Lake Monster Mysteries (11 page)

Some have suggested that the object can't be a log because that possibility was ruled out by “expert analysis.” This misunderstanding may be the result of journalistic errors. For example, a United Press International report asserted that “experts at the University of Arizona say an analysis indicated the picture is real and shows the image of a live animal” (Lake's Champ 1981). According to another ill-informed writer, “The photograph was examined at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, and investigators at both schools said it showed some sort of animal life. While it was confirmed the creature in the Mansi photo was alive, its identity was not confirmed” (Sandra Mansi photograph 2002). Yet these findings don't appear in Frieden's report or anywhere else. What Frieden wrote was that the object didn't “appear to be a montage or superposition” and that it was almost certainly a real object in the lake; there was no statement to the effect that the object had been confirmed to be alive.

Its also fair to ask why the object looks like Champ in the first place. After all, this is supposedly the best image of the creature, and many eyewitness descriptions of Champ don't resemble the object in the Mansi photo at all. I showed a copy of the Mansi photo to Norm St. Pierre, our Lake Champlain guide, and asked him what it looked like. “It looks like Champ,” he replied. I realized that it does indeed, and that assumption feeds a sort of loop whereby uncorroborated and uncertain evidence is used to support other suppositions: we don't know what Champ looks like, but if we see an unusual photo of something in the water that we can't explain, we're happy to call it Champ. Thus unverified reports, mistakes, and misidentifications all get thrown into the mix, with little justification for inclusion or exclusion. When I pressed St. Pierre for his best non-Champ guess, he replied, “Maybe a drifting tree” (St. Pierre 2002). He estimated that the object was about four feet out of the water, closely matching the estimate we eventually calculated.

Sonar searches of Lake Champlain have, on rare occasions, picked up readings of seemingly strange or large objects at depth, but none have been verified as Champ signatures. These readings often occur after weeks or months of surveying, and given that much time and opportunity, the odds are good that some sort of unusual reading will occur just by chance.

One problem with this sort of evidence is that sonar readings are imprecise and ambiguous by nature.
Fortean Times
writer Mike Dash (1997), reviewing the use of sonar in the search for lake monsters, found that “such evidence will always be ambiguous because (a) it is difficult to be sure any given contact is not a false echo produced by sound waves bouncing off lake walls underwater; and (b) such contacts are not absolute indicators of size, but merely indicate variations in density: a small fish with a large swim-bladder can produce strong echoes.” As one sonar technician told me during our search of Lake Okanagan (detailed in
chapter 7
), “sonar is half image and half interpretation.” Said another
during our investigation of Lake Simcoe in Canada, “The sooner you understand that a fish finder will lie to you, the sooner you understand a fish finder” (Clayton 2005). Because of this inherent ambiguity, most researchers emphasize other types of evidence.

In June 2003, a group of researchers from a company called Fauna Communications Research claimed that they had detected a series of strangely high-pitched ticking and chirping noises, akin to those made by a beluga whale or a dolphin, in Lake Champlain. The team, led by Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, was at the lake with a Discovery Channel documentary crew. (In fact, Joe and I reproduced some of the lake experiments described here for the same crew; the resulting show,
America's Loch Ness Monster,
aired October 26, 2003.) The documentary group followed von Muggenthaler on several unsuccessful expeditions, violating scientific protocol at least once for the film crew's benefit.

The team's announcement led to media speculation that solid evidence had finally been found for Champ; a local newspaper headlined, “Champ Might Be for Real after All.” Although von Muggenthaler declined to guess the size or shape of the creature—or confirm that it was indeed Champ—she said, “What we got was a biological creature creating biosonar at a level that only a few underwater species can do.” The sounds were presumed to be the result of a type of echolocation, the means by which some animals seek food. The biosonar, she said, was ten times louder than that of any known species of fish in the lake. And although mechanical devices and fish finders can simulate the readings, von Muggenthaler stated that the irregular sequence they detected ruled out such an explanation. “Man-made sonar or fish-finders send out a signal that is very regular, and entirely different than biologically produced sonar” (von Muggenthaler 2004b).

The fact that von Muggenthaler suggested that the sound resembled a beluga whale is interesting. Though no beluga whales have been reported in Lake Champlain, they do exist in the St. Lawrence Seaway, which is linked to the lake. I contacted von Muggenthaler to learn more about her findings and to ascertain in what ways the sounds are different from those made by whales and dolphins. She explained:

When analyzing animal vocalizations, one looks at basically three components, frequency, amplitude, and time.… The differences between the [Lake Champlain] signal and [signals of] dolphin, killer whale, and beluga whale have to do with frequency, some higher, some lower; amplitude (killer whales are louder, beluga and dolphin are less loud); and, with regard to time, the Lake Champlain signal fell somewhere in the middle of these three. … I have no idea what is in Lake Champlain. What I do know is that to date, animals that we know of that use echolocation underwater are carnivores, have impressive communication centers in the brain, and inhabit marine environs, not freshwater. (von Muggenthaler 2004a)

It's unclear what to make of this evidence. As of this writing, the recordings haven't been fully analyzed, and the findings haven't appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. Obviously, anomalous readings by themselves don't indicate the presence of a monster. At several points in their search, strange biosonar readings yielded no creature sightings at all. The Discovery Channel documentary shows von Muggenthaler's crew detecting an unusual high-frequency pitch and immediately dispatching two divers to investigate the source of the sound. If unusual readings did in fact indicate the presence of a monstrous creature, the divers presumably would have seen it. Yet despite an hour's search, the divers “saw nothing strange, just the usual fish.”

I don't flatly discount the idea of large, unknown creatures in Lake Champlain; it's possible that—despite a nearly complete lack of good evidence—such creatures exist. However, given what we know about the Mansi photograph (the best evidence to date) and its circumstances, of all the possible things the object could be—animal, tree, or something else—the least likely explanation is an unknown creature that has managed to elude detection for decades. It's probably a familiar feature on the lake seen and photographed from an unfamiliar angle.

It's interesting to note that in the nearly three decades since the Mansi photo was taken, that image remains the best. Lake Champlain has had a dramatic increase in the traffic on and population around the lake; cameras are cheaper, better, and more widely available than ever before. If a group of giant unknown creatures is in fact living in the lake, it seems odd that another one hasn't been better photographed since then. There is also the fact that many people who have spent large amounts of time searching in and on the lake have never seen Champ. For every old-timer who swears he's seen the monster, there's another who has spent just as much time on the lake and never seen a thing.

At Lake Champlain (as at Loch Ness and Lake Okanagan), there is an economic incentive to keep the lake monster legend alive. There is an annual Champ Day event and parade at Port Henry, New York. In most of the communities around the lake, Champ is regarded as a regional mascot, a friendly lake creature all their own. Champ images can be found on the sides of buildings, on signs, and elsewhere.

The legend of Champ has also been kept alive by newspapers eager to exploit the story, court readers, and drum up tourism. One such paper was the
Burlington Free Press:
“Whenever the Champ seemed destined to be regulated
[sic]
to the realm of mythology, it was E. F. Crane, editorial writer for the
Burlington Free Press,
who would come to the mobster's
[sic]
rescue. Wrote Mr. Crane, ‘This effort to debunk, eliminate and permanently bury the Lake Champlain Monster will not work. … If Loch Ness can have its Monster and capitalize on it year after year, is there any reason why Lake Champlain can't have one too?'” (Furlow 1977, 61).

Robert Bartholomew, a sociologist who has lived on the shore of Lake Champlain for years, believes that the continued interest in Champ serves several symbolic functions for the New York and Vermont residents living near the lake:

Champ's very existence and persistence over centuries in the wake of demanding evidence from scientists who require conclusive proof, serves as an anti-scientific symbol.… Champ is in some ways a reflection of the region's collective imagination.
Given the widespread belief in Champ across the region, in the absence of unambiguous proof of its reality, the ongoing search may tell us more about the hunters than the hunted. In this regard, the Champ mystery is not likely to be solved by scouring Lake Champlain in hopes of seeing a prehistoric aquatic creature, but by turning away from the lake and examining the human mind, and what deep-seated psychological needs are being fulfilled. (Bartholomew 2003).

Bartholomew believes that Champ is, among other things, an environmental symbol highlighting the delicate balance that exists in nature and the need to protect and preserve endangered species. This view is supported by the unanimous efforts of Champ proponents to protect the lake environment (Joe Zarzynski pushed through a government resolution protecting the creature; Sandra Mansi often speaks of the importance of protecting the lake's ecology, as does Dennis Jay Hall).

Piece by piece, the Champ mythos comes apart. The original sighting by Samuel de Champlain has been shown to be a fiction, the result of journalistic error. The contention of a long tradition of Champ sightings has been disproved. No bodies or bones have been found. The object in the Mansi photograph, the best photo of any lake monster anywhere, is revealed though field research to be less than half the size originally claimed, and an analysis of the account and the photo show that the object didn't act or look like an animal. All we are left with are occasional sightings of unknown—but not unexplainable—objects in the lake and the firm belief that Champ lives in its depths. Some of those looking for Champ will continue to find it; all the evidence they need can be found in and around the lake's cold waters.       

Bartholomew, Robert. 2003. Personal communication, February 6.

Binns, Ronald. 1984.
The Loch Ness mystery solved.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Blackman, W. Haden. 1998.
The field guide to North American monsters.
New York: Random House, 54-56.

Champ unmasked. N.d.
Plattsburgh Press-Republican
newspaper clipping, ca. 1984, with photo of driftwood resembling prototypical Champ monster.

Clark, Jerome, 1983. America's water monsters: The new evidence. In
Mysteries and monsters of the sea: True stories from the files of Fate magazine.
1988. Edited by Frank Spaeth. New York: Gramercy Books, 55-64.

_______. 1993.
Unexplained! 347 strange sightings, incredible occurrences, and puzzling physical phenomena.
Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 61–67.

Clark, Jerome, and Nancy Pear. 1995.
Strange and unexplained happenings: When nature breaks the rules of science.
Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research.

Clayton, Jerry. 2005. Interview by Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell, August 27.

Coleman, Loren. 1983.
Mysterious America.
Winchester, Mass.: Faber and Faber, 85–92.

Dash, Mike. 1997. Lake monsters.
Fortean Times
102 (September): 28.

Forrest, Thomas H. 2002. Interview by Joe Nickell, August 3.

Frieden, B. Roy. 1981. Interim report: Lake Champlain “monster” photograph.
Appendix 2
in Zarzynski, Joseph. 1984.
Champ: Beyond the legend.
Port Henry, N.Y.: Bannister Publications.

Furlow, Herbert M. 1977. Has anybody seen the Champ of Lake Champlain? In
Secrets of Loch Ness,
No. 1. New York: Histrionic Publishing Co.

Godin, Alfred J. 1983.
Wild mammals of New England.
Chester, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 173.

Gould, Rupert T. 1976.
The Loch Ness monster and others.
Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press.

Grant, John. 1992.
Monster mysteries.
Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell Books.

Green, Susan. 1999. Lake creature eludes centuries of searchers.
Burlington Free Press,
June 25.
www.s-t.com/daily/07-99/072599/c03wn084.htm
.

Greenwell, J. Richard. 1992. Quoted on
Unsolved Mysteries,
National Broadcasting
Company, September 23.

Hall, Dennis Jay. 2000.
Champ quest: The ultimate search.
Jericho, Vt.: Essence of
Vermont.

_______. 2003. Personal communication, February 1.

Hollowell, Laura. 2002. Interview by Joe Nickell, August 24.

“John,”
Valcour
ferry deckhand. 2002. Interview by Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford, August 26.

Kirk, John. 1998.
In the domain of the lake monsters.
Toronto: Key Porter Books.

Kojo, Yasushi. 1991. Some ecological notes on reported large unknown animals in Lake Champlain.
Cryptozoology
10:42–45.