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unable to locate the site of the photo, which would help determine a number of things, including the size of the object. And the photo has virtually no objects of known scale (e.g., boat, human) by which to judge the creature’s size or distance. The fact that the Mansis waited four years to release the photo was also seen as suspicious. All we are left with is afantastic story in which the only supporting proof is a compelling but ambiguous photograph of something in the water.
    Because of the litany of missing information and the high quality of the image, suspicions of a hoax surfaced almost as quickly as Champ. Such accusations were summarily dismissed by Mansi family lawyer Alan Neigher, who said that his clients “could no more have constructed such a hoax than put a satellite in orbit.” Though some have suggested that Mansi tried to get rich from the photo, she proudly points out that she turned down lucrative offers from supermarket tabloids to reprint the photo. It was, she said, an issue of credibility.
    Richard D. Smith, a filmmaker who was producing a documentary on Champ, offered his expert commentary on the matter of a hoax: “As a photographer and filmmaker, I can speak with some authority as to what it would take to fake a picture of this sort. Assuming the remote possibility that the Mansi photo is a fraud, it would require fabrication of an excellent, full-sized model (highly expensive in terms of expertise and materials) which would have to be smuggled out to Champlain or another lake, there assembled or inflated, and successfully maneuvered around out in the water (most difficult, especially with a slight wind blowing), the whole thing accomplished without being seen or the slightest leak in security (unlikely)” (Smith 1984).
    Smith’s account is nearly comical in its strained assumptions. He envisions an “excellent, full-sized model” of the Champ monster, which certainly is unlikely. But the Mansi photograph doesn’t show an “excellent, full-sized model” of Champ; it shows a dark, featureless, ambiguous curved form of unknown size in the water. Surely such an object wouldn’t be as difficult to fake as Smith presumes.
    Other attempts to dismiss the possibility of a hoax are also strained. In his analysis of the photo (discussed in more detail later), B. Roy Frieden of the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona suggested that it “would be very difficult to hoax the object,” due in part to the fact that “the water is cold, therefore you’d have to have a wetsuit on, real protection from the cold water” (Frieden 1981). The photograph, however, was allegedly taken in July, and Sandra Mansi’s children were playing in the water, presumably without wetsuits. During our initialexperiments at Lake Champlain (discussed later), I had the privilege of taking measurements in the lake while my co-investigator stayed warm and dry on the shore (“Champ bait,” he called me). Although I was in fairly deep water, I was chilly but not uncomfortable, and I certainly didn’t need thermal protection. (Though admittedly, when we re-created our experiments later for a Discovery Channel documentary, the water was somewhat colder.)
    Jerome Clark (1983) asks, “If Sandra Mansi did help perpetrate a difficult, expensive hoax, why did she take only one photograph?” This simply begs the question: How do we know she took only one photograph? Just because she has shown only one to the world doesn’t mean that there aren’t others—perhaps ones that reveal more clues about the object. If Clark is willing to suppose for argument’s sake that Mansi might lie about her story, why would he assume that she would tell the truth about how many photos she took?
    One could just as easily argue that the taking of only one photo makes a hoax more likely, not less so. The one photo is intriguing enough to cause a