Fredrick William Holiday, also known as "Ted Holiday" (1920-1979) was a British journalist, angler, cryptozoologist, and wildlife specialist.

Motivated by the early 1930s media reports, Holiday would dedicate the rest of his life to investigating the Loch Ness monster. In the 1960s, Holiday became a member of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. After several hundred hours of watching the Loch, Holiday claims that he reported four unidentified sightings. In his 1968 book, The Great Orm of Loch Ness, Holiday postulated that the creature in the Loch was some sort of invertebrate creature.

Holiday also claimed that he noticed several unusual coincidences, including camera malfunction during certain Nessie sightings. For example, in August 1968, even though there were several witnesses along the shore, "Nessie" chose to appear in one of the very few places that were obscured from the various cameras. Holiday reported, "The observers were watchful and keen but they had seen nothing. The phenomenon had concealed itself so there was nothing for them to see."

By 1972, Holiday publicly rejected his initial hypothesis that the Loch Ness monster was a literal physical animal. In his second book, The Dragon and the Disc, Holiday postulates that there are certain commonalities between paranormal phenomena and certain reported sightings on the Loch. Holiday also believed that there is a relationship between ancient dragon legends and contemporary UFO phenomena.

Books

• Sea Trout: How to Catch Them (1956)
• River-fishing for Sea Trout (1960)
• Angling in Wales (1960)
• Fishing in Wales (1964)
• Feathering for Seafish (1966)
• The Great Orm of Loch Ness: A Practical Inquiry into the Nature and Habits of Water-monsters (1968), ISBN 0571084737
• The Dragon and the Disc: An Investigation into the Totally Fantastic (1973), ISBN 0283979151
  • also published as Creatures from the Inner Sphere (1973)
  • republished as Serpents of the Sky, Dragons of the Earth (1993), ISBN 1881852075
• Estuary Fishing (1974), ISBN 0214200418
• The Dyfed Enigma: Unidentified Fying Objects in West Wales, co-authored with Randall Jones Pugh (1979), ISBN 0571114121
• The Goblin Universe, co-authored with Colin Wilson (1986), ISBN 0875423108
  • 2nd ed. by Holiday (1990), ISBN 1854800817

1920 births | 1979 deaths | Cryptozoologists | British journalists | British non-fiction writers