Film & TV3 min(s) read
Published 10:22 08 Jun 2026 GMT
A pair of filmmakers believe they may have accidentally captured Champ, known as America's Loch Ness Monster, on camera.
Richard Rossi and Kelly Tabor were filming scenes for their children's movie, Lucy and the Lake Monster, based on the mythical beast said to inhabit Lake Champlain, when they unknowingly recorded something unusual in the water behind their boat.
The discovery did not come until two years later during the editing process.
According to the filmmakers, the video seemed to show a mysterious creature swimming behind their small vessel on the 125-mile-long lake, which stretches across parts of New York, Vermont, and Quebec.
"When I saw it, I saw it like a skinny neck, and that the body got larger," Tabor told the Daily Mail. "It looked like the skinny neck was oscillating back and forth, as if it was grazing underwater. My eyes were just popping out."
Tabor later called Rossi over to review the footage.
The video has since caught the attention of producers from the History Channel's hit series The UnXplained, The New York Post reported.
Per Rossi, the producers described the footage as the strongest visual evidence of Champ since a famous photograph taken in 1977.
The filmmaker said one aspect that makes the footage particularly notable is that the alleged creature can be seen alongside an 11-foot boat, giving viewers a clearer sense of scale.
Stories about the creature lurking beneath the surface of Lake Champlain have circulated for more than 200 years.
One of the earliest and most famous reports dates back to 1819, when Captain Crum claimed he encountered a creature measuring 187 feet long with the head of a seahorse.
More than 50 years later, in 1873, The New York Times published an account stating that a railroad crew had spotted the head of a scaly "enormous serpent" emerging from the lake.
Sightings continued throughout the decades, becoming such a cultural spectacle that lawmakers in both New York and Vermont passed resolutions in the 1980s protecting Champ, should the creature actually exist.
For Tabor, the monster is more than just the subject of a movie, as she grew up near Port Henry, New York, an area many believers consider Champ's home due to the large number of reported sightings there.
As a child, she regularly scanned the water looking for signs of the creature and believes she may have witnessed evidence of it herself while sitting on the porch of her parents' lakefront cabin.
"There was a big stirring out a little ways from the front porch," Tabor told the Daily Mail. "[The wake] wasn’t going from the left or the right. It was bearing up and down. It was a straight way, at least an inch high, coming straight at us."
But what happened next made the experience even more bizarre. "It came right towards the cabin, and it made a 90-degree turn," she said, adding that whatever it was never surfaced.
"I like to believe I saw the effects of Champ," she added.
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