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Do You See The Dog In The Water? (Hugh Gray Nessie Photo; 1933)

Zeke Newbold

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
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I'm chewing over a very old chestnut here - but it's an interesting experiment in perception and possible paredolia.

The Hugh Gray 1933 photo of an alleged Loch Ness Monster is thought to be the first of its kind.

The received wisdom of it has since become that it shows nothing more than a dog - a sandy coloured labrador - swimming towards the viewer with a stick in its mouth.

That has always been my take on it too - and I find that once you see the damned dog - you just can't unsee it!
The born again Nessie sceptic Tony Hamsworth has said, somewhere, that he once showed the picture to a group of primary school kids without context, and that they all immediately volunteered that it was a dog with a stick in its mouth!

Nevertheless, the venerable Glasgow Boy - surely Britain's last die hard Nessie believer - has put up a spirited and elaborate defence of the picture as showing something else entirely and the dog image as being a case of paredolia. (Strap yourself in for a long and detailed read).

http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2011/06/hugh-gray-photograph-revisited_26.html

I was never won over by his cunning argument as it seemed overwrought - because it had to be.

Recently though I was able to conduct my own experiment. I showed this image to an objective party: a Russian woman who had only dimly heard of the Loch Ness Monster and certainly had no previous exposure to this image. As an English language teacher I was teaching Modals of Possibility (may be, could be,might be, etc) and used a printed copy of the picture to get her to use these this language. I didn't even tell her that the picure was taken at Loch Ness - just asked her to describe it using Modals of Possibility.

She theorised that it could be a submarine or a dolphin...but the notion of it being a stick wielding canine did not occur to her, and I'm not sure she even saw it when I pointed it out. I should add that the woman concerned is a dog lover (a proud owner of a puppy) and an artist (hence visually minded).

So..what about you? Can you see the dog? Can you unsee the dog? And what do you think the image really shows? I'm dogoned!

Loch ness pic.jpg
 
I can see a ghostly image of the head of a dog, but is the long dark image supposed to be the stick? If so it seems too large even for a labrador size dog to swim with. Perhaps the dog may be standing on the bottom? No to me it looks like someone taking a snap of a large stick as it landed on the water, having been thrown by someone. As in the case of the doctors famous faked image, you have to look at the pattern/scale of the waves. Whatever it is it's small - I think the Loch Ness monster is very big.:rolleyes:
 
Agreed that it's very hard to unsee the golden retriever swimming towards us, with a bent stick in its mouth.
The dog's right ear, eye and nose do seem quite clear.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Can you see the dog?
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Yes, but only when I first read this blog some time ago.

Zeke Newbold said:
Can you unsee the dog?
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Easily, because -

Zeke Newbold said:
And what do you think the image really shows?
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Not a dog. I think it would have to be moving at an impossibly fast speed* to leave such a faint exposure.

*to where? And why would the 'stick' be so clear if it was in the dog's mouth and therefore moving at the same pace?

I don't know what it shows exactly, but the waves look too small for it to be a dog.
 
David Plankton said:
Yes, but only when I first read this blog some time ago.
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By `this blog` do you mean Lochnessmystery.blogspot as linked above? If so that's pretty ironic as the whole point of that post is to get people to unsee the dog!

Mythopoeika said:
I can't see a dog, no matter how hard I try.
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Interesting: one more dog-with-stick blindness sufferer then! The poor thing is swimming towards you full of canine trust and with cute floppy ears saying `Look at me! I'm a dog with a stick!` Must try harder, sir! To be fair I think it took me a while to see it. (I think I first came across it in a book Called something like `The Loch Ness Monster Explained` by Ronald Binns). However, once you do see it - it's impossible to make it go away!

henry said:
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Well this is really just restating Glagow Boy's position which he lays out in great detail. He seems to think it's a fish-like thing with one eye looking at the viewer. I'm not so sure about that.

One thing is clear: if this is an example of parediolia then it suggests some interesting consequences: it seems that can we sometimes substitute an unfamiliar image with a more familiar but constructed one - and when we do so it is very difficult to dissuade us from our delusion.

For the record though - I'm a Nessie sceptic.
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I can't see a dog either. In fact it looks rather inorganic to me.
On the righthand side at the front it looks a bit like a part where a
light would be,
 
i was simply including the two original images from the article ... to me it looks like something stationary mainly beneath the water
 
Iris said:
I can't see a dog either. In fact it looks rather inorganic to me.
On the righthand side at the front it looks a bit like a part where a
light would be,
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I think you need to explain that last sentence a bit more Iris. What kind of light? What kind of object do you have in mind?
 
I was thinking some kind of underwater vehicle.
 
only because it is untouched, unlike the treated photo earlier inthread
 
Classic picture it may be, but there's simply nothing in it that allows any kind of positive ID. If it was of a local boating pond, you'd think it was a double exposure or smudges made during development.

There was some talk of 'unseeing the dog' earlier in the thread. Try 'unseeing the monster'. Once you remove the priming or expectation that comes with the words 'Loch Ness' there's really nothing to analyse in any meaningful way.
 
Coal said:
Classic picture it may be, but there's simply nothing in it that allows any kind of positive ID. If it was of a local boating pond, you'd think it was a double exposure or smudges made during development.

There was some talk of 'unseeing the dog' earlier in the thread. Try 'unseeing the monster'. Once you remove the priming or expectation that comes with the words 'Loch Ness' there's really nothing to analyse in any meaningful way.
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I agree.

I do suspect, however, that the original subject of the photo may have been something like this!

You_Doodle_2018-12-23T13_41_45Z.jpg
 
I can't really see a dog there unless I force my idea of a dog onto the blurs. I certainly don't think it's a dog swimming with a stick in it's mouth.

The Wikipedia article says of this photo:

<<Hugh Gray's photograph taken near Foyers on 12 November 1933 was the first photograph alleged to depict the monster. It was slightly blurred, and it has been noted that if one looks closely the head of a dog can be seen. Gray had taken his Labrador for a walk that day, and it is suspected that the photograph depicts his dog fetching a stick from the loch.[24] Others have suggested the photograph depicts an otter or a swan. The original negative was lost. However, in 1963 Maurice Burtoncame into "possession of two lantern slides, contact positives from th[e] original negative" and when projected on screen it revealed an "otter rolling at the surface in characteristic fashion.">>

I can't see an otter either.

However, I have spent a lot of time by the water, and the angle suggests that the photographer was looking down at a fairly nearby object. The waves appear to be little more than ripples. This is not evidence of a monster.
 
This like as is the case with many photo's in cryptozoology is blurry - questionable at best. It's a shame the small shred of truth concerning cryptozoology is often obscured by those that are hopefully dreamers or deceivers. But I maintain an open eye for those few undiscovered beasties.
 
Mikefule said:
"... However, in 1963 Maurice Burton came into "possession of two lantern slides, contact positives from th[e] original negative" and when projected on screen it revealed an "otter rolling at the surface in characteristic fashion." ...
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Burton's article relating to the Gray photo ('The Loch Ness Saga') appeared in the 24 June 1982 issue of New Scientist, accessible at:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ts4HDr_n_rQC&pg=PA825&lpg=PA825&dq=Maurice+Burton+"Loch+Ness+Saga"&source=bl&ots=mlGLhg-HEQ&sig=yglVwh3VOnL96zq6q2sbu6UkvU8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwip_5eVubbfAhVQ1qwKHYzMBr4Q6AEwCHoECCAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Maurice Burton "Loch Ness Saga"&f=false

He essentially says nothing more than what is quoted above.

Edit to Add:

It's worth noting that in this 1982 article Burton repeats and reaffirms his 1962 claim that the 'Surgeon's Photo' (Wilson, 1934) represents the tail of an otter. We now know it was a fabricated model and not an otter's tail.
 
I'm attaching the earliest, clearest version of the Gray photo I could readily find.

I don't think it's an otter, but I think it could well be Gray's Labrador. However, I don't think it's Gray's dog with a stick.

If you look at the photo closely you'll notice a disjunction or discrepancy in the image moving from left to right, as well as duplication of some features. This leads me to suspect it's a double exposure of the dog in the water, with the two exposures occurring while the dog was at different distances from the camera.
 

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As an aside ... I thought the illustration accompanying Burton's 1982 article (cited above) was a nicely conceived visual barb concerning misperception in Forteana ...

NS-24Jun82-KenCoxIllo.jpg
 
Right. Well. I've never actually come across this photo before so I'm seeing it here with "new eyes" as it were. And... at first I could not see a dog, even after reading that there seems to be a dog (so therefore with that already implanted in my mind).

I squinted a bit and thought I could see a beagle-type dog's head at the far right of the 'stick' (for want of a better word) but then with a bit more squinting and moving my head about I finally saw what I guess other people are seeing... a golden retriever-type dog, just to the left of the beagle dog. So now I can sort of see both equally, although I wouldn't say they're obvious or stand out particularly.

There also seems to be a duplicate of the golden-retriever's eyes/eyebrows above it, like a copy and paste thing, so possibly the double-exposure @EnolaGaia was talking about.

The dog does appear to be off-centre in relation to the stick, but as a dog owner I'm fully aware that dogs often carry sticks like this (as my shins will attest to!).

So it could be a dog carrying a stick while swimming. Or could just be a stick in the water.

What I don't think it is, is a monster of any kind.
 
A dog, eh? Wow. That's quite a stretch. Yes, I see the "face" that might look a bit like a golden retriever in the blurring, but it's Squirrel-On-Mars silly to me. There is no sign of any disturbance in the surface of the water directly behind the "face", among other things. Looks more like a ghost of a retriever to me. As others have said, it's an odd photo that manages to be completely useless as evidence of anything at all.
 
Many have said that the picture is too ambiguous to count as evidence for anything. That is clearly true as far as it goes - but there's not just a picture here - there's also a witness testimony that goes with it. As with many a U.F.O picture, we have two tiers of evidence to consider: on the one hand a photo and, on the other, a story of how and why the photo came to be made. Whilst the latter may well be a fabrication - we should no more ignore it than we should ignore the picture itself.

I would ask people to read the post that I linked in the O.P: in that Glasgow Boy does put forth some strong arguments as to why it is not a dog of any kind, with or without a stick. By saying this I am not endorsing his version of events either (he believes it probably shows a Nessie).

Krepostnoi said:
Henry, are you zooming in on that detail for any particular reason?
It puts me in mind of the "skeksis" photo that came up recently on the other thread.
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As Henry himself pointed out, the pictures he shared come from Glasgow Boy's post in Lochnessmysteryblogspot. The reason Glasgow Boy zoomed in on that part is because he contends that it depicts the side view of a Nessie's head, with one eye - as it were - `looking at us.`(Again, read his post for more on that!)

What interests me most about all of this is the pareidolia aspect of it. If the dog with a stick image that many of us are stuck with is a mental construct (and there seems to be some good reasons for it being so) then how often - when we see something new - do we just substitiute whatever we are seeing with something more recognisably average and familiar? How many new experiences are dulled or swept aside in this way?
 
Zeke Newbold said:
How many new experiences are dulled or swept aside in this way?
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I cannot cite a source, but I have a vague recollection of reading of a "south sea island" tribe (or south American?) who were said to be unable to see the European ships just off the coast because they were so unlike anything they had ever seen. Whether this is true or just a good story, I don't know.

What I do know is that people interpret evidence through the lens of what they already know, or what they would like to believe to be true. Very few people are completely rational and objective all the time.

I spent part of my career investigating motor accidents, interviewing witnesses. By the time the insurer gets to interview the witness, they have already "filled in the gaps" and "eliminated the unwanted details" and they truly believe their consistent and convenient version of events. Not always, but often.
 
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