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.
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 man
y 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 READINGS
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.”
CONCLUSION
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 una
mbiguous 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.
REFERENCES
Bartholomew, Robert. 2003. Personal communication, February 6.
Lake Monster Mysteries Page 7