Try finding anything on cryptozoology at the local bookstore or library and you'll most likely be directed to the Occultic or New Age section.  Such an unjust placement is clearly a contradiction of the actual intent of cryptozoology, which has no more to do with the supernatural than paleontology per say.  But for F.W. Holiday the border between the biological and the paranormal could be a hazy one at best, especially when it came to lake monsters.

Amongst his many diverse occupations Holiday was a naturalist and seasoned investigator of Fortean phenomena, even serving as a free-lance journalist for such magazines as The Flying Saucer Review (later known as INFO).  After becoming fascinated with news of a monster in Loch Ness, it was only suiting Holiday became an active member of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau.  There his devoted patrolling along the loch's shore would eventually pay off with a total of four recorded sightings.  His theory that Nessie was an enormous gastropod set him apart from other researchers in the 60's and was used as the foundation for his first entry into lake monster literature with The Great Orm of Loch Ness.  While the book's primary goal was to promote the invertebrate theory Holiday would make several allusions that seemed as if to suggest there was something of a metaphysical undertone to the phenomena.  Stories of cameras jamming up, the many incidences where a sighting occurred only after a camera had been stored away or frustrating cases where a surfacing was reported in the only part of the loch that wasn't under routine surveillance by watchful eye of LNBI staff, all the quirks and jinxes that stood in the way of success came as too much to be brushed off as mere "coincidences" for Holiday.  All of this making him hint in The Great Orm that some unnatural covert element was at play. 

In 1968 LNBI member Lionel Leslie would lead an expedition away from Loch Ness and into the bog lands of Connemara.  Leslie had become convinced similar animals were dwelling in small bodies of water a mere fraction the size of Loch Ness.  The encouraging dimensions of the Irish lakes allowed the team to conduct netting efforts in the hopes of capturing a live specimen, a feat that would have been nearly impossible to perform in the vastness of Loch Ness.  Holiday became disturbed at the notion that large animals were somehow sustaining themselves in such limited bodies of water.   The traditional assumption that the creatures were carnivores was obviously challenged as he rationed that any sizable organism would deplete the lake's fish stocks in a matter of weeks.  For Holiday, suspicions that lake monsters were something of a supernatural nature were finally becoming confirmed.  

In his second book, The Dragon and the Disc, Holiday's dabbling with the idea of a 'paranormal connection' is embraced with full force.  The "bad luck" that seemed so evident in the group's investigating efforts, combined with the illogical habitat of the Irish creatures, all led to the conclusion that 'lake monsters' were actually modern incarnations of the same sinister force that haunted the ancient world in the form of dragons.  The first third of the book details LNBI's efforts in Ireland and contains several thorough interviews with witnesses in Connemara.  After going over the recent and past sightings of the area the book suddenly plunges into linking monster sightings to everything from UFOs and ley lines, to Bronze Age artifacts and messages preserved on the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

Before his death in 1979, Holiday would go on to write a third book on lake monsters along with The Goblin Universe,  an expansion on the path already set by The Dragon and the Disc.  The former has never seen publication but it's reported that in his final work before death F.W. Holiday abandoned the supernatural road and returned to a more conventional approach.   The fate of this final book and whatever possibly new information it held, is presently uncertain.     

Lionel Leslie may have paved the way for the Irish research but it was Holiday's publications on the subject that helped bring international attention to Ireland's very own water monsters.  

LINKS:

The Strange Case of F.W. Holiday