to hear the story.
I mean, what a place.
Absolutely beautiful.
Those are the Adirondacks, I take it? Yes, they are.
All right.
It's gorgeous.
So, tell me your story.
What happened here? Well, I was sitting at my campsite at Button Bay State Park, and I was looking out at the water.
It was probably, I would say, 11:30 in the morning.
Mm-hmm.
And I saw some turbulence in the water.
And all of a sudden I seen this dark-colored hump rise to the surface of the water.
It was something I could not explain.
And so whereabouts in the water from here was it? It was straight ahead right towards the middle of the bay.
Okay.
Let me see.
I've seen sturgeon.
I've seen whales.
I've seen dolphins.
I can't explain what I saw.
All I know is a saw a hump come up and there was no dorsal fin.
It had to be at least 15 feet.
But it didn't resemble anything I've ever seen before.
So I ran to my car to get my camera, and as soon as I got to my camera, it submerged.
It was gone.
It was gone.
Mm-hmm.
I'd give anything to go back at that time and grab my camera faster or at least have it on me, at hand.
Unfortunately, Katy didn't manage to grab her camera in time to document her sighting.
But at least one now-famous photo of the creature does exist, and from what I've heard, it might just be the best evidence there is that Champ is real.
Hello.
Are you Linda? Giorgio.
I am.
Welcome.
Great pleasure to meet you.
This is some great place you've got here.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
Let's go on a little tour.
I want to show you some of the information that we have on Champ before we get started, and just fill you in on a little bit of the background about this great lake monster, and why it's so important to us here at ECHO.
Awesome.
Lead the way.
Okay.
Lake Champlain is named for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, and in 1609, he claimed that he saw a strange creature emerging from the waters while on an expedition.
Native Americans already had their own legends concerning a lake monster, which by some accounts was 30 feet long.
By the late 19th century, the creature they called Champ became so popular that showman P.
T.
Barnum put up a reward of $50,000 for its capture.
Barnum wanted Champ, dead or alive, so that he could include it in his traveling show.
Let's go to the staff offices now, and I'll show you where the files of information are, as well as Secret archives.
Exactly.
Like the surgeon's photo of Nessie, there is a world-famous photo of Champ, only this one has not been debunked, and I can't wait to see it with my own eyes.
You know, there have been more than 300, 600 eyewitness accounts.
Every year, here, I get files full of information from folks wanting to share either their stories or their clippings or their encounters.
So, these sightings happen to this day.
I mean, we're not talking about stuff that happened 50 years ago, but they actually continue.
Right.
I've been told that there's one picture that exists that apparently has undergone all tests of authenticity, and I was told you have it.
That's right, we do.
Yeah? So here we go.
This is it.
It's nicely protected- I like that.
Yes.
Yes.
So, this is the original photograph.
Oh, wow.
I'm at the ECHO Center in Burlington, Vermont, with science education specialist Linda Bowden.
She has just handed me what is widely considered the best photographic evidence that the lake creature known as Champ really exists.
So, this is the original photograph.
Oh, wow.
No kidding! This is the one that Sandra Mansi took in 1977.
I mean, this is this is crazy, it really is.
I mean I don't even know what to say right now, 'cause, like I said, I've I haven't seen this before, and, um That is wild.
In July 1977, Sandra Mansi was exploring the countryside around Lake Champlain when she pulled off the road to let her children play on the shore.
As she watched them, she noticed a huge disturbance on the surface of the water, about 150 yards out.
According to Sandra, a large hump emerged from the lake.
The kids were playing in the water before this creature rose up and turned and looked at her and then went back down.
She took the photo and then dropped to her knees, realizing, "Wow, what was this? And my children were in the water with this.
" This is it's crisp.
It's a crisp photograph.
In 1981, the famous Sandra Mansi photo was submitted for authentication to the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona.
To see if the object might have been superimposed on the picture, technicians put the photograph through a series of sophisticated tests, including examining the wave patterns under a microscope and constructing a digital code for the picture to find inconsistencies in lighting.
After a thorough examination, they determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that this photo is 100% authentic.
What is your opinion on Champ? When we first started telling the story here at ECHO 11 years ago about this lake monster, we were doing it tongue-in-cheek to start out with.
But the number of people that started coming to us with their stories and wanting a place to share their stories I took on a different tone with regards to this.
People are seeing, and they're genuinely seeing, something out in the lake.
Truly interesting.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
After seeing the famous Sandra Mansi photo, and hearing the account of someone who claims to have seen Champ firsthand, I'm more intrigued than ever.
Now, does some large underwater creature really exist? And if so, does it have a connection to the one at Loch Ness? Although I'm not sure, I do believe the eyewitnesses did see something.
The Abenaki tribe believe in some sort of a spirit creature named Gitsakog that lives within Lake Champlain, and, according to them, it has been there for as long as the lake has existed.
Now, could there be a connection? To find out, I'm meeting with Abenaki Chief Don Stevens.
The first thing I'd like to ask him about is their creation story, because, from the little that I know, it may just give a new perspective on this entire investigation.
So, tell me about your creator god.
Tabaldak was walking across the universe with his friend Tool-ba, which is a turtle.
And they were coming across the Milky Way, and they saw a planet in the distance that was blue.
And they were pretty thirsty, so they thought there'd be some water there.
Don told me the story of how Abenaki gods shaped the Earth, and explained that when they made Lake Champlain, they created the monster known today as Champ to protect it.
What I find intriguing in your creation story is it's a story of a man and a story of a turtle walking through the universe, or the Milky Way.
And the reason why I'm blown away by that is because all around the world, in the most ancient of cultures, the origin stories usually begin with the story of a cosmic turtle appearing out of the depths of the cold, or the depths of darkness.
In Guatemala, there is an artifact that has the figure of a man wearing a helmet lying inside what appears to be a turtle shell, and the archaeologists there will tell you that this is depicting the ancient legends of the giant flying turtles.
Now, when I hear about stories of flying turtles, I don't think that the ancient people really saw turtles flying.
It was that they saw something that looked to them like a turtle.
They used references that were familiar to them.
And what was it they were describing? Perhaps they were talking about a flying craft- a chariot of the gods.
Now, another strange aspect of the Abenaki creation story are their accounts of a monster that is said to sometimes disappear and reappear right before people's eyes.
Now, that to me indicates that maybe we are dealing with something more than just some large prehistoric creature.
I have talked to people, uh, who have said that they have seen him, and they have stayed there for a while, and it has come to them.
It could be a state of mind at the time and he has manifested himself there.
The more I investigate this, the more I'm becoming convinced that maybe there is an ancient astronaut connection here, something much more than what meets the eye.
What if the key to solving the mystery may not be finding some giant underwater "monster," but by surveying the area where these strange sightings occur? I've arranged to meet with Dr.
Will Amidon, who is a professor of geology here in Vermont.
Permission to come aboard.
Permission granted.
Welcome.
All right.
Thank you.
Captain Steve Cluett is taking us out on Lake Champlain for a Champ hunt, and you never know if this could be the day.
All right, so let's head on out, then.
Let's see if we can find Champ.
Let's have a look.
All right.
Dr.
Will Amidon is intrigued by the similarities between Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, and speculates there may be numerous connections that could help explain the various sightings of a so-called "sea monster.
" I was on a boat on Loch Ness trying to look for the creature there, and then I came here because of Champ.
It's interesting, you know, Loch Ness and Lake Champlain actually weren't so far apart hundreds of millions of years ago.
Back when the Atlantic Ocean was closed, the same mountain collision that formed the Green Mountains here in Vermont is actually what formed a lot of the Scottish Highlands, where Loch Ness sits.
What's the deepest spot here in Lake Champlain? It's called Split Rock.
The lake narrows to about a half mile wide, and it's 500 feet deep at that point.
Wow.
Okay.
So, when you get out there, you can almost feel the gravity change as you're sitting, you know, right between these two rocky points with this 500 feet below you.
I like the way you talk- you can "feel the gravity change.
" Only poets and scientists speak like that.
I like that.
Right.
So, I've got a personal question for you.
Do you actually think that there is a possibility that some type of uncategorized creature lives here in Lake Champlain? Sure, I think it's an absolute possibility.
But one of the things a lot of people don't know about Lake Champlain is that at one time it was actually connected to the broader ocean in this body of water called the Champlain Sea.
Right after the glaciers retreated, the land surface was depressed and the ocean water actually flowed in, filled this entire basin, to the point that there's even been whale skeletons found.
Okay.
So in the sense that you could have had whales swimming in here, why not other creatures? You know, the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have sighted Champ independently, you have to place some stock in that body of observations, and that people aren't crazy, they're not dumb, and they may know what they're seeing in some cases.
So, talk to me about granite, and the whole idea of quartz.
I mean, is this an area where that type of stone is prevalent? Vermont is famous for granite, actually.
But most of that comes from the core of the Green Mountains.
There's very little granite here in the actual Lake Champlain basin, but we do have a lot of quartz.
Hmm.
There it is again.
Quartz.
Parts of Loch Ness are also rich in quartz.
Could it merely be coincidence that both of these lakes feature high concentrations of the same mineral, one that the ancient Egyptians, for example, associated with cosmic energy? Could the shared geology of these lakes be one of the reasons for all these mysterious sightings? I have one last stop to make, and that has taken me all the way back to Southern California.
Dr.
Brandenburg! Giorgio! I'm here to meet with renowned physicist Dr.
John Brandenburg, who has set up a demo to help explain what might be going on at Loch Ness and Lake Champlain.
So, from everything I've read and the people that I've talked to, the experts, one thing that I found interesting is when the geologist explained to me that in both cases- whether it was Lake Champlain or Loch Ness- the topography there is very similar, and the one thing that is the same in both cases is that there's a lot of quartz there.
Quartz.
Yes.
The quartz is the secret.
When you stress the quartz, an enormous amount of electromagnetic field can be created.
We know that the ultimate basis of space-time is electromagnetic.
This is the basis for what's called the Casimir effect.
We're surrounded with a sea of electromagnetic oscillations created by the quantum mechanics of the vacuum itself.
The structure of space-time itself, including gravity, is due to this zero-point fluctuation.
Geologic stresses on the quartz can generate enormous amounts of power, as is seen in earthquake lights.
Plasmas are created in the sky due to the stresses on the quartz in the ground.
Once completely dismissed or mistaken for UFOs, an earthquake light is a phenomenon that appears as a ball of orange light in the sky at or near areas of tectonic stress.
Both Lake Champlain and Loch Ness were formed due to tectonic plate shifts.
The plasma is just an indicator that you have enormous electromagnetic fields being generated.
Okay.
So after all this information, is it at all possible that there is any correlation to a potential alternative idea besides that these sightings are of a prehistoric creature that has survived all these millions of years? So could there be another idea? An alternative hypothesis? Yes.
An alternative hypothesis is time travel.
Time travel.
Yes.
Now you've got my attention.
Dr.
John Brandenburg is a nationally renowned physicist whose theories about the planet Mars have rocked the scientific community, and he wonders if the key to solving the mystery of the so-called Loch Ness Monster may be found by a close examination of the geography in and around the loch, particularly the area's high concentration of quartz.
He also theorizes that the area of Loch Ness may very well be a gateway or a portal for time travel.
So, are you suggesting that the potential for a temporary traversable wormhole actually exists? Hypothetically, yes.
As proposed first by Kip Thorne at Caltech.
The quartz is the secret.
You have enormous electromagnetic fields being generated.
Okay.
That means that we can create, perhaps, a traversable wormhole.
So what we are seeing is creatures from the past, in the present.
Time travel? Wormholes? A rift in space-time? This is incredible.
What if the reason why we can't find Nessie or Champ is that they're really not there? What if the witnesses and photographers have seen not a physical sea creature, but an animal that may have existed tens of thousands or even millions of years ago? In other words, what Dr.
Brandenburg suggests is that Loch Ness and Lake Champlain could very well be some sort of a gateway, as incredible as it may sound.
I have a demonstration here.
Mm-hmm.
Here we can create waves.
Now, we can't create them as uniformly as the surrounding in space-time.
We're surrounded by these waves.
These waves that you see on the surface of the water are very much like the quantum waves.
Now, if we place these bars in here, we can see, as I place them, that the waves change their structure in between the bars.
They become parallel waves, whereas before they were very chaotic.
Now, if I release these, they cling together.
They're forced together by the pressure of the waves outside.
So how does this apply to time travel? When we disturb the space-time continuum with electromagnetism, we can create, possibly, wormholes traversable to the past.
You know, this is interesting, because when Dr.
Amidon, the geologist, talked to me about Lake Champlain, he told me that there's a spot where there are these sheer cliffs that go straight down about 500 feet.
And he suggested that the gravity there might change.
Would that be a place where this Casimir effect would be more prevalent? Because it That's right, just like between the Casimir plates, you are creating a zone of negative energy.
This is incredible.
According to Dr.
Brandenburg, the high concentrations of quartz, coupled with the narrowness and depth of both Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, create a perfect storm of highly-charged electromagnetism- the type that could generate wormholes or portals in time.
My head just exploded.
It almost is the perfect solution, because that means that everyone is right.
Yes.
Because people who are looking for it, they're not seeing it because it's not there, and the people who saw it or who took some photographs, they truly photographed something, because it appeared in that split second.
You know, the idea is very fascinating, especially in the context of the ancient astronaut theory.
Mm-hmm.
Because that suggests that Earth was visited by extraterrestrials in the remote past and that is only possible if a society has mastered the technology with which to traverse the vast distances between the solar systems.
Absolutely.
Dr.
Brandenburg, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
And before I leave, I wanted to give you one of these.
Ah.
Which is something I give to everyone whom I ask questions, and What-what is this? This, here, is a pre-Columbian artifact.
What does this remind you of? Amazing.
Looks like an airplane.
There you go.
Oh, this is wonderful.
Thank you.
It's definitely a conversation starter.
Absolutely.
I will use it to start many conversations.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Until next time.
The mystery of Loch Ness is actually more fascinating than I ever imagined.
And while we can't say for certain that wormholes really exist at places like Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, it is intriguing to speculate that space-time rifts might explain how sightings like Nessie and Champ are possible, and how extraterrestrials may have traveled to Earth in the remote past.
But this is just the tip of a giant iceberg.
With many more places to explore and many more mysteries to solve.
And that's why I'm off, once again, in search of aliens.
Over the past few years, new evidence has come forth that I've found rather interesting.
Sightings of the legendary lake monster are once again on the rise.
And there have been accounts of similar cryptids from all over the planet.
Canada, for example, has Cressie and Ogopogo, Japan has Issie, and Cameroon has something called the "Mokele-Mbembe.
" All of these mysterious creatures appear in early local folklore, and some have suggested that they look like the offspring of a prehistoric creature called Plesiosaurus.
But could it be something from another world that came to Earth millions of years ago? And what if it's something even more incredible than that? Because, in my experience, nothing is ever what it seems.
My name is Giorgio Tsoukalos.
I explore the world that exists between reality and speculation, the known and the unknown.
What we've been taught by mainstream scholars is not the whole picture.
But I'm convinced that every day we are one step closer to the truth.
In Scotland, the word "loch" means "lake," and one lake here is the most notorious in the world.
For over 80 years, Loch Ness has been the place where monster hunters and cryptozoologists have been hunting for an allegedly prehistoric creature that shouldn't even exist.
In 1933, the Loch Ness Monster became a media sensation when a local newspaper reported a sighting of a beast of enormous size.
Almost immediately, dozens of researchers, hunters, and even Boy Scouts descended on the loch to attempt to capture the beast and claim a ?20,000 reward.
A year later, in 1934, fascination with the monster went worldwide with the publication of this famous image, known as the "Surgeon's Photo.
" It seemed to show some sort of a creature with a long neck gliding along the loch.
Since then, millions have come to Loch Ness in hopes of catching a glimpse of this so-called "monster.
" In fact, the creature they now call "Nessie" has become its own industry, and the town of Fort Augustus has played host to thousands of Nessie hunters over the years.
But one man could probably be called the greatest Nessie hunter of all time, because he's been watching the loch every day for more than 20 years, and he lives right on the shores of the loch itself- Steve Feltham.
Are you Steve? Certainly am, yeah.
I'm Giorgio.
Hello, Giorgio.
Great pleasure to meet you.
The locals have told me, if I want to learn more about Nessie, you're the guy to talk to.
This is true.
This is true.
What do you need to know? My area of expertise is ancient astronauts, so I'm not quite sure how Nessie fits into that realm.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
But it is a part of the unknown, and I'm always interested in exploring the unknown, and that's why I'm here.
Ah.
Um, yup, you've come to the right place, definitely.
Yeah? Absolutely.
Yeah.
This is great.
"NessieHunter.
com.
" Yup.
"Nessie-sery Independent Research.
" It's necessary.
Somebody's got to do it.
That's true.
So what about these things right here? Do you make these? That's how I fund hunting for the bigger ones.
Make a few of these.
Guaranteed accurate.
Prove it's not, get your money back.
There you go.
I love it.
So I'll sit here, make the models here.
This is my home.
Have a look, yeah, yeah.
This is great.
You know, essential ingredient- wood-burning stove.
Amazing.
So, up A piano.
Piano.
Essential, as well.
Observation area.
Excellent stuff.
This is my dream come true.
I'm living my life's ambition, to be fully involved in this hunt for this animal.
There's one thing over here.
Look.
Guinness Book of Records.
The longest Loch Ness Monster vigil.
That is great.
That's me.
I love it.
Guinness Book of Records.
Anyway, come back out here.
Get a seat, and I'll tell you all about it.
It takes a while to take it all in.
Loch Ness was created by a geological fault line called the Great Glen around 400 million years ago.
It is almost 23 miles in length, and in some places, estimated to be 745 feet deep, which is deep enough for two complete Statues of Liberty stacked on top of each another.
It is the largest body of freshwater in the United Kingdom.
Another interesting characteristic of the loch is the high amount of quartz found here.
Quartz is a stone that sometimes is associated with the ancient astronaut theory.
Because of its crystalline structure, some claim that quartz has the ability to convert the earth's natural electrical vibrations into usable energy by a property known as piezoelectricity, and many obelisks are constructed from granite, a stone that may contain high concentrations of energy-responsive quartz crystal.
One such example can be found at the Egyptian sun temple of Abu Gorab, which was known as the "Place of the Gods".
Egyptologists say that this was a place where the ancients connected with powerful energies.
But some say that these obelisks could have been used to transmit energy, possibly by vibration flowing through the obelisks.
Now, is it possible that the quartz content at Loch Ness is somehow connected to the sightings of the monster? That is what I'm here to find out.
Have you seen something where you thought, man, what was that? In the first year I was here, something went through the bay, like a torpedo.
And was it fast? Or how fast did it move? Very fast.
Very fast.
Covered the distance of a football pitch in less than ten seconds.
Really, really going at speed.
Then, a sort of spray of water off that.
Yeah.
Obviously I thought, what is that? I thought, right, brilliant, I'm on the right track.
Mm-hmm.
Next time I see that, I'm going to be ready, I'm going to photograph it, and here we are now, 23 years later, and I'm waiting for that next glimpse.
Still chasing Still chasing.
the elusive creature? Yes, still optimistic.
What are some of the most compelling sightings or reports that you're familiar with? The best thing I've ever heard of since I've been here was an echo chamber contact made by Marcus Atkinson about four years ago.
I can show you the image that he managed to take, a photograph of the screen.
Yeah, I would love to, yes.
I've got that here.
I can show you that.
Thank you.
I've got it I've got it here.
Look, look at this.
This is what he got.
So, Marcus was out on his boat, and this is 600 feet of water here.
Mm-hmm.
This is the bottom of the loch, and this object- they estimate that that's about a meter and a half, two meters wide, deep that way.
Uh-huh.
Right.
The thickness of this animal as it passes underneath the boat.
Marcus could explain this to you better.
I can take you to meet Marcus if you want.
So he's still around? He's Yeah, I can take you to see him, no trouble.
He still has the equipment? He can explain this much better than I can.
All right.
This is incredible.
An actual sonar photo showing what looks like some sort of a giant object or creature in the lake.
The most famous photograph of Nessie- the so-called "Surgeon's Photo" taken in 1934- was revealed to be a hoax in the 1990s, when artist Christian Spurling admitted he made a model to look like a giant sea creature.
But this sonar image is no fake.
And it might be the most compelling evidence yet that the so-called "Loch Ness Monster" really exists.
So what are some of the different theories that you've heard about the loch? Well, there's people that think this is a portal to a hollow earth.
There's one guy down the other end of the loch that thinks there's a spaceship on the bottom of the loch, and that it's all connected with that.
A portal to a hollow earth? A spaceship on the bottom of the loch? Incredible? Yes.
But maybe not as far-fetched as you may think.
The idea that the earth might actually be hollow was first introduced in the 1700s, and while I don't subscribe to these ideas, it was also believed that there were other beings and strange creatures living far below our planet's surface.
Now, the idea of a spaceship is also interesting, because many people have proposed that extraterrestrials may be hiding from us deep underwater.
In Native American folklore there is the legend of the thunderbird, one of which is said to reside at the bottom of Lake Elizabeth in southern California.
Stories dating back hundreds of years say that the thunderbird was often seen rising out of the lake, shiny and glimmering, breathing fire- like some kind of a spacecraft.
Another story exists in Cuzco, Peru, where locals say a silvery craft resides at the bottom of Lake Puray.
What if the Loch Ness Monster is not a monster at all, but maybe, as some people have claimed, an alien craft? It's far too early for me to make that determination, but I definitely know who I want to speak with next- the man who took that sonar photo.
I've got a rib boat right over there at the Dores Inn, so We can go by that.
Can we take it? Yeah, yeah, we can go straight across.
Yeah, it's easy.
Let's do it.
The Nessie hunter Steve Feltham and I are conducting our own hunt for the Loch Ness creature.
We're touring the loch with Captain Marcus Atkinson, the man who took the famous sonar image of something strange deep underwater.
It just might be the only definitive evidence that some sort of underwater creature really exists.
So I'm not even gonna wait, I'm gonna ask you flat out, have you seen something strange here in the loch? Well, yes.
I have.
Three or four years ago, in 2011, I was running a trip on our speed boats and down at the Urquhart Castle about 20 miles from here.
And the sonar was just ticking away.
Underneath the boat came my sonar image, and, um, it was a very, very mysterious photograph.
You probably got it.
Actually, I have the photo right here.
Steve gave it to me, and if you can tell me more about this, I'd be very interested to find out more.
What we're looking at here, actually.
The way that sonar works is as you're going through the water, you send out a click of sound.
And this click travels down through the water column, and as it contacts things on the way down, fish or the bed of the loch or whatever else, you know, you'll get an echo of it.
So a small fish, for instance, you'll get a small echo.
Big fish, you get a bigger echo.
Now, the boat is on the right-hand side of the of the picture, and I was coming in from the deep water.
So this is all deep water over here.
Well, first of all, start noticing all these fish- there's lots and lots of fish around here.
And then right in the middle, as I get closer into the shore, came this this object.
Now, the best way of looking at it is to measure the width of it.
That little lump there.
Mm-hmm.
These are five-meter graduations, that lump is gonna be a meter, a meter and a half in diameter.
Right.
That's a big thing.
This sonar image really blows my mind.
According to the measurements, the object would measure approximately 20 feet long and five feet thick in the center.
Almost identical to the descriptions of Nessie provided by many of the eyewitness accounts.
What is your opinion what this might be? Well, that's the $64,000 million dollar question, there, you know? I mean, what is it? I don't I don't know.
I've heard people say it's an algal bloom.
Bloom of algae.
But algae needs light.
This is nearly 80 feet down.
There's no light down there for algae to bloom on, so I instantly discount that.
I've seen loads and loads of shoals of fish and I've never seen anything like that sitting in the middle of it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that was actually my next question- how would this, what we see here, compare to some of the other aquatic life that Loch Ness definitely has? It's pretty big.
You know, I mean, you can see the dots around here.
These are little individual, probably, arctic charlies.
They're all very small.
I'd love to find out.
Mm-hmm.
I would really genuinely love to know what that was that was under my boat on that particular day.
Now, seeing that sonar photo and meeting Captain Marcus Atkinson- who actually took the photo- helped convince me that something strange may very well be happening right here at Loch Ness.
Over the years, there have been more than 2,000 reported sightings of Nessie.
It's still hard to say at this point what these witnesses are actually seeing.
So I really need to dig even deeper if I'm going to find out if there really is an ancient astronaut connection to this phenomenon.
Steve Feltham and I took a trip to the Loch Ness Centre.
Hello, Steve.
Good to see you again.
We're here to meet naturalist and historian Adrian Shine, who has been here studying the Loch Ness legends for the past 40 years.
So that's the submarine, huh? It certainly is a submarine.
Uh, this was last here in 1969, with a very brave American called Dan Taylor.
The vessel wasn't quite finished when it arrived.
And although it got to the point where it could submerge and just about surface, it couldn't do very much in between.
And the idea was that they would fire these biopsy harpoons.
These tubes held harpoons.
Would be fired to take tissue samples.
Of course it was 1969, DNA work had not as not gone as far as it has today.
But that was the idea, because, you see, it was the time when the surface surveillance that the Loch Ness investigation had been carrying out for ten years was really running out of steam.
For ten years, almost 1,000 people stood around this loch with big cameras.
And what they were setting out to do was to duplicate those classic pictures that I'm sure are in all our minds.
They failed utterly, and that is why people like Dan Taylor went underwater.
People like me went underwater.
I built my little submersible hide.
Mine was a passive wait-and-hide strategy, and it was somewhat cramped with air being passed down to me.
So, plenty of air.
But we failed utterly.
So the question arose, what next? Can you imagine yourself in one of these? I wish I yeah, I wish I'd been here in the days of such expeditions.
You know, it's a shame they're not going on any more things like that.
Well, you can start it again.
Get the funding, and, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I could.
Because this is 1960s, 1970s technology, and just imagine what could be done today.
We are looking at this subject in new ways, which are not necessarily technology-based.
What are they? But they are evidence-based.
They are ways of treating anecdotes as data.
And if you'd like to come and look at some sighting reports, I can tell you more.
Yes, absolutely.
Great.
That's quite an impressive volume.
This box contains some 300-odd of the sighting report forms that were drawn up by the Loch Ness investigation of the 1960s.
This is from 1963, I think.
And this one will show you, I suppose, the classic Loch Ness Monster as described.
Of course, eyewitness accounts of strange underwater creatures are nothing new.
One of the earliest dates all the way back to 565 AD, when, according to legend, an Irish missionary named St.
Columba banished a water creature from attacking Celtic tribespeople known as the Picts.
Today, the locals call this beast from their ancient folklore the Water Horse, or Kelpie.
Well, the Kelpie, or water horse, was a sort of, um, shape-shifting piece of bad news.
It would frequent rivers, lakes, lochs, and sometimes it would appear as a horse to a weary traveler- they might want to get on its back and immediately they stick to it, it charges into the water and eats you, and you go to hell, of course.
So it was bad news.
And even to speak of such things was bad news.
The fact is, people have been reporting a strange creature in and around the loch for almost 1,500 years.
The native people who lived here in the 6th century believed it to be a kind of shape-shifting water horse, and even carved its image on many stones that can still be found around the area.
Now, why would they spend so much time carving images of this creature if it was purely fictional? Well, I think the next place I need to go to find the answer is not here in Scotland but back home in America, because, believe it or not, the United States has its very own legends of a so-called underwater monster, in the form of a giant sea creature known as "Champ.
" I'm in Burlington, Vermont, on the edge of beautiful Lake Champlain.
I'm on my way to meet Katy Elizabeth, a local cryptozoologist who claims to have come face-to-face recently with Champ, Lake Champlain's own version of the Loch Ness Monster.
Like Nessie, there is no scientific evidence of Champ's existence- although there have been over 300 documented sightings.
Some people even believe that the two creatures are not only similar, but possibly even one and the same.
They think there could be some vast underwater tunnel or link between Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, even though they are more than 3,000 miles apart.
And what if the connection is even more astounding than that? That's what I'm here to explore.
All right.
Katy? Hi.
How are you? Pleasure to meet you.
I'm Giorgio.
How are you? Nice to meet you.
So this is the place, huh? Yes, it is.
All right, well, I can't wait to hear the story.
I mean, what a place.
Absolutely beautiful.
Those are the Adirondacks, I take it? Yes, they are.
All right.
It's gorgeous.
So, tell me your story.
What happened here? Well, I was sitting at my campsite at Button Bay State Park, and I was looking out at the water.
It was probably, I would say, 11:30 in the morning.
Mm-hmm.
And I saw some turbulence in the water.
And all of a sudden I seen this dark-colored hump rise to the surface of the water.
It was something I could not explain.
And so whereabouts in the water from here was it? It was straight ahead right towards the middle of the bay.
Okay.
Let me see.
I've seen sturgeon.
I've seen whales.
I've seen dolphins.
I can't explain what I saw.
All I know is a saw a hump come up and there was no dorsal fin.
It had to be at least 15 feet.
But it didn't resemble anything I've ever seen before.
So I ran to my car to get my camera, and as soon as I got to my camera, it submerged.
It was gone.
It was gone.
Mm-hmm.
I'd give anything to go back at that time and grab my camera faster or at least have it on me, at hand.
Unfortunately, Katy didn't manage to grab her camera in time to document her sighting.
But at least one now-famous photo of the creature does exist, and from what I've heard, it might just be the best evidence there is that Champ is real.
Hello.
Are you Linda? Giorgio.
I am.
Welcome.
Great pleasure to meet you.
This is some great place you've got here.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
Let's go on a little tour.
I want to show you some of the information that we have on Champ before we get started, and just fill you in on a little bit of the background about this great lake monster, and why it's so important to us here at ECHO.
Awesome.
Lead the way.
Okay.
Lake Champlain is named for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, and in 1609, he claimed that he saw a strange creature emerging from the waters while on an expedition.
Native Americans already had their own legends concerning a lake monster, which by some accounts was 30 feet long.
By the late 19th century, the creature they called Champ became so popular that showman P.
T.
Barnum put up a reward of $50,000 for its capture.
Barnum wanted Champ, dead or alive, so that he could include it in his traveling show.
Let's go to the staff offices now, and I'll show you where the files of information are, as well as Secret archives.
Exactly.
Like the surgeon's photo of Nessie, there is a world-famous photo of Champ, only this one has not been debunked, and I can't wait to see it with my own eyes.
You know, there have been more than 300, 600 eyewitness accounts.
Every year, here, I get files full of information from folks wanting to share either their stories or their clippings or their encounters.
So, these sightings happen to this day.
I mean, we're not talking about stuff that happened 50 years ago, but they actually continue.
Right.
I've been told that there's one picture that exists that apparently has undergone all tests of authenticity, and I was told you have it.
That's right, we do.
Yeah? So here we go.
This is it.
It's nicely protected- I like that.
Yes.
Yes.
So, this is the original photograph.
Oh, wow.
I'm at the ECHO Center in Burlington, Vermont, with science education specialist Linda Bowden.
She has just handed me what is widely considered the best photographic evidence that the lake creature known as Champ really exists.
So, this is the original photograph.
Oh, wow.
No kidding! This is the one that Sandra Mansi took in 1977.
I mean, this is this is crazy, it really is.
I mean I don't even know what to say right now, 'cause, like I said, I've I haven't seen this before, and, um That is wild.
In July 1977, Sandra Mansi was exploring the countryside around Lake Champlain when she pulled off the road to let her children play on the shore.
As she watched them, she noticed a huge disturbance on the surface of the water, about 150 yards out.
According to Sandra, a large hump emerged from the lake.
The kids were playing in the water before this creature rose up and turned and looked at her and then went back down.
She took the photo and then dropped to her knees, realizing, "Wow, what was this? And my children were in the water with this.
" This is it's crisp.
It's a crisp photograph.
In 1981, the famous Sandra Mansi photo was submitted for authentication to the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona.
To see if the object might have been superimposed on the picture, technicians put the photograph through a series of sophisticated tests, including examining the wave patterns under a microscope and constructing a digital code for the picture to find inconsistencies in lighting.
After a thorough examination, they determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that this photo is 100% authentic.
What is your opinion on Champ? When we first started telling the story here at ECHO 11 years ago about this lake monster, we were doing it tongue-in-cheek to start out with.
But the number of people that started coming to us with their stories and wanting a place to share their stories I took on a different tone with regards to this.
People are seeing, and they're genuinely seeing, something out in the lake.
Truly interesting.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
After seeing the famous Sandra Mansi photo, and hearing the account of someone who claims to have seen Champ firsthand, I'm more intrigued than ever.
Now, does some large underwater creature really exist? And if so, does it have a connection to the one at Loch Ness? Although I'm not sure, I do believe the eyewitnesses did see something.
The Abenaki tribe believe in some sort of a spirit creature named Gitsakog that lives within Lake Champlain, and, according to them, it has been there for as long as the lake has existed.
Now, could there be a connection? To find out, I'm meeting with Abenaki Chief Don Stevens.
The first thing I'd like to ask him about is their creation story, because, from the little that I know, it may just give a new perspective on this entire investigation.
So, tell me about your creator god.
Tabaldak was walking across the universe with his friend Tool-ba, which is a turtle.
And they were coming across the Milky Way, and they saw a planet in the distance that was blue.
And they were pretty thirsty, so they thought there'd be some water there.
Don told me the story of how Abenaki gods shaped the Earth, and explained that when they made Lake Champlain, they created the monster known today as Champ to protect it.
What I find intriguing in your creation story is it's a story of a man and a story of a turtle walking through the universe, or the Milky Way.
And the reason why I'm blown away by that is because all around the world, in the most ancient of cultures, the origin stories usually begin with the story of a cosmic turtle appearing out of the depths of the cold, or the depths of darkness.
In Guatemala, there is an artifact that has the figure of a man wearing a helmet lying inside what appears to be a turtle shell, and the archaeologists there will tell you that this is depicting the ancient legends of the giant flying turtles.
Now, when I hear about stories of flying turtles, I don't think that the ancient people really saw turtles flying.
It was that they saw something that looked to them like a turtle.
They used references that were familiar to them.
And what was it they were describing? Perhaps they were talking about a flying craft- a chariot of the gods.
Now, another strange aspect of the Abenaki creation story are their accounts of a monster that is said to sometimes disappear and reappear right before people's eyes.
Now, that to me indicates that maybe we are dealing with something more than just some large prehistoric creature.
I have talked to people, uh, who have said that they have seen him, and they have stayed there for a while, and it has come to them.
It could be a state of mind at the time and he has manifested himself there.
The more I investigate this, the more I'm becoming convinced that maybe there is an ancient astronaut connection here, something much more than what meets the eye.
What if the key to solving the mystery may not be finding some giant underwater "monster," but by surveying the area where these strange sightings occur? I've arranged to meet with Dr.
Will Amidon, who is a professor of geology here in Vermont.
Permission to come aboard.
Permission granted.
Welcome.
All right.
Thank you.
Captain Steve Cluett is taking us out on Lake Champlain for a Champ hunt, and you never know if this could be the day.
All right, so let's head on out, then.
Let's see if we can find Champ.
Let's have a look.
All right.
Dr.
Will Amidon is intrigued by the similarities between Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, and speculates there may be numerous connections that could help explain the various sightings of a so-called "sea monster.
" I was on a boat on Loch Ness trying to look for the creature there, and then I came here because of Champ.
It's interesting, you know, Loch Ness and Lake Champlain actually weren't so far apart hundreds of millions of years ago.
Back when the Atlantic Ocean was closed, the same mountain collision that formed the Green Mountains here in Vermont is actually what formed a lot of the Scottish Highlands, where Loch Ness sits.
What's the deepest spot here in Lake Champlain? It's called Split Rock.
The lake narrows to about a half mile wide, and it's 500 feet deep at that point.
Wow.
Okay.
So, when you get out there, you can almost feel the gravity change as you're sitting, you know, right between these two rocky points with this 500 feet below you.
I like the way you talk- you can "feel the gravity change.
" Only poets and scientists speak like that.
I like that.
Right.
So, I've got a personal question for you.
Do you actually think that there is a possibility that some type of uncategorized creature lives here in Lake Champlain? Sure, I think it's an absolute possibility.
But one of the things a lot of people don't know about Lake Champlain is that at one time it was actually connected to the broader ocean in this body of water called the Champlain Sea.
Right after the glaciers retreated, the land surface was depressed and the ocean water actually flowed in, filled this entire basin, to the point that there's even been whale skeletons found.
Okay.
So in the sense that you could have had whales swimming in here, why not other creatures? You know, the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have sighted Champ independently, you have to place some stock in that body of observations, and that people aren't crazy, they're not dumb, and they may know what they're seeing in some cases.
So, talk to me about granite, and the whole idea of quartz.
I mean, is this an area where that type of stone is prevalent? Vermont is famous for granite, actually.
But most of that comes from the core of the Green Mountains.
There's very little granite here in the actual Lake Champlain basin, but we do have a lot of quartz.
Hmm.
There it is again.
Quartz.
Parts of Loch Ness are also rich in quartz.
Could it merely be coincidence that both of these lakes feature high concentrations of the same mineral, one that the ancient Egyptians, for example, associated with cosmic energy? Could the shared geology of these lakes be one of the reasons for all these mysterious sightings? I have one last stop to make, and that has taken me all the way back to Southern California.
Dr.
Brandenburg! Giorgio! I'm here to meet with renowned physicist Dr.
John Brandenburg, who has set up a demo to help explain what might be going on at Loch Ness and Lake Champlain.
So, from everything I've read and the people that I've talked to, the experts, one thing that I found interesting is when the geologist explained to me that in both cases- whether it was Lake Champlain or Loch Ness- the topography there is very similar, and the one thing that is the same in both cases is that there's a lot of quartz there.
Quartz.
Yes.
The quartz is the secret.
When you stress the quartz, an enormous amount of electromagnetic field can be created.
We know that the ultimate basis of space-time is electromagnetic.
This is the basis for what's called the Casimir effect.
We're surrounded with a sea of electromagnetic oscillations created by the quantum mechanics of the vacuum itself.
The structure of space-time itself, including gravity, is due to this zero-point fluctuation.
Geologic stresses on the quartz can generate enormous amounts of power, as is seen in earthquake lights.
Plasmas are created in the sky due to the stresses on the quartz in the ground.
Once completely dismissed or mistaken for UFOs, an earthquake light is a phenomenon that appears as a ball of orange light in the sky at or near areas of tectonic stress.
Both Lake Champlain and Loch Ness were formed due to tectonic plate shifts.
The plasma is just an indicator that you have enormous electromagnetic fields being generated.
Okay.
So after all this information, is it at all possible that there is any correlation to a potential alternative idea besides that these sightings are of a prehistoric creature that has survived all these millions of years? So could there be another idea? An alternative hypothesis? Yes.
An alternative hypothesis is time travel.
Time travel.
Yes.
Now you've got my attention.
Dr.
John Brandenburg is a nationally renowned physicist whose theories about the planet Mars have rocked the scientific community, and he wonders if the key to solving the mystery of the so-called Loch Ness Monster may be found by a close examination of the geography in and around the loch, particularly the area's high concentration of quartz.
He also theorizes that the area of Loch Ness may very well be a gateway or a portal for time travel.
So, are you suggesting that the potential for a temporary traversable wormhole actually exists? Hypothetically, yes.
As proposed first by Kip Thorne at Caltech.
The quartz is the secret.
You have enormous electromagnetic fields being generated.
Okay.
That means that we can create, perhaps, a traversable wormhole.
So what we are seeing is creatures from the past, in the present.
Time travel? Wormholes? A rift in space-time? This is incredible.
What if the reason why we can't find Nessie or Champ is that they're really not there? What if the witnesses and photographers have seen not a physical sea creature, but an animal that may have existed tens of thousands or even millions of years ago? In other words, what Dr.
Brandenburg suggests is that Loch Ness and Lake Champlain could very well be some sort of a gateway, as incredible as it may sound.
I have a demonstration here.
Mm-hmm.
Here we can create waves.
Now, we can't create them as uniformly as the surrounding in space-time.
We're surrounded by these waves.
These waves that you see on the surface of the water are very much like the quantum waves.
Now, if we place these bars in here, we can see, as I place them, that the waves change their structure in between the bars.
They become parallel waves, whereas before they were very chaotic.
Now, if I release these, they cling together.
They're forced together by the pressure of the waves outside.
So how does this apply to time travel? When we disturb the space-time continuum with electromagnetism, we can create, possibly, wormholes traversable to the past.
You know, this is interesting, because when Dr.
Amidon, the geologist, talked to me about Lake Champlain, he told me that there's a spot where there are these sheer cliffs that go straight down about 500 feet.
And he suggested that the gravity there might change.
Would that be a place where this Casimir effect would be more prevalent? Because it That's right, just like between the Casimir plates, you are creating a zone of negative energy.
This is incredible.
According to Dr.
Brandenburg, the high concentrations of quartz, coupled with the narrowness and depth of both Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, create a perfect storm of highly-charged electromagnetism- the type that could generate wormholes or portals in time.
My head just exploded.
It almost is the perfect solution, because that means that everyone is right.
Yes.
Because people who are looking for it, they're not seeing it because it's not there, and the people who saw it or who took some photographs, they truly photographed something, because it appeared in that split second.
You know, the idea is very fascinating, especially in the context of the ancient astronaut theory.
Mm-hmm.
Because that suggests that Earth was visited by extraterrestrials in the remote past and that is only possible if a society has mastered the technology with which to traverse the vast distances between the solar systems.
Absolutely.
Dr.
Brandenburg, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
And before I leave, I wanted to give you one of these.
Ah.
Which is something I give to everyone whom I ask questions, and What-what is this? This, here, is a pre-Columbian artifact.
What does this remind you of? Amazing.
Looks like an airplane.
There you go.
Oh, this is wonderful.
Thank you.
It's definitely a conversation starter.
Absolutely.
I will use it to start many conversations.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Until next time.
The mystery of Loch Ness is actually more fascinating than I ever imagined.
And while we can't say for certain that wormholes really exist at places like Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, it is intriguing to speculate that space-time rifts might explain how sightings like Nessie and Champ are possible, and how extraterrestrials may have traveled to Earth in the remote past.
But this is just the tip of a giant iceberg.
With many more places to explore and many more mysteries to solve.
And that's why I'm off, once again, in search of aliens.