Nessie hunter Frank Searle
Posted: Monday, May 30th, 2005 11:38 pm
Getting to the nub of Frank Searle is as demanding a task as proving or disproving the verity of the monster he longed to photograph. Searle, detested by many, remembered fondly by others, was in equal measure a showman, a raconteur, a hermit and a charlatan. He produced 20 pictures of “the beast” of Loch Ness which, most now believe, were created using fence posts, logs, tarpaulins and old socks. …
Searle set himself up at one of the loch’s lonelier reaches, at Lower Foyers, until 1985. The police had questioned him about the petrol-bombing of Adrian and Maralyn Shine’s Rosetta Project camp at Achnahannet. Searle fled, and neither his friends nor enemies saw or heard from him again. It was rumoured that he was seeking lost gold in the Hebrides, or in Cornwall, or had died in some misadventure. A filmmaker, Andrew Tullis, sought him out for a documentary called The Man Who Captured Nessie, to be shown on Channel 4 this year. His investigations led him to the seaside town of Fleetwood in Lancashire. It transpired that Searle had lived inconspicuously there for 18 years, and had died in his bedsit just a few weeks earlier. …
Searle was reviled by other Loch Ness researchers. He seemed quite unaware, or unconcerned, that he was affecting “genuine” research. He had a long-running dispute with Adrian Shine, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society who, in securing funding and support, had continually to debunk Searle’s photographs. …
Frank Searle, self-styled cryptozoologist, was born on March 18, 1921. He died on March 26, 2005, aged 84. … Read full obituary
