Frank Searle

Eric Frank Searle (18 March 1921 – 26 March 2005) was a British cryptozoologist who spent 14 years living by Loch Ness maintaining a full-time watch and taking photographs of what he claimed were the Loch Ness Monster.

Life Searle was born in Staines, on 18 March 1921.

In 1998, he had a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair.

He never married and had no known heirs when he died in Fleetwood on 26 March 2005. which so impressed him that he camped by the loch during his summer holidays for the following years, hoping for a sighting, being rewarded by seeing what he was sure was the monster in 1965. On 16 June 1969, he gave up his job and pitched a tent by the loch for a year-round vigil, which he maintained in a series of tents and caravans, until 1983, when he left abruptly without telling anyone. This was the first of about twenty pictures which he sold to the press during his time at the loch, becoming a minor celebrity with many visitors to his campsite and interviews with the media.

Legacy Searle was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary entitled The Man Who Captured Nessie in 2005.

His photographs have been dismissed as either inanimate objects or fakes, but he is considered to have been a genuine investigator.