The infamous Dave Walsh:
RIGHT HAND OF THE DEVIL

He loves to be called the Devil´s Advocate, being a satanist and blathering about the occult, both on his website and in his emails. I´m embarassed to mention this, but he was one of the partici-
pants in our GUST98 expedition to Norway last year. He lied his way into our team and not until it was too late, did we discover what an unreliable person we had taken aboard.

Name: Dave Walsh (but "many people in Ireland have two names, their English name and their Gaelic equivalent. We´re free to use wichever, to a certain extent").
Age: 26.
Title: Reverend (but "It was done for the hell of it. I joined the Universal Church just to have Reverend in front of my name").
Home: [Address removed - daev] Arbour Hill, Dublin 7, Ireland.
Phone: +353 1 679 16 53 (home) and +353 1 (work).
Occupation: Editor of the Blather, a crazy spoof magazine for the mentally disturbed.
Religion: "I also have some weird unspecified relations with the Church of the Subgenius, that crazy spoof religion".
Civil status: Single (no woman in her right mind would wanna share her life with a whacko like Dave Walsh).
Hobby: Satanism, monster hunting, the occult.
About other cryptozoologist´s: "Loren Coleman is very good and so is Karl Shuker, Darren Naish, etc. Jonathan Downes, well, he’s what we’d call a ’character’, and no one takes him
very seriously. On the other hand, he’s antics have a habit of knocking us of our high horses when we get too haughty. I wouldn’t, however, get the impression that he’s big in British Crypto circles Darren Naish or Shuker are more reliable. I just take everything Jon does with a pinch of salt".

This interview with Dave Walsh was done last year by email, to evaluate his suitability for the GUST98 expedition to Norway.

Q: What is your previous experience with lake monsters?
DAVE WALSH: Pretty much just from my own studies, in various books, journals and libraries.

Q: Are you open to the possibility of an unknown species in Lake Seljordsvatnet?

DAVE WALSH: Of course!

Q: Do you trust your own visual ability?

DAVE WALSH: I have excellent long range sight.

Q: What is your most critical view on an expedition like this one?

DAVE WALSH: It’s image with regard to public opinion - people might think it’s a bunch of mad people looking for a monster, rather than a group of serious researchers. Of course, the question always arises - why do we want to know what’s down there?

Q: What is the most important for you, the result of our search or the search in itself?

DAVE WALSH: To ascertain whether anything large is in the lake, and/or what could the
lake support, ecologically speaking.

Q: What is your view on the media regarding this search?

DAVE WALSH: It’s like walking on glass. The media will want sensations. The thing is, how much media do you want?

Q:  Finally, what would you like to include in our expedition to make sure we´ll succeed?

DAVE WALSH: That depends on what you would define the ’success’ to be. Tight coordination and rigourous recording are crucial. We can have all the electronics in the world, but they have to be made useful by the hands of researchers.

Pretty sane replies, right? That´s what we thought too, but Dave Walsh went through a frightning change as soon as he came to the lake. I believe he was posessed by his previous relationship with the occult (and especially satanism and his strange attraction to the Devil). At one stage I even speculated that a sinister force was at work at the lake and used Walsh as a tool. If you had seen what we saw, you wouldn´t be too sure either.

His Irish was hard to understand for everyone and it wasn´t exactly for the better, that he talked like an oral machinegun, which he did too often for comfort. He kept most things to himself and just wouldn´t share, not even on our team briefings when everyone was suppose to speak up. As time went by he became more interested to hang around on the pub together with the Cicada Film team, which I guess his pretty used to in Ireland, instead of brainstorming with us on what to improve for the benefit of the search.

Like Kurt Burchfiel, a Massachusetts State Trooper in Boston, USA, who later bailed out on us together with Walsh, he dreaded the instrumental side of the search and yet, in an email dated July 15, only some two weeks before we started, he wrote: "In case you don’t know, I have a background in mechanical engineering and I’m pretty quick at learning new technologies, so as I’ll not be diving etc, I’ll be happy to pitch in with the electronics...". None of that was true of course, it was just something he invented to impress on us.

Even though that Dave Walsh in our short interview said, quote: "The media will want sensations" he was quick to talk to first the Sunday Business Post on June 28, where his true motive was revealed in one short sentence: "I´m not terribly confident that we´ll find anything, to be honest, but I think they´re bringing me along as a devil´s advocate". Later he also talked to Sunday People, another infamous UK tabloid and when bells started ringing and I was close to give him the silk rope, as the saying goes, he begged on his knees to remain, saying: "Jan, I apologise for the press coverage, I do hope you can forgive me, as I really do want to be on board GUST98". When he later reported on GUST98 on his own devilish website, he distorted the truth once again and claimed: "It was after much deliberation that I finally found myself in Oslo´s Fornebu Airport, on August 3rd 1998".

The reason for leaving the GUST98 expedition was that Dave Walsh didn´t want to jeopardize his reputation, he said. What reputation? Have a look at his website The Blather and click on "Peter Lakbar" and you will find that the prestigious Mr. Walsh sponsors pornography! How many scientist´s would have their name dragged through the dirst associating with such a man? The answer is none.

Dave Walsh is one of the most unreliable researchers on cryptozoology I´ve ever come across. There´s tons of documents in the form of his own emails and other writings that could be used to prove that he is not to be trusted, but enough is enough and by this portrait I hope that you realize that dealing with Dave Walsh is to deal with a very dangerous man.