Champ

Lake Champlain stretches 125 miles along the border of Vermont, New York, and Quebec, a glacially carved freshwater lake up to 400 feet deep and connected by the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence, and from there to the Atlantic. The indigenous Abenaki called the lake Petonbowk, meaning the waters between, and both the Abenaki and the neighboring Iroquois had oral traditions describing a large horned serpent or water-panther living in the lake. Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer for whom the lake is now named, recorded in his 1609 journal a sighting of a large serpent-like creature in the waters, though some modern scholars argue he was describing a longnose gar, a real fish that can exceed six feet in the lake.

The modern Champ phenomenon took shape in the late 19th century. In 1873, the New York Times reported that a railroad crew working along the lake had seen an enormous serpent. That same year, the steamship captain Daniel Merritt reported a 25 to 35 foot creature breaking the surface. P.T. Barnum offered a fifty thousand dollar reward for the body of the creature, a sum large enough to generate dozens of hopeful expeditions. Sightings continued through the 20th century, with reports clustering around Button Bay, Bulwagga Bay, and the waters off Port Henry, New York.

The most famous single piece of evidence is the Sandra Mansi photograph, taken in July 1977 at Saint Albans Bay, Vermont. Mansi, a local resident on a family outing, photographed what appears to be the head and curved neck of a large creature rising several feet out of the water roughly 150 feet from shore. The photograph was not published until 1981. It has been analyzed repeatedly by optical scientists, including J. Richard Greenwell and researchers at the University of Arizona, and while no analysis has identified the object as a known animal or proven it a hoax, the negative has been lost, complicating further study. The photograph remains one of the most studied pieces of cryptid visual evidence in North America.

Champ's political situation is unusually favorable. In 1982, the Vermont House of Representatives passed a resolution protecting any unknown animal in Lake Champlain from harm. In 1983, the New York State Assembly passed a similar resolution. The town of Port Henry has declared itself Champ's official home and holds an annual Champ Day festival. In the early 2000s, researchers from the Fauna Communications Research Institute recorded underwater sounds in the lake that they determined did not match any known species and resembled echolocation clicks. Whether these represent Champ, misidentified fish, or ambient lake acoustics has not been resolved, but the lake continues to produce new reports every summer, and no one has collected Barnum's century-and-a-half-old reward.