Champ is the lake monster said to live in Lake Champlain, the long lake shared by New York, Vermont and Quebec. With more than 300 reported sightings, a famous 1977 photograph, protective resolutions in two state legislatures and its own festival, Champ is North America’s best-known lake monster. Many popular accounts say that the explorer Samuel de Champlain saw it in 1609, but that story turns out to be a twentieth-century invention.[1]
| Location | Lake Champlain (New York, Vermont and Quebec), about 200 km long |
|---|---|
| Typical description | A long, dark animal with humps, sometimes with a long neck |
| Reported sightings | More than 300 since 1819 |
| Famous evidence | Sandra Mansi photograph, 1977 (published 1981) |
| Myth to discard | That Samuel de Champlain saw it in 1609 |
| Legal status | Protective resolutions in Vermont (1982) and New York (1983) |
| Leading explanations | Logs, large fish such as sturgeon and gar, swimming animals, waves |
The Samuel de Champlain myth
It is often said that Samuel de Champlain, who explored the lake in 1609, was the first European to see the monster. The earliest source for this claim is a 1970 issue of the magazine Vermont Life. Champlain’s own writings describe a large fish called the chaoufarou, which an 1878 translation identifies as a longnose gar, but there is no evidence that he described a monster.[1]
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), including the Mohawk, have traditions of giant serpents, and these are sometimes linked to Champ, but the modern legend is a product of nineteenth-century newspapers.[1]
Nineteenth-century reports
- 1819. The Plattsburgh Republican reported that a Captain Crum had seen a serpent about 187 feet long in Bulwagga Bay, at the southern end of the lake. The report’s author appears to have used a joking pseudonym.[1][3]
- 1873 and 1887. The showman P. T. Barnum offered rewards for the capture of the monster, dead or alive.[1]
- 1883. Sheriff Nathan Mooney reported a water serpent 25 to 30 feet long, prompting a wave of further reports.[1]
The Mansi photograph
In July 1977 Sandra Mansi took a photograph near St. Albans, Vermont, that appears to show a long neck and head rising from the water. It was published in The New York Times in 1981 and became the most famous image of Champ. Experts found no sign that it had been doctored, but could not tell whether the object was alive.[4]
Skeptical investigators noticed problems. The bay where it was taken is no more than about 14 feet deep, which Joe Nickell argued makes a giant animal very unlikely, and some have suggested the “neck” is a rising log or tree trunk, or that a sandbar is visible. Estimates of the object’s size have shrunk over the years from several meters to around two. Mansi said she had thrown away the negative and could not find the spot again.[1][2]
The Champ hunters and the law
In the 1980s the teacher Joseph Zarzynski founded the Lake Champlain Phenomena Investigation, which spent more than a decade on sonar surveys, surveillance, dives, hydrophone recordings and even submersible work. It collected hundreds of witness accounts and a few ambiguous sonar contacts, but no definitive evidence; along the way it located the wreck of a historic tugboat. Zarzynski’s book Champ: Beyond the Legend appeared in 1984.[2][4]
Zarzynski also campaigned to protect the animal. In 1980 the village of Port Henry, New York, barred harming lake monsters in its waters. In 1982 the Vermont House of Representatives passed a resolution protecting Champ, and in 1983 the New York legislature passed a resolution encouraging scientific study of unusual animals in the lake and protecting them from harm.[4][5]
What the sightings show
A 2023 analysis of more than 300 Champ reports by the data scientist Floe Foxon found that:[2]
- about 70 percent of sightings happened in summer, and more than 80 percent on calm water;
- almost every witness who described the color said the animal was dark;
- only about a quarter of witnesses described the animal’s shape at all, and over a quarter of reports resembled logs, swimming land animals, birds, fish or boats;
- sightings per year more than doubled in the years after the Mansi photo was published in 1981, then fell back to earlier levels by about 1988.
That jump suggests that publicity, and people watching the lake expecting to see Champ, shaped the number of reports.[2]
More recent evidence
- 2003. Underwater recordings made for a Discovery Channel program picked up clicks compared to the echolocation of belugas or dolphins, neither of which lives in the lake.[1]
- 2005. Two fishermen filmed a video that can be read either as a long-necked animal or as a fish or eel.[1]
- 2024. Drone footage of a large moving shape, filmed during the making of a documentary, went viral.[1]
Possible explanations
- Floating logs and debris, which can rise, roll and sink in the lake.
- Large fish. Lake sturgeon and longnose gar can be well over a meter long, and Champlain’s own “chaoufarou” was probably a gar.
- Swimming animals. Zarzynski’s team itself watched deer swimming across the lake; otters, beavers and birds in a line can look like humps.[2]
- Waves and wakes on a long, narrow lake where boat wakes and wind waves travel far.
Champ is also a beloved part of local life: Port Henry holds a “Champ Day” each August, a historical marker at Cumberland Head celebrates “Champy,” and the Vermont Lake Monsters baseball team uses Champ as its mascot.[1][5] For similar creatures, see the Loch Ness Monster and Ogopogo.
References
- “Champ (folklore),” Wikipedia, citing the Plattsburgh Republican (1819), Vermont Life (1970), J. Nickell (2003) and others.
- Floe Foxon, “What’s in Lake Champlain? Analysing historic sightings of the cryptid known as ‘Champ’,” The Skeptic (7 June 2023).
- “Legends and Lore marker honors Lake Champlain’s Champy,” WAMC (9 July 2019).
- Tim Clark, “The Lake Champlain Monster Believer,” Yankee Magazine (June 1986).
- Joseph W. Zarzynski, Champ: Beyond the Legend (1984).
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression.