Lake Monster Mysteries (10 page)

Figure 2.10
In field experiments on Lake Champlain, investigator Benjamin Radford
holds a 3-foot marker at 150 feet. Using this image, the “monster” in the Mansi photo can be measured. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Size.
The object's actions seem to be distinctly nonliving, but if it really is the monstrous size suggested, a lake creature remains a possibility. Many analyses had been conducted to determine the object's size (Mansi said fifteen to twenty feet; LeBlond suggested sixteen to fifty-six). If valid, these estimates would suggest a lake monster, but the measurements were indirect and fraught with error. The lack of reference objects and known distances makes the task formidable. However, the analysis can be approached from a different angle: Although we don't know the absolute size of—or distance to—the object, we do know what Sandra Mansi reported as the size and distance. With those variables fixed, it is a fairly straightforward process to determine whether the object is the size she (and others) claim.

To help judge the validity of the Mansi photo, we carried out some experiments during our expedition to Lake Champlain. Following an unfruitful attempt to locate the original site, we chose a spot on the lake in the same general area. Joe Nickell stood approximately 8 feet above the waterline; this height is similar to that reported by Sandra Mansi (kneeling down atop a 6-foot ledge). I entered the lake holding a 3-foot black-and-white scale marker, measured off in 1-foot lengths. Photographs (using the same type of camera Mansi used in 1977—a Kodak Instamatic, fixed-focus 110) were taken at 50-foot intervals, ending up 150 feet from shore (
figure 2.10
). The distances were measured directly, calibrated using a synthetic string to avoid any stretching in the water. Joe also took duplicate photos with his own 35 mm camera (those reproduced here). For comparison, we verified that both cameras were of the same focal length.

With the camera at the height Mansi claimed (about 8 to 9 feet) and the marker in the water at the distance she claimed (150 feet), this should allow us to measure the size of an object in that scale. Any object of a claimed size at a certain distance (at a given focal length) will take up a measurable space in the print. We measured the size of the I-foot
scale at 150 feet on our photograph, marked that, and transferred the measurement to the Mansi image scaled to the same size. For greatest accuracy, I carefully measured the Champ object in comparison to the original photo in its entirety, not the magnified and cropped commercial version that appears in books and magazines (and is reproduced here).

Figure 2.11
A six-foot “Champ” neck rises out of Lake Champlain. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Unfortunately for those claiming that the Mansi object is huge, the numbers don't add up. All the previous estimates of the object's size were dramatically overstated. The “neck” sticking out of the water is nowhere near the previous estimates of 6 to 8 feet or more. Instead, the object is just over 3 feet out of the water, and both segments together are about 7 feet across. (A less accurate comparison using the least-cropped publicly available version of the photo, in the April 1998 issue of
Discover
magazine, produces a neck height of about 4 feet.) To double-check our results, we also worked backward, using a photograph of a mock Champ neck and head held 6 feet above the water at 150 feet (
figure 2.11
). If Mansi's estimates are correct, the neck height in the two
photos should look very similar. Using that scale for measurement, we verified that our estimate was indeed accurate.

Note that our analysis is based on Sandra Mansi's own estimates and testimony. Because the object in the photo is inconsistent with the claimed height, those who wish to maintain that the object is 6 feet or taller (and 15 feet or longer) will have to decide which part of Mansi's story is false (or inaccurate). There is no way to be sure exactly how large the object is, but estimates of the distance and the size can't both be correct; either one—or both—must be wrong. Since the publication of our results, I have been contacted by two other researchers who independently arrived at similar estimates regarding the object's size.

At least one researcher, J. Richard Greenwell (1992), concluded that Mansi's 150-foot distance estimate is correct: “we concluded that that object, whatever it is, was there in the lake at that estimated distance.” The most likely explanation is that the Mansis simply thought the object was bigger than it was. This effect is well known in eyewitness reports; Zarzynski (1988a, 109) himself warns about it: “many estimates
of length tend to be overstated.” Yasushi Kojo (1991), another Champ researcher, also states that “the sizes of the animals are frequently overestimated in sighting reports.”

Figure 2.12
The heavily wooded shores of Lake Champlain offer an explanation
for the many logs and tree stumps in and around the lake. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

This revelation sheds new light on the object in the Mansi photograph. With the size approximately half that of all previous estimates, the range of possible candidates becomes far larger—including a large bird, a known animal, or a floating tree stump.

My Conclusions.
It seems clear that the object had none of the characteristics of a living animal. The object that Mansi saw and photographed, I believe, was almost certainly a log or tree stump that happened to surface at an angle that made it difficult to identify. Sandra Mansi's own description of the object's texture supports this conclusion: “The texture looks like bark, like crevice-y.” How could someone mistake a tree for a living creature? For anyone knowledgeable about eyewitness testimony, it's not difficult to imagine.

The case of another unknown animal sighting is instructive. In March 1986, Anthony Wooldridge, an experienced hiker in the Himalayas,
saw what he thought was a Yeti (a Bigfoot-like creature) standing in the snow near a ridge about five hundred feet away. He described the figure as having a head that was “large and squarish,” and the body “seemed to be covered with dark hair.” It didn't move or make noise, but Wooldridge saw odd tracks in the snow that seemed to lead toward the figure. He took two photos of the creature, which were later analyzed and shown to be genuine and undoctored. Many in the Bigfoot community seized on the Wooldridge photos as clear evidence of a Yeti, including John Napier, an anatomist and anthropologist who had served as the Smithsonian Institution's director of primate biology. The next year, researchers returned to the spot and found that Wooldridge had simply seen a dark rock outcropping against the snow that looked vertical from his position (Wooldridge 1987).

Figure 2.13
Many pieces of driftwood resemble a lake monster's head and neck.
(Photo by Benjamin Radford)

Several researchers have suggested visual explanations of the object in the Mansi photo. In one case (seen in a 2003 Discovery Channel documentary), a researcher compared the image's silhouette to various animals and objects, such as a jumping fish, a bird, or a tree stump. I found his (failed) attempt at duplicating a possible tree stump rather unimpressive, so I created a scale model of a tree stump that, from certain angles, might resemble the object Mansi saw and photographed (see the results in
appendix 3
). Though the shape doesn't exactly match the Mansi image, it clearly demonstrates one possibility.

Driftwood and logs are common in and around Lake Champlain. Much of the shoreline is heavily wooded, and washed-up driftwood can be found littered along the shore (
figures 2.12
and
2.13
). Many of these logs are roughly the size and shape of long, sinewy creatures; it doesn't take much imagination to see how some of the thousands of logs, trees, and stumps along the lake's nearly six hundred miles of shoreline could be mistaken for a living creature if roiled up by waves and currents.

There is another compelling reason to suspect that many of the sightings (including Mansi's) are in fact logs: Lake Champlain has a large and powerful seiche. While the surface of the lake remains calm, an enormous underwater wave—as large as three hundred feet high—can bounce back and forth between the shores. Seiches can occur in just about any body of water, but as writer Dick Teresi (1998) points out,
“the ideal lake for really big seiches would be one like Champlain.… long, narrow, and deep, and routinely subjected to a severe winter so that the lower level of water can stay cold while the upper layer warms up in the spring.” The seiche in Lake Champlain can easily bring debris, logs, and vegetation from the lake's bottom up to the surface.

How could a sunken log act like a living creature, suddenly surfacing for a few minutes and then sinking again? Jerry Monk, a British hydrographic surveyor, provides an expert's opinion on the matter:

When a piece of wood is first immersed in water it has many gas-filled lacunae in its structure. Over time, this gas is absorbed in the water and diffuses out, increasing the density of the wood, eventually to the point where it becomes denser than water and sinks. If there is a thermocline (a region where the temperature falls rapidly with increasing depth) it is perfectly possible for the log to float in mid-water on the denser layer. Otherwise it will sink to the mud on the bottom. This environment tends to be anoxic (devoid of oxygen) and anaerobic bacteria get to work on it, producing methane as a by-product. Once the methane saturates the water, it will be produced as gas whose volume will depend inversely on the pressure. During the winter the waters of the lake cool down and, as water has its greatest density at 39 degrees F, water of that temperature will collect on the bottom while the surface may well be colder or frozen. In the spring the warming air will warm up the surface layer that was already less dense than the bottom water, and so there is no overturning, a well-defined thermocline developing instead. Also, as the surface waters warm up, bacterial activity increases and more methane is produced. Eventually a rotting log may get pockets of methane large enough to make it buoyant again and it will float slowly off the bottom and rise with increasing speed as the pressure decreases and the methane bubbles enlarge.… Once the log has reached the surface, it will typically roll about a bit as the exposed parts reach a
balance with the centre of buoyancy, and the methane trapped within will leak out. This will lead to a gradual loss of buoyancy again and the log will gradually submerge, exactly as described by Mrs. Mansi. (Monk 2004)

Part of the reason the Mansi photo is so striking is that we're used to seeing professional, unambiguous photography. The photographs the average person sees on a daily basis are the crisp, clear, retouched images in advertisements, on television, and in magazines. But photographs are simply two-dimensional representations of an object. We don't do nearly as well when confronted with ambiguous photos; tricks in perspective easily fool the eye.

I believe that Sandra Mansi is an honest person who may have done what we all do from time to time: she misunderstood something she saw. The only thing that makes her case special is that she managed to get a photograph of it. If the form she saw and photographed in the water had obviously been a floating tree stump or log, it would have been ignored or filed away. Instead, the visual ambiguities that tantalized Sandra Mansi in 1977 remain in the photo today, ensuring its place in lake monster history.