The Perplexing Legend of Vermont's Sea Monster • Mystery Files

This guy's looking for some PBJs. I'm gonna go out there with a bag of PBJs. And we are talking about his body with the Hump's Nut. Ho, ho, ho, bye! Or that's just his move. Welcome to Mystery Files, where we take a deep dive into cases that span from the creepy to the truly bizarre and everything in between. I'm Shane, and today I'll be forcing my colleague, Ryan, to hear all about one of the world's shyest monsters. That's right, Gene. America's big, shimmering... Slick. Slick, aquatic beast. Champ, Ryan. I don't know too much about it. I know you're obsessed with it. I don't know that I'm obsessed. I've been to Burlington, Vermont. I checked out the lake. Check out that Burlington Coat Factory. Is that where they're based? I have no idea. I'd love to know. Well, let's get into it. But first, I'd like you to watch one of my special videos. Well, last time you did this, it was an issue. No, no, no, this is a different one. Let's check it out! Hello, and welcome to the official trailer for Podwatcher, the official podcast of Watcher Entertainment. That's right. It's our weekly little get-together where we talk about whatever the hell we want. Did you touch Annabelle? No, here's this. Now, we've never talked about this before. You know, it's our place to let loose a little bit. I'm a big B-I-C guy. Bic? Is that how you say it? Big Bic energy. Yeah, I was waiting for it. Sometimes the topics are contemporary. Recently, Mari and I, well, we've been talking about it for like the past year, we should get a dog, but. And sometimes they're not. Grogu, but they're always real. Do you know about how to steal from them? Huh? I've said this before, and this works most of the time. Join us every Monday. By watching over at the Watcher Podcast YouTube channel or listening wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We'll be there. You know, it's really the only place where I feel like I can really be me. Aw. Don't touch me. Located on the border of Vermont and New York and extending as far north as Montreal, Lake Champlain is a popular destination for those looking for sun and fun, boating, fishing, water sports, or maybe catching a glimpse of an elusive marine monster. That'd be nice. I mean, I'm more interested in the water sports. Can you imagine out there skiing and then chomp? You get chomped by champ? Oh, I thought you were going to say imagine if I could ride champ. Oh, if champs. I don't know why I bounced up and down when I did that. Well, that's what champ's doing. Champs, you know, doing like big, and you're going, whoa! Remember in like SeaWorld shows when like a dad would be like, oh, I'm gonna go take pictures next to the tank, and then he'd fall into the tank. That happened to a dad? No, no, but then the dad would come back up and he'd be riding a dolphin. I was not aware of that. Oh, that's kind of what I'd like to happen. Never been to SeaWorld. I don't like the way they treat those whales, but I guess you're, you know. Hey, look, I went as a child, okay? It's actually where I had my first beer when I was three. Oh, okay. For centuries, there have been frequent sightings of an impossible to prove serpent-like creature living in the calm waters of the Adirondacks' largest freshwater lake. Infamously, the creature is known as Champ the Lake Monster, and its legend continues to fascinate locals, visitors, and historians, as well as scientists. This is an artist's rendering, not the actual picture of Champ. No, this is a photograph. Yeah, a little bit. You know, pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. The Champ that I know is a friendly guy. This is not what we like to see. Well, how do you know that's not his friendly face? Sometimes people have a resting, angry face. Yeah. A wrath. Stephen Lim, our own CEO, has one of those. That guy barely has a face. And I do think it's because he actually is thinking murderous thoughts all the time, so that's probably a bad example. That's true. Well, billed as America's Loch Ness Monster. What the fuck? Yeah. Descriptions of the creature vary amongst the hundreds of witnesses who claim to have seen him. Common characteristics depict a snake-like or reptilian aquatic animal with a long neck, wide head, large eyes, and massive size for its isolated lake habitat. This isn't you. Long neck, wide head, large eyes. I think I have little tiny eyes, don't I? That's true, you do have small eyes. The other part's- I have a tiny mouth, too. The other part's pretty, pretty accurate. Snake-like, reptilian, massive in size. Can't deny that. I'm talking about your height. Weirdo. Whatever, man. Most reports say Champ is between 10 to 40 feet long. Some testify to seeing fins or three distinct humps as it moves speedily but gracefully through the water with a trail of large waves following behind. And we are talking about his body with the hump's not. Yeah, they don't see him jump out of the water and go, ho, ho, ho, bye. Or that's just his move. Is the mystery here that Champ is, is he a real guy? Is that the mystery? Yeah, it's a cryptid. I know he's real. You believe? I don't know if I believe. Maybe you can convince me to believe. Close your eyes, Ryan. What are you, why, why? You gotta- Are you proud of yourself? I mean, I feel good. Because Champ is frequently spotted during the warmer months when the lake's temperatures are warmer, some suggest Champ may be a seasonal migratory creature. Or maybe that's when there are more tourists hungry to come back for their vacation in lazy old upstate New York with a wild story to tell the neighbors. More people to see it, therefore more likely to have stories. Yeah, it makes sense. Maybe he likes the cold. Though I love the fact that Champ might be a hot tub guy. Or maybe Champ likes the fame. This one likes the fame. That one likes the fame. Dating back to Champ's earliest witnesses, indigenous peoples of the region had their own folklore about a beast in the lake. They reportedly warned French explorers not to disturb the creature Mais non! A French colonizer could not be deterred with a fuck ton of beaver furs on the line. Some say the first European account of the monster was made in 1609 in the diaries of famous French explorer and founder of Quebec City, Samuel de Champlain, for whom the lake, and by extension the monster, was later named. In these entries, he allegedly wrote about a large sea serpent whose coils and scales reflected in the lake's sunlight. He kind of looks like you. Yeah, I guess so. Like if you imagined you with that mustache and that strange facial hair. Do you believe any of that? Yeah, I mean, look, I don't like when people are just like, well, that happened a long time ago. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about. That's the thing, though. It happened a long time ago, so do they really know what the fuck they're talking about? I mean, it's not a matter of belief if you see a giant dragon-like creature. It's kind of just like- Not necessarily. We'll get into that later. There were a lot of sea serpents people saw. All right. I mean, it's really hard to take you seriously in that giant. That's okay. However, actual written evidence of his account doesn't seem to exist. And there's been speculation that the quotes attributed to him actually first appeared in an article in Vermont Life Magazine in 1970. In fact, some quotes falsely attributed to Champlain speaking on the topic of the lake's monster may actually refer to a large fish he saw on the St. Lawrence River. Now, despite the fact that there's no actual evidence that Champ exists, the creature is protected by state safe waters laws in both New York and Vermont. What happens if you were to, say, poach him, then? They kill you. I know in my old neighborhood, when you would, there were peacocks there. You got a lot of peacocks in your old neighborhood. And if you hit one with your car, it would be like a $3,000 fine. Did you ever chase them? I chased them. So you could tease Champ. Yeah, I could tease him. Give him a little tease. Yeah, I could ride him. Give him a wet willy. No, I don't think he has ears. He is a wet willy. Now, Champ has become a consistent favorite in media around the world. His story has been covered everywhere, from scholarly journals, to Japanese TV shows, to the Today Show. And locally, this monster is treated more like a hero. First peoples may have known him as a danger, but modern depictions are much more docile, shy, and smiling. Look at that guy. Oh, he looks like he just ate a PBJ. This guy's looking for some PBJs. I'm gonna go out there with a bag of PBJs. Whole sack of PBJs. A whole sack of them. Just throwing them into his mouth. He won't know what hit him. Nice wet PBJ. Yeah, well, I don't know about that. Now, in Vermont, there's a baseball team named after him, the Lake Monsters. That's cute. Complete with their own Champ mascot. Wow. Look at him. Oh, that's him, man. Whoa! One more time. Whoa! He's got like a little Ninja Turtles thing on, too. Whoa! Port Henry has created- Yeah, look at this fucking guy. He's trying his best. Port Henry has, in fact, created a whole tourism market around him from a statue of him erected near the water, merchandise devoted to him, and local restaurants, even having been known to serve Champ burgers. Those are seafood-based patties on a bun, as a burger often is. I love when these cities that are known for cryptids base a lot of their commerce around it. Would you eat a Champ steak? No. You wouldn't eat, like, let's say we found- Didn't you just say you love Champ? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, okay, hypothetical. We found two of them. We're gonna take one, chop him up into meat, and let the other one live. Let's say there was 200,000 of them. Then I would eat one. No, in this scenario, it's two. Well, that's gonna make that- You have to eat one. Which one are you gonna pull the trigger on? I wouldn't eat an endangered species. You gotta shoot one in the head and make a burger out of it. Would not eat Champ. There have been as many as 300 sightings of Champ and possibly thousands of witnesses since 1819, the earliest year we have an actual surviving written record describing the monster. Appearing in print in the Pittsburgh Republican newspaper on Saturday, July 24th, 1819, the article told a story from a few days earlier when Captain Crumb, sailing- I know, we like that, don't we? Oy, Captain Crumb! That's a competitor to Captain Crunch. Yeah. Just wasn't his enough. Yeah. Just wasn't enough. Not as good. Captain Crumb, sailing on his small barge on Bulwaga Bay, saw a giant black monster in the water. According to his account, the monster was a horrifying 187 feet long. Damn! It reared its giant head, which resembled a seahorse's and extended over 15 feet out of the water, despite being over 200 yards away, according to other witnesses. Captain Crumb said he was close enough to see the monster's three teeth. Huh? Eyes the color of a peeled onion, a white star on its forehead, and a belt of red around his neck. Try drawing this. Based on these clues- I'm not a good artist, but I could do that. Try your best. Remember, three teeth, eyes the colored of peeled onions. There it is right there. You can see the monster, and then that's actually me. Oh, you're teeny tiny for scale. Honestly, that's one of the better drawings you've done. Thank you for saying that. You're getting good. Now, by the 1870s, champ sightings became more frequent and dramatic, seemingly correlating with the rise of entire groups of steamboat passengers corroborating stories of sightings of the creature on the lake, with separate incidents occurring in 1870, 71, 73, and 74. At that point, though, how much is he in the collective consciousness? Like, is he in the newspaper all the time? What else are they gonna talk about? You go there, they got a statue of the guy. Oh, I'm just saying that because if it's like in the newspaper every week, it's more likely that people will be like, I saw him too! I mean, I don't trust people, so I'm gonna assume most of them didn't see anything. Well, it's rich for you to say you don't trust people when you look like you do right now. Well, that's what I'm saying. You shouldn't trust me. Die! I don't think you- What do I know? You're not gonna have to argue with me there. Now, according to the tourists on board the steamship W.B. Eddy, their whole boat nearly turned over when they almost ran into the creature in 1873. That same year, the New York Times covered a story about a railroad crew that claimed to see the head of an enormous serpent with bright silvery scales that glistened in the sun and the waters of Lake Champlain. That scans, that sounds like champ, glistening, water, scales. Yeah, I mean, like, all of these are gonna have, you know, descriptions that match the other ones based on the fact that it's been published. You would think, I'm gonna lower my head here. Sure. My skull needed to breathe. Now, you would assume that an incident in which an entire steamship is nearly capsized, people would sort of get their story straight. That, to me, kind of sounds like the steamboat captain fucked up and crashed into a rock or something. Oh, it was a serpent! It was a serpent right in the water! It was champ who did it! And then that kind of telephoned its way back to the back of the boat. Yeah. It's possible. Just to cover his own ass. Maybe. In response to the frenzy surrounding speculation of champ's existence in 1873, racist charlatan P.T. Barnum offered an enormous reward with separate reports saying as much as $20,000 to $50,000 to any person who could bring him the hide of the great Champlain serpent to add to his mammoth world's fair show, though he also would have gladly taken the beast alive. Now, obviously, the monster of Lake Champlain would never join Barnum's stupid little collection. It's hard enough to catch a glimpse of champ, let alone lay mortal hands on him, though wouldn't that be nice to just strangle that beast? I don't know. I think it'd be cool to pet him. Well, strangle, I mean, yeah, sort of like ride through the waters. This is his neck. I'm sort of like, you know. Can you do that again, how you would ride it? Yeah. Okay. Now, some witnesses have gotten extra lucky, at least catching photos or videos of the creature. One of the best known pieces of hard visual evidence of champ's existence was a photo taken nearly a century later. On July 5th, 1977, Sandra Mansi was at the lake with her family for a patriotic holiday getaway when she spotted something emerging from the water in the distance. See that? Yeah, I see it. Sandra's photo was verified to be authentic in depicting something, and that something, in fact, matches descriptions many have attributed to champ. Skeptics point out that the photo was taken in the lake's relative shallows, perhaps in less than 15 feet of water, making it hard to imagine that this was the giant lake monster of all. Yeah, 187 feet long. That doesn't exactly look like that. Maybe that's the baby. Can you picture, just even just imagine the noises produced? Ooh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. A lot of gurgling. Yeah. As of 1992, there were reportedly over 600 witnesses who claimed to have seen champ, and that number has likely doubled in just a few short decades with the advent of camera phones and dozens more alleged sightings every summer. Now, it could be down to hype, but there has also been some interesting video evidence collected in recent years that's pretty hard to ignore. Oh, I'm so stoked. In 2015, a YouTube channel uploaded a supposed video of champ with a description that goes as follows. Quote. Sent to me by a viewer. They wrote, not sure what the hell I saw, but caught part of it on video. This thing was in Lake Champlain, and it was massive. I first saw the neck, which was sticking out of the water about six feet. Could this be champ? So this is not the YouTube person's video. They were sent this video. Yeah. And the quote you read- The chain of evidence here is already getting pretty sloppy. And the quote you read was from the person who sent the video. Yes. Gotcha. They spelled weird wrong, not us, by the way. Are you ready to watch? I'm so stoked for this video. Okay. Pretty weird, huh? I guess I was hoping to see a little more of the humps. Oh, like you're one to talk. Hey, I only give out high quality evidence. That is not true. That is totally true. Now, despite centuries of speculation and hundreds of sightings, champ remains elusive. Researchers have gone as far as employing sonar technology to try to locate and track the movements of any abnormally large creatures beneath the lake's surface. In June, 2003, researchers led by bioacoustician Elizabeth von Muggenthaler went to Lake Champlain with a Discovery Channel documentary crew attempting to prove champ's existence. Now, unfortunately, they are said to have violated scientific protocol for the film crew's benefit, but managed to detect a noise 10 times louder than that of any known species of fish in the lake. A series of high-pitched clicking and chirping noises, like those made by a beluga whale or a dolphin. As a result, the team made an announcement that they'd found evidence proving champ's existence. They sound like a bunch of fraudsters. I was about to say, this is a Discovery Channel production. No, I'm not saying that they are fraudsters, but I will say that there's an immense pressure to have some sort of result on those kinds of shows. And you've already told me that they broke scientific protocol. Do you know how they did that? I mean, they probably, you know, used tools of questionable scientific merit. As a Ghost Files member, I don't even know how to break scientific protocol, because I only adhere to it. That's right. Yep. And we're just going to let that sit and we're going to move on. I am sitting. So, if it's not a baby beluga in the deep blue lake, what the hell could champ be? That's a good question. Let's get into the theory. All right, let's get into the theories, my friend. Yeah. Are you excited for these? Oh, I'm so excited. Theory one, champ is the relative of an extinct aquatic reptile. And this is a big one. Look, look how big that is. Look at this big, beautiful theory. That's a lot. Biggest, most beautiful theory I've ever seen. That's a lot of reptiles. Now, some theorize that champ is a zooglodon, a giant prehistoric whale, whose original name, Basilosaurus. Cool. Means king of reptiles. Described as a sea serpent, this creature's fossil records show that it lived in the Iapetus Ocean, a body of water extending across North America 500 million years before the Atlantic Ocean was formed. Can you imagine? Whoa, you're basically saying that it's a dinosaur. I would be more moved by this if it was a cryptid that lived in the ocean, as opposed to- What's a lake but a small ocean? Well, I mean, it's freshwater versus saltwater. That's true. You're right. It's probably not this. Could this be what the Abenaki tribe were referring to when they named the lake's creature the Gitaskog or Tataskog, roughly translating to great serpent? It could be. Now, it's possible that in prehistoric times, the area we now know as Lake Champlain could have been home to a species of giant freshwater reptile, and champ may be a descendant or a lone survivor. Hmm. Others have posited that champ could be a relative of the Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile. That's sort of what I'm dressed up as, sort of a Plesiosaur. You certainly would fit in the furry community. I don't think I would. Well, you're a Plesiosaur. I think they need fur. They need more fur. Oh, are they pretty strict on needs to have fur for the furry? I don't know that they like- I thought it was more just, you need to be in a funny outfit. I don't think they like slick, wet. They don't like it when you start out slick and wet. That's what I was about to say. You get there eventually, but all due respect to our furry pals. So, they believe it could be a relative of a Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile that lived in the late Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Cool. Measuring at about 15 feet long, the Plesiosaur's small head, long neck, a turtle-like body, short tail, and two pairs of paddles would account for many of the characteristics attributed to champ by witnesses and his merchandise. I'd be sick if my hands were paddles. Steven Lin comes in work, starts giving you some sass. You could just slap him like with a, just a fish fin right to the face. Oh yeah, Ryan, we need you in the office. And he couldn't even say anything because that's your biology. That's who you are. That's right, that's how I communicate. That's how you communicate. What do you think of this? You think it's, think it's this? I don't know, I like it. You like it? I'm still curious in how something survived from that long. You got to have a stable population for these things. So, a lone survivor seems unlikely. Would it be considered a stable population if there was only one of the species? No, because that's impossible. Unless it's champ. Let's move on to theory two. Champ sightings are just. Nice. Now these folks are the authors of Lake Monster Mysteries, investigating the world's most elusive creatures. Cool. And they've said of their own analysis of the infamous Mansi photograph that, quote, it's difficult to picture how the gently sloping hump on the right could be anatomically connected to the neck, which emerges from the water at about an 85 degree angle. The hump slopes down toward the base of the neck, just a few feet away. Rather, they postulate that the photo is a result of noonday shadows in what they say is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to accidental lake monster sightings, large pieces of driftwood. Roots and branches and gnarled, twisted and fantastic forms. Not the most exciting theory, but. I do recall me saying that. I did say that it might be a log or something like that. You did say it was a log. Theory three. Champ is an unidentified cryptozoological creature. Amazing, love it. Now, Champ's mythology attributes him to being a lone figure living in the lake over centuries, but Champ may not be the only one of his kind. Other well-known cryptozoological creatures resembling Champ have been spotted in lakes, rivers, and oceans around the world. In addition to the infamous Loch Ness Monster, have you, Scotland, heard of her? I heard of her. Beautiful lady. There's the legend of the Ogopogo in Canada. I haven't heard of that one, Ogopogo. And rumors of dinosaurs in Kyrgyzstan's Lake Issyk-Kul. But of course, these creatures. Issyk-Kul. It is cool. Issyk-Kul. We're not making fun. But of course, these creatures also have the trait of being completely unverifiable in common. So it's possible that these are all like cousins and they're all masters of espionage? I didn't know where to squeeze this in, but I think I do have to acknowledge that in the ancient world, when they were sailing around the ocean, they would think they would see sea monsters. Yeah. And do you know what the culprit often was? What? I was wondering what was behind that. Oh, that's a whale penis. That's a whale penis. I'm glad you spotted that right away. I know that really well. I'm just putting this there to rule it out because this is not the open ocean. This is a lake. So it is not probably a whale penis. I don't know what other creatures are in that lake or what their hogs look like. Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty weird looking one, but if I was packing something that size, why not do the backstroke? Why not? It's possible that it's a cryptozoological creature. I'd like to believe that. I'd like to believe they're all friends. That'd be nice. Pen pals. Yeah. Theory four. Champ is simply a big garfish. What the fuck is that? Now that's a garfish right there. Up to 10 feet long, huh? No, let me tell you, let me tell you. Okay. Some of the positive theories that champ is related to a more modern creature, ranging from eels to crocodiles to catfish. Historical scholars have hypothesized that champ is a garfish. The alligator gar is one of the largest of all. You see this fucking, that's just a crocodile. Look at this guy though. He's like, oh yeah. The alligator gar is one of the largest of all freshwater fishes, reaching up to 10 feet long, meaning that champ would be much larger than even a bigger than average garfish because, you know, champ is supposed to be like a hundred. Fucking huge. It's supposed to be bigger than the statue of liberty. Yeah. But you know, this class of fish does include lake sturgeon. Look at that. Maybe that's champ. Maybe it's a big fish, which still live in Lake Champlain today. Perhaps that's what the person had spotted in their supposed video evidence of champ. But don't people say that it has like, big like, wide eyes, three teeth? Yeah, but what do people know? Why would a fish have three teeth? I don't think, I mean, look, it's interesting. I think it's more likely a piece of wood than this. You think it might be a zooglodon? I don't know about a zooglodon, but it could be some sort of other adon. I was just thinking, what if they blasted some Daft Punk under. Oh, just to see what it would do to. I think that would probably fuck up the whole ecosystem of that lake. I don't know why. I was just thinking, because then you could maybe get champ moving. I even drew a picture of what it would look like. Let's put a Daft Punk in the lake right there. That's the helmet, and he's just kind of swimming around. You're putting the actual members of Daft Punk in there. That's right, I'm gonna put them there, and they're gonna perform live. So Daft Punk go down into water. Everyone go, they must have drowned. RIP Daft Punk. Suddenly, champ rises from the water. With Daft Punk riding. Daft Punk, around the lake, around. And then Daft Punk takes the helmet off, and it's revealed. Who? It's me. I think it's pretty clear that we don't know what the answer is in this case. Otherwise, it'd be fairly major news, and pretty well known that there was a large monster living in the lake. That's true. So, Ryan, and our wonderful viewers at home, is champ a figment of our collective, overactive imaginations? A hoax manufactured by bored steamboat passengers of yesteryear? Or is champ actually a relative of a giant prehistoric fish or reptile? Well, there doesn't seem to be a ton of scientific evidence to prove champ's existence. But as distinguished Yale scientist, Benjamin Silliman. What a funny name for a scientist. I'm Dr. Silliman. I'm very serious about science. Champ is real. Well, Benjamin Silliman reportedly said in 1827, he was open to the possibility that a monster in Lake Champlain existed. But for now, champ remains a mystery. Well, that does it for Mystery Files. We'll see you next week, everybody. Ryan and I are gonna go eat some ants on a log. I thought it was soda, and then it was beer, and then I spit it all over my dad's sandals. And then I saw the dad riding a dolphin. Not my dad. It wasn't your dad? A separate dad. Okay.