Hi this is an update on our video about Loch Ness

The video originally was going to document a new stage in our journey as we would feature our travels around the further reaches of the country.

We spend so much time on the road travelling to locations that it has become apparent that we spend more time in the car than actually sitting and enjoying where we are.

Travelling with 3 unruly chihuahuas limits your options for last-minute hotel bookings, so we started looking at camper vans, but they seemed to be designed for other people rather than us. So while we look at buying a van and fitting it out for our needs, we came up with the idea of an inflatable tent – yes it’s inflatable. We looked at pop up tents and were just about to buy one and saw this. Like garlic bread, we have been told it’s the future.

We once tried camping, a long time ago, five miles down the road on top of a moor and hated it. One of our family still bears the scars of that trip. So to christen the tent, it seemed only natural to drive to the top of the country and try it out on the shores of Loch Ness

We started out early on Saturday morning and ended up in Gretna Green for about 9am.

The plan was to move up Scotland visiting about 5 locations for some photoshoots to fill up the stock.  We made it to the first one, the very impressive Kelpies which are just outside Falkirk. When we started looking at the background for this video, we were amazed about the number of water creature legends in Scotland and most of them are in my last book! It seems that not only were the kelpies attacking Uppermill but they have quite a history around Loch Ness.

We finished the Kelpies and started on the next location which was to be Stirling Castle, but we began to notice the sky getting more threatening, and with the light going we decided to push further north in the hope of the weather clearing up. That was a warning we didn’t pay attention too.

So again the plan was to drive up the loch, with a camera on the roof, pitch up the tent while waving happily to our new neighbours. Do a quick movie showing how easy it all was while toasting marshmallows. Instead, it was like a scene from the Jurassic Park movie when the storm hit. We had no choice as there was no way we were going to do another 8-hour drive back and as we say 3 chihuahuas don’t make it easy for you to pop into a bed and breakfast.

So we experienced just how easy it is to put up an inflatable tent in a storm. To be honest, it wasn’t that bad, and we managed it in about 20 minutes. We must have done it well as the tent, and all of us survived the night. To be honest, we have a few kinks to iron out around the cooking, dogs hogging the sleeping bags and probably a 3^rd bed for them as well.

The other bits that need looking into are probably more to do with weather forecasts and google earth as we found out that when we got here the 360 cam was a waste of time for the bit of Loch ness we were in as its all trees and rock and you very rarely see the Loch from the road.

We have to look at how to carry less stuff as we filled the car which wasn’t really the point. We also hoped to show you all our fun things that we have found which make life on the road more bearable but we will add them as we go through our next few videos

It stopped raining in time for us to pack up.

Loch Ness is a fascinating place, so let’s get started

The first recorded Loch Ness Monster incident was 600AD when St Columba forced a monster from the Loch by invoking the name of God. There were also reports of sightings in 1600 and 1700. Actually in 1771 people saw something in the Loch described as a water kelpie.

In 1885 there were reports of a strange beast in the lake and again in 1912 tying into reports of sharks being seen on the west coast of Scotland

There were a few other mutterings of strange happenings in the area, but I think it is safe to say that it really all kicked off in May 1933s with the small report in the Inverness Courier of a strange beast being sighted off the shores of the Loch.

Just looking at a quick search across the newspapers at the time there were 840 articles in 1933 about the monster, 3321 in 1934 and 600 in 1935. It was big news, hardly a day seemed to go by without another sighting or hunt being organised.

If I was cynical I would say that the fact that the person who made the report owned a hotel in Inverness might have had something to do with all this and that honestly was the opinion I started with. I also thought that the timing of the report was close to the release of the King Kong movie, and it fed into a desire from the general public for any sort of Monster feature.

But having read through all the documentation read all the reports, listened to a fascinating audiobook on the way up to the Loch I honestly can’t say its all hype. The tales of monsters started before 1933, and there have been many more since. Even scientists seem equally divided.

Like anything, there have been so many witnesses, even multiple witnesses that surely there must be something there. We didn’t see anything, but then again we didn’t actually get to see the Loch for about 12 hours with all the rain and mist. At one point my husband stated that even if Nessie was down on the shore doing the Highland Fling, he wasn’t going out in the rain.

The main point of the trip was the Loch Ness monster, but Boleskin was going to be a little added sparkle for people not interested in water beasties.

How wrong we were.

The first thing to say is that if you are in any way sensitive, please protect yourself if you decide to visit this location.

The parish of Boleskine was formed in the 13th Century, and a Kirk or church and graveyard were built in the parish around this time.

A succession of Ministers ran Boleskine Parish and would travel the area on horseback or on foot in all weather conditions. One Minister, Thomas Houston is said to have had an issue with having to lay the dead back into the ground after a local wizard tried to raise dead.

Poor old Thomas was very dedicated as he was also attacked by robbers and had his household and money plundered. His predecessor has also been brutally murdered.

He also asked for help with the graveyard as he wrote that people were just leaving bodies without any proper burial, descriptively he describes dogs fighting over bones of the departed before service

The graveyard is situated directly on a military route of the Hanoverian forces. One day in 1745 a funeral was being held while a military transport was passing and one of the attendees stole a loaf of bread from the cart and threw it to the dogs. This act of defiance led to the soldiers firing into the funeral party. Apparently, no one was injured, but it is said you can still see the bullet holes in the grave stones

Another legend was that the Church caught fire and burnt to the ground with the congregation still inside. While we can’t dispute this, we also can’t find any reference to this incident apart from some mentions of the ruin of the Kirk in some early local guides.

The small house in the pictures is a Mort House which was a place where they would place the dead until they were buried. There is also meant to be a hidden passage in the graveyard.

This now brings us to Boleskin House which by legend is meant to be built on the site of the church and supposedly the dead congregation

Boleskine House was built around 1760 as a hunting lodge for the Honourable Archibald Campbell Fraser, the 38th Chief of the Fraser Clan

He was the 3rd son of Simon Fraser of Lovat who was beheaded at the Tower of London aged 80 years on 9th April 1747 for supporting the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. He was the last man to be executed in this manner in Britain.

The house remained in the Frasers family until in 1899 when it was bought by the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley.

The story is that Crowley was looking for a ‘magical house’ to perform the ‘Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage’.

His requirements for the house was that it was secluded, have a north opening door from an oratory room and a terrace that could be covered with fine river sand. This would create a “lodge” where the spirits may congregate.

Now I am sure that lots of houses would meet those requirements and after seeing it what was left of it we were curious as why Crowley would choose this house especially paying twice the asking price.  However, Crowley’s diary mentions that he knew Boleskine was already the centre of a thousand legends and that even before he arrived there was a fine crop of the regular Highland superstitions. One of them seemed to be the fact that the house was haunted by the rolling head of Simon Fraser.

Many myths have developed around the house from the time of Crowley’s ownership which include a local butcher cutting off his own hand with a cleaver and dying after receiving a note from Crowley scribbled on a piece of paper with a spell on the reverse.

During the ceremony, it is rumoured that Crowley stopped the ritual halfway through and supposedly left without dispelling the “12 Kings and Dukes of Hell” he had summoned. Crowley himself, never one to admit a mistake, even conceded that the rituals he had performed at Boleskine House had gotten out of hand.

Crowley’s lodge-keeper, “a total abstainer for twenty years”, became “raving drunk for three days” and “tried to kill his wife and children”.

Crowley asked 3 Golden Dawn members to assist him, one refused to go to the house, one came but mysteriously left without saying goodbye to anyone and the third began to display symptoms of panic and strange fears, stating that there were “presences” in the place of an evil nature and left

All of his dogs died and his servants started becoming ill. Crowley tried to combat this by using rituals as he thought he was under attack from another Magician.

The house was then attacked by a plague of beetles which reportedly no expert was able to identify.

A workman who was at the house putting in central heating into the house suddenly became maniacal and attacked Crowley’s wife

Another of Crowley’s servants also suffered at the hands of the Boleskin demons when his ten-year-old daughter died suddenly at her desk at school and one year later, Gillie’s 15-month-old son died of convulsions on his mother’s knee!

Boleskine was eventually sold on Friday 12th July 1918 to Dorothy C. Brook for £2,500.

The house was acquired by retired Army Major Edward Errick Grant and his wife Nancy. On Tuesday 8th November 1960, he blew his head off with a shotgun in Crowleys bedroom. There is a BBC documentary which has a bizarre interview with the housekeeper who laughs about giving a part of the Major’s skull to his dog as a toy by mistake.

The house wasn’t finished yet. It was part of the largest post war scandal of our time which somehow seems to be also the least reported. Boleskine was to be turned into a piggery During the early nineteen-sixties there were rumours that the British actor George Sanders (1906-1972) wished to buy Boleskine with his business partner the Scottish MP Dennis Lorraine and build a pig farm on the property. The venture failed and Lorraine was sent to prison for fraud.

Apart from Wikipedia saying that it was George Raft and not George Sanders who was involved in all of this there are some very interesting aspects to this part of the Boleskine Story. The house was chosen by Lorraine’s estranged wife who felt compelled to own it, in a book written by her son the passage way between the house and the graveyard was confirmed as he used to play in it. He also mentions that over time his mother changed

When the scandal hit the pigs in the farm were supposedly left to die

in 1971 Boleskine House was bought by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page who left his friend Malcolm Dent in the house as a caretaker

One of his stories sounds like something from ‘House on Borderlands’ by William Hope Hodgeson. He was awakened one morning by the sound of something outside the bedroom door snorting, snuffling and banging. He spent the night terrified as he said “Whatever was there, I have no doubt it was pure evil.”

The house is also linked to the ‘Curse of Led Zepplin’

Jimmy Page sold Boleskine House in 1991 and it remained in private hands until it mysteriously burnt down.

It also was the subject of a BBC documentary which according to reports had to call in an exorcist, dealt with an invasion of beetles, had lighting rigs blow out and were warned by various White Witches that Crowley had put a curse on anyone looking into Boleskine.

On the day we photgraphed what was left, not really knowing the full story and went home.

Now my husband had a cold so that didn’t help but basically over the last two weeks we have felt that we have had ‘visitors’. It got to the point that we have been burning sage and wearing talismans to get through.

So what do we think of the whole Boleskin situation?

Basically something is there, we don’t know what but we have never had an experience like that before. I strongly believe that whilst Crowley made the situation worse, the location had issues before he came. From the accounts of people associated with Boleskin the house chooses people, Crowley and Lorraine both confirm that.

Like the Overlook Hotel in the Shining I believe the house or whatever forces are there amplify your worst instincts and fears.

So of course, the only option for us is to return and get closer to the house and finish our video. If I don’t make another post then you know they have got me.