The Champ mass sighting from the Spirit of Ethan Allen

Lake Champlain has its own monster. People call it Champ. Reports go back to the steamboat era, with sightings from vessels such as the Curlew and the *W.B. Eddy*. In 1984 the Spirit of Ethan Allen was brand new. Michael Shea had founded the cruise business that year, and by late July the boat was carrying parties out of Burlington.

Saturday evening, July 28, 1984. The boat was off Appletree Point on Burlington's north shore, hosting a 50th wedding anniversary party. Shea described what came next as "a moving object with three to five fins on top." It "swam parallel to the boat for more than 1,000 yards." The band stopped playing, and everyone crossed to that side of the boat.

Witnesses put it at about 30 feet long. Dark greenish-brown. Later retellings describe humps rising about 12 inches out of the water, "green-brown and slimy-looking," "like a frog." Shea remembered that "it came up a couple feet out of the water." Discover placed it about 200 feet off the port side.

Then a speedboat came the other way. "It did a 90-degree turn, dove and disappeared," Shea said. It was not over. About 15 minutes later the object surfaced again.

UPI reported about 70 people aboard. Other counts range from 58 to as many as 86. Bette Morris of Grand Isle saw "several bumps on the water." She had been looking for Champ for almost 17 years. "We hadn't been drinking all that much at the time, either," she said.

Shea estimated its weight at 3,000 to 5,000 pounds and insisted it was not a fish or a carp. Several passengers photographed the object. Those pictures have never been found.

UPI carried the story on Monday, July 30. No agency investigated. The follow-up came from Champ researcher Joseph Zarzynski, who logged it as a "mass sighting" and told Yankee in 1986 that more than 60 people saw it.

In January 2015 the Champ Search blog published an anonymous email signed "MR2KSpyder." It claimed a contractor had built a serpentine apparatus from large-diameter blower hose, painted and ballasted so only the humps showed. A diver supposedly surfaced it as the boat reached a pre-determined point and towed it alongside. The blog posted the claim with a question mark. Nothing has corroborated it.

The original UPI story raised a large fish or sturgeon. In Discover, Dick Teresi described work by Middlebury College researchers Robert Prigo and Thomas Manley on large internal waves that can lift logs and debris to the surface. Logs, swimming deer and psychological contagion were offered too. Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell have argued that many Champ sightings are otters. In 2018, Shea said he could not say what it was, but "it wasn't a rogue wave," and he has never seen it again.

Today the Spirit of Ethan Allen III invites passengers to look for Champ as they cruise, and the 1984 encounter is still cited as the largest group sighting of the creature. One evening. One boat. About 70 people. And a set of photographs no one has found.