Namely, I do not believe in the lochness monster (or bigfoot, the yeti, aliens, etc) .....but that does not mean I would go swimming in loch ness (or trekking through supposedly Yeti-infested parts of the Himalayas, or spending a night in Castle Dracula, or skinny dipping in Lake Tele in Africa). Not because I think something malevolent and ravenous will rise up from the dark and dank depths, but rather because I'd rather not tempt fate. Once upon a time the Mountain Gorilla was thought to be a myth (as late as the late 19th century), the Okapi was a legend until early 20th century, and as late as the 1960s the Boomslang was supposed to be a non-lethal species of snake (even though local Africans always regarded it as a handgrenade with scales .....it took the rather horrific - think bleeding from every orifice, black urine, etc- death of a prominent herpetologist for the scientific community to recognize that it is actually an extremely venomous snake that just happens to be back-fanged).
Thus, if people say they saw some lake monster in Late Tele, some aquatic dinosaur in Loch Ness, some abominable snowman in some remote locale, or that every 10pm greenmen abduct cows in some forsaken corner of Wisconsin, I will NOT believe it ....but neither will i chose the location for a midnight picnic.