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A man from Barnstaple has claimed he caught footage of the legendary Loch Ness Monster stealing his chips while out on a trip to the Scottish Highlands earlier this year.
Nobody has actually seen the footage yet… until now.
Boat welder Jason Pilkington, 34, took the 11-hour journey to the other end of the UK with his fiancée, Emily Weston, and their border collie Jasper on Thursday, 12 January for a long weekend of walking to commemorate their five-year anniversary.
“We always celebrate our annual ‘get-together’ date, but we’re on a bit of a budget at the moment as we’re saving for our wedding in September,” explained Emily, a 32-year-old graphic designer from Hartlepool.
“I said to Jason ‘We’ve still got to do something.’ To which he suggested a trip to Scotland to explore the Lochs. I wasn’t sold at first but after scrolling through pics of the area on Instagram and being bought a new puffer jacket as an anniversary gift I was quickly swayed.”
After a day of exploring their surroundings, they decided to go on a hop-on hop-off guided tour of the infamous Loch Ness for added tourist value. However, just an hour in and halfway around the circuit, Emily began to feel unwell and the couple chose to tour the area on foot.
Two hours of exploring later, the pair decided to catch their breath and grab a bite to eat at Shack’s Fish & Chips.
Once they’d secured their fish and chips haul, the lovebirds went on their way headed for a scenic place to enjoy their scran. The couple ate and began, in Jason’s own words: “d**king about taking typical tourist pics by the Loch,” when Emily noticed a bubbling coming from the body of water.
“It was just bizarre,” said Jason, still quite shaken by the event.
“I’ve never really believed in that kind of stuff - I actually think it’s quite daft - but knew just from looking that those bubbles were far too big to be a fish or something like that.”
Stunned, Emily quickly changed from picture to video mode and…
…Oh, you’re still reading? You do realise this story is totally fake, don’t you? Sorry to disappoint. (Nessie isn’t even a fan of chips anyway.)
There's a good reason behind this false article though.
We’re posting this fake story to see just how many people it can reach, proving to our readers that misinformation can spread like wildfire across social media.
According to statistics, over 80 percent of people will come across fake news every day.
In fact, misinformation is 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth, with social media being twice as likely to lead you to fake news than real news. Scary, right?
We've pulled together the statistics and our results are now live. If you want to see what we found, click here.
In the meantime, there are some handy things you can do to give yourself a better chance of spotting fake news online before you share it.
The SHARE checklist tells you exactly what to look out for with phoney articles, from dodgy sources and spelling mistakes to ingenuine figures and headlines.
For more information, check out the SHARE Checklist.
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