What do YOU think about Hugh Gray's 1933 'Loch Ness Monster' photo?

Hugh Gray's famous Loch Ness photo

From the weird news file this week I read that last Thursday marked the 54th anniversary of a very strange incident that occurred in Riverside, Calif.

On Nov. 8, 1958, a man named Charles Wetzel was driving along the Santa Ana River on North Main Street in Riverside. The river had overflowed its banks, and Wetzel stopped when his car radio stopped working. Wetzel was trying to get his radio working when he looked up and saw a “strange bipedal reptilian creature with scales.” The creature was about six feet tall and had a beak-like mouth, but no nose or ears. The creature gurgled and screeched and attacked Wetzel’s car. When the creature began clawing his windshield, Wetzel stomped on the gas, which caused the creature to fall off the hood and beneath his car. Wetzel drove over it. Wetzel later said that the creature had a “round, scarecrowish head like something out of Halloween.”

The ensuing police investigation showed that Wetzel had ran over something and that there were definitely claw marks on his windshield. The police even brought tracking dogs to the scene, but they weren’t able to find the creature.

The following night, not far from the spot where Wetzel saw the creature, another motorist was frightened in an encounter with another strange creature. There was no evidence to support that claim, nothing like the claw marks left behind on Wetzel’s car.

Now comes the weird part.

Earlier that year, on July 28, 1958, another man named Charles Wetzel saw a strange creature in Nebraska. The creature looked like a six foot tall, brown kangaroo. Other folks in the area also saw kangaroos, some up to 100 miles away.

The two Charles Wetzels had never met, weren’t related and both had sons named Charles. Weird, huh?

----- 0 -----

Monday also marked the 79th anniversary of the day that a man named Hugh Gray supposedly took the first photo of the Loch Ness Monster.

On Nov. 12 ,1933, Gray was walking along the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland, on his way home from church with his camera, when he saw an "object of considerable dimensions, making a big splash with spray on the surface of the Loch."

Gray raised his camera, fired off several shots and took what’s believed to be the first photo of the “Loch Ness Monster.” Gray was only able to develop one of the photos he took, and the blurry image appeared to show a thick-bodied creature with a long tail.

Some say though that Gray’s picture is nothing more than a photo of a dog swimming towards the camera with a stick in its mouth. Others who have examined the picture say they can see four flipper-like appendages along the bottom of the creature’s body while others say that the creature has a head like an eel.

Whatever the case may be, with one click of his camera, Gray secured himself a place in the lore surrounding the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.