CHAMP

Opening

Around midday on 5 July 1977, Sandra Mansi was on the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain, somewhere north of St. Albans Bay, with her fiancé Anthony Mansi and her two children. She saw turbulence she took for a school of fish, then a head and long neck rise out of the water. She took one picture with a Kodak Instamatic.

Anthony shouted for the children to get out of the lake, and the family left. The print stayed in a family album for almost four years. When it surfaced in 1981 it turned Champ, a lake legend with a long list of sightings, into a creature with a picture.

Timeline

1819 and 1883Older newspaper reports describe a large animal in the lake, including an 1883 account by Sheriff Nathan H. Mooney of a serpent 25 to 30 feet long.

1873 and 1887P. T. Barnum offers rewards for the creature, $50,000 for its hide in 1873.

5 July 1977Mansi takes the photograph and watches the animal for a few more minutes. The film goes to Fotomat for processing.

1980The Mansis divorce. Sandra keeps the print. The negative has already been lost or thrown away.

Spring 1981An optical analysis at the University of Arizona finds no sign the print was faked. A Smithsonian zoologist, George Zug, who sees it calls it convincing evidence that something unusual lives in the lake.

June 1981After having the image copyrighted, Mansi lets The New York Times publish it.

29 April 1986Vermont lawmakers pass a resolution saying any such creature must not be disturbed, injured or harassed, and calling for serious scientific inquiry.

2018Mansi dies of cancer at 74. The original print had been shown publicly at ECHO, the lake science centre in Burlington, a few years earlier.

Key figures

Sandra Mansi took the only picture and gave the only account of the moment. She appeared on The Merv Griffin Show and later visited schools to talk about it.

Anthony Mansi fetched the camera from the car and got the children out of the water. He died a few years after the couple divorced.

Joseph Zarzynski, a schoolteacher who ran the Lake Champlain Phenomena Investigation, took up the photograph and wrote Champ: Beyond the Legend.

Philip Reines of SUNY Plattsburgh said he could not authenticate the picture without the negative or the location. The investigator Joe Nickell later argued for a rising log or tree trunk.

Physical and documentary trail

What survives: one Instamatic print, Mansi's account, the 1981 Arizona analysis, and the Times publication. The negative is gone, and Mansi said she could never find the exact spot again, so no one can measure the object against the shoreline. The bay usually linked to the photo is no deeper than 14 feet, which critics say is too shallow to hide a large animal.

Things you might not know

• Champlain never saw Champ. The famous 1609 sighting by Samuel de Champlain traces back to a 1970 issue of Vermont Life. His journals describe a large fish, which the 1878 translation identifies as a longnose gar.
• Barnum wanted the hide. In 1873 the showman offered $50,000 for the skin of the Champlain serpent.
• The film went to Fotomat. The roll was developed at a drive-up kiosk, which is part of why the negative never reached anyone's archive.
• The state voted to protect it. Vermont's 1986 resolution asks that the creature not be disturbed, injured or harassed.
• Something in the lake clicks. In 2003 Fauna Communications recorded underwater sounds for a Discovery Channel programme that resembled the echolocation of belugas or dolphins, neither of which lives in the lake.
• Port Henry holds a Champ Day. The New York village keeps a giant Champ model and celebrates on the first Saturday of August.

Competing explanations

An unknown animal. Mansi watched it for several minutes and described a head that turned to look over its back, which is more behaviour than a log usually offers. The Arizona analysis found no tampering, and a Smithsonian zoologist took the print seriously.

A log or tree trunk rising in the water. Nickell's version leans on the shallow bay and on the way waterlogged wood can surface suddenly. It explains the shape but not the movement Mansi described.

A known animal, such as a large fish or a swimming bird, seen at an unknown distance. Without the location, nobody can set a scale on the object, so this cannot be tested either.

Later life of the case

The Mansi photograph became the image of Champ on signs, mugs and documentaries. Later evidence, including a 2005 video by fisherman Dick Affolter and the 2003 sound recordings, has not displaced it, partly because none of it shows a clearer animal.

Finding

The photograph is a genuine, untampered print, taken by a witness who stood by her account for the rest of her life. What it shows is open. The best-supported mundane reading is floating or rising wood, but that is an inference from the bay's depth, not a match made against the object, and the minutes of movement Mansi described are not accounted for by it.

What still will not resolve: the negative, the exact spot on the shore, and a second camera on the water that afternoon.