Loch Ness Monster sightings more than double since last year — but not everyone is convinced prehistoric legend is real

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Cruz, B. (2026, October 26). Loch Ness Monster sightings more than double since last year — but not everyone is convinced prehistoric legend is real. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2026/10/26/world-news/loch-ness-monster-sightings-more-than-double-since-last-year/

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New York Post · collected 2026-10-26 · by Brandon Cruz

Quick Summary

The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register reports that sightings of Nessie have more than doubled this year compared to last, with 15 reported sightings as of early August 2026, up from six in all of 2025. Recent documented encounters include a sighting by German tourist Felix Tiekemeier on Aug. 21 and another by Jocelyn Boyce near Urquhart Castle. While some researchers suggest these sightings might be attributed to giant eels based on DNA evidence collected in 2019, others like Adrian Shine maintain that the nature of reported sightings contradicts this theory.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-26, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

The Loch Ness Monster sightings have more than doubled since last year, with 15 reports in 2026 compared to just six in all of 2025. The latest "accepted" sighting was on August 21 by Felix Tiekemeier, a German tourist who reported seeing a black creature about 20 feet long that surfaced briefly offshore. Adrian Shine, an expert with 53 years of experience investigating the mystery, argues that sightings occur in calm water rather than waves and believes the legend has scientific merit despite skepticism. Over the last decade, the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register recorded over 1,180 sightings at the Scottish lake.

Written for “Loch Ness Sightings Increase” on 2026-10-26, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.
Why this leaning score
This article does not take a side on a contested political question, so it has no leaning score. That is an answer rather than a gap: a match report or a rescue can be warmly or critically written without being left or right, and scoring it anyway is how approval of a subject gets recorded as a political position.
No political leaning scored for article 108267 · logged 2026-10-26

Story

📰 Loch Ness Sightings Increase
Other · 1 article(s) covering the same event.

Compared with similar articles

This article reads unscored and hedges 29% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
Daily Mail
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 9% hedged 8 of 88 📰 publisher trust 66
“Article A discusses an expert's lifelong search and personal experiences with 'monsters from the deep', while Article B reports on increased sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in recent years. They cover related topics but describe different specific events.”
How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
14
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
29%
4 of 14 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
not political
takes no side on a contested political question
Publisher signals
66/100
New York Post's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
1
Other
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-10-26 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

New York Post · 14053 article(s) · 35 correction(s) detected
Running correction rate · 35 correction(s)

Who wrote this

Brandon Cruz
37 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 “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.
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Also by Brandon Cruz
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 37 articles by Brandon Cruz →

Topics

Barcelona German Scotland Scottish The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register

Subjects

Barcelona GPE · 1× Felix Tiekemeier PERSON · 1× German NORP · 1× Jocelyn Boyce PERSON · 1× Malta GPE · 1× New Zealand’s GPE · 1× Norbert Kawka PERSON · 1× Scotland GPE · 1× Scottish NORP · 1× The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register ORG · 1×

Narrative

“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.
framing: mixed · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-10-26
🔮 “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.

Claims (14 extracted, 4 hedged)

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. uncertain
sightings → report → 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. asserted
that → accept → centuries
In the last decade, the register recorded over 1,180 sightings at the Scottish lake, according to the data. uncertain
register → record → 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. asserted
that → accept → 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. asserted
register → surface → sighting
“It was swimming close to the surface and appeared to have a head,” it detailed. asserted
it → swim → head
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. asserted
she → base → 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.” asserted
something → report → 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. asserted
they → lead → 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. uncertain
Gemmell → reveal → magazine
But not everyone is convinced that the uptick in sightings are credible. asserted
uptick → convince → sightings
Start your day with all you need to know Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. asserted
Report → start → news
“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. asserted
missionary → see → Ness
Today, the monster pulls in about $55 million in tourism cash for the region every year, according to various estimates. uncertain
monster → pull → estimates
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