Legends of strange, terrible monsters hidden in the depths of waters or in the thickest woods, go back as far a human history, with each region putting their own spin on it. In the Scottish highlands, the Loch Ness River monster legend is often traced back to the sixth century A.D., when Saint Columbia rescued a swimmer from the clutches of a monster in the Loch river — by invoking God and commanding the creature to return to the waters. The legend was mostly dismissed as just that — until news broke of a modern sighting.

On this day, May 2, in 1932, the newspaper Inverness Courier ran a story on local couple who claimed to have sighted “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The sensationalistic story caught, with regional newspaper and big London tabloids offering rewards of tens of thousands pounds sterling for convincing proof of the monster’s existence.

Such incontrovertible proof seemingly arrived in 1934, in the form of a black-white photo showing a dinosaur-like neck sticking out of the water. The so-called “Surgeon’s Photograph,” taken by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson, a physician, withstood many attempts to discredit it, none very successful. Still, more rigorous scientific searched with sonar and submarines turned up nothing conclusive. Then in 1993 Christian Spurling, the stepson of well-known moviemaker, admitted to the hoax, saying he fashioned the “monster” out of some plastic and a wind-up toy submarine.