Video Revives Lake Champlain Monster Mystery

 

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To date, the most famous photograph of "Champ" is a 1977 image taken by Bristol, Vt., resident Sandra Mansi and published in Time magazine and The New York Times.

Lake Creature Photographed in 1977

The daughter of a Vermont fisherman, Mansi, now 66, said she grew up hearing the stories of the lake monster but "didn't believe it anymore than I did the tooth fairy."

But while picnicking with her family one afternoon on the shores of Lake Champlain, Mansi and her family saw what they thought was a head and neck emerge from the water.

"I'm turned around and I'm looking at it and my knees gave out," she said. "At this point, the rationalization in my mind is that it's Champ."

Although Mansi didn't see the creature swimming, she said the subject in Olsen's video appears to have a similarly shaped head. The neck, however, seems longer than the one from her memory.

She has never spoken with Olsen but said, "I would love to welcome him to the club. It's a very small, exclusive club.

"For 30 years, I've been telling people that the lake holds a gift," she said. "It's just more proof that there is something there and we need to preserve the lake."

Biologists, Skeptics Say It's Local Wildlife

But area biologists aren't convinced the creature in the video is anything more exotic than the local wildlife.

"My guess is that it's a decent-sized animal, probably a deer or moose," said Professor Charles Kilpatrick, a biologist at the University of Vermont.

From watching the video, he guessed that a tired mammal was struggling to get its head out of the water.

Ben Radford, managing editor of the magazine The Skeptical Inquirer and co-author of "Lake Monster Mysteries," has investigated claims of lake monsters across the world and is convinced that the video shows nothing more than an elk or deer in the water.

It's ignorance, not evidence, that continues to fuel the myth of lake monsters, he said. Just as unknown creatures on land become "Bigfoot," and unidentified objects in the sky become UFOs, mysterious characters in the water become lake monsters.

"It shouldn't be surprising that people are still seeing things in the lake," Radford said. "It requires little or nothing -- anytime anyone sees anything that they can't identify on the lake, it becomes Champ."

In previous investigations of sightings on Lake Champlain, he said, floating logs, waves and other animals have been revealed as "Champ."

No Hard Evidence Supports Existence of 'Champ'

"There's no hard evidence," he said. "No teeth, bones, skeletons, or dead ones that wash up. At some point you ask, Why is that?'"

And, he added, it's not like there can just be one. A whole breeding population of Champs would have to exist.

But despite the dearth of evidence, the myth of the Lake Champlain monster persists. The creature has even become something of a local mascot, appearing on endless tourist T-shirts and with a minor league baseball team named for it.

"They make a lot of money on their Champ T-shirts, Champ boards and sandwiches," Radford said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that but there's definitely an incentive to keeping the idea alive."

But it's not just economics that drives the legend of the lake monster.

In 1982, the Vermont House of Representatives went so far as to pass a resolution protecting Champ "from any willful act resulting in death, injury or harassment." The New York State Assembly has adopted a similar measure.