Frank Searle; Loch Ness monster hoaxer; dead at 84
The Independant
Eric Frank Searle, photographer and monster hunter: born Staines, Middlesex 18 March 1921; died Fleetwood, Lancashire 26 March 2005.
Driving along the south shore of Loch Ness in the mid-1970s you would have come across a hand-painted sign announcing “The Frank Searle Loch Ness Investigation”. A bleak stretch of waste ground by the loch shore at Foyers was home to Frank Searle’s isolated blue caravan and exhibition centre, and provided a base for perhaps the most colourful and controversial character ever to join in the hunt for the Loch Ness monster.
Searle became a local celebrity in the 1970s for capturing more pictures of Nessie than anyone else in history. But his dedication to his monster hunt bordered on the obsessive, and stories of his eccentric behaviour were legendary, even inspiring a character in the 1995 film Loch Ness, in which Keith Allen played a fiercely territorial monster investigator. But this fictional representation little prepared for the bizarre real-life tale uncovered in a documentary on Searle’s 14 years at Loch Ness, The Man Who Captured Nessie.
In the context of the Nessie phenomenon, Frank Searle was a paradox. Although a passionate champion of the monster’s existence, he will be remembered as the person who did most damage to serious scientific investigation by attracting ridicule and disrepute. This was all down to Searle’s role as the monster’s resident portrait photographer, and the infamous images that became an all too common tabloid currency.
In 1969 Searle gave up his job as a greengrocer in London, to relocate to Loch Ness. He relished the change, and spent his first three years in a tent on the loch shore. To keep him company through long winter nights, Searle successfully advertised for “Girl Fridays” to join the hunt.
