Champ

Champ is the nickname for the Lake Champlain monster, a creature that has been reported more than three hundred times in Lake Champlain, a large, deep, cold body of water that separates the states of Vermont and New York. Sightings are particularly numerous in Bulwagga Bay, located on the New York side of the lake. Experts on Champ disagree on when it was first sighted. Some say it was in 1609, when explorer Samuel de Champlain wrote in his journal about seeing a monster in the lake that appeared to have the body of a snake and the head of a horse; however, many cryptozoologists believe that Champlain was actually seeing a large fish, perhaps a sturgeon. Other sightings of what was apparently the same creature Champlain saw occurred between 1810 and 1873. But beginning in 1873, newspaper reports described a creature that clearly was more reptilian than fish: a giant silver-scaled serpent 25 to 40 feet (7.6 to 12m) long, its body 18 to 20 inches (46 to 51cm) thick, its head at least 20 inches (51cm) in diameter, moving across the water’s surface at a speed of approximately 10 miles per hour (16kph). Among the first of these reports was an August 1873 story in which the crew of a steamship claimed to have tracked the creature and shot it, whereupon it sank. Despite many searches, however, no one discovered the body, and sightings of the creature continued.

During the 1970s, descriptions of the creature changed slightly. Now Champ was said to have not only a horselike head and snakelike body but two bumps or humps that thrust about three feet (.9m) above the surface of the water. In July 1977 a family saw this creature on the lake somewhere near Saint Alban’s Bay and the Canadian border; the mother of the family, Sandra Mansi, took a photograph of it before it disappeared beneath the surface. The image and surrounding waves in the Mansi photograph suggest that this Champ, which had a humped back, was anywhere from 24 to 78 feet (7.3 to 23.8m) long, and according to Mansi, its head appeared to rise as much as 8 feet (2.4m) out of the water.

For a time the Mansi family kept this photograph, and their experience, to themselves, fearing ridicule, but in 1980 they shared it with Joseph W. Zarzynski, a schoolteacher who showed it to some experts in zoology, biology, oceanography, photo analysis, and other disciplines. As a result of their analyses, Zarzynski concluded that the photograph was genuine, a position he then argued in a 1984 book titled Champ—Beyond the Legend. In support of this view, many people have noted that the Mansis were credible witnesses without any motive to perpetrate a hoax. Nonetheless, sceptics believe that, for whatever reason, the Mansis somehow faked the photograph.

Comparisons between the photograph and one supposedly taken of Scotland’s Loch Ness monster show many similarities. Consequently, some people believe that Champ is either the same species or one related to the Loch Ness monster. One theory is that both animals are some kind of plesiosaur, a marine reptile thought to have become extinct millions of years ago.

SEE ALSO:

• lake monsters;
• Loch Ness monsters

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning