Most lakes are named for a person, a place, or a plain description of what they look like. Two of ours are also watched over by something nobody's ever quite explained.
Of the six lakes in this collection, only Lake Champlain and Lake Memphremagog carry documented, generations-old monster folklore — real written accounts stretching back to the 1800s, real local societies that still track sightings today. The other four lakes have plenty of history, wildlife, and beauty of their own, but no lasting monster tradition. (Lake Willoughby has a stray 1868 newspaper item about a "great water snake" and a single 1986 sighting, which we cover on the Lake Willoughby history page, but nothing like Champ or Memphre.) We're not going to invent more just to fill out a page.
Champ — Lake Champlain
Vermont's most famous lake monster, with roots in Abenaki oral tradition and well over a century of reported sightings — plus a $50,000 reward P.T. Barnum reportedly once offered for Champ's capture, and symbolic protection resolutions passed by both Vermont and New York.
Read the full story of Champ →
Memphre — Lake Memphremagog
The cross-border serpent of Newport, Vermont and Magog, Québec, first documented in writing in 1816 — decades before Champ's earliest sightings — and still tracked today by the International Dracontology Society of Lake Memphremagog, founded in 1986.
Read the full story of Memphre →
What They Have in Common
Both are long, dark, serpentine creatures reported in deep, glacially carved lakes. Both have been "sighted" for well over a hundred years, by fishermen, swimmers, and ordinary people out on the water. Both have dedicated local societies keeping the record straight. And neither has ever been proven to exist — which hasn't stopped either lake from being a little more interesting because of it.