Something weird is afoot at Loch Ness. You know, that large, deep freshwater lake over there in the Scottish Highlands, where people have claimed to catch glimpses of a large dinosaur-like creature for decades.
The Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has logged 15 in-person Nessie sightings so far in 2026 alone, matching the total recorded in 2018 and putting this year well ahead of the six sightings reported in 2025 and just three in 2024. It still falls short of the 18 recorded in 2019, but after a couple of unusually quiet years, Nessie appears to be having something of a busy season.
And some of this year’s reports are pretty darn strange.
The sightings register is exactly what it sounds like: a running record of eyewitness reports from people who claim to have seen something unexplained in or around Loch Ness. That doesn’t mean 15 people have proven that a giant prehistoric monster is swimming around Scotland. But when the reports start piling up, especially when several involve photographs, videos or descriptions of objects moving against the current, it’s hard not to start looking toward the water.
Sounds like old Nessie is planning one heck of a Halloween party. Maybe she heard about Tombstone’s Candy Corn Pizza and is trying to get in on the ground floor of that snack for the spooky holiday. Who knows?
One of the most spectacular reports came out on March 1, when American visitor Tony Inhorn said he saw a dark greenish-gray object emerge from the water just 15 feet from his boat near the opening of the Caledonian Canal.
According to his eye-witness claim, the exposed portion was roughly 5 to 10 feet long. Inhorn said it hovered on the surface for about five seconds before disappearing beneath the water. He also noted that it emerged against the chop of the water and appeared clearly defined rather than simply being part of the waves.
Then there’s the S-shaped wake. On April 23, Canadian visitors Margaret Sunstrum and Joan Sweeney were traveling along the loch when they saw a large shape crest the surface. They said the water was calm and still, but the object left a distinct S-shaped wake that extended behind it. That’s the kind of sentence that makes a person want to cancel whatever they were doing and book a flight to Scotland. Who’s buying the inner tubes?
Things got even weirder on August 5. Norbert Kawka, visiting from Malta, reported seeing a creature near Fort Augustus for approximately 15 minutes. He described it as moving in and out of the water like a very large eel and estimated that it was at least seven meters long. The conditions were foggy with a hint of rain, but Kawka said there was no wind and the water was calm.
That report was followed almost immediately by another sighting on August 6, when Barcelona visitor Jocelyn Boyce and her family spotted a dark, almost black mound-like shape protruding from the surface while looking out over Loch Ness from Urquhart Castle. Boyce recorded roughly 13 seconds of video on an iPhone 16 and captured photographs before the object disappeared.
And those aren’t even the only recent reports.
The register’s 2026 log includes a German visitor who reported a roughly six-meter-long black object surfacing about 300 meters away on August 21. Felix Tiekemeier said it remained visible for about 20 seconds and appeared to have a head. Earlier in July, other visitors reported seeing dark shapes, heads and humps moving through the water, including one sighting that appeared to show a head followed by two humps and a disturbance in the water that the witness believed was caused by a tail.
There have even been strange things caught by webcams. The sightings register keeps those reports separate from sightings witnessed by people physically at the loch. In March, webcam watcher Eoin Fagan reported seeing an unexplained object break the surface four times while moving against the current. In July, another webcam report described two large objects emerging from the water and moving together.
So why are there suddenly so many sightings? That’s the part nobody can really answer.
There doesn’t appear to be a single explanation for the increase, and the sightings themselves are all over the place. Some involve dark shapes or humps. Others describe wakes, fins or objects moving beneath the surface. Some have photographs or video attached, while others are simply eyewitness accounts.
And, naturally, there are plenty of mundane possibilities. Waves, wakes, floating debris, boats, wildlife, unusual water conditions and simple misidentification have all been suggested as explanations for Loch Ness sightings over the years.
Then again, that doesn’t make the stories any less fun.
Loch Ness is enormous, stretching for roughly 23 miles through the Scottish Highlands, and it’s notoriously difficult to see very far beneath the surface. The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has recorded more than 1,000 reports going back centuries, with the modern legend becoming one of the world’s most famous cryptid stories.
A 2018 environmental DNA survey also found an abundance of eel DNA in the loch, although researchers did not find genetic evidence supporting the presence of a plesiosaur, shark, catfish or sturgeon. The study couldn’t determine the size of the eels detected, which naturally left plenty of room for Nessie enthusiasts to keep arguing about what might be lurking down there.
And now 2026 has given them 15 more reasons to stare at the water. Is Nessie back? No idea. Could every single one of these sightings turn out to have a completely ordinary explanation? Absolutely.
But if you’re spending Halloween season looking for something appropriately creepy to obsess over, you could do a whole lot worse than staring at a giant Scottish lake and wondering if something approximately 20 feet long is about to stick its head out of the water.
Just don’t forget your camera. And maybe a boat.
Actually, forget the boat. Stay on shore.
