Free Lake Monster Mysteries by Benjamin Radford Page B

time.… It didn’t know I was there. I’m sure it didn’t.” This detail strongly suggests that the object Mansi saw was nonliving. Sound travels more than four times faster in water than in air,and some whales can hear sounds at distances of twenty miles or more. A living creature of the presumed size and complexity of Champ should certainly be able to hear and sense two young children splashing and playing nearby. Mansi attributes Champ’s distinctly unusual behavior to deafness: “I really don’t think it could hear because wouldn’t you think that if it heard the children [it would turn its head to face us]?” A simpler explanation is that the object couldn’t hear because it was nonliving.
    Mansi said that the creature, after surfacing six to eight feet out of the water, turned its head, apparently looking over the countryside. But what would an aquatic animal be doing scanning the shoreline and surrounding area? Animals that live in the water are unlikely to have good terrestrial vision for the distances described. Sea turtles, for example, have excellent eyesight underwater but are nearsighted on land. The idea that Champ would stick its head up to “have a long look around” (except toward the loud noises behind it) seems extremely unlikely.
    The creature held its head out of the water and was essentially stationary for “at least five to seven minutes.” Even given the fact that eyewitnesses tend to overestimate the duration of sightings, this is a remarkably long time for any large, living creature to remain essentially motionless. Large animals in the wild rarely stay immobile for long periods unless they are sleeping or eating. The majority of Champ sightings last less than a minute—often only a few seconds. If the Champ creatures (and there would have to be dozens to constitute a breeding population) habitually stick their necks six feet or more out of the water for five minutes or longer (whether people are nearby or not), it’s amazing that they aren’t sighted routinely.
    The object’s movements were not characteristic of an animal. From Mansi’s description, the head and neck were always more or less fixed in the same position. Although the head was said to move to some degree, it did not, for example, slide back or around as a snake’s head might. The object moved more like a stiff, stationary object turning slightly on its axis than like a flexible, pliable neck or appendage. Many reports—including Mansi’s—specifically point out that Champ “sank—it did not dive—under the water” (e.g., Clark and Pear 1995, 433). This is aninteresting characteristic, and exactly the behavior one would expect from a protruding root or branch of a partially submerged tree being roiled by waves: a necklike object sinking back into the water instead of diving forward.
    Mouth. There is only one specific detail in Mansi’s account that argues for a living creature and against a root or a tree: the presence of a mouth. Mansi said, “I could see that it was living. I could not see detail … I remember the mouth was open when it came up and water came out.” This feature is indeed hard to reconcile with a stump or a log. But later during our interview, Mansi contradicted herself: “When it came up, its mouth was closed, but you could see water [coming from the head].” This suggests that she only inferred the presence of a mouth. Since Mansi was interpreting the top of the “neck” as a head, this is a perfectly reasonable and perceptually sound assumption. Given that she thought she was seeing a creature’s head, her mind supplied the rest. The process by which the human mind fills in perceptual details thataren’t actually present is well documented (see, e.g., Williams, Loftus, and Deffenbacher 1992). If you look at the downward curve of the nose and head, it’s easy to