International Cryptozoology Museum
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 7th, 2007
Here is a peek inside the International Cryptozoology Museum, thanks to the Sun Journal’s photographer Amber Waterman.
The following are the images (except the final three Bigfoot photographs) that accompany the Lewiston Sun Journal front page article about the International Cryptozoology Museum, with their captions and audio clips. At the end, you will find my clarifications and artists’ credits.
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Loren Coleman talks about the International Cryptozoology Museum located in his Portland home. To the far right is a [resin] cast of the Patterson film Bigfoot, and on the wall is the coelacanth, a fish that was presumed extinct until it was caught off the coast of South Africa last century.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
A figurine of the Dover Demon is displayed at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland. The strange creature was spotted in Dover, Mass., in 1977 and Loren Coleman coined the name after investigating the sightings.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
Loren Coleman has been given many things, including a bottle of water from the Loch Ness in Scotland, where Nessie the Monster is supposed to live, and also a bottle of Loch Ness Scotch.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
A cast of Bigfoot prints that are believed to be real.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
The story of the Abdominal [sic] Snowman was what got Loren Coleman interested in Cryptozoology as a child.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
A movie prop from the 1999 A&E movie “P.T. Barnum” depicts the Fiji [sic] mermaid.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
Hair gathered during Tom Slick’s expedition to Nepal in the 1950’s was DNA tested and came back “unknown.” Loren Coleman believes that the hair belongs to a 4-foot tall variety of Yeti.
Amber Waterman/Sun Journal
TEASE:
Monster or seal? Listen online to Loren Coleman’s theory about the creature swimming in Loch Ness and more…
Audio Files
Loren on Fiji [sic] Mermaid and P. T. Barnum
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Footnotes:
The Sun Journal made some relatively common errors. Also, let me give some full artists’ credits here too.
“Abdominal Snowman,” instead of “Abominable Snowman,” is a mistake I’ve seen before, and have never quite understood how it can be made. Fiji Mermaid is contemporarily correct, as per the island, but in P.T. Barnum’s day, this faked entity was spelled “Feejee.” Otherwise the captions are technically on-target.
The Dover Demon figurine is a unique, one-of-a-kind five-inches tall sculpture by artist Steve Goodrich of New York State.
The 9-inches resin sculpture of the Patterson Bigfoot is by artist Jeff H. Johnson. (Pictured next to it, above, is a museum-quality replica of the “Black Skull” of Paranthropus.)
The full-scale 57-inch long fiberglass replica mount of coelacanth is produced by Fantastic Fish Mounts of Florida.
The P. T. Barnum movie latex prop of the 3 feet tall “Feejee Mermaid” is sculpted and painted by Erik Gosselin of Lifemaker Make-Up Effects of Quebec, and is the one used in that film.
The Tom Slick expedition hair samples are linked to the smaller sized Yeti, the Teh-lma, from in situ Nepalese discovery of the hair, in relationship to Teh-lma sightings. Comparative tests found them to be from an “unknown primate.”
In the original article, mention is made of a forthcoming 12 feet long Ogopogo model for the musuem. The item is being created by former Hollywood model maker and current cryptofiction author Lee Murphy.
Here again is the well-known Joseph Citro photograph of the 8.5 ft tall, 450 pound Bigfoot at the museum, and the museum’s director, taken in August 2005. This has become the iconic image for the museum.
Wisconsin taxidermist and artist Curtis Christensen created this Sasquatch, the “world’s most unique Bigfoot in existence,” above, in 1990.
At my museum nearly a half decade, in 2006, I loaned the Bigfoot to the Bates College Museum of Art’s “Cryptozoology Out of Time Place Scale” exhibition (above, in a Michelle Souliere photograph) and then the stop at the Kansas City Institute of Art’s H & R Block Artspace version of the exhibition (below in a Professor Hex photograph).
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Very cool, Loren! The coelecanth is certainly striking. All the photos are nice, and the additional information is interesting.
Nice article and awesome coelacanth. Good to see pics of the Bigfoot - why didn’t they include one of those in the article? It’s quite a striking model.
Very kool Loren. I wondered if you had a crypto room in your house. A museum, NICE.
Cool I have a ceramic Nessie just like yours