Lake Monster Mysteries (6 page)

With a fully loaded car, we set out for Whitehall, New York. There we met friend and fellow researcher Robert Bartholomew and his brother Paul (a cryptozoologist) and discussed many relevant issues with them. Then we began to explore Lake Champlain from its southernmost tip near Whitehall to its northern end in Quebec. Our base camp for the next two days was Collins Cabins at Port Henry. Late that first afternoon, we set up Champ Camp I at a boating ramp area just outside Bulwagga Bay, the locale of the majority of Champ reports, and maintained a watch from 7:00 to 8:30
P
.
M
. (
figure 2.2
)—a supposedly
prime time for Champ sightings (Kojo 1991). Unfortunately, Champ was a no-show.

Figure 2.2
Benjamin Radford maintaining a Champ vigil. (Photo by Joe Nickel1)

Figure 2.3
Champ monster sighting board at Port Henry, New York, the “home of Champ.” (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

We later conducted research at the Collins Cabins bar. Ben took notes while I asked a group of men about a local signboard that lists Bulwagga Bay Champ sightings in six columns of names and dates (
figure 2.3
). One man, William “Pete” Tromblee, quipped that it was “a list of the local drinkers.” In fact, Tromblee's own 1981 sighting is listed, and he assured us that he was entirely sober at the time. He admitted that he did not know what he had seen and volunteered that it might have been a large sturgeon—a refrain one hears quite often. The proprietor, Rita Collins, rummaged through a drawer behind the bar and came up with some related newspaper clippings, including one with a photo of a “six-foot piece of driftwood that bears a striking resemblance to artists' conceptions of Lake Champlain's legendary monster, Champ.” (See
figure 2.9
, later in this chapter.)

The following day (August 24) we crossed the Champlain Bridge to Vermont. We explored the lakeshore around Otter Creek, dropped in on the naturalist at Button Bay State Park, and then proceeded to Bristol to keep our appointment with Sandra Mansi regarding her famous snapshot (discussed in detail later in this chapter).

We subsequently rendezvoused with Norm St. Pierre, a veteran fisherman and lake guide who operates Norm's Bait and Tackle at Crown Point, New York (a few miles south of Port Henry). Outside his “One-Stop Hunting and Fishing Supply Store” rests a giant hook baited with a large rubber fish and waggishly labeled “Norm's Champ Rig.” Norm was to be our guide, aboard his sonar-equipped Starcraft cruiser, to Champ's reputed lair (
figure 2.4
).

The sonar Norm uses to locate schools of fish soon picked up a twelve- to twenty-pound catfish or sheepshead. However, on our entire tour of Bulwagga Bay and many miles beyond, we saw nothing, either visually or on sonar, that could be construed as Champ, with the exception of one unidentified “hump” (see
figure 2.5
). That's not surprising, given that during more than four decades on the water, Norm has never seen a giant enigmatic lake creature. He has occasionally encountered a wave on calm water that puzzled him and, like others, says there's
“something” out there. But he's more likely to suggest a sturgeon than an unknown or extinct creature.

Figure 2.4
Norm St. Pierre, veteran fishing guide, aboard his sonar-equipped boat. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Figure 2.5
Strange dark hump on the lake: monster or rock? You decide. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Early in the morning we closed our base at Port Henry and, again crossing into Vermont, made our way to St. Albans and beyond. We searched the areas of Maquam and Missiquoi Bays in the hope of finding a landscape that matched the location of the Mansi sighting. Unfortunately, her description was so vague as to be almost useless, and in any case, the intervening years could have changed the scene completely. This precluded one set of photographic experiments, but we located a suitable area for others, near a boat launch. By wading into the water, Ben discovered that it was surprisingly shallow for more than 150 feet offshore. This was fortuitous, since we would not have to use the raft we had brought, but it raised an interesting point. A local man who had resided there for thirty years said that the general shallowness of the lake in the surrounding area made him doubt the presence of any leviathan there. Indeed, although the lake reaches depths of up to 400 feet, the maximum for all of Missiquoi Bay is 14 feet. And for the eastern edge of Maquam Bay and the connecting area of lake, the offshore depth at Mansi's estimated sighting distance of 150 feet is 12 feet or less, as shown by a Lake Champlain hydrographic contour map (Lake n.d.).

The experimental work (discussed in the second part of this chapter) was time-consuming, but we were done by midafternoon and continued north to the upper end of Lake Champlain at Venise Bay, Quebec. We stopped along the way to explore and to photograph some driftwood that had piled up along the shore. We returned as far south as Burlington, Vermont, that night. Ben was glad finally to be able to wash up from his swim in Lake Champlain and treat a cut on his foot, injured on some sharp rocks during the earlier experiments.

Our final day, the twenty-sixth, was another long one. We took the ferry
Valcour
from Burlington to Port Kent, New York, traversing Lake Champlain at one of its widest places. We maintained a Champ watch, noting that some reported sightings had been made from ferries as well as other boats. A veteran deckhand told us that he often teased the children to look overboard for Champ and instructed the adults to
“go below” to the onboard snack bar that serves beer and wine, so that they might also see the creature.

Disembarking from the
Valcour,
we headed south along the west coast of Lake Champlain until we veered away on the interstate and headed for home. We had traveled more than twelve hundred miles and had obtained quantities of notes, photographs, videotapes, books, charts, and other research materials—all of which would now need careful study. Here are our findings.

Promoters of Champ's existence often cite the same major eyewitness. According to
Discover
magazine (Teresi 1998), “The first recorded sighting of Champ dates back to July 1609, when Samuel de Champlain claimed he saw a ‘20-foot serpent thick as a barrel, and a head like a horse.'” This quotation from Champlain—which has been repeated, paraphrased, and embellished with Indian legends (e.g., Coleman 1983; Green 1999)—is, alas, bogus. Jerome Clark, who was once taken in by the claim (1983), reports that it is “traceable to an article by the late Marjorie L. Porter in the Summer 1970 issue of
Vermont Life
” (Clark 1993). Champlain's actual description is in volume 2 of his journal (quoted in Meurger and Gagnon 1988, 268–70):

There is also a great abundance of many species of fish. Amongst others there is one called by the natives Chaousarou, which is of various lengths; but the largest of them, as these tribes have told me, are from eight to ten feet long. I have seen some five feet long, which were as big as my thigh, and had a head as large as my two fists, with a snout two feet and a half long, and a double row of very sharp, dangerous teeth. Its body has a good deal the shape of the pike; but it is protected by scales of a silvery gray colour and so strong that a dagger could not pierce them.

As Champlain's actual account demonstrates, far from heralding a serpentine, horse-headed monster, he simply mentions a native species of
large fish. It was almost certainly a gar (or garfish), one of the Ganoidei subclass (from the Greek
ganos,
“shiny”), which includes sturgeon and other varieties.

Other supposed evidence of an early Champ sighting comes from an old powder horn bearing a Crown Point soldier's name, the year 1760, and various pictorial elements, including “a rather large dragonlike creature.” Zarzynski (1984a, 52–53) suspects that this is a “possible link” to Champ. However, the figure is merely a stereotypical dragon—complete with large wings. It is by no means evidence for the existence of a Lake Champlain leviathan.

In his
Champ: Beyond the Legend,
Zarzynski (1984a, 152–205) cataloged 224 Champ reports. Putting aside Samuel de Champlain's, which never occurred, the rest are from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The earliest is from 1819 and is still the most sensational description of Champ ever recorded. I tracked down the original account in the
Plattsburgh Republican
published on Saturday, July 24. The sighting was attributed to a “Capt. Crum,” who had been in a scow on Bulwagga Bay the previous Thursday morning. The black monster was said to be about 187 feet long, with its flat head—resembling that of a “sea-horse”—rearing more than 15 feet out of the water. The creature was some 200 yards away (twice the length of a football field) and was traveling “with the utmost velocity” while being chased by “two large Sturgeon and a Bill-fish.” Nevertheless, the captain was able to notice that it had three teeth, large eyes the color of “a pealed
[sic]
onion,” a white star on its forehead, and “a belt of red around the neck.” The outlandishness of the incident suggests that someone was pulling the reader's leg.

Hoax or not,
that
monster has not been seen since, or it has apparently shrunk to a fraction of its former self and lost its distinctive markings, although not without gaining others. According to the various reports, Champ is between 10 and 187 feet long; it has one to four or more humps, or up to five arching coils; it is black, or has a dark head and white body, or is gray, black and gray, brown, moss green, reddish bronze, or other colors; and it is possibly drab or shiny, scaly, or smooth—even “slimy.” Moreover, it possesses fins, a pair of horns,
“moose-like antlers,” “elephant ears,” a tan or red mane, glowing eyes, or “jaws like an alligator”—or none of these. Overall, it looks like a great snake, “a large Newfoundland dog,” “a steam yacht” (but traveling too fast to be one), a horse, a Florida manatee, a submarine periscope, a whale, and so on (Zarzynski 1984a, 152–205).

Astonishingly, some writers have concluded that there is a “surprising degree of correlation between all the various descriptions” (Grant 1992,115) or that they are “disturbingly similar” (Vachon 1977). However, to the rest of us, it appears that either Champ is a metamorphosing, contortionistic, chameleonlike creature, completely unknown to the natural world, or else eyewitnesses are viewing—and no doubt misperceiving—a number of different things.