Lake monster still a mystery after hundreds of years

People still often see the monster, but some are still skeptical

Story and photo by Kyler Klix

Water can be a mysterious place. It’s hard to tell what lurks beneath the surface, especially when there are hundreds of feet to the bottom. The deep waters of Lake Champlain have been a mysterious place for hundreds of years. One legend that lives in the lake is the story of Champ. It is unknown whether Champ exists in the lake, although hundreds of people claim that they have seen something swimming in the water resembling the sea monster.

Lohr McKinstry has written over 100 articles about the topic of Champ for the Press-Republican for more than 20 years. He said there are often a few sightings every year. Sometimes there are more than others, but there is always a lookout for Champ.

"There's certainly something big in there"

"It seems like every year there is a sighting or two,"he said. "Some years there’s a bunch, this last year has seen very few.

McKinstry said many of his articles were about different people and organizations performing different tests on the lake to see if they notice a large creature somewhere underneath the surface.

Organizations such as Champquest began for people looking to discover the creature. Many programs have done specials on the creature as well, such as "Good Morning America," "Unsolved Mysteries," the Sci-fi channel’s "Monsterquest,"the Travel channel and the Discovery Channel.

Champ has been seen the most in Bulwagga Bay, located in Essex County, N.Y. This is the deepest part of the lake, and it is a less developed part of the lake where there are underwater caves. In Vermont, Champ has been seen the most in Button Bay, the deepest part of the lake that borders Vermont.

The first reported sighting of Champ was Samuel de Champlain when he first arrived to the lake in 1609. He noted that he saw something very large swimming in the water. There are different descriptions of what Champlain saw. Some say it was a 20-foot long serpentine creature with a head like a horse, McKinstry said.

Since Champlain made the first recorded sighting, there have been more than 300 sightings of the monster. The most recent sighting came in June 2009. There were sightings documented throughout the 1800’s and the 1900’s, but it was not until 1977 that a solid photograph was taken for proof.

Sandra Mansi was on driving along the lake on July 5, 1977. She made a stop at bluff overlooking the lake, and this is where she photographed something swimming in the water. After this photograph, there was push from both states on the sides of the lake to have a protection put in place for the creature based on how genuine the photograph looked. The protection was put in place in 1981 that made it illegal to harm Champ.

There has not been as strong of evidence for Champ that has shown as much detail as Mansi’s has, although a video taken by anglers Peter Bodette and his stepfather Dick Affolter made the story popular once it was shown on "Good Morning America" on February 22, 2006.

Frank Pabst, a retired captain and a marine consultant, has spent over 50 years on Lake Champlain. He scuba-dives into the lake for leisure, and he likes to explore under the water. He knows all about the many tales of Champ and the numbers of sightings.

He has never seen anything that could be Champ, and he is not too sure whether he believes the stories or not.

"We all saw something, but whatever it was left submerged"

"He could have a lot of places to hide," he said. "There’s certainly something big in there, but it could be an alligator gar, or a big muskellunge with lamprey eels attached to it."

An alligator gar is a species of fish that can get as big as 8 to 10 feet, and muskellunge is a fish that gets to about 5 feet long.

He once was part of a search for Champ, but it only produced a fuzzy image of something, which could be anything, he said.

"I’d love to see a photograph of the creature," he said.

One man who claimed to see the lake monster is sure of what he saw. Robert Pell-deChame saw it one day in 1986 while driving on Route 9N near Port Henry, which is where Bulwagga Bay is located. He had a passenger in the vehicle with him as well from Montreal, who did not know about any stories about a lake monster.

Pell-deChame described that he was driving at about 3 in the afternoon in mid July. He said the lake was very calm: "It looked like glass – so smooth, not a ripple in the water and not a cloud in the sky."

When he was driving over a hill that had a view of the lake, his passenger yelled aloud in French, "Jesus Christ what’s that?"

Pell-deChame looked over, and saw the tail end of something very big.

"I grew up on the lake and know distances and can adjust sizes,"he said. "The part I saw was enough for me to see how large it was."

Pell-deChame pulled over his car and got out to look at ripples in the lake, and four to five other cars behind him did the same thing, with all of the drivers with the same puzzled look on their faces.

"It was obvious to me why we we’re getting out of our cars,"he said. "We all saw something, but whatever it was left submerged."

When Pell-deChame’s passenger, who never heard of Champ, was trying to get some kind of explanation for it, Pell-deChampe told him: "I think we just saw a very famous creature from the lake."

What do you think is swimming around in Lake Champlain?