Library of Cryptozoology

Your item on Dr. Roy P. Mackal and the Loch Ness Monster (This Month, July '67) was especially distressing to me. It is not that the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau Ltd. should not keep on investigating, but this group is after minnows compared to the huge Leviathan in waters approximately two hundred miles west of the Azores Islands, in the regular shipping lanes. The Loch Ness Monster, according to other articles I have read is not larger than fifty feet, while the mammoth creature of which I am speaking may be over three hundred feet, possibly five hundred feet. Approximately 1300 hours, 25 June, 1966 while on board a ship en route to New York I saw this tremendous Leviathan partially surfaced in a calm sea. There was not a whitecap to be seen, when all of a sudden there was a breakwater about a mile distant, as the prow of a ship might make. My first glimpse of the greyish-blue sea serpent came as the long round body emerged from the depths and, like a roller coaster,

On the twentieth dive in the Bathysphere, at a depth of 2100 feet, we saw two large, elongate, barracuda-shaped fish, which twice passed within eight feet of the windows, once partly through the beam of our electric light. These were at least six feet in length. No direct lights were visible on the head, yet the rather large eyes and the faint outline were distinct. There was a single row of strong, pale blue lights along the side, large and not far from twenty in number. The mouth, with strongly undershot jaw, and numerous fangs illumined either by mucous or indirect internal lights along the brachiostegals. The fish reminded me in general of barracudas, with deeper jaws open all the time. Posterially placed vertical fins were seen when they passed through the electric beam. There were two ventral tentacles, each tipped with a pair of separate, luminous bodies, the superior reddish, the lower one blue. These twitched and jerked along beneath the fish, one undoubtedly arising from a

Just as NBC was signing off, Dr. Beebe gave an exclamation. A deep sea dragon at least six feet long crossed before the window and a moment later returned with its mate. Until that time scientists had doubted the presence of such large fish in the middepths. This was the only big dragon on record, and I had missed seeing it!