Move Over, Nessie! These Other Lake Monsters Want the Spotlight!

By | October 26, 2018

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A view of the Loch Ness Monster, near Inverness, Scotland, April 19, 1934. The photograph, one of two grainy pictures known as the 'surgeon's photographs,' was allegedly taken by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson, at Loch Ness.

For generations, bizarre sightings in Loch Ness in Scotland have prompted residents and visitors to believe that a strange, unknown creature lives in the depth of the lake, surfacing infrequently to scare anyone who happens to be watching the water. The legend of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, as it has been affectionately called, is well known the world over, but did you know that Nessie may not be alone? All over the globe, people have reported seeing odd, mysterious creatures residing in freshwater lakes. Here are just a few of them. 

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Champ of Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain is similar to Loch Ness in that it is a long, narrow, deep lake. Lake Champlain, however, is located mostly in the United States, between Vermont and New York. Part of the 125-mile long lake does extend north into Canada. People have reported seeing a strange, large, serpent-like creature in Lake Champlain for hundreds of years. Both the Iroquois and Abenaki tribes have folklore that surrounds the unknown lake monster. The Abenaki people referred to the beast as “Tatoskok” before the body of water was named Lake Champlain after Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec. In fact, Samuel de Champlain may have been the first European to report a sighting of the Lake Champlain Monster, which became known as Champ. In 1609, according to some reports, de Champlain noted that he saw a “20-foot serpent thick as a barrel and a head like a horse.”