For centuries, cultures around the world have told tales of mysterious lake creatures lurking beneath the deep, murky water. Creatures with serpent-like bodies, long necks, and enormous heads. People are fascinated by these creatures, but why? Why are we fascinated by creatures whose existence keeps getting debunked despite continued “sightings?”
The two most recognizable lake creatures do just that. They are the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland and its American counterpart, Champ. Let’s take a look at the intrigue and mystery they hold over us.
Medieval Lake Creatures
Mysterious lake creatures aren’t new to this day and age. During the Middle Ages, the sea was a dangerous yet necessary place for economies to trade with one another.
The sea was mighty, vast, and unpredictable. At any moment, storms could unleash their fury on even the strongest of medieval ships. Beyond the unpredictability of the weather, those sailing the high seas also feared encountering mysterious sea creatures.
Water represented one of the last unknown frontiers. Medieval folklore was full of tales of creatures lurking in the sea's watery depths. So much so that medieval maps were drawn with sea serpents and even mermaids over them.
While the sea is a better understood today, there’s still a lot we don’t know. It’s why these large freshwater lakes feel similar. They can seem just as expansive as the sea and hold the same intrigue and mystery. Just like sightings of sea creatures back then, these creatures have somewhat escaped into today's lakes.
Loch Ness: Scotland’s Legendary Lake Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is a mythical lake creature thought to live in Loch Ness, a large freshwater lake near Inverness, Scotland. Loch Ness is the largest body of freshwater in the United Kingdom. So much so that they say you could submerge every person on the planet. It’s truly a sight to behold. Unless you’ve seen it firsthand, there’s no way to grasp how vast its waters are.
The First Recorded Sighting
Stories of the Loch Ness Monster date back nearly 1,500 years, with the earliest account appearing in the biography of the Irish missionary Saint Columba. On August 22, 565 AD, Saint Columba was traveling to visit the King of the Northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped to confront a beast believed to be killing people in the lake. It’s recorded that St. Columba saw the creature poised to attack someone, and he commanded it to “go back,” and the monster did.
The Sighting That Changed Things
It wasn’t until 1933 that the next significant sighting took place. During that year, a new road was completed along the shores of Loch Ness, giving drivers a clear, unobstructed view of the Loch. In May of 1933, the Inverness Courier reported that a local couple claimed to see an “enormous animal rolling and plunging the surface.”
After this Loch Ness sighting, it became a media phenomenon. Many newspapers sent reporters to Scotland hoping to get a prize-winning glimpse of the lake creature. This included London’s Daily Mail, which sent big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell.
After only a few days, Weatherell reported finding footprints of a large four-legged animal along the shore of Loch Ness. The Daily Mail proclaimed the legend of the Loch Ness monster to be true.
But was it? Plaster casts taken of the footprints were sent to zoologists at the British Natural History Museum, who dispelled the hopes of many by saying that the tracks were from a hippo foot and likely a stuffed one at that.
The “Surgeon’s Photo”
Those determined to prove the Loch Ness monster as fact weren’t deterred. In 1934, English physician Robert Kenneth Wilson photographed the alleged creature. This famous photo, known as the “surgeon’s photograph,” appears to show the monster’s small head and neck. The Daily Mail printed it, inciting a global sensation.
Speculations ensued that the creature in that photo was not the Loch Ness monster, but a primitive marine reptile long extinct.
The Search for Loch Ness Goes on
The search for the Loch Ness Monster continued. In the 1960s, several British universities launched expeditions, even using sonar to search the deep waters. Although nothing concrete was found, the sonar detected a large underwater object they could not explain. Sonar expeditions continued into the 1990s, all with inconclusive readings, keeping hopes alive.
There is even a registry of Loch Ness sightings run by volunteers: The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register | Home.
Even without conclusive evidence of the Loch Ness monster’s existence, it remains widely popular and even profitable. It’s believed to contribute around $80 million annually to Scotland’s economy. Recent sightings in June 2026 have fueled new hope for proof of the lake creature’s existence.
But did you know that Scotland isn’t the only home to a mysterious lake creature? Let’s venture across the Atlantic to the United States and meet its counterpart, Champ.
Meet Champ: America’s Lake Creature
Champ, America’s “Loch Ness,” is believed to live in Lake Champlain, a large freshwater lake located along the border of upstate New York and Vermont. For centuries, there have been alleged sightings of an “enormous swimming monster.”
Legends of Lake Champlain
In the 18th century, the indigenous tribes of the area told their own tales of lake creatures in Lake Champlain. Large snake-like creatures with horns lurked in the waters. The Abenaki even warned French explorers to be careful in disturbing the lake waters so as not to disturb the monsters below.
Champ has allegedly been seen by hundreds of witnesses over the years. Many describe it as a creature between 20 and 80 feet long, with a serpentine body and the head of a snake or seahorse. Many historians think Champ is most likely a garfish.
Early Sightings of Champ
One of the first and most famous documented sightings of Champ was by Captain Crum and was recorded in the Plattsburg Republican newspaper on July 14, 1819. Captain Crum claimed to see a “black monster with the head like a sea horse” come out of the water while aboard his scow on Bulwagga Bay.
In 1873, a story in the New York Times reported a railroad crew saw the head of an “enormous serpent” in Lake Champlain. Again in 1945, passengers on the S.S. Ticonderoga claimed to see the creature as well. By 1992, the number of sightings came to 180.
The Mansi Photo
You may be familiar with the most famous photograph of Champ taken by Sandra Mansi on July 5, 1977. This single photo taken with her Kodak Instamatic camera is widely believed to be a hoax. Although even the biggest skeptics can’t claim that what showed up in the photo she took wasn’t a creature of the water.
In a 2011 article, Santa Mansi recounts what led up to her taking this famous photo. She says she wasn’t unfamiliar with Champ’s story, but she didn’t truly believe it until the day she saw the creature emerge from the water with a long neck, and she just knew she was seeing it in the flesh.
Mansi still maintains that her photo is real.
Interest in Champ Lives On
Just like with Loch Ness sightings, media interest spiked after sightings capturing the attention of the Today Show and NBC Unsolved Mysteries. In 2003, the Discovery Channel did a special on “America’s Loch Ness Monster” after 3 new sightings.
Despite skepticism over Champ sightings, Champ is now protected by law on both sides of Lake Champlain and is embraced as the local lake monster. There are parades and festivals in its honor, and even a Minor League Baseball team gets its namesake from it.
The truth about Champ returns to eyewitnesses to show the existence of the creature beneath the waters of Lake Champlain. Alleged sightings continue to show up in photos and videos, but all still remain unclear, or do they?
Why Lake Creatures Stand the Test of Time
Even when sightings are debunked, there’s still a small part of us that wishes this creature of the lake does, in fact, exist. So, why do people keep scanning the water at Loch Ness? Why do Champ sightings still surface in stories around Lake Champlain? Why do we give names to the shadows in deep places?
It’s why I am so interested in why we keep looking for them.
Maybe because monsters help us respect the unknown. Maybe because they make familiar landscapes feel enchanted again. Maybe because, somewhere deep down, we want the world to still have secrets.
Lake Monsters and My Art
For myself, I have always been drawn to the kind of stories that live at the edge of belief. In particular, the ones that begin with someone looking out across dark water and saying, I know what I saw.
This is most likely why lake and sea creatures found their way into my art.
A deep lake already has a kind of mythology built into it. You cannot see the bottom. You cannot know everything that moves beneath the surface. So the imagination does what it has always done. It fills the dark with teeth, scales, shadows, and possibility.
That is the feeling I come back to again and again in my work.
The half-seen thing. The question that survives because no one can fully answer it.
So when I create lake and sea creatures, I am not trying to prove they exist. What I am trying to do is bring a little bit of the wonder these creatures hold for us.
Dive deep into the world of these creatures here: Sea Monsters – Modern Medieval Press
along with the piece inspired by the Loch Ness Monster itself: Loch Ness Sea Monster Art Print | Folklore Reproduction – Modern Medieval Press.
In the Waters Below
A lake creature is not just a monster to me. They evoke the feeling of standing on shore and realizing the world is older and stranger than we can explain. It is the shadow under the surface.
Creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and Champ feel ancient, even when the stories themselves shift from place to place. They belong to that strange space between folklore and memory, where landscape becomes character and water starts to feel like it is keeping something from us.
Even when sighting after sighting is torn apart, the mystery still draws us in, and it’s why we keep searching for them in the waters below.
