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Some intriguing visual insights are becoming visible with enhancements of the "Champ video." This footage first came to the attention of Cryptomundo, and then was shared with you and the world on Monday, June 1, 2009.
Let's take a look at some of these new imagery and media revelations.
For starters, the name and more details about the man who captured the footage are now known. On June 3, 2009, the Burlington, Vermont Free Press published the first media article about the incident. Staff writer Sam Hemingway, who interviewed me the day before, penned the initial results of his journalistic investigation. (The print edition has incorrectly spelled my name and shortened a couple of my comments, thus changing their meanings. Therefore, I have corrected these errors in the following online version, specifically regarding those points - see bracketed edits.)
A cell-phone video of a "creature" that appears to be swimming in Lake Champlain near Oakledge Park in Burlington last weekend is sparking renewed discussion about "Champ," the lake's legendary monster.The article, "Champ Mystery Grows," was a front page story in the paper's Wednesday edition, and will propel the news into the mainstream media.
The nearly 2-minute video, taken at sunrise Sunday [May 31, 2009] by Burlington resident Eric Olsen, 37, shows an object moving across the mouth of the small cove and beach area at the park.
At several points during the video, the object appears to raise its "head" a foot or more above the water's surface. At other times a portion of what appears to be a torso, several feet in length, also can been seen.
"I was just filming the water when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move, and I turned toward it and tried to zoom in on it," said Olsen, a Web site developer and musician.
"You can see that it is moving both horizontally, across the water, and vertically, going under the surface and coming back up," he said. "It struck me as something that was long, that it didn't have much girth."
Olsen put what he captured with his phone on YouTube, an Internet video-sharing site. Unsure about what he had photographed and reluctant to call it a "Champ" sighting, Olsen titled the footage "Strange Sighting on Lake Champlain."
The number of viewings of the video since it went on YouTube on Sunday had reached 3,060 by Tuesday evening.
Loren Coleman a cryptozoologist based in Portland, Maine, said what Olsen filmed with his phone is the best [moving] photographic evidence to date of what residents on both sides of Lake Champlain prefer to call "Champ."
"We need to figure out what is going on here," Coleman said. "The film needs to have a formal forensic analysis performed ... to break it down frame by frame. It needs to be looked at very seriously." Cryptozoology is the study of purportedly nonexistent or mythical creatures. [Cryptozoology is actually the study of as-yet-unverified new animals, hidden animals, and to-be-recovered "extinct" animals. ~ Loren]Before Sunday, the best known "Champ" photograph was taken in 1977 by Sandra Mansi of Bristol while she was having a picnic on the lake with her family. The photo was verified as legitimate and later appeared in Time magazine and The New York Times.© UnknownThe Sandra Mansi photograph
Mansi, now 66, viewed Olsen's video Tuesday and said there were similarities - and differences - between what she saw in 1977 and what is depicted in Olsen's footage.
"I see the shape of the head, how big it is," she said, comparing her photo and the video. "The only thing I have a hard time with is the neck. It doesn't look long enough for me. ... Whatever he saw has a link to what I saw. Tell him, 'Welcome to the club.'"
Scott Mardis of Winooski, another cryptozoologist who has spent time researching the "Champ" legend, said Olsen's video seemed legitimate and was "very impressive."
"It does not look like it was Photoshopped," Mardis said. "The object in the video has the same general texture as the rest of the photograph. It does not look like it was computer-generated. It looks like a 'Champ.'"
Mardis and Coleman said the object's movements and size ruled out the chance it was a beaver, moose or some other more common mammal. Instead, both speculated it might be some unknown species of seal with an unusually long neck.
"There's lots of things that it could be," Coleman said. "It's just as interesting to me if all it is is an out-of-place harbor seal [if it is not an unknown species]."
Ellen Marsden, a biology professor at the University of Vermont, said she thinks the object is not a seal but possibly a young moose in distress.
"Fish or aquatic species rarely move that slowly in the water," Marsden said. "It did not look like a creature that was comfortable in water. It was swimming as if something was seriously wrong." She also said seals don't swim with their backs out of the water.
Olsen said he never saw the object emerge from the lake. He said he stopped filming after two minutes because the phone's memory capacity was limited and he was afraid of losing what he had filmed. He said he stayed at the park for another half hour before leaving.
There have been several alleged sightings of "Champ" on Lake Champlain over the years, but few were accompanied by any photographic substantiation.
Meanwhile, overnight, images are turning up from the "Champ video," assisting in a closer look at this footage.
Brought to Cryptomundo's attention via "boyinthemachine," from Jason Ficks of West Coast Sasquatch, here are a few stills from the "Champ video" taken May 31, 2009 footage:
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A German site has posted a video capture, too.
Ogopogo researcher/filmmaker Sean Viloria has forwarded the following enhanced enlargements of the clips from the footage. Please click on them to bring them up on your screen into a larger size.
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But now, along comes this footage. And it is interesting.
Comment: Well, it seems that the Video embedding has been disabled upon request. So there is no longer a video of "Champ", which is interesting in itself.
Maybe we will find out at a later date what is up with all of this.