Man hunts ‘Nessie’ every day for 35 years and even met his wife there

A Loch Ness Monster hunter has given up his life to dedicate every day to finding the mythical creature.

Steve Feltham, 63, moved to the legendary loch in 1991 to have ‘an adventure’ and search for the legendary monster.

After giving up his job installing security alarms in Dorset, he began living in a former mobile library van, which he has now dubbed the Loch Ness Monster HQ.

Based on Dores Beach next to the world-famous Scottish lake, which is where he met his wife, Steve has now looked every day for the monster for more than three decades.

He maintains that he saw Nessie once in the first year he lived next to the lake, but he has not seen him since.

‘In year one of being out here full-time, I was parked on the end of the canal, and waves were coming onto the loch,’ he told The Sun.

‘Something caught my attention, shooting through the water, directly against those waves, making a splash as it hit each oncoming wave, like a torpedo going through the water.

‘All I could see was a white streak of something going very fast through the water – almost like a jet ski, but without the jet ski.

‘As soon as it subsided, I thought, “damn it, I should have photographed that, that’s my job”.

‘I thought that’s the photograph missed, but it won’t be long before there will be another opportunity.’

The 63-year-old, who moved to Loch Ness in his mid-twenties after being fascinated with the monster from the age of seven, said he now has to spend a lot of his time ‘disproving deliberate hoaxes’.

‘Around 90% of the time I can figure out what has caused someone’s sighting – a genuine mistake or find a mundane explanation,’ he added.

‘I occasionally see things that defy explanation to me – that absolutely stop me in my tracks and that I can’t explain.

‘But there’s also things I see where people are deliberately trying to hoax. With AI, any teenager in his bedroom who wants to be a budding fake photograph maker can experiment with an app.

‘I didn’t realise when I set off, how much of my time would be taken up with disproving deliberate hoaxes.’

The 63-year-old met his wife, Hilary, 20 years ago near the loch before marrying in lockdown.

Today, they live separately to allow Steve to focus on his research, but with Hilary living in Inverness they still see each other regularly.

He now also spends him time talking to visitors, watching the loch, and taking trips out in boats to find evidence himself.

To make money he crafts and sells handmade clay sculptures of Nessie to visitors, which cost between £10 and £20.

This comes after the first new Nessie ‘sightings’ in months reignited the mystery of the Loch Ness monster.

American tourist Tony Inhorn was the first to report a sighting on March 1 earlier this year after seeing a ‘dark-greenish grey body’ that rose two feet out of the water near the opening for the Caledonian Canal.

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