Indian legends tell of a horned serpent. (Copyright
Lee Krystek, 2000).
of Lake Champlain
People the world over have heard of "Nessie,"
the monster that supposedly inhabits Loch
Ness in Scotland. Fewer people are aware that a body of
water in North America also has a reputation of having a monster.
In Lake Champlain, located on the border between New York and
Vermont, the creature, which may be real or legendary, has been
given the nickname "Champ."
The Iroquois nation lived along the lake before
Europeans came. They had stories that said a horned serpent
lived within its waters. Many American bodies
of water were the source for such legends about water serpents
and spirits, and it is difficult to use these as proof of Champ's
Some historians place the earliest sighting of
the creature by a European with Samual de Champlain, after whom
the lake is named. Champlain is supposed to have mentioned the
creature in a chronicle he wrote in 1609. A careful reading
of the text, though, shows that the animal described by Champlain
might have been a large garfish, rather than a monster. Many
garfish continue to live in the lake today.
Reports of the monster start showing up in newspapers
around 1873. According to a story in the New York Times,
a railroad work crew was laying track near Dresden, New York,
when they saw the head of an "enormous serpent" emerge
from the water. After a moment of paralyzing shock, the workmen
ran away. The creature, in turn, swam away. Witnesses reported
that the animal had bright, silver-like scales that glistened
in the sun. The article said, "The appearance of his head
was round and flat, with a hood spreading out from the lower
part of it like a rubber cap often worn by mariners."
In August of that same year, a small steamship
loaded with tourists, allegedly struck the creature and nearly
turned over. According to newspaper accounts, the head and neck
of the animal were sighted afterward about a 100 feet from the
As the fame of Champ grew, showman P.T. Barnum
posted a $50,000 reward for the "hide of the great Champlain
serpent to add to my mammoth World's Fair Show."
Reports appeared in the newspapers for the rest
of that century. In July of 1883 the Clinton County Sheriff
saw "an enormous snake or water serpent" which he
estimated to be 25 to 35 feet long. In 1887 a farm boy spotted
the creature "making noises like a steamboat" a mile
out in the lake. That same year a group of picnickers near Charlotte,
Vermont, reported seeing an animal seventy-five feet long and
"big around as a barrel" out in the water.
All the reports of this era seem to picture the
creature as a long serpent with an arched back and a broad,
flat tail. In modern times there have also been similar reports
about Champ. In 1970 the creature was reported spotted by two
independent witnesses traveling on a ferry across the lake.
Richard Spear, one witness, said the animal was "dark brownish-olive"
in color with "the size and shape of a barrel in cross-section."
The other witness said the creature appeared to be "a large
snakelike creature, swimming with its head above water, held
as snakes do, with coils behind."
There have also been other reports that seem to
describe the creature resembling a plesiosaur.
Plesiosaurs were marine reptiles with long necks,a bulky body,
four fins and a long tail. They have been extinct since the
age of the dinosaurs ended some 65 million years ago.
Probably the most convincing piece of evidence
for the existence of Champ is the "Mansi Photograph"
taken in 1977.
In the 1970's a New York Social Studies teacher,
Joseph Zarzynski, took an interest in the Champ sightings and
formed the Lake Champlain Phenomena Investigation. Zarzynski
and his group organized observations of the lake, and explorations
with sonar and even a small robotic submarine. While some of
the sonar searches turned up some interesting blips, none of
them were conclusive proof of the creature.
In 1980 Zarzynski heard about a photograph taken
by Sandra Mansi a few years earlier. He approached Mansi and
her husband, saw the picture, and was impressed enough with
it to show to George Zug of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology
at the Smithsonian Institution. Zug said it didn't resemble
any known animal in the lake or anywhere else.
The Mansi photograph was taken in 1977. Sandra
and Anthony Mansi were visiting relatives in Vermont when they
stopped along Lake Champlain's edge near the Canadian border.
Sandra's children were playing in the lake while the adults
watched. While Anthony went back to the car, Sandra noticed
some "turbulence" in the water. As she watched, a
huge creature with a small head, long neck and a humped back
rose out of the lake.The head, which was eight feet above the
surface, moved from right to left. To Sandra it appeared to
resemble a prehistoric animal.
When Anthony returned, he saw it too. Alarmed
for Sandra and the children's sale, he and got them out of the
water and up the six-foot lake bank. It was at this point Sandra
took the photograph with her Instamatic camera. Moments later
the creature seemed to sink back into the lake, perhaps startled
by a motorboat that was approaching. The whole sighting lasted
six or seven minutes.
The Mansis', fearing ridicule, never publicized
what they had seen, but put the photo into their family album.
The negative got lost over the years. A friend who saw it eventually
Zarzynski also showed the photo to B. Roy Frieden
of the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center. Frieden
determined that the photo was not doctored by pasting one image
on top of another. Another expert, Paul LeBlond, from the University
of British Columbia, estimated from the surrounding wave sizes,
that the object in the picture was between twenty-four and seventy-eight
feet in length.
people think "Champ" is a plesiosaur that
escaped extinction (Copyright Lee
Investigations continue at Lake Champlain. Cryptozoologist
Roy Mackal visited the lake in 1981 and suggested the creature
might be a surviving zeuglodon (also
known as a Basilosaurus). Thiis a primitive form of whale which
had a long snakelike body that would match the description of
many of the reports, but not the Mansi photograph. The fossils
of such a creature, thought long extinct, were discovered near
Charlotte, Vermont, just a few miles from the lake.
Skeptics point out that if there are monsters
in Lake Champlain, there must certainly be enough of them to
have a breeding population. This usually requires 50 adult creatures
for the group to survive even in the short run and 500 to keep
the population healthy over a long period. Could fifty large
lake monsters live year in and year out in Lake Champlain with
only a very occasional sighting? Skeptics argue that this is
Lake Champlain is very much like Loch Ness: It
is long, deep, narrow and cold. Scientists have discovered that
both bodies of water have an underwater wave called a seiche
that can throw debris from the bottom of the lake up to the
surface. Some skeptics think this may explain many of the monster
Whether Champ is a zeuglodon, plesiosaur, or seiche
wave, one thing remains certain. People living and visiting
Lake Champlain will continue to see things in the water and
wonder what they might be..
Copyright Lee Krystek, 2000.
All Rights Reserved.