Do you believe in mythical monsters or think that stuff isn’t real? Regardless there is a mystery that has surrounded Lake Champlain for many years and we are going to tell you all about it.
Lake Champlain is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the US states of New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec. The New York portion of the Champlain Valley includes the eastern portions of Clinton County and Essex County. The roughly 120-mile-long freshwater lake briefly enjoyed the honor of becoming the sixth Great Lake before its title was stripped after just 18 days.
It’s a pretty big lake lots of fishing lots of boating and even has a ferry on it. Spoiler alert the ferry is not the mythical monster we are talking about. It’s not The Rock as the tooth fairy. It’s an actual ferry that you drive on and cut through the lake to get to NY or Vermont faster. While on the ferry it’s not uncommon for people to look around and try to spot the Mythical Monster known as Champ!
You might have never heard of Champ but you probably have heard of its counterpart, or cousin, hell maybe even brother or sister the Loch Ness Monster. You know Nessie the mythical monster that is said to be living in the Scottish Highlands. Much like Nessie Champ is said to be living in Lake Champlain.
Champ or Champy was first documented in 1609 when Samuel D. Champlain was exploring Lake Champlain and talking to the local Indian tribe, the Abenaki Indian tribe and they noted that there was this creature they called Tatoskok and Samuel D. Champlain never saw it, but in his journal he wrote and described it and had a picture of it.
It was even reported that PT Barnum (call back to episode 10 The Greatest Show On Earth Train Crash) put out a ransom of $50,000 to bring back the carcass of Champ. It would have been a great addition to his “freak show”. So that brings several people to the area looking to cash in on this monster ransom which adds even more hype buzz and folklore to Champ.
There have been so many sightings through the years and some of them have even been documented. There is also an iconic picture that has been seen and dissected by so many that we will make sure to put it on our social media. Sightings date back to the 1600s and even the present day. Here is a story from a couple and their sighting in the 80s.
In the summer of 1981 or 1982 (Lackey and her husband, Steve, disagree on the exact year), the newly-married couple was enjoying a cruise on their boat on a hot afternoon with “no waves, no wake, no wind, no storm,” according to Lackey. As they coasted near the New York shoreline just north of Bulwagga Bay, Lackey says something silently and unexpectedly came out of the water.
“It wasn’t a hose, it wasn’t an eel … it was something that humped,” she says, making a cresting, wave-like gesture with her hands. “It was rounded and you couldn’t see under it. It came up and down into the water again, and then there were two of them, and then there were three of them! And I said [to Steve], ‘That’s Champ!’ He just sat there and looked at me and he said, ‘Hmm, perhaps we should go home.’”
Lackey laughs and slaps the table for emphasis. “I tell anybody who will listen because I know what I saw.”
The next famous account appears in the Plattsburgh Republican newspaper (really another episode where we bring them up weirdly) on Saturday, July 24, 1819. Captain Crum was aboard a scow on Bulwagga Bay the previous Thursday morning when he reported a black monster, about 187 feet long and with a head resembling a sea horse, that reared more than 15 feet out of the water. He claimed the monster he saw had three teeth, eyes the color of a "pealed [sic] onion," a white star on its forehead, and "a belt of red around the neck." This is a remarkable level of detail concerning an object that was, according to the witness, some 200 yards away.
1873 was a busy year for Champ. A New York Times story reported that a railroad crew had seen the head of an "enormous serpent" in Lake Champlain, with bright silvery scales that glistened in the sun. Both the men and the monster parted ways at that point.
In July of that same year, Clinton County Sheriff Nathan H. Mooney reported an "enormous snake or water serpent" he thought was 25 to 35 feet long. Then in August, the steamship W.B. Eddy encountered Champ by running into it. The ship nearly turned over, according to the tourists on board.
By 1992, sightings totaled 180, with approximately 600 people claiming to have seen Champ all over the lake. Eager children crossing the lake by ferry often look for the lake monster, hoping for a sighting. A few people even managed to snap photos of what they claimed to be Champ. Much like his mythical relative at Loch Ness, Champ's sightings and photos are much debated and analyzed.
The 21st century saw a new wave of sightings, which numbered in the double digits each summer and prompted interest from Japanese television, the Today Show, NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, and Fox Network's Sightings. In 2003, the Discovery Channel did a special on "America's Loch Ness Monster" in the wake of three new sightings by June of that year. Champ has been written about in Discover magazine and in scholarly journals.
Although many people are skeptical of sightings, Champ is now protected by law on both sides of Lake Champlain, just in case.
1981 — Port Henry, New York, declares their waters a safe haven for Champ
1982 — The state of Vermont passes a House Resolution protecting Champ
1983 — In New York, both the state Assembly and the state Senate pass resolutions protecting Champ
Celebrating Champ
Today, Champ is celebrated, whether he exists or not. In Vermont, a baseball team is known as the Lake Monsters, with a Champ mascot. A Champ statue sits by the water in Port Henry, NY, and images of the monster — looking cheerful and definitely not scary — appear throughout the area, at local businesses, on t-shirts, in children's books, and more. A historic marker even sits on the shore in Clinton County, in honor of everyone's favorite lake monster.
So that leaves us to ask Do you believe in mythical monsters or think that stuff isn’t real?
“You do know that I can’t just will mythical beings into existence, right?”
“Not with that attitude, you can’t.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Lost Souls
Sources:
Wikipedia