'Loch Ness Monster appeared when I looked back at my holiday photos'

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/loch-ness-monster-appeared-looked-37257924

Fun fact: Found an old photo of a science fair project I did on the Loch Ness Monster in 5th Grade.

Look how extra I was about all this. I really did (and do) love reading about monsters.

#Science #Nostalgia #LochNessMonster #Cryptozoology #Animals #Folklore

Mysterious Times Weekly Roundup W/E 12-5-26

Just when you think the world has settled down for a quiet week, along comes another pile of glowing orbs, declassified UFO papers, strange creatures in distant waters and enough odd headlines to keep Forteans happily staring into the night sky with a mug of tea in hand.

The week ending 13th May 2026 has been especially busy for paranormal watchers, UFO researchers and cryptozoology enthusiasts alike, with one story in particular dominating discussion across social media, news outlets and late night conspiracy forums.

The biggest talking point of the week has undoubtedly been the release of previously classified Pentagon UFO files. The United States Department of Defense began publishing what it describes as “never before seen” material relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, on a rolling basis through a newly launched public archive.

The initial batch reportedly includes more than 150 documents, images and videos collected from agencies including NASA, the FBI and military intelligence departments. Among the files are astronaut reports, infrared footage of unexplained airborne objects and historical witness statements dating back decades.

Unsurprisingly, the internet reacted immediately. Believers hailed the release as historic disclosure while sceptics argued much of the material appears inconclusive or already partially known. Either way, it has reignited public fascination with UFOs in a major way. [1]

Several analysts and scientists interviewed after the release urged caution.

Experts noted that many of the images remain blurry, lack contextual data or could potentially be explained by balloons, optical artefacts or atmospheric effects. Others pointed out that eyewitness testimony alone is notoriously unreliable. Even so, the sheer scale of the disclosure has created a fresh wave of speculation, especially surrounding military encounters over oceans and restricted airspace. The Pentagon has stated that further document drops are expected in the coming weeks. [2]

Meanwhile, UFO sighting databases and reporting hubs have continued receiving a steady stream of new reports from around the world. This week alone included reports of silver spheres over Nevada, glowing orange orbs in remote desert areas and fast moving triangular formations seen above parts of Europe and the United States. One particularly intriguing case involved witnesses in Arizona describing two silent lights manoeuvring at impossible speeds without visible propulsion. Another report from Italy described a glowing sphere abruptly changing direction before vanishing. While none of these sightings have been independently verified, they continue to fuel public fascination with unexplained aerial phenomena. [3]

Over in the world of conspiracy culture, online discussions have exploded around claims involving missing or deceased scientists allegedly connected to classified aerospace or advanced energy projects. The theory, which has spread rapidly across social media platforms, suggests there may be hidden links between a number of unrelated disappearances and alleged UFO research programmes. Journalists, sociologists and investigators have strongly criticised these claims, describing the supposed connections as coincidence and pattern seeking rather than evidence of any organised conspiracy. Nonetheless, the theory has become one of the most widely discussed paranormal talking points of the month. [4]

Cryptozoology has had its own peculiar week as well. Reports from Australian waters involving unusually large squid sightings continue to circulate following several marine encounters shared online by divers and fishermen.

In Britain, the seemingly eternal mystery of phantom big cats remains active, with new alleged sightings reported in rural Wales and the north of England. Though photographs remain frustratingly unclear, witnesses continue describing large black feline shapes moving silently through woodland and farmland.

Nessie, naturally, has also resurfaced in discussion after fresh sonar anomalies from Loch Ness enthusiasts made the rounds online once again. No convincing evidence has emerged, but the legend clearly refuses to fade.

On the archaeological side of strange history, renewed interest has been sparked by reports concerning ancient Mesopotamian clay cylinders linked to King Nebuchadnezzar II. Researchers believe the inscriptions may represent some of the earliest surviving foundation texts associated with the rebuilding of the ziggurat of Kish. While not paranormal in itself, discoveries like these often blur the line between mythology, ancient religion and historical reality, particularly for those fascinated by lost civilisations and forgotten beliefs. [5]

Elsewhere in the world of Forteana, weather watchers in Wales shared photographs of bizarre lenticular cloud formations nicknamed “UFO clouds” after they appeared hovering motionless above hillsides earlier this month. Though meteorologists quickly explained the phenomenon as unusual but natural atmospheric conditions, the images spread rapidly online and inevitably revived memories of classic flying saucer imagery. [5]

The latest issue of Fortean Times has also been attracting attention this week with its deep dive into the historical origins of crashed UFO folklore, exploring mysterious airship scares, strange metals and tales of dead alien pilots from the nineteenth century. It serves as a timely reminder that many supposedly modern mysteries often have roots stretching far deeper into history than we sometimes realise. [6]

As always, the truth behind many of these stories remains frustratingly elusive. Some will eventually find mundane explanations. Others may remain permanently unresolved, drifting into folklore and becoming part of the strange modern mythology we continue building around ourselves.

And perhaps that uncertainty is part of the appeal. The unexplained continues to thrive precisely because it leaves room for imagination, speculation and wonder.

Further reading and sources:

Sky News UFO files report (https://news.sky.com/story/a-13541565)

ABC News Pentagon UFO release coverage(https://abcnews.com/Politics/pentagon-begins-release-decades-unresolved-ufo-files/story?id=132780534)

Spectrum News UAP archive article(https://spectrumlocalnews.com/us/snplus/news/2026/05/08/pentagon-ufos-unidentified-flying-objects-uap-new-website-tranches-additional-records)

Anomaly Daily sightings database(https://anomalydaily.com)

Aliens Digest sightings archive (https://aliensdigest.com)

Fortean Times magazine (https://www.forteantimes.com)

[1]: https://news.sky.com/story/a-13541565 “‘Never-before-seen’ files on UFOs released by Pentagon | US News | Sky News”

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_files_release_%282026%29 “UFO files release (2026)”

[3]: https://anomalydaily.com “Anomaly Daily — A field guide to the unexplained”

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_theory “Missing scientists conspiracy theory”

[5]: https://www.milkywaynews.com “Milky Way News”

[6]: https://www.zinio.com/publications/fortean-times/3154/issues/735151 “Issue 470 May 2026 – Fortean Times”

Copyright © 2026 Kirst Mason D’Raven / [Mysterious Times](https://www.mysterioustimes.co.uk). All rights reserved. This article or images may not be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews, research or scholarly discussion with appropriate credit.

Shadows in the Water, Eyes in the Dark

Pull up a chair, because the world of cryptozoology has been unusually lively this past week.

Not in the sense of definitive proof, of course. Cryptozoology rarely offers anything so tidy. Instead, what we have are glimpses. Shapes in the mist. Strange movements caught at the edge of a camera frame. Stories resurfacing in places where the old legends never quite went away.

We begin in the Highlands of Scotland, where fresh interest has once again gathered around Loch Ness Monster. A new sonar anomaly recorded during a private survey on Loch Ness has reignited debate after investigators reported an unusually large moving mass deep beneath the loch’s surface. Experts remain cautious, suggesting everything from drifting debris to shoals of fish, but believers argue the readings resemble earlier unexplained encounters stretching back decades.

It is remarkable how Loch Ness continues to hold its grip on the imagination. Decades of searches, documentaries, hoaxes, and scientific studies have not diminished the mystery. If anything, they have deepened it. The loch itself seems to resist certainty, its dark waters swallowing conclusions as easily as they swallow light.

Closer to the forests and farmland of northern England, reports of Britain’s so called “big cats” have once again surfaced. This time, witnesses in rural North Yorkshire described a large black feline moving across moorland near dusk. Grainy mobile footage has circulated online, inevitably dividing opinion between those convinced they are seeing a melanistic leopard and those pointing towards escaped domestic hybrids or simple misidentification.

The persistence of these sightings across Britain remains one of the strangest aspects of the phenomenon. From Devon to the Peak District, from the Scottish Borders to the Welsh countryside, the stories remain remarkably consistent. Large cats. Silent movement. Yellow eyes caught briefly in torchlight. Livestock injuries that never seem entirely explained. Whether flesh and blood predators or modern folklore shaped by expectation, the Beast of Britain refuses to fade quietly into myth.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the forests of Canada, several hikers in British Columbia reported hearing what they described as “inhuman vocalisations” during a backcountry trek near remote woodland areas associated with long standing Sasquatch legends. Audio recordings captured during the encounter have already begun circulating through paranormal and cryptozoological communities.

Predictably, wildlife experts have suggested bears, elk, or distorted natural sounds. Equally predictably, believers remain unconvinced. Bigfoot occupies a peculiar place in modern mythology. Less monster than relic. A creature that seems to embody the fear that somewhere in the wilderness there are still places beyond mapping, beyond explanation, beyond us.

Further south, in the dense waterways of the Amazon basin, local reports have revived stories surrounding the Cobra Grande, the enormous serpent of South American folklore said to inhabit remote rivers and flooded forests. Villagers in isolated communities have described unusual disturbances in the water alongside sightings of immense dark shapes moving beneath the surface at night.

Giant snake legends exist across the world for a reason. From African river spirits to the Australian Rainbow Serpent, humanity has always imagined vast things moving below dark water. Perhaps because deep water itself is one of our oldest fears. We know what lives on land. The depths remain another matter entirely.

And speaking of the deep, Australia has delivered one of the week’s most extraordinary stories.

Marine researchers off the coast of Tasmania have reported an unusual spike in sightings of giant squid and colossal squid activity, including damaged whales carrying fresh scarring believed to come from encounters in deep ocean waters. While giant squid are very real creatures, they remain among the least understood animals on Earth. Most people never see them alive. Instead, they emerge in fragments. A tentacle hauled from the stomach of a whale. A pale carcass washing ashore after storms. Eyes larger than dinner plates staring blindly from the sand.

There is something deeply unsettling about the fact that animals of this scale still move largely unseen through the oceans. Entire worlds existing beneath the reach of sunlight.

Elsewhere, Japan has seen renewed fascination with the tsuchinoko, the strange snake like cryptid said to inhabit remote mountain regions. Following several recent social media claims from hikers, local communities have leaned once more into the legend, with some villages even organising small festivals celebrating the elusive creature.

It would be easy to dismiss such things entirely as tourism and storytelling, yet folklore has always survived precisely because communities continue to breathe life into it. The line between cultural identity and cryptid legend is often far thinner than outsiders realise.

Perhaps that is the true mystery of cryptozoology.

Not proof. Not bodies on laboratory tables. Not headlines declaring mystery solved.

But stories.

Stories carried through generations. Stories attached to forests, lakes, mountains, and lonely roads. Stories that adapt to modern technology while somehow retaining the same ancient shape. We now capture our monsters on mobile phones instead of charcoal sketches, but emotionally the impulse remains unchanged. We still peer into dark water expecting something to rise from it. We still glance twice at movement in woodland shadows. We still want to believe that the world contains corners untouched by certainty.

And every so often, something stirs just enough to remind us why.

Further Reading & Sources

BBC Countryfile: British Big Cat Sightings

Official Loch Ness Centre investigations

Smithsonian coverage of giant squid discoveries

Canadian Sasquatch research archives

Australian Museum marine cephalopod research

Japanese folklore archives on tsuchinoko legends

cryptozoology, nessie, loch ness monster, british big cats, giant squid, sasquatch, bigfoot, paranormal news, mysterious times, folklore, strange creatures, unexplained mysteries, cryptids, monster sightings, lake monsters

The May M.T Almanac

Pull up a chair, grab an ice-cream and hold onto your sunhats, because May is never quite as innocent as it looks!

It all starts on 1st with Beltane. Yes ‘Beltane’. Don’t come for me with your alternative spellings and pronunciations, I call it Beltane and I pronounce it “Bell-tane”. You may spell and pronounce it differently. That is your right. Many people do. We are, after all, human and we all have our own, slightly different takes on these things. That’s ok. We are inclusive here at Mysterious times. Anyway, I digress…

Beltane is an ancient fire festival which marks the beginning of summer in the Gaelic and Pagan calendar and has it’s own May Day customs of greenery, dancing, flowers and thresholds. May 1st this year (2026) falls on a Friday, while the May Day Bank holiday follows on Monday 4th

“But why?” I hear you ask,

“Why do we celebrate the Bank Holiday on Monday and not on the actual date?”

The answer to that is probably very simple.. but I can’t remember it at the moment. I’ll look into it and get back to you later. Stop interrupting. There will be time for questions like that in the comments. Moving on… Where were we?

Ah yes! Thresholds…

So, May is all about thresholds, and if you haven’t swept yours already, you’d better get to it. We will cover all the ins and outs of thresholds in another article, but for now let’s just say it’s believed by many to be most beneficial if you make sure yours are all in order before Beltane. So get your broom out.

In Christian calendars, it’s all about saints and workers (and probably spring cleaning). In the first few days of May we have St Joseph the Worker (Jesus’s dad), St Philip and St James (apostles)and St Athanasius (The Black Dwarf).

The Bahá’í Twelfth day of Ridván falls on the 2nd May, marking the close of one of the faiths holiest festivals.

Judaism brings Lag Ba’Omer in early May.

Meanwhile, the Christian calendar marches onwards toward Ascension Day on the 14th and Pentacost on the 24th.

May 25th offers another chance for Brits to descend on beer gardens and garden centres – It’s Spring Bank Holiday Monday!

Shavuot falls on 22-23rd May, the Declaration of the Báb is observed on the 24th, Hajj is listed from 24-29th, Eid al Adha from 26-30th, the Ascension of Bahá’ u’lláh also on the 29th and Vesak, or Buddah Day on the 31st May. Dates for lunar observances may vary slightly between community and sighting of the moon, but May 2026 is unusually crowded with sacred times.

This month is also, quite delightfully, the month that gives us National Paranormal Day on the 3rd May. It is a modern, unofficial observance rather than an ancient holy day, but it feels very at home here, tucked between Beltane fires and a month of apparitions, monsters and strange lights.

Talking of which – Cryptozoology! Yay!

May begins with one of the great monsters of modern folklore. On 2nd May 1933, the Inverness Courier published the report that helped launch the modern Loch Ness Monster legend, after Aldie Mackay claimed to have seen an enormous creature rolling and plunging in Loch Ness. The actual sighting was said to have occurred in April, but it was the May newspaper report that turned a Highland water mystery into an international monster. From there, Nessie became not only a cryptid, but a cultural force, part beast, part tourism icon, part stubborn ripple in the rational world.

But May’s strangeness doesn’t just stay in the water – and I, for one am very grateful for this because if it did we wouldn’t have any UFO reports like this one from McMinnville, Oregon.

On 11th May 1950, Paul and Evelyn Trent took two photographs near their home which showed what they described as a metallic, disc shaped object in the sky. the McMinnville photographs became some of the most famous UFO images of the twentieth century, debated by believers and sceptics alike. What keeps them interesting is not just the object in the frame, but the sheer ordinariness of the setting: A farm, evening light, rabbits to be fed, supper probably waiting. The uncanny often arrives without a soundtrack.

For May 13th, we have a case that could fit comfortably into both paranormal and religious history studies. on this date in 1917, three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal reported the first of a series of Marian apparitions. The Catholic church later approved the devotion and the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima is now observed on May 13th. To the faithful it is sacred history. To historians of the paranormal, it is also one of the twentieth centuries most influential apparition narratives, complete with prophecy, crowds, controversy and a final public miracle claim in October of the same year. Me? I’m on the fence. The story has a lot of similarities to the kind of Fae encounters you find in folklore or Alien encounters in UFOlogy. Talking of UFOlogy (again)…

On the 19th May 1986, one of UFOlogys strongest radar visual cases occurred. In Brazil’s ‘Official UFO Night’, no less than 21 unidentified objects were reportedly seen by civilian and military witnesses across Sáo Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Goiás. Brazilian Air Force radar detected the objects, and five fighter jets were scrambled to intercept them. Whatever you think of the case, it remains significant because this wasn’t just a lone witness in a field somewhere. It was radar, air traffic control, military pilots and an official archive all staring at the same impossible sky.

On 20th May 1967, industrial mechanic Stefen Michalak reported seeing two strange craft near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, Canada, one of which landed nearby. He later sought medical help for burns and the Falcon Lake Incident became one of Canada’s most discussed UFO encounters. CBC called it Canada’s best documented UFO case, although sceptical questions remain around several details, but that’s often the way with the best cases. They refuse to behave for either side.

By the final week, the calendar has got it all going on. Shavuot, Pentacost, the Declaration of the Báb, Hajj, Eid al-Adha, the Ascension of Bahá’ u’ lláh and Vesack crowd together in a few, supercharged days. And that matters because folklore, faith, ghosts, UFOs and monsters all grow from the same human habit – we mark the year, we watch the skies, we tell each other what we saw and we argue about what it meant.

So May isn’t merely a month of Bank Holidays, blossom and bluebells. It’s Beltane smoke and Marian light. It’s Nessie breaking the surface of the public imagination. It’s flying discs over Oregon, radar ghosts over Brazil, burns and mystery beside a Canadian lake. It is saints days, sacred festivals, monster lore and strange skies all arriving under lengthening evenings when people are outside again and the world feels a little bigger, a little more… mysterious. That, perhaps is why May feels so magical. It opens the door and shows you the threshold.

References and Further Reading:

The UK Bank Holiday calendar, The University of Leeds 2025-2026 faith calendar, the Bahá’í calendar, the Catholic Liturgy calendar for May 2026, the Inverness Courier and later histories of the Loch Ness Monster, the McMinnville UFO Festival history, the Brazilian government archive on Official UFO Night, Library and Archives Canada material on Falcon Lake and reporting on the Fátima Apparitions.

The one pre-modern report of the Loch Ness Monster was in the "Life of St. Columba" by Adomnán (7th century CE). Supposedly, St. Columba was attacked by a huge beast in the River Ness, but he drove it off by ordering the beast to leave while St. Columba made the sign of the Cross.

#WyrdWednesday #Mythology #Folklore #Scotland #Celtic #Monster #Cryptozoology #Cryptid #LochNessMonster