September 18, 2006

New Champ Sighting

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Lake Champlain Monster researcher Sean Clogston is reporting the following new sighting of Champ from eyewitness Scott Joy:

I would like to report a sighting I had on the September 7, (9-9:30 am) [2006]. I was riding the ferry between Plattsburgh, New York, and Vermont.

As we were crossing I was sitting in my truck (I’m an OTR* truckdriver ). I was looking toward the north end of the lake when I noticed what I thought was a wave or wake from a boat, approx 2ft high at the peak and maybe 6-8ft long. I thought that it was strange because the water was very calm. As I was watching it quickly evolved into a much longer (30 or more ft) and oddly shaped wave and began to move laterally. It gained speed rapidly and had what I could only describe as the motion of a serpent or more correctly an eel.

I had a passenger with me and I told them to look. She saw it immediately and asked me what it was. I told her it must be the thing they say lives in this lake. She was somewhat fearful at that point. I assured her that we were safe and told her to give me the cell phone (she was talking on it at that moment) because I wanted to take a picture of it. As I was trying to get her to give me the cell phone I remembered that I had a disposable camera in the truck (in case of an accident).

I jumped up from my seat and began to look for it, by the time I found it and got it out of the bag and got back to my seat to take the picture the thing was almost gone. I took one picture from my seat that I believe contained a part of what I had seen, but when I had the film developed the first picture didn’t come out at all. (They didn’t even develop it.) I’m going to take the negative and have it developed just in case there is something there.

After I took the picture from my seat, I climbed out of my truck to see if anyone else had seen it. The only people I even saw sitting in their car were two men. I approached their car pointing in the direction of what I had seen and asking them if they had seen it. When I got to the car the passenger rolled down his window and asked me, “What?”

I told him that Loch Ness Monster thing they say lives in this lake. He said, “No!.”

The driver didn’t comment at all and they proceeded to ignore me.

I went back to my truck and told my passenger that they didn’t believe me. By this time we were reaching the Vermont shore.

As I was leaving the ferry I told the woman attending it that I had seen “Champ” She basically said,  “Yeah, sure!”

I stopped at a small convenience store (not the one on the corner), when I got off the ferry. I went in and asked the people behind the counter how many people had ever seen the thing in the lake. They smiled and said very few. I told them my story and I think they may have believed me (at least to some degree).

There was also a woman in there that worked on the ferry and I told her about it as well.

I know without a picture that it is going to be very difficult to convince anyone of what I saw, but I’m convinced in my own mind that the phenomena that i saw couldn’t have been created by anything other than a giant serpent or eel like creature. The creature was on the surface for probably 20-30 seconds. Unfortunately I missed some of it in my search for the camera. (But, I probably wouldn’t do any different if I had it to do over again).

[*OTR = Over The Road. OTR drivers deliver freight in all or part of the 48 United States and Canada, with 2,500 miles per week a reasonable expectation. Drivers are limited to driving/working 70 hours in 8 days, with a maximum 10 hour work session before an 8 hour break. Freight is point-to- point rather than multiple stops, with an attempt to avoid congested areas like New York City. Drivers are away from home an average of 1-4 weeks.]

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Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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