Narrator: It's called America's Loch Ness monster...
We were sitting in our boat, having lunch.
Narrator: ...a bizarre creature,
said to inhabit New England's Lake Champlain.
Cohn: And all of a sudden,
one of the buoys literally flies out of the water.
At the time, it scared the stuffing out of us.
I turned my camera on and started filming.
McKinstry: You can actually see the creature
wiggling up and down through the water.
Narrator: Locals call it Champ.
It's such a sight that you can't really comprehend
what you're taking in.
I just have to say that I saw what I saw.
I was a little skeptical until I met people
and talked to people that had actually seen something.
A lot of people are seeing it.
There's no fake about it.
Wilkins: Well, the first thought that came to mind was,
"Oh, my lord, could this really be Champ?"
I'm picking up something at 10k, what is that?
Narrator: With so many reported sightings,
the scientific search for Champ continues.
We actually looked at each other in just wide-eyed amazement.
Then the question is, "Well, what is it?"
If it's bigger than the boat, we're gonna address it as "sir"
or whatever else it wants to be called.
Narrator: A quest begins into the dark waters of the lake
and the unfathomable depths of the imagination.
Ripped By mstoll
In the upstate New York town of Westport,
marina owner Jim Carroll is known as a sober man,
responsible, not given to seeing things.
Yet one day, while cruising with friends on Lake Champlain,
he saw something.
Carroll: We were out water-skiing,
and as I look ahead just to make sure
that nobody had crossed our paths,
there was something that was longer than out boat
and about that wide that was swimming right next to the boat.
It was kind of a mottled gray, browns, and it was smooth.
It was pretty scary at the time.
Narrator: The same strange sight appeared one day
to ferry Captain Jason Alvarez.
Alvarez: As we were coming out of the cove,
I could see a wake coming down the lake, which was unusual,
because there was nothing else out there...
little bow wake, like about six inches.
And as we got closer, I could see the humps behind it.
So I rang up the deckhand,
and I said, "What the heck is that?"
And we got out close to it, I stopped the boat,
and it swam right across our stern.
And we watched it going, "Hmm, never saw one of those before."
Narrator: Captain Alvarez's sighting
added even more credibility to the legend of Champ...
America's version of the world-famous Loch Ness monster.
I was skeptical.
I didn't really think that there would be any lake monsters here,
much less Loch Ness.
Just when you think you've seen everything,
something else comes along,
and you realize that, no, you haven't seen it all.
Narrator: Hundreds of people claim to have seen Champ.
Several even claim to have photographed it.
Some of the strongest evidence
was captured by Elizabeth Wilkins
early one Sunday morning,
off the deck of her lakefront home in Essex, New York.
Wilkins: We were getting ready to go to church.
It was about 7:00.
And the lake was like a piece of glass.
It was very still.
But the seagulls out here were carrying on terribly.
And there were hundreds of them.
And I looked out, and I saw this long black thing in the lake.
And I said, "Gee, what is that?"
And Champ came to mind.
So I got out the binoculars, and sure enough,
you could see the hump in the back of it,
and it was like crocodile skin...
dark and, you know, crummy-looking.
The first thought that came to mind
was, "Oh, my lord, could this really be Champ?"
And so, fortunately, I had the binoculars
and my camera right there.
And it's just a piece of luck that I happened to be
at the right spot at the right time.
Narrator: Those who see Champ
do not always see the same creature.
The witness descriptions vary greatly,
from something that looks like a rottweiler to a giant eel.
The best description that I found for these animals
is a large snapping turtle without a shell.
Narrator: Some describe it as an enormous sea monster,
with several humps along its back.
Others say it looks like a plesiosaur, a large aquatic
reptile that lived more than 100 million years ago,
and whose fossilized skeletons
are found throughout North America.
You get some funny looks, but I saw what I saw,
and there was no logical explanation
for what it could be.
He's a big animal, I'll tell you.
He's a lot bigger than people think.
Anything that big is gonna earn the name Champ.
I'm sorry, but if it's bigger than the boat,
we're gonna address it as "sir"
or whatever else it wants to be called.
Narrator: Hard as the legend of Champ may be to believe,
surprises from the deep have revealed
that its existence is not impossible.
Ever since men went to sea,
they brought back frightening tales of sea monsters,
like the giant, squid-like kraken.
As the centuries passed,
the kraken was dismissed as myth,
until the 19th century, when one actually washed ashore.
Today, deep-sea trollers net giant squid up to 60 feet long.
With appro ximately 70%/ of the planet covered by water,
other sea monsters have long remained hidden.
Man: A dead fish is news.
Its name, coelacanth... a link with the distant past.
Narrator: Zoologists were convinced
the prehistoric coelacanth went extinct 60 million years ago,
until one washed up off South Africa in 1938.
In 1978, near the Hawaiian Islands,
fishermen snared a creature never before seen:
A giant shark dubbed Megamouth.
To date, biologists have identified 1.7 million species
on planet Earth.
Estimated number of total species...
between 10 million and 100 million.
That leaves a lot of unknown animals.
One could be living here.
Five times bigger than Loch Ness,
Lake Champlain is 110 miles long,
587 miles around, and up to 400 feet deep.
Local journalist Lohr McKinstry
has been writing about Champ for 15 years.
Lake Champlain is very deep,
and there are underwater caves in some parts of the lake.
And the people who investigate Champ
think that Champ lives in those underwater caves.
Narrator: One of those investigators
is Elizabeth Von Muggenthaler.
Brought up on these shores,
she was raised on Champ folklore.
Growing up, we heard stories from people saying,
"Wow, I saw this most amazing thing.
It was really scary."
I did have a friend, and his father was a farmer...
7 th- or 8th-generation farmer here,
and a very stoic individual
who had seen it and not told anyone
and was actually quite frightened of the lake
after that.
Narrator: An expert in bioacoustics,
Von Muggenthaler hopes to capture audio recordings
of the strange creature so many people claim to have seen.
Von Muggenthaler: We have to take into consideration many things,
make certain that we're not wasting our time and money.
The main thing that a scientist does
when investigating a phenomena
is to take into consideration historical precedence.
We have hundreds of sightings since 1609.
Narrator: Native American legend
tells of great horned serpent that lived in the lake.
In 1609, Samuel de Champlain,
the French explorer who gave the lake his name,
sighted a weird serpentine creature
in a river just north of the lake.
McKinstry: De Champlain listed it in his diary.
I think he really saw something.
Whether he saw this creature that we now call Champ,
I don't know.
At that time, of course,
they believed in all sorts of things
that we don't believe in now, including dragons.
Narrator: As more people settled in the region,
documented sightings increased.
In the late 1800s, passengers on the steamship Curlew
reported a sea serpent in Horseshoe Bay, Vermont.
Near the Canadian border,
sheriff Nathan Mooney saw a strange-looking animal
with a long, curved neck
surface 50 yards offshore.
Lake resident Dennis Hall spends a lot of driving time searching
for Champ and knows its history well.
This sheriff was well-known, well-liked and respected
and when he said that he had seen Champ, they believed him.
People believed him all of a sudden,
and then the media became involved.
In 1873, a bounty for Champ's capture
was posted by the great American showman P.T. Barnum,
the inventor of the freak show.
Barnum's reward... $50,000 dead or alive.
No one ever collected.
All kinds of Champ stories have crossed McKinstry's desk.
Over the years, I've had hundreds of people
call with Champ sightings.
In fact there are other people who send people here if they've
seen Champ or if someone is reporting seeing Champ.
I've had two prison guards, I've had housewives who saw Champ,
tourists on a boat.
We never go a year without sightings.
More than 600 eyewitness accounts have been recorded,
including video footage and photographs.
Eyewitness reports continue to trickle in
from the small towns along the lake.
Port Henry, New York, can fairly claim the title "Champ Central."
If people here haven't seen Champ themselves,
they usually know someone who has.
Earl Sprague is a woodcarver,
who has lived by the lake all his life.
There was a guy up here in Woodall's Point,
was camping there.
He seen it several times.
And it's no hoax, no hoax.
Narrator: Champ has spawned a cottage industry,
a miniature economy that thrives on a creature
that may not actually exist.
Lorraine Franklin manages the general store.
Franklin: What inspired the name Champ for us
was just the Lake Champlain monster.
It seems to be such a myth that's alive in this area,
we thought it would be appropriate
to name the store Champ.
Narrator: Jack Woods manages the town's department store.
People became so interested, we made up T-shirts,
we made up caps like these.
We have keychains.
And people just very interested in our little Loch Ness monster
that we have here in Lake Champlain.
Narrator: Few townsfolk will look their gift sea monster
in the mouth.
Historian Art Cohn can see both sides.
Cohn: I believe that Champ is a phenomenon.
Absolutely, Champ is real.
You guys are here because Champ is real.
Champ is on T-shirts because Champ is real.
If you're asking me, "Does Champ exist
in a three-dimensional form
on the bottom of Lake Champlain?"
I would say at this point, I'm probably skeptical.
Narrator: Even skeptics can be converted.
While searching for shipwrecks one summer day,
the doubter almost became a believer.
We were sitting in our boat, having lunch...
bunch of the divers just relaxing in our suits
and chatting.
And all of a sudden,
one of the buoys literally flies out of the water
and then goes down under the water!
The buoy disappears under the water,
then flies up out of the water again!
And then disappears again!
And all of a sudden, we all look at each other
and go, "My god, this is it! This is Champ!"
Narrator: In this case,
Champ turned out to be one of Champlain's large fish.
What others have been seeing for 400 years, no one can say.
We don't know if Champ is a prehistoric reptile
or whether it is just a large sturgeon
or whether this is just some case of people, over the years,
wanting to see something
and knowing that there is a creature in Lake Champlain.
Narrator: Like many adults,
Jessica Maher is a true believer.
Maher: It will always be my dream, I think, to discover Champ
or at least advance the investigation.
A lot of people don't understand it.
They think that it's totally fiction.
They think that the whole thing is imaginary,
and they have no idea about the sightings.
I would just encourage people to just look at all the evidence
before they make up their mind.
Narrator: Two skeptics intend to follow her advice.
Embarking on a scientific field investigation,
they'll brave the frigid waters of Lake Champlain,
in search of its elusive legend.
In the summer of 1977,
Sandra Mansi was vacationing
with her family on Lake Champlain.
One day, she noticed something strange
moving through the water.
She decided to snap a picture.
That photograph would become the first
and most controversial piece of evidence
of a creature said to inhabit the lake,
a serpentlike animal known as Champ.
The Mansi photo is probably the best photo
ever taken of Champ.
And they said they had already thrown the negatives away,
so absolutely nothing existed,
except one little print of Champ.
Narrator: When the media caught wind of it,
the Mansi photo made front page news.
As the news spread,
the photo drew attention from around the country.
A lot of people look at this picture and think that
she really did see something.
That Champ is really out there.
In 1981, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution
and the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center
analyzed Mansi's 3x5 photo.
They reached two conclusions...
the creature resembled no known animal
and the image was genuine.
Well, when I first saw the Mansi photo,
I was surprised and puzzled just like anyone else.
If I don't think it's a fake, a hoax, there's something there.
But then the question is, "Well, what is it?"
Narrator: Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell
work for the "Skeptical Inquirer,"
a publication dedicated to challenging legends
like UFOs, Bigfoot, and Champ.
Dr. Nickell: There's reason to be skeptical.
Maybe we don't have quite as much fun as the believers do,
but it's an interesting phenomenon to study.
Narrator: In the summer of 2003, Radford and Nickell decided
to re-create Sandra Mansi's sighting of Champ.
Their goal... to determine the true size
of the object in the photo
and, perhaps, its identify.
Radford: In 25 years, since this photo was taken,
we're the first people to actually go out onto the lake,
do the field experiments and try to duplicate the photograph.
And so we're sort of excited to see,
well, what's going on here and can we really pull this off
and come up with something that's valid?
Narrator: In 1977,
Mansi reported the animal's head and neck
rose six feet above the water,
about 150 feet from where she stood on the shore.
Using those measurements,
the University of British Columbia
estimated the creature was huge, between 24 and 78 feet long.
Radford: If it really is an enormous creature,
as some people say, then maybe it's a lake monster.
If those estimates aren't true, and it's, in fact, much smaller,
then that broadens the possibilities.
Narrator: The possibilities include a duck,
a log, or a large fish.
Narrator: For the first step of their experiment,
Radford and Nickell search for a location at the lake
that matches the far shore in the Mansi photograph.
So I'm thinking about... maybe about here.
Mm-hmm.
And... something about here.
Yeah, that might match.
The first thing we used was a transparency of her photograph,
of the Mansi photograph.
What we were trying to do there was to superimpose it
on the far shore
to see if we could find out where the photograph was taken,
because that would help to determine the creature's size.
Narrator: After 25 years of growth, this is no easy task.
- No. - Too close, isn't it?
Yeah, that's not gonna do.
Narrator: This phase of the experiment
will determine the height and length of the creature,
based on its position from both shores.
Dr. Nickell: Well, we're on the spot on Lake Champlain
where Sandra Mansi... somewhere in the general area,
she can't remember exactly where...
in 1977, made a famous photograph of "Champ"
that some consider the Holy Grail
in terms of evidence for the Lake Champlain monster.
I think what we need here
is one of those and one of these.
Close the trunk.
All right.
Narrator: Next, Radford and Nickell
precisely mark off the distance
from where Sandra spotted the object
to where she stood.
Dr. Nickell: We're using synthetic string
in order to make sure that doesn't stretch in the water.
Narrator: They measure out rope in 50-foot increments
until they reach 150 feet...
the distance from Sandra to the creature.
If that photograph was taken at that distance at that size,
we can compare that to the Mansi photograph and determine
that either the photograph is accurate or it's not.
Narrator: Though the water temperature averages 50 degrees Fahrenheit,
Radford foregoes a wet suit.
He has about 15 minutes to complete his measurements
before hypothermia sets in.
Okay, here's 50 feet.
50 feet.
Okay, hold on.
I'm treading water, but I'm good at it.
The next thing we did was to use a scale marker
and so we took a 3 foot scale marker
and we went out at the different lengths,
at the 50 foot intervals, away from the shore.
I feel your pain, Ben.
Yeah, the hell you do.
Trust me!
Yeah, come on out then.
Smile! One more.
One more increment, we got it.
Okay.
Whew!
For the final step of the experiment,
Radford and Nickell have created a six-foot mock-up
of the creature's head and neck, matching Sandra's description.
Radford: What that then should do is to tell us
whether the height out of the water
is the same as in the Mansi photograph.
Narrator: Radford must go back in the water
for one more round of photographs.
Let me back up a little bit.
Okay.
Narrator: Mission accomplished.
All right. We got it.
- Good job. Well done. - All right.
Narrator: Now, for the results.
After analyzing all the data, the two skeptics agree
on the size of the creature in Mansi's photograph.
Radford: Well, after the field experiment,
we determined that, in fact, the object wasn't nearly as big
as Sandra Mansi and others had said it was.
We concluded that, in fact,
the neck segment is just over three feet out of the water,
and it's only about seven feet long.
I want to point out that just because it's smaller
doesn't necessarily mean it's not a lake monster.
But then the question is, well, is it a loon, is it a sturgeon?
You know, there's lots of large fish in the lake.
So there are any number of things
that could be mistaken for Champ.
Narrator: Digital effects expert John Roulafson
was so fascinated by the Champ mystery,
he made his own investigation.
Using computer graphics, he compared the Mansi monster
to animals and objects common to the lake,
including more than 80 species of fish.
This is a sturgeon, kind of a fatter body
than what you would see in that profile.
It would have to be jumping out of the water
to have this much of its body out of the water.
This is a picture of a loon.
As you can see,
the head is a little fatter than what we see.
And it would be difficult for a duck
to present that kind of a profile.
And also, given the scale,
that would have to be a really large duck.
Say it was a piece of driftwood sticking up.
You would have to consider the fact
that there would be kind of the iceberg effect.
For that much of the wood to be protruding from the water,
there would have to be a large amount of it
that's actually submerged beneath the water, like so.
I mean, we're talking a large tree at that point.
But without being able to look at the negatives,
it's very difficult to tell.
Narrator: To this day,
the object in the Mansi photo remains in dispute.
But in the 30 years since the photo was taken,
a new tool emerged for recording strange sightings...
the video camera.
McKinstry: With Dennis, the thing is,
he actually goes out there all the time and looks for Champ.
And someone who spends that much time looking for something,
if there's something there, you're probably going to see it.
Narrator: A sea monster inhabits Lake Champlain,
or so they say.
The search for the creature known as Champ goes on,
but beneath the surface,
other astonishing sights emerge...
ghosts.
Connecting the St. Lawrence and Hudson Rivers,
Lake Champlain served as an important route
for trade and enemy invasions.
Throughout the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War,
and the War of 1812, great battles roiled these waters.
Today, nearly 300 ships are thought to lie on the lake bed.
We found, in the early 1980s, 3 War of 1812 warships
in the southern part of Lake Champlain.
And so we had a team of archeologists there
for weeks and weeks and weeks, working in shallow water,
measuring and documenting every piece of shipwreck we could.
In fact, we've systematically examined
almost the entire bottom of Lake Champlain
in the last eight years.
We found 90 new shipwrecks.
Narrator: Art Cohn is an expert on Champlain's historic wrecks,
and yet the question he is asked the most
has nothing to do with ships.
I get asked about Champ every day of my life
in every school I ever go to and every lecture I ever give.
Narrator: Cohn has never come across Champ,
but Dennis Hall has.
Does anybody look at the picture and not see Champ?
Narrator: A local historian,
amateur archeologist, and carpenter,
Hall was hiking along Otter Creek on the spring of 1977,
when something stopped him in his tracks.
Hall: I heard an animal crashing in the marsh.
When I went to investigate it, I could see
that it was a very long-necked, reptile-looking animal.
And it was walking along the edge of the march.
It smelled like a snake.
When you pick up a snake...
I don't know if anybody's ever done that...
but it's a very strong smell,
almost as strong as a skunk.
Just walking through the marsh, and it turned its head...
slowly turned its head and looked.
And every time it did that, its eyes reflected red.
I followed it for 45 minutes.
There's the first Dennis Hall sighting in Button Bay,
which turned Dennis Hall from a normal individual
into a believer in Champ.
He then joined the group Champ Quest,
which he now heads.
And Champ sort of became part of his life.
I hope Dennis Hall doesn't mind
that I said he was a normal person once.
Narrator: Eight years later,
towards sundown one June evening in 1985,
Hall was out searching for Champ north of Button Bay.
This one is a still shot from my 1985 video.
This is Champ here.
His neck is looped out of the water.
There's foam and spray, which you can't see.
It was white.
And that's just like the tail end of him here.
But his neck is under the water,
and he's kind of searching for stuff under the water.
Narrator: As director of Champ Quest,
Hall investigates sightings of the Lake Champlain monster.
In March 2000, he published a field guide
for avid hunters of the elusive creature.
Hall: When you see it move,
the first movement that you see it make,
you realize it's a movement you've never seen before.
It's such a sight that you can't really comprehend
what you're taking in until after it's all over.
Then you realize what you had just seen.
Narrator: By his own account,
Hall has seen Champ more than 25 times.
His latest sighting, on May 31 st, 2003,
could be his greatest.
According to Hall, that's the day
he captured a clear shot of Champ on film.
Hall: It was a workday for me.
And I got the idea, after lunch, I'd go down to Button Bay
and sit for a couple of minutes and watch for Champ.
And as I'm pulling into Button Bay,
I had noticed a swell in the water.
The boat was coming from the broad lake,
and their paths were gonna intersect in the shallow water.
So I turned my camera on and started filming.
And it wasn't a fish.
In fact, it was two champtanystropheus in the bay.
The video footage occurred right over here...
is where Champ surfaced,
between this island and this point right here.
And I was in this exact location,
only I was not set up like I am right now.
I just had time to lean out of my truck and take the footage.
Narrator: Since that sighting,
Hall has analyzed his footage over and over
for clues to the creature's identify.
And the animal makes its appearance right here.
As you can see, a head pops up out of the water,
and there's a serpentlike body behind.
It's moving slowly, because it's walking on the bottom.
They're a very low-to-the-ground animal.
And what you see when it's walking
is the rear end of the animal
is actually lifting up a little bit.
And they actually kind of propel their bodies like a caterpillar.
It's one of the strongest videos of Champ that I've ever seen.
You can actually see the creature
wiggling up and down through the water.
Narrator: After analyzing the creature's movements,
some experts speculate Champ could be a prehistoric whale,
called a zeuglodon.
Others say Champ is descended from the plesiosaur,
a prehistoric marine reptile
that some say also describes the Loch Ness monster.
I have an idea if there is a large creature in this lake,
it's along the lines of something probably like a
plesiosaur with a very long neck, which would correlate with
the Mansi photograph and some of the other witnesses.
The only problem that I have with that
is that's an air breather.
Now you would think that an air breather would be seen more
often because they would have to come up for air.
But then again maybe not, they're maybe nocturnal.
The major flaw of the plesiosaur was that it had flippers,
and the animal that I'd seen did not have flippers.
Plesiosaur's neck vertebras were very short,
leaving it with a very soft neck.
It would have been hard for this animal
to lift its neck out of the water.
Narrator: Another reason the theory may not hold water...
such a creature never inhabited Lake Champlain.
The lake was formed by the retreat of the Wisconsin glacier
during the last ice age, millions of years
after these prehistoric reptiles went extinct.
Carroll: The lake is only 12,000, 14,000 years old.
Prior to that, this was part of the Atlantic Ocean.
And as the earth rose up
and things resettled after the ice age ended,
this lake became isolated from the ocean
and evolved into a freshwater lake.
So whatever Champ might be was some kind of a sea creature
that successfully evolved from saltwater
over to the freshwater that we have today.
Narrator: Who knows what creatures have made their home here?
Hall believes Champ resembles a tanystropheus,
a marine reptile with a long neck
that lived more than 200 million years ago.
Hall: The most bizarre reptile that ever lived
was the tanystropheus...
its looks, its behavior, and where it lived.
They have four feet that are not flippers,
but they're actually webbed, clawed feet.
Narrator: Hall has even coined a named
for Champlain's mysterious creature...
champtanystropheus.
And he has a theory on how it has endured.
These animals lived at the front of a glacier so that they could
hibernate six months out of the year and then remain active
six months out of the year.
So as the glaciers retreated and advanced, they stayed just far
enough ahead of them so that the temperature variation was never
more than what was perfect for their life conditions.
Hall says his champtanystropheus shares the habits of any fish...
swimming, eating, and mating.
There's no way to have 400 years of recorded sightings
without having a colony living in this lake
it has to be reproducing.
Hall: Every major river system that enters into Lake Champlain
probably has at least three of these animals
living near the mouth of it.
These animals are making a comeback,
and they're gonna be seen more and more frequently.
Narrator: That theory is about to be tested
by a team of researchers
armed with the equipment to find Champ.
Narrator: On Lake Champlain,
an unprecedented experiment begins...
a quest for evidence
of the elusive creature known as Champ.
Elizabeth Von Muggenthaler and Joseph Gregory
are bioacousticians, experts in animal communication.
Von Muggenthaler: With an acoustic study,
what you do is you take the ambient sounds in the lake.
Ambient sounds are the fish and other animals
that we know to exist in the lake,
including zebra mussels, which make noise,
shrimp, fish, eels, turtles, whatever have you.
What we do is, if we get a sound
that does not match any of those others,
we consider that an anomaly.
Narrator: Using underwater listening devices,
the scientists hope to capture these audio anomalies.
We can actually look at the signal in any way we want to.
We can filter out sounds, we can do frequency acquisition
which means that we're just looking at the frequency or
the pitch of the signal or we can look at the amplitude.
We can plot all the different sounds.
Yet, on the first day,
mechanical problems with the boat
stop the investigation dead in the water.
You're gonna put a meter on it,
see which one of those terminals is doing what.
Early the next morning,
the team resumes their search for Champ in a new boat.
We actually have some excellent sites to go to.
Outside of Port Henry in Bulwagga Bay,
there have been sightings,
so we're pretty excited about that area.
And then, a little bit further north,
quite an active area in the 2,000s of Button Bay,
outside of the state park.
Narrator: For five days, they crisscross the lake,
investigating areas
where eyewitnesses report seeing Champ.
They constantly monitor their underwater devices,
hoping to detect audio anomalies.
Then, off Button Bay,
something odd catches their attention.
Hurry, it goes away quick. Joe!
It's recording?
Oh, did you see that one?
That was amazing.
They record the sound and later, try to identify it.
Whoa, Joe, look at this.
That's a dolphin.
That's exactly what dolphins look like.
Yeah?
That's up to 100... 100k.
Von Muggenthaler: We actually looked at each other
and just... with wide-eyed amazement.
It's like being a kid again and finding a treasure box.
Narrator: At times, the signal reached 140 kilohertz,
seven times higher than the human range of hearing.
Von Muggenthaler: This is the anomaly we picked up.
[Clicking]
And these speakers
don't actually do justice to the signal,
because it's much, much higher in frequency than that.
And it sounds only like clicking on here,
but in all actuality, it's very, very high frequency,
which means it's... [squeaks]
Narrator: Gregory and Von Muggenthaler
believe they've captured a high-frequency,
animal-produced sonar signal, known as echolocation.
They're a series of clicks.
And the frequency is such that
only an animal that's using sonar,
like a dolphin or marine mammal,
would be capable of producing these.
Narrator: Von Muggenthaler thinks the signal
closely resembles a beluga whale.
Von Muggenthaler: You have a whale carcass that was found...
the Charlotte whale that was found
less than a mile from the lake...
that's 11,000 years old.
The lake, geologically, was once connected to the ocean
and was an inland sea.
Narrator: Today, beluga whales
make their home in the St. Lawrence Seaway,
linked to Lake Champlain by the Richelieu River.
Yet no belugas have been sighted in the lake itself.
Despite its resemblance to whale or dolphin echolocation,
the audio anomaly differs
from anything Von Muggenthaler has ever recorded.
What creature made that sound, the team cannot say.
Okay, we're clear.
Narrator: After probing other sites around the lake,
the team heads back to Button Bay.
Here, in May 2003,
local resident Dennis Hall captured footage
of the creature thought to be Champ.
Over the years, more than 35 documented sightings
have been reported on this spot.
Get my paraphernalia in here.
At the Point Bay Marina,
the investigators take on two veteran divers,
Pierre Larocque and James Hall.
Using an underwater camera,
the divers will try to capture visual evidence of Champ.
We're gonna get this thing ready to go, fired up, on,
and in the standby position
so that, when we hit the water,
this can just be handed down to us, ready to go.
Narrator: The divers wait for the scientists
to detect an audio anomaly.
Larocque: As soon as they hear something,
we'll deploy and see if we can see anything,
in the area that they're gonna give us to look in.
And if we get no joy here in this area,
then we'll pull anchor and try something else.
Marilyn, can you go drop the sensor, please?
Sure.
Let's try and get it at about 15 feet down.
Narrator: The sensor is so sophisticated,
it can detect fishing lures hitting the water 500 feet away.
The hours pass with nothing unusual,
just the chatter of fish.
Sound like someone snapping their fingers under water.
It's a pretty common fish vocalization.
Generally, that's the female fish
telling the male fish to go mow the lawn.
Yeah, take out the garbage.
Narrator: Von Muggenthaler and Gregory
are about to call it a day
when they detect a high-frequency pitch.
I'm picking up something at 10k. What is that?
Let's take a look.
Now the investigation is in the hands of the divers.
Von Muggenthaler: Okay, since we're passive,
we're going by ear alone, directionality,
but I would suggest this area right here,
off the starboard bow.
Narrator: After an hour's search, the divers surface.
They're seen nothing strange, just the usual fish.
This quest for Champ
is the 20th such investigation in 30 years.
Each time, the investigators have returned
without proof of the elusive creature.
Yet this time, they haven't returned empty-handed.
They've detected strange signs of life.
Von Muggenthaler: I don't know whether this is a mammal,
I don't know whether it's an amphibian.
But it appears that this signal is echolocation,
which is indicative that there is something in this lake
that we were previously not aware of.
Narrator: On a body of water once fought over by navies,
a new battle rages, between science and faith.
So far, the winners are Champ's true believers,
some as fascinating as Champ itself.
Narrator: For decades,
hundreds of people have journeyed
to the shores of Lake Champlain
in search of the creature that many have sighted
but no one has caught... Champ.
Hi, Champ!
Some sightseers are an attraction themselves.
Lucille: We have a guy that comes up from...
I think it's Massachusetts.
He comes up for every year, just to look for Champ.
Narrator: Earl and Lucille Sprague
live on the lake in Port Henry.
I had a couple little old ladies driving in a few years ago,
and she jumped out of the car.
She said, "Where is he? Where is he?"
And I said, "Where's who?" And she said, "Champ."
I said, "He's probably in the lake."
She said, "Oh, I thought you had him in a cage."
Narrator: In 1952, the town hired Earl Sprague
to carve the giant wooden statue of Champ
that now greets visitors.
Earl: We built it on a boat.
Yeah.
That's that one right there.
It's pretty well rotted. I got to rebuild it.
Narrator: Sprague claims he and his wife saw Champ years ago,
as teenage sweethearts.
Looked like a log.
It would go up and down and come back.
A lot of people were seeing it.
There's no fake about it.
There's a lot have seen it.
Yep.
Too bad he wouldn't come out so we could get ahold of him.
Well, I see him one time,
I was going down through the rock cuts.
And I see this huge thing,
and it was more or less in the water,
but up on the shore edge.
And it was just amazing to see that.
It'd give you goose bumps.
Narrator: Lucille Sprague has compiled a history
of all things Champ, a scrapbook that spans decades.
Here's Champ.
They were taking him off the boat,
putting him into the water.
And there's Champ floating on the boat.
And these are the two guys that stole Champ.
They were drinking,
and they hooked it onto the back of their truck.
And no wheels or nothing,
but they dragged it all the way over,
across the bridge to Vermont.
The locals take Champ seriously.
Though its existence has yet to proved,
hunting it is against the law.
Both Vermont and New York have passed laws
protecting these animals.
It's illegal to harass them, to shoot them,
to hurt them or harm them in any way.
Narrator: Esther Waldron was a town clerk in Moriah, New York,
when the law passed.
I was working at the town hall, which is almost on the lake.
And we heard a lot of different things, different ideas.
I was a little skeptical,
until I met people and talked to people
that had actually seen something.
Narrator: Champ is so popular around here,
locals hold an annual Champ Day.
Champ sightings are publicly posted,
and Champ headlines sell papers.
McKinstry: We did a Champ extravaganza.
It was probably our biggest Champ issue so far.
We sold out. People asked for reprints.
Whether they believe or not, people living around the lake
have something to say about Champlain's mysterious creature.
Interesting local fable.
I don't particularly believe in Champ, myself.
The Champ is the legend from the lake, like a monster.
People talking about it all the time.
Anything is possible. I think Loch Ness is possible,
and I think it's possible here. Why not?
He's got a point, but I'm sure it's just a large fish.
I don't know anybody who's actually seen him,
but the stories are always good.
You can run into someone every now and then who says they know
someone who knows someone who saw him.
As to whether Champ is really swimming around in the lake
at this moment, it's hard in some ways
to believe that that might be the case,
but I think Champ's still an important part of life,
you know, around the lake.
I don't know what it is, really. I mean, who really knows?
It's nice to have a myth locally, though.
It keeps things going a little bit.
Even postman Daniel Sweatt from Willsboro, New York
has a lake monster story.
When I was a kid, I've always fished the lake all my life.
A friend of mine and I, we had an old boat
with a motor that would never run
and one time, we don't know whether it was a log or what,
but something kind of drifted under the boat.
And when we were kids, I mean people had heard about it
even then, or, you know, talked about the lake monster.
Narrator: With the Champ legend so deeply entrenched,
finding the creature itself may be moot.
I think the local people actually believe in Champ
because there's such a culture around here of people believing
that Champ exists.
Franklin: Do I believe in Champ?
I believe there's something in the lake.
That lake is deep, and it's cold.
And I've seen some strange things in the lake,
some ripples that may be large sturgeon,
may be large schools of fish.
Who knows?
It's just nice to think that maybe there is.
It's like Santa Claus.
I think anyone who spent any time on Lake Champlain
knows that there's just something special about the lake
and you can't really put your finger on it.
And they just have to look at all the evidence for Champ
and not just automatically assume that it's false
and just think people are crazy for believing in it.
No one knows for sure what Champ is.
I really wish that I could be the one that would have
the definitive answer.
Von Muggenthaler: I think our greatest surprise
was finding one anomaly that we can't explain.
But really, on the timeline that we had,
that's quite truthfully amazing.
McKinstry: There's really no way to debunk something.
You'd have to prove that Champ doesn't exist,
and there's no way to prove that it doesn't exist.
There's always the possibility.
Unless you drained Lake Champlain,
there's no way to prove it.
It could always be hiding out there somewhere.
Hall: That there's no scientific evidence
that these animals exist
is saying that there's no scientific evidence
to prove any of the images the Hubble Telescope has shot,
'cause all of those are just faint, distant, blurry objects
that have been enhanced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They are telling us that there are new planets
out in the galaxy,
but they're only basing that on photographic evidence.
It's the same with Champ.
There's no solid body for Champ,
but there is enough photographic evidence
to prove that large, unidentified animals
do live in Lake Champlain.
Dr. Nickell: Lake monsters have been with us
ever since there have been lakes.
And before that, there were ocean monsters, sea serpents.
And there's been a carry-over.
In fact, the early lake monsters
were often called sea serpents in the lake.
But these are just popular archetypes
of the human imagination.
And as long as there are unknown bodies of water,
people will imagine
that there are wondrous and fearful things underneath.
Narrator: In the days before Columbus,
mariners who ventured far from land
brought back terrifying tales of sea monsters.
Map makers drew the fearsome creatures
on the edge of their charts and penned a warning...
"Here be dragons."
In time, an entire menagerie of sea monsters evolved,
crossbreed of real sightings and drunken hallucinations.
Like the dragons of old,
Champ remains a hybrid creature...
half fact, half fiction.
Despite the best efforts of science to kill the legend,
Champ survives... unexplainable, yet irrefutable.
Such is the power of imagination.
Ripped By mstoll