Evidence of Champ? An overview of Lake Champlain's most famous sightings

Is there a prehistoric serpent monster lurking in the depths of Lake Champlain?

Over the past centuries, there have been over 300 alleged sightings of the Lake Champlain monster known as Champ, according to an article by the New England Historical Society. Cryptozoologist Nick Valenzuela estimates that number to be closer to 600.

Valenzuela was recently featured in "Lake Champlain Monster” — an episode of the CW Network TV show "Mysteries Decoded" that explores the legend of Champ that aired on Aug. 10. Here are some of the most famous Champ sightings.

The famous photo

On July 5, 1977, Bristol resident Sandra Mansi was trying to have a peaceful vacation day with her family.

Resting on the shore of Lake Champlain, Mansi was watching her kids splash around in the water when she noticed a "creature" emerge above the lake surface, according to a 2003 interview with Mansi by the Burlington Free Press.

"I think I saw some kind of dinosaur that day," Mansi said. "It wasn't a fish. No fish can hold itself up six or eight feet out of the water."

Before the creature disappeared below the water surface, Mansi took out her Kodak Instamatic and captured possibly the most famous photographic evidence of Champ to date. The photo is blurry, but definitively shows something serpent-like floating on the surface of the lake.

The image was analyzed by the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center, which confirmed that the photo had not been tampered with — but could not identify the subject captured in the photo, according to a 1981 New York Times article.

Since then, others have claimed to capture photographic evidence of Champ, including a 2005 video of mysterious large ripples in the lake taken by Charlotte's Peter Bodette. Still, Mansi's photograph has remained one of the most intriguing and controversial arguments for the existence of Champ yet.

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Older than the Loch Ness Monster

Champ is sometimes referred to as "America's Loch Ness Monster," but its legend predates that of the Scottish serpent, according to a 2012 book by historian Robert Bartholomew.

"Between the 1870s and early 1930s, the most famous lake serpent in the world was the Champlain Monster," writes Bartholomew. "[A]ccounts of his antics were reprinted in hundreds of newspapers across the country and around the world."

The year 1873 was a particularly busy year for Champ. That August, a Burlington marble mill worker named J.P. Farmer told the Burlington Free Press he saw a "marine monster" while fishing in Shelburne Bay. Farmer described the monster as "an animal with a brownish body, seemingly from twelve to fifteen feet in length, and having a large head in shape like a bull-pout’s."

That same year, Champ was reportedly spotted by railroad workers, the Clinton County sheriff, and tourists aboard the steamship W.B. Eddy, who claimed they were nearly knocked overboard by the lake monster, according to a 2017 article by the Adirondacks newspaper Sun Community News.

These sightings caught the interest of P.T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, who in August of 1873 posted a bounty of "$50,000 for the hide of the great Champlain Serpent" in the New York newspaper Whitehall Times.

Abenaki perspectives

The first sightings of Champ are sometimes credited to French colonizer Samuel de Champlain, whose writings describe fish of up to 10 feet long with "sharp, dangerous teeth." Bartholomew argues in his book "The Untold Story of Champ" that Champlain's descriptions were most likely of gar fish — and certainly were not the first recordings of serpentine monsters in the lake.

"Native Americans living along Lake Champlain told stories of a mysterious 'horned serpent' that was said to reside in the lake," wrote Bartholomew. "The Abenaki of what is now southern Quebec and northern Vermont had a name for an aquatic beast they called Gitaskogak, Gitaskog, or Peetaskog, the “great snake” that was believed to reside in Bitaw-bagok — the Abenaki name for Lake Champlain."

According to Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation, the creature known today as "Champ" was created by a giant by the name of Oodzee-hozo, or Odzihozo.

The giant "created an underwater serpent," Stevens said in a 2019 video with UVM Extension. "[H]e blew into it, and it became a magical being. So that way, it could patrol the waterways, and report back to him, and protect the lake."

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The importance of Champ

The existence of Champ is a hot topic of debate at the ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, according to Middlebury College student Francis Shiner, who recently completed an internship at the Burlington aquarium.

While at ECHO, Shiner has heard theories ranging from the fantastical (Champ is a 60 million-year-old prehistoric reptile) to the pragmatic (Champ is just a sturgeon). Sturgeon are an endangered species of fish native to Lake Champlain that can reach 150 years of age and weigh 310 pounds, according to a 2016 report by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.

Shiner's view is that it doesn't really matter what Champ really is.

"I don't know what species Champ would be. I think it's mostly just fun," Shiner said. "Part of the fun of having the Champ myth is that you get people to think more about the lake that we all live so close to. And that sort of invites you to think more about like, 'How do we take care of the lake?' and like, 'What's this type of fish? How do we make sure that it's safe and doesn't become endangered?'"

Contact April Fisher at amfisher@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AMFisherMedia

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This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: VT top sightings of Champ the Lake Monster