By Brandon Cruz
These are some monster numbers.
Reported sightings of one of the Loch Ness Monster have more than doubled from last year with just over two months still left to go this year, according to “official” monster data.
The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has accepted 15 reports of Nessie so far in 2026, up from just six in all of 2025, in what is the latest boost for a legend that has kept believers scanning Scotland’s most infamous lake for centuries.
In the last decade, the register recorded over 1,180 sightings at the Scottish lake, according to the data.
The latest “accepted” sighting of the Loch Ness Monster came on Aug. 21 from Felix Tiekemeier, a German tourist who said he spotted a creature about 20-feet long that surfaced roughly 1,000 feet offshore just before noon.
“The object was black and surfaced, remained at the water’s surface for about 20 seconds, and then disappeared again,” the register said of the accepted sighting.
“It was swimming close to the surface and appeared to have a head,” it detailed.
Also in August, a Barcelona-based tourist Jocelyn Boyce said she and her family saw “a dark, almost black, mound-like shape protruding above the surface of the water” from a lookout at Urquhart Castle.
Norbert Kawka of Malta reported that he watched something swim against the current near Fort Augustus for 15 minutes, bobbing in and out of the water like “a very large eel.”
Researchers led by New Zealand’s University of Otago sampled DNA from the loch’s water in 2019 revealed eel DNA nearly everywhere they tested in the loch rather than any prehistoric marine reptile roots.
“Our data doesn’t reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of the material says that we can’t discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness,” geneticist Neil Gemmell said at the time, according to People magazine.
But not everyone is convinced that the uptick in sightings are credible.
“Loch Ness monsters are not seen in waves — Loch Ness monsters are seen in calm, flat water,” Adrian Shine, a self-described expert who has spent 53 years probing the mystery, argues in his new book, “A Naturalist’s View of the Loch Ness Enigma.”
The legend dates back to at least the year 565, when the Irish missionary St. Columba is said to have encountered a beast in the River Ness.