The 109-mile-long Lake Champlain sits on the border of New York and Vermont. Over the years, it has been home to a lake monster nicknamed Champ. The first field sighting in Lake Champlain was probably in 1819 by settlers in the Port Henry, New York area. Sightings of champ continued through the years with another documented sighting in 1883 by Nathan Mooney, a county sheriff who was cited as having seen “a huge water snake or snake about 25 to 30 feet long.”

One of the most famous documented field sightings was that of the Mansi in 1977. Sarah Mansi and her husband were vacationing in Vermont, near the Canadian border, and while looking at the lake they saw the creature. This sighting also produced one of the best sighting photos of the lake to date known as the mansi photo (pictured above). The Mansi photo has been analyzed by several scientists and it was concluded that it was not a fake but a creature that could possibly be a plesiosaur that survived centuries ago.

Many say that Lake Champlain is an ideal lake to house such a creature with depths in the 400 foot ranges and that it is an outlet to the open Atlantic Ocean. The lake also contains a viable food source along with a constant enough water temperature and an underwater habitat with many archaeological sites and sanctuaries to support a large creature.

The search for champions continues in Lake Champlain with more sightings and even reports of smaller creatures being seen alongside larger ones possibly pointing to a growing population of whatever creatures inhabit the waters there. Scientists agree that there would need to be a breeding population in the lake to cover the reporting gap over the years. To date there have been 130 or more documented sightings of camps since 1982.

Will the myth of the champion finally be proven? Is there a monster that inhabits the waters of Lake Champlain yet to be discovered?

“The Search Continues”