New drone footage captures elusive creature in Lake Champlain, reviving hopes of Champ’s existence
Champ, is that you?
Since the 1600’s, tales of a mysterious sea serpent named Champ, named after explorer Samuel de Champlain, have been part of the folklore of the Lake Champlain region. The lake borders New York and Vermont. Champlain and the Abenaki tribe were the first sightings of Champ in the historical record.
Champ remained elusive. The only notable visual evidence was a photo taken in 1977 by Sandra Mansi.
Until now.
For the first time in history, a video that allegedly captures the legendary lake monster on film is being hailed as the “most notable visual evidence” of Champ. Some compare it’s impact to the Patterson-Gimlin film impact on the Bigfoot cryptozoology community.
Independent filmmakers Kelly Tabor and Richard Rossi were shooting a fictional film ‘Lucy and the Lake Monster‘ about a 9-year-old girl and her grandfather looking for Champ, a legendary lake monster rumored to live and lurk in the murky waters of Lake Champlain. The film is based on their bestselling book of the same title.
A poignant scene in the fictional film features the grandfather, “Papa Jerry,” (played by actor-director Richard Rossi), reading a passage about the mighty Leviathan sea serpent from the forty-first chapter of the Book of Job to his granddaughter Lucy (played by actress Emma Pearson).
Hopes were high they would see Camp surface while they were shooting. “We never saw Champ surface out of the water,” Tabor said. “But God had a surprise waiting for us. He did it in a different way than we expected. Through our drone we saw him swimming under the water, not surfacing above the water.”
As part of their shoot, their cameraman sent a drone above the lake in Bulwagga Bay, and what they saw in post-production stunned them.
They posted ten seconds of what is now known as the Tabor-Rossi footage on YouTube and 36,000 views later, it has provoked discussion and debate about what appears to some to be a plesiosaur swimming below the lake’s surface, behind a boat containing the two lead actors in their film, Emma Pearson and Richard Rossi. The footage of the plesiosaur, (plesiosaurs are a sea creature from the dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic era), can be seen here:
Tabor and Rossi’s recent interview on the Cryptid Creature podcast was posted on Spotify. The duo submitted their footage and story for assessment by the two hosts, Todd Stevens and Brian Brock. Stevens eloquently summed up his conclusion, affirming the veracity of the footage.
“The creature is bigger than the boat, fifty yards behind the boat, Stevens said. ”It has a plesiosaur body. It is not sturgeon, or multiple sturgeon. It is one large body moving.” The entire Cryptid Creatures interview with Tabor and Rossi can be heard here.
Tabor first spotted the creature in the footage, editing on her large screen T.V. ”It’s poetic that Kelly saw it first,” Rossi said. “She has been looking for Champ for over fifty years.” Tabor grew up in a cabin on Lake Champlain in Crown Point, New York.
“We inadvertently caught this on camera,” Tabor said. “We weren’t trying to.”
If Kelly Tabor is the true believer of the screenwriting team, her writing partner Richard Rossi is the Doubting Thomas, insisting on the footage being evaluated by scientists with a doctorate in science and to prepare a report for peer review in 2025.
“I’m the more skeptical one compared to Kelly,” Rossi said. ”But there’s definitely something there.”
The filmmaking crew was so busy filming the movie, they didn’t catch the anomaly in the footage until later, in the post-production editing stage.
Multiple versions of their footage are now on Pinterest and YouTube as cryptozoologists use their tech savvy to zoom in on the Champ image, and use coloring to do morphological enhancements and evaluations.
The Tabor-Rossi Champ footage is incorporated into their fictional film, ‘Lucy and the Lake Monster,’ at about the four-minute mark of the film. The movie has screened in theaters in New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, California, and South Carolina. This month, it won 12 awards in film festivals. It will be released on DVD and streaming next year.
“As filmmakers, our primary focus is on the art form itself. We don’t respond too much to the debate around the footage,” Rossi said. “We try to focus on doing the best job we can in our screenwriting, acting, cinematography, and music. It’s nice that Champ has blessed us with the benefits of headlines that let people know about our book and the film, but at the end of the day, our focus is on showing the film and writing the next sequel. Champ has been a great publicist.”
“Champ is also one of the biggest stars in our new film,” Tabor added.
Their ‘Lucy and the Lake Monster’ film ends with actress Emma Pearson reading her poem that is a paean to Champ:
“Champ is not just an animal, or a monster to fear
He is a fellow divine creature, and his home is right here.“
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Contact:
Reporter Christy Collins
Eternal Grace
(424) 421-0060
richardrossi@lucyandthelakemonster.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.