Loren Coleman ‘78SW

While trained as an anthropologist, zoologist, and clinical social worker, and being proudest of being a father, most of my life‘s work has moved to the spot where I find myself today labeled by the popular media as "the world‘s leading living cryptozoologist." Certainly, I can modestly acknowledge part of that honor, for, at least, I am alive and the current American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology—the study of hidden or as yet to be discovered animals—in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1947, the son of a Navy yeoman who would soon quit the service. He would move with his wife and three–month–old baby back to their homeland, Illinois. Raised with animals and wildlife, I would hear about Abominable Snowmen twelve years later and that would stimulate in me a fire that has never died.

I obtained an undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, majoring in anthropology, minored in zoology, and did some summer work in archaeology. After working for several years in the human services field, I received a graduate degree in psychiatric social work from Simmons in 1978. Then I was admitted to the Ph.D. programs, and took doctoral coursework in social anthropology at Brandies University, and later in sociology at the University of New Hampshire‘s Anthropology/Sociology Department.

However, my dedication to fatherhood made my decision to be an active co–parent to my sons (Malcolm & Caleb), to teach, to continue my cryptozoology research, and to write, an easy one.

If you don‘t know what "cryptozoology" is, you‘ve missed an exciting bit of history and adventure that has taken place from the jungles of Africa and the lochs of Scotland to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and the Gulf of Maine off the New England coast.

I began my fieldwork and investigations in 1960, traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, first leading me to research mysterious Black Panther sightings and reports of Napes (North American Apes) in the American Midwest, at the elbows of game wardens and science teachers. From there, I went on to do fieldwork, camp, and travel to every state in the USA (except Alaska), throughout Canada, Mexico, Scotland, and the Virgin Islands, interviewing hundreds of witnesses of Hairy Hominoids, Lake Monsters, Giant Snakes, Mystery Felids, Mothman, Thunderbirds, and other cryptids, for the last 50 years.

I established my International Cryptozoology Museum, in 2003, as my home office and cabinet–of–curiosities collection to share with global media and worldwide researchers visiting Portland, Maine. It has served as the setting for several documentary television programs‘ interviews, regarding my books and continuing research.

I have written many articles, books, and blogs, and have worked both on– and off–camera in television, documentaries, and movies, as well as with radio. I also spent a great deal of time as an instructor, assistant/associate professor, research associate, and documentary filmmaker at various university settings until retiring from teaching in 2003.

There is much more I’d like to share with you. Check out Cryptomundo.com and Twilight Language, for additional details!

Recently posted by Loren Coleman

International Cryptozoology Museum

By Loren Coleman on September 29, 2009 11:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This is big news!

It's taken six years, but as of November 1, 2009, the International Cryptozoology Museum will publicly open in a permanent space in downtown Portland, Maine.

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After first being established in August 2003 via my modest home-based cabinet-of-curiosities in the Libbytown section of the Pine Tree State's largest city, the International Cryptozoology Museum will have its grand public opening right after Halloween 2009, in downtown Portland.


The museum has found a public home at 661 Congress Street, in the Arts District, just down the street from the world-famous Portland Museum of Art, the Children's Museum, and the State Theater, next to a local landmark, Joe's Smoke Shop. Also, it will sit right across from The Fun Box Monster Emporium. What a wonderful neighborhood for a cryptozoology museum!


After years of planning, I am excited and energized by this remarkable move to a fully publicly venue, complete with regular hours, sharing space with the new downtown Green Hand Books, owned by Michelle Souliere, anomalist and editor of the Strange Maine Newsletter. (The "green hand" relates to the phantom appendage appearing on classic pulp novels.)


Cryptozoology, the study of hidden animals, has been conceptualized since the 1940s, but the last few years have seen Bigfoot museums and cryptid exhibitions developed in a more organized fashion.


One great stimulation to the current evolution resulting in this public opening of the International Cryptozoology Museum occurred thanks to the exhibition, "Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale," at the Bates College Museum of Art in 2006. Co-curated by museum director Mark H.C. Bessire and Kansas City Art Institute's H&R Block Artspace director Raechell Smith, the genesis of that exhibition began in my front room.


Bates' unique art show, with a nonfiction gallery room labeled "the future International Cryptozoology Museum," started with discussions between myself, Bessire, then-Portland painter Sean Foley, international installation artist Mark Dion and international natural history painter Alexis Rockman. Foley, who first discovered he lived around the corner from my home but now lives in Ohio, and Bessire, the new director of the Portland Museum of Art, are godfathers, indeed, of this present move.

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The centerpiece of the collection is the once elusive eight feet tall, 400-pound "Crookston Bigfoot," created by Wisconsin artist Curtis Christensen, which was permanently added to the collection of the International Cryptozoology Museum in 2004.


The mission of the museum is to share the many items I have collected during the last half a century, with tourists, teachers, researchers, scholars, colleagues, students, documentary filmmakers, news people and the general public. I opened the International Cryptozoology Museum in a house I bought in Portland, under the spotlight of the media (ABC News visited the first week) and with a beginning trickle of invited visitors. Soon, Boing Boing TV, MonsterQuest, Lost Tapes, Weird Travels, and many more documentary film crews would come by.


The museum modestly began with sculptures and paintings created just for it, hundreds of cryptids toys and souvenirs from around the world, one-of-a-kind artifacts, a life-size 8 feet tall Bigfoot representation, a full-scale six-foot-long coelacanth model, over a hundred Bigfoot-Yeti-Yowie footcasts, jackalopes, furred trout, along with such Hollywood cryptid-related props as The Mothman Prophecies' Point Pleasant "police" outfit, the movie P. T. Barnum's authentic 3.5 feet tall Feejee Mermaid, the TV series Freakylinks' 11 ft long "Mystery Civil War Pterodactyl," and some of the movie Magnolia's falling frogs.


Special drawings, bronzes, paintings, and sculpture creations by the world's leading cryptozoology artists are featured in the collection, from Richard Klyver, Lee Murphy, Duncan Hopkins, Peter Loh, Steve Goodrich, Bill Rebsamen, Jeff H. Johnson, Erik Gosselin, Paul Dini, and many others.

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Photograph used with permission of Gregg Hale, Executive Director, Haxan Productions and Fox TV.


The International Cryptozoology Museum, also includes exhibits on the discoveries of "living fossils," the successful cryptozoological stories. One of the most famous, of course, is the coelacanth. Many thanks to an anonymous individual who donated the six-foot-long fiberglass mount of a coelacanth, modeled from an actual specimen by Fantastic Fish Mounts of Florida.


Museum quality skulls also exist in the collection of Gigantopithecus, Paranthropus, Australopithecus, Panthera atrox, gorilla, chimp, lion, cougar, and much more.

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Keith P. Luke photo, used with permission.


The view from the front window of the museum's new location. It's just a "Fayette coincidence" that this is the image that jumped out at me from my first Google Earth search of the museum's new address.


I am extremely proud to announce the formal unveiling of the public museum in tourist- and education-friendly Portland, Maine, housing five decades of cryptozoological pieces, with regular hours (11 am - 7 pm Tuesdays - Saturdays, Noon - 5 pm Sundays). The price of admission to view the gallery cryptozoology museum space, for all ages, will be $5.00, plus any other donations you might wish to leave.


Hope to see you there!


Greetings!

By Reconnect with Simmons on September 1, 2009 11:49 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
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