On the Trail of… Champ: Small Town Monsters Kickstarter Launch
Posted by: Seth Breedlove on January 12th, 2018
For centuries, tales have been told of a massive, unknown, aquatic creature living in the waters of Lake Champlain. The “beast” is said to be anywhere from ten to thirty feet long with an abnormally long neck, flippers and a dinosaur-like appearance. Sightings of the animal known as Champ reached their peak during the 1970s but history tells of a bizarre “water horse” said to reside in the lake long before the area became inhabited by settlers. Today, Champ is celebrated in local towns and villages along the lake and has even become a mascot for the local minor league baseball team and will soon be the focus of a new documentary series titled On the Trail of… Champ.
A Crowdfunding campaign to fund post-production on “Champ” along with two other projects from the production company behind the documentary will launch on January 25th on the Kickstarter.com website. This June, Small Town Monsters (2016’s Beast of Whitehall) and filmmaker Aleksandar Petakov will release On the Trail of… Champ; an examination of the legend and the ongoing search for the creature. Today, a new trailer for the film has been launched which gives a hint at some of what viewers can expect. On the Trail of… Champ is a six-to-eight episode mini-series filmed during the summer and early Fall of 2017.
Petakov was on and around Lake Champlain for one of the largest, most well-funded searches for Champ in history and when the project is released on June 15th you’ll get to experience this massive search for yourself. What they found might just change your mind about the existence of such a creature.
“Champ” marks the beginning of the new, ongoing series from Small Town Monsters titled “On the trail of…” and will be followed up in 2019 with a massive search across the Eastern United States for the legendary being called Bigfoot. On the Trail of… Champ will premiere on DVD and the VIDI Space streaming platform on June 15th before heading to Amazon in July. VIDI Space is a new online network founded by Nick Groff (“Paranormal Lockdown”/”Ghost Adventures”), Elizabeth Saint (“Ghosts of Shepherdstown”), and Justin Narragon featuring paranormal and supernatural content. “Champ” will help launch the platform’s brand-new Cryptid.Space.
Small Town Monsters made waves recently when they released Beast of Whitehall, a documentary which examined Whitehall, New York’s Bigfoot history. That documentary went on to garner film festival awards and played on New York television during the summer of 2016. Since then, Beast of Whitehall has become one of the most-viewed documentaries on bizarre subjects on Amazon Prime. All prior “STM” productions have been funded through Kickstarter campaigns with their 2017 campaign hitting it’s initial funding goal in less than two hours. Rewards in this years campaign include statues, film props, t-shirts, DVD copies of the films, your name in the credits of each projects, posters and much more.
Learn more about Small Town Monsters
About Seth Breedlove
Seth Breedlove is a freelance investigative journalist, filmmaker, and radio show host. He has contributed content to numerous websites on a variety of topics. He served as a columnist for the Massillon Independent, helming a weekly column titled "Slice of Life" that ran on the front page of the paper. In addition to his column he has covered news stories and daily assingnments for the Medina Gazette.
In 2014 he started SasWhat: a Podcast About Bigfoot with co-host Mark Matzke where each week they discuss the subject as a whole and interview various personalities from the field. Seth has also researched and examined historical Bigfoot reports from across the country, compiling an extensive database of newspaper articles dating back to the early 1800's.
Looks to be a promising show. Will be interesting if something new comes up.