QUOTE
Bigfoot and sea serpents and a search for the hidden
Portland's 'hidden animal' researcher also takes an interest in report of Maine mountain lion
By David Carkhuff, Editor - david@portlanddailysun.me
Click to view attachment
Loren Coleman poses next to a Bigfoot figurine in his home in Portland. (DAVID CARKHUFF PHOTO)
Bigfoot insists on eluding the public; stories of sea serpents off the Maine coast remain unconfirmed.
Yet, ask Portland's premier researcher of hidden animals, Loren Coleman, and he will tell you it's an exciting time to be a cryptozoologist.
One reason? A mother and her two sons recently reported seeing a mountain lion near Winslow.
Hmm, a mountain lion. Not Bigfoot? Not a lake monster?
Admittedly, mountain lions are rather mundane when you're talking about cryptozoology. The research of "hidden animals," Coleman's field of study, prompted him to travel to the scene of a recent sighting of the Lake Champlain monster (the camera-phone footage taken by a lake visitor certainly looks like a Loch Ness monster knockoff; it has a long neck topped by a knoblike head). Coleman has probed similar sightings such as that of Cassie, the legendary Casco Bay sea monster.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, Coleman will discuss "Cryptozoology, the Study of Unknown and Undiscovered Animals" at the 2009 Fort Knox Paranormal and Psychic Faire near Prospect.
Coleman understands that a mountain lion report, even when state wildlife officials say there is no evidence of an established mountain lion population in Maine, won't stoke interest among his readers and viewers quite like the newest sea serpent sighting or Bigfoot report.
When a television show like "MonsterQuest" seeks out Coleman as an expert guest, it's to discuss the possible existence of Sasquatch, swamp apes or maybe even the giant squid. And when Coleman appears Saturday as a guest speaker at the paranormal fair at Maine's Fort Knox, he knows questions will tend to focus on the more spectacular, the mysterious, the bizarre.
Coleman takes it all in stride. He has a giant, stuffed Bigfoot in his home and his walls are covered with monster memorabilia. After 50 years of researching hidden and as-yet undiscovered animals, Coleman maintains a sense of humor. But he also takes cryptozoology, his adopted field, quite seriously.
Yes, mountain lion are fair game for his field of inquiry, he insists. The recent reported sighting in Maine, he says, falls right in line with his expertise.
"In terms of cryptozoology, that's a cryptozoology report because as long as they officially don't exist, cryptozoologists are interested in getting sightings like that," he said.
And don't forget that in Maine, Bigfoot takes a back seat to big cats.
Black panthers in Maine?
Expect the subject of black panthers to come up at the Fort Knox fair.
"Every time I've done the talk, people come up to me and tell me about their cat sightings," Coleman said. "Even though they're the Bigfoot of the feline world, most people think they're so mundane, but they really are so extraordinary because we aren't supposed to have black panthers and mountain lions in Maine. We may be coming into a hot period of reports for mystery cats in Maine."
Mostly, the reports surface in rural, less populated areas.
"I hear reports up and down the coast of Maine, more often from Waldo County ... about black panther reports," Coleman said. "There are not supposed to be any black panthers in Maine, yet Waldo County has the highest concentration of black panther cases on the East Coast."
On his blog, www.cryptomundo.com, Coleman posted several threads about reported panther sightings in Maine.
"People are seeing large cats this spring in the Northeast, and getting serious about finding proof," he wrote on June 1. He recounted the Winslow incident involving the mountain lion.
A year ago, on July 1, 2008, a restaurant owner in Island Falls in northeastern Maine reported that he and his wife saw a panther cross the road in front of them. Coleman documented his investigation into this sighting.
A year prior to that, Coleman documented his investigation of a series of Maine sheep killings and speculated that a black panther might be the culprit.
Coleman concluded on his blog, "Needless to say, a find of a dead black puma, i.e. mountain lion, or a classic black panther, i.e. melanistic leopard (that is not a former captive) verified as being a native of North America would be a remarkable cryptozoological discovery. ..."
State wildlife officials in the Winslow case speculated that the mountain lion spotted by the mother and her sons had been released into the wild and wasn't indigenous. Exotic pets released in the United States, especially alligators and pythons, can account for some sightings, Coleman conceded, but usually cats and other domestic animals, even if exotic, will return to populated areas and not try to survive in the woods, he said.
Of course, with any search for a missing animal, there are bound to be hoaxes.
In 1999, while writing his book, "Cryptozoology: A-Z," Coleman investigated reports from a college student about an Ozark howler, "a black panther-type creature." The student concocted an elaborate Internet hoax, even creating mock websites to corroborate his find, but through careful review, Coleman said he debunked the student's claims.
"People do that occasionally, and I'm usually quite cautious and careful," he said.
What about Bigfoot in Maine?
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (www.bfro.net) reported the newest area Bigfoot sighting occurred on July 28, 2002, just northeast of Maine between Fredericton, New Brunswich, and the Maine border.
A couple from Arizona had attended their daughter's wedding and were traveling west on Route 3 toward the state line. The husband noticed a Bigfoot-like creature in the middle of the road, and "as he watched the creature, and witnessed the muscles expanding and contracting, as well as its unusual descent down into the ditch, it became apparent to him that it was a not a human, but rather a unique bipedal creature synonymous with other descriptions of bigfoot/sasquatch," the field researchers reported.
Coleman said Bigfoot sightings in Maine are not as common as those in the Pacific Northwest.
"Bigfoot reports are not that frequent in Maine, as I would not expect them to be. I think if we see any Bigfoot in Maine, they're probably migrant Bigfoot from Quebec. We're used to that, right? They're tourists," he said, smiling.
"The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, appears to be home to family groups of Bigfoot," Coleman added.
One Bigfoot sighting that Coleman investigated personally came early in his career, in the early 1970s.
"Bigfoot sightings in Cumberland County, Maine, date back to July 1970 in the Shiloh-Lisbon Falls Road area in Brunswick and elsewhere in the county, when multiple sightings were reported," the BFRO reported.
Lois Huntington, 13, reportedly fell off her bike about three feet from the creature "and all he did was cock his head and look at her," the research organization reported. Huntington told the Maine Sunday Telegram: "I fell right down in front of him and all he did was look at me. I would have known if it were a hippie or something. But it had a regular monkey face. You have seen a monkey before, haven't you?"
This account from BFRO investigators was one of several sightings.
Coleman said he investigated the "Durham gorilla," an apelike creature seen near Brunswick, in 1973.
"You still get people who try to email me and say, 'I know what that was. I was it. I got a costume and went out there,'" Coleman said. "People always make claims to get new attention that they were behind a hoax, but we investigated it at the time, police officers investigated it, and they didn't find any hoaxing. Something was seen, I'm not sure what it was. It had a much more gorilla-like, apelike stance to it than a Bigfoot. Bigfoot is upright totally all the time."
In August 2008, two men from Georgia claimed they had found a Bigfoot carcass in northern California. Their "find" ultimately was debunked and declared a hoax.
Other reports originate more innocently.
"There are all kinds of animals that make noise in the woods, and somebody who's unfamiliar with the woods and camping, come up to Maine and they hear something in the woods and they get scared and they say it's Bigfoot," Coleman noted.
"Eighty percent of the stuff that comes my way are misidentifications, mistakes, mundane animals, people that are trying to pull my leg or looking for attention," Coleman said. "The actual major hoaxes like the Georgia Bigfoot last year, those are only maybe 1 percent, but that 20 percent of the unknown, the ones that can't be easily explained, those are the ones that interest me and get my attention."
A background in science, searching
Hoaxers, beware. Coleman has learned to sniff out a fake.
"I have a background in anthropology, zoology and psychiatric social work, so it's pretty hard to fool me, and I've also been doing this for 50 years, so I've seen everything by now," Coleman said.
This is his third year at the Fort Knox paranormal fair. Coleman enjoys the interaction but treats the subject matter with gravity.
"These conferences I don't take lightheartedly. I know the people there are serious about their crafts," he said.
"I certainly take cryptozoology very seriously, and I always consider whether or not I want to appear at a fair or a conference that's about the paranormal because most cryptozoologists like myself really see cryptozoology as the study of hidden or unknown, yet to be identified animals, it's not mythical creatures," Coleman said.
The Fort Knox fair, however, is a well respected event, he said, and it's also a benefit to raise money for the historic site, "so I can get behind that cause."
Coleman said on Saturday he will give an introduction and overview about cryptozoology and its discoveries and then discuss current events.
"Cryptozoology is a way that zoology understands and discovers new animals by getting information from local people, from natives, from folklores and traditions to really build up a case to see if there's any physical evidence for those actual animals existing," he explained.
This research approach paved the way for discovery of giant pandas, mountain gorillas and Coelacanths, a new species of fish related to lungfishes and tetrapods found in eastern Africa, Coleman said. He recently posted on his blog about a new species of bat found in the Comoros island archipelago.
Coleman grew up in Decatur, Ill., where there weren't many woods, mostly cornfields, so exploration was limited. By 1980, he and his wife lived in Cambridge but enjoyed visiting their cabin in Rangeley. A fan of Maine, Coleman moved to Portland in 1983. The city has been his home ever since, and a perfect launching pad for investigating sightings.
"Because I'm a generalist, because I'm a cryptozoologist and not just a Bigfooter, I hear all of the reports. I was the first person who published on the Lake Chaplain monster video," Coleman said, referring to the alleged camera-phone footage of a sea serpent at Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vt.
Eric Olsen was taking pictures of a sunrise when he turned his cellphone and captured a clip of what may be Champ, the reputed version of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, at Lake Champlain. The sighting and cellphone video clip showing what appears to be a head and neck extending from Lake Champlain prompted Coleman to devote a month of analysis to the sighting and visit the lake on June 23.
This wasn't the first time he had ventured out to analyze a sighting.
"I've investigated the sea serpent reports off the coast of Maine," Coleman said.
"The big thing with Portland is, of course, there are many possibilities for sea serpents," he noted.
A 1958 report from Cape Elizabeth proved to be one of his most memorable experiences.
"I got one of the best reports ever to come out of this area, and it was of a sea serpent that was going through the water, and the old foghorn was down there, and (the creature) would turn its head. That's a remarkable detail for an eyewitness because most people don't think about putting themselves in the place of those animals. When they're coming up with a hoax they might tell me it had enormous scales and fiery eyes, but this guy was just a fisherman, a Norwegian fisherman, who had been over here for 30 years."
Enjoying the hunt
A half century into his career, Coleman continues to glean stories and anecdotes. HIs blog, www.cryptomundo.com, is read by upwards of 1.9 million people a week, he said.
"I have a worldwide base of readers in my Cryptomundo blog that's been around for five years," he said.
Appearances on the History channel show, "MonsterQuest," have raised his visibility as well. Coleman is unapologetic about going on TV to promote cryptozoology.
"If we look at the history of cryptozoology and the discovery of animals from about the beginning of the 20th century through about 1950, all of the funding was from museums and zoos," he explained. "After the 1960s, certainly in the '80s, '90s and in this century, almost 90 percent of the funding has been from film companies, documentary film companies, from television series, who are sending people into the woods, sending people on expeditions to Mongolia or Nepal or to Australia from sites in western Europe and America. As a funding source, we have to be realistic."
While active on the Internet, Coleman said TV and newspapers remain important sources of funding for those in his field.
"People can make fun of television, they can make fun of newspapers all they want, in saying they're dying arts compared to the Internet, but it's from those sources, the print media and the visual media, that we're getting our funding to make this profession really work," Coleman said.
Lectures, like his presentation on Saturday, often result in fresh fodder for inquiry.
"It's at talks like this that people feel comfortable to come up and they give me new material sometimes," Coleman noted.
Later, over Labor Day weekend, Coleman will give a talk at the Waldo Theater in Waldo County; and that same weekend, he will present a commentary on sea serpents during a whale watch excursion out of Belfast.
Clearly life is good for Coleman as he enjoys his profession.
"I'm talking about cryptozoology, I'm writing about it, I'm lecturing about it and I'm going on expeditions," he said.
And while he may not run into Bigfoot any time soon, Coleman said he enjoys the human interaction.
"You never can tell who you'll meet," he said.
Portland's 'hidden animal' researcher also takes an interest in report of Maine mountain lion
By David Carkhuff, Editor - david@portlanddailysun.me
Click to view attachment
Loren Coleman poses next to a Bigfoot figurine in his home in Portland. (DAVID CARKHUFF PHOTO)
Bigfoot insists on eluding the public; stories of sea serpents off the Maine coast remain unconfirmed.
Yet, ask Portland's premier researcher of hidden animals, Loren Coleman, and he will tell you it's an exciting time to be a cryptozoologist.
One reason? A mother and her two sons recently reported seeing a mountain lion near Winslow.
Hmm, a mountain lion. Not Bigfoot? Not a lake monster?
Admittedly, mountain lions are rather mundane when you're talking about cryptozoology. The research of "hidden animals," Coleman's field of study, prompted him to travel to the scene of a recent sighting of the Lake Champlain monster (the camera-phone footage taken by a lake visitor certainly looks like a Loch Ness monster knockoff; it has a long neck topped by a knoblike head). Coleman has probed similar sightings such as that of Cassie, the legendary Casco Bay sea monster.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, Coleman will discuss "Cryptozoology, the Study of Unknown and Undiscovered Animals" at the 2009 Fort Knox Paranormal and Psychic Faire near Prospect.
Coleman understands that a mountain lion report, even when state wildlife officials say there is no evidence of an established mountain lion population in Maine, won't stoke interest among his readers and viewers quite like the newest sea serpent sighting or Bigfoot report.
When a television show like "MonsterQuest" seeks out Coleman as an expert guest, it's to discuss the possible existence of Sasquatch, swamp apes or maybe even the giant squid. And when Coleman appears Saturday as a guest speaker at the paranormal fair at Maine's Fort Knox, he knows questions will tend to focus on the more spectacular, the mysterious, the bizarre.
Coleman takes it all in stride. He has a giant, stuffed Bigfoot in his home and his walls are covered with monster memorabilia. After 50 years of researching hidden and as-yet undiscovered animals, Coleman maintains a sense of humor. But he also takes cryptozoology, his adopted field, quite seriously.
Yes, mountain lion are fair game for his field of inquiry, he insists. The recent reported sighting in Maine, he says, falls right in line with his expertise.
"In terms of cryptozoology, that's a cryptozoology report because as long as they officially don't exist, cryptozoologists are interested in getting sightings like that," he said.
And don't forget that in Maine, Bigfoot takes a back seat to big cats.
Black panthers in Maine?
Expect the subject of black panthers to come up at the Fort Knox fair.
"Every time I've done the talk, people come up to me and tell me about their cat sightings," Coleman said. "Even though they're the Bigfoot of the feline world, most people think they're so mundane, but they really are so extraordinary because we aren't supposed to have black panthers and mountain lions in Maine. We may be coming into a hot period of reports for mystery cats in Maine."
Mostly, the reports surface in rural, less populated areas.
"I hear reports up and down the coast of Maine, more often from Waldo County ... about black panther reports," Coleman said. "There are not supposed to be any black panthers in Maine, yet Waldo County has the highest concentration of black panther cases on the East Coast."
On his blog, www.cryptomundo.com, Coleman posted several threads about reported panther sightings in Maine.
"People are seeing large cats this spring in the Northeast, and getting serious about finding proof," he wrote on June 1. He recounted the Winslow incident involving the mountain lion.
A year ago, on July 1, 2008, a restaurant owner in Island Falls in northeastern Maine reported that he and his wife saw a panther cross the road in front of them. Coleman documented his investigation into this sighting.
A year prior to that, Coleman documented his investigation of a series of Maine sheep killings and speculated that a black panther might be the culprit.
Coleman concluded on his blog, "Needless to say, a find of a dead black puma, i.e. mountain lion, or a classic black panther, i.e. melanistic leopard (that is not a former captive) verified as being a native of North America would be a remarkable cryptozoological discovery. ..."
State wildlife officials in the Winslow case speculated that the mountain lion spotted by the mother and her sons had been released into the wild and wasn't indigenous. Exotic pets released in the United States, especially alligators and pythons, can account for some sightings, Coleman conceded, but usually cats and other domestic animals, even if exotic, will return to populated areas and not try to survive in the woods, he said.
Of course, with any search for a missing animal, there are bound to be hoaxes.
In 1999, while writing his book, "Cryptozoology: A-Z," Coleman investigated reports from a college student about an Ozark howler, "a black panther-type creature." The student concocted an elaborate Internet hoax, even creating mock websites to corroborate his find, but through careful review, Coleman said he debunked the student's claims.
"People do that occasionally, and I'm usually quite cautious and careful," he said.
What about Bigfoot in Maine?
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (www.bfro.net) reported the newest area Bigfoot sighting occurred on July 28, 2002, just northeast of Maine between Fredericton, New Brunswich, and the Maine border.
A couple from Arizona had attended their daughter's wedding and were traveling west on Route 3 toward the state line. The husband noticed a Bigfoot-like creature in the middle of the road, and "as he watched the creature, and witnessed the muscles expanding and contracting, as well as its unusual descent down into the ditch, it became apparent to him that it was a not a human, but rather a unique bipedal creature synonymous with other descriptions of bigfoot/sasquatch," the field researchers reported.
Coleman said Bigfoot sightings in Maine are not as common as those in the Pacific Northwest.
"Bigfoot reports are not that frequent in Maine, as I would not expect them to be. I think if we see any Bigfoot in Maine, they're probably migrant Bigfoot from Quebec. We're used to that, right? They're tourists," he said, smiling.
"The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, appears to be home to family groups of Bigfoot," Coleman added.
One Bigfoot sighting that Coleman investigated personally came early in his career, in the early 1970s.
"Bigfoot sightings in Cumberland County, Maine, date back to July 1970 in the Shiloh-Lisbon Falls Road area in Brunswick and elsewhere in the county, when multiple sightings were reported," the BFRO reported.
Lois Huntington, 13, reportedly fell off her bike about three feet from the creature "and all he did was cock his head and look at her," the research organization reported. Huntington told the Maine Sunday Telegram: "I fell right down in front of him and all he did was look at me. I would have known if it were a hippie or something. But it had a regular monkey face. You have seen a monkey before, haven't you?"
This account from BFRO investigators was one of several sightings.
Coleman said he investigated the "Durham gorilla," an apelike creature seen near Brunswick, in 1973.
"You still get people who try to email me and say, 'I know what that was. I was it. I got a costume and went out there,'" Coleman said. "People always make claims to get new attention that they were behind a hoax, but we investigated it at the time, police officers investigated it, and they didn't find any hoaxing. Something was seen, I'm not sure what it was. It had a much more gorilla-like, apelike stance to it than a Bigfoot. Bigfoot is upright totally all the time."
In August 2008, two men from Georgia claimed they had found a Bigfoot carcass in northern California. Their "find" ultimately was debunked and declared a hoax.
Other reports originate more innocently.
"There are all kinds of animals that make noise in the woods, and somebody who's unfamiliar with the woods and camping, come up to Maine and they hear something in the woods and they get scared and they say it's Bigfoot," Coleman noted.
"Eighty percent of the stuff that comes my way are misidentifications, mistakes, mundane animals, people that are trying to pull my leg or looking for attention," Coleman said. "The actual major hoaxes like the Georgia Bigfoot last year, those are only maybe 1 percent, but that 20 percent of the unknown, the ones that can't be easily explained, those are the ones that interest me and get my attention."
A background in science, searching
Hoaxers, beware. Coleman has learned to sniff out a fake.
"I have a background in anthropology, zoology and psychiatric social work, so it's pretty hard to fool me, and I've also been doing this for 50 years, so I've seen everything by now," Coleman said.
This is his third year at the Fort Knox paranormal fair. Coleman enjoys the interaction but treats the subject matter with gravity.
"These conferences I don't take lightheartedly. I know the people there are serious about their crafts," he said.
"I certainly take cryptozoology very seriously, and I always consider whether or not I want to appear at a fair or a conference that's about the paranormal because most cryptozoologists like myself really see cryptozoology as the study of hidden or unknown, yet to be identified animals, it's not mythical creatures," Coleman said.
The Fort Knox fair, however, is a well respected event, he said, and it's also a benefit to raise money for the historic site, "so I can get behind that cause."
Coleman said on Saturday he will give an introduction and overview about cryptozoology and its discoveries and then discuss current events.
"Cryptozoology is a way that zoology understands and discovers new animals by getting information from local people, from natives, from folklores and traditions to really build up a case to see if there's any physical evidence for those actual animals existing," he explained.
This research approach paved the way for discovery of giant pandas, mountain gorillas and Coelacanths, a new species of fish related to lungfishes and tetrapods found in eastern Africa, Coleman said. He recently posted on his blog about a new species of bat found in the Comoros island archipelago.
Coleman grew up in Decatur, Ill., where there weren't many woods, mostly cornfields, so exploration was limited. By 1980, he and his wife lived in Cambridge but enjoyed visiting their cabin in Rangeley. A fan of Maine, Coleman moved to Portland in 1983. The city has been his home ever since, and a perfect launching pad for investigating sightings.
"Because I'm a generalist, because I'm a cryptozoologist and not just a Bigfooter, I hear all of the reports. I was the first person who published on the Lake Chaplain monster video," Coleman said, referring to the alleged camera-phone footage of a sea serpent at Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vt.
Eric Olsen was taking pictures of a sunrise when he turned his cellphone and captured a clip of what may be Champ, the reputed version of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, at Lake Champlain. The sighting and cellphone video clip showing what appears to be a head and neck extending from Lake Champlain prompted Coleman to devote a month of analysis to the sighting and visit the lake on June 23.
This wasn't the first time he had ventured out to analyze a sighting.
"I've investigated the sea serpent reports off the coast of Maine," Coleman said.
"The big thing with Portland is, of course, there are many possibilities for sea serpents," he noted.
A 1958 report from Cape Elizabeth proved to be one of his most memorable experiences.
"I got one of the best reports ever to come out of this area, and it was of a sea serpent that was going through the water, and the old foghorn was down there, and (the creature) would turn its head. That's a remarkable detail for an eyewitness because most people don't think about putting themselves in the place of those animals. When they're coming up with a hoax they might tell me it had enormous scales and fiery eyes, but this guy was just a fisherman, a Norwegian fisherman, who had been over here for 30 years."
Enjoying the hunt
A half century into his career, Coleman continues to glean stories and anecdotes. HIs blog, www.cryptomundo.com, is read by upwards of 1.9 million people a week, he said.
"I have a worldwide base of readers in my Cryptomundo blog that's been around for five years," he said.
Appearances on the History channel show, "MonsterQuest," have raised his visibility as well. Coleman is unapologetic about going on TV to promote cryptozoology.
"If we look at the history of cryptozoology and the discovery of animals from about the beginning of the 20th century through about 1950, all of the funding was from museums and zoos," he explained. "After the 1960s, certainly in the '80s, '90s and in this century, almost 90 percent of the funding has been from film companies, documentary film companies, from television series, who are sending people into the woods, sending people on expeditions to Mongolia or Nepal or to Australia from sites in western Europe and America. As a funding source, we have to be realistic."
While active on the Internet, Coleman said TV and newspapers remain important sources of funding for those in his field.
"People can make fun of television, they can make fun of newspapers all they want, in saying they're dying arts compared to the Internet, but it's from those sources, the print media and the visual media, that we're getting our funding to make this profession really work," Coleman said.
Lectures, like his presentation on Saturday, often result in fresh fodder for inquiry.
"It's at talks like this that people feel comfortable to come up and they give me new material sometimes," Coleman noted.
Later, over Labor Day weekend, Coleman will give a talk at the Waldo Theater in Waldo County; and that same weekend, he will present a commentary on sea serpents during a whale watch excursion out of Belfast.
Clearly life is good for Coleman as he enjoys his profession.
"I'm talking about cryptozoology, I'm writing about it, I'm lecturing about it and I'm going on expeditions," he said.
And while he may not run into Bigfoot any time soon, Coleman said he enjoys the human interaction.
"You never can tell who you'll meet," he said.
