Maine’s ‘Godfather of Cryptozoology’ is stalking one thing actually huge: a legacy

Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum Director Loren Coleman talks in regards to the museum throughout a current tour of the museum in Portland. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

Toys and film memorabilia, together with this from the film “Gremlins,” are discovered all through the museum. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

Abominable snowpeople will get their very own part. Lake monsters, too, clearly.

Ditto for werewolves and dogmen, finally.

Loren Coleman has moved his hefty assortment of 100,000 books — on as-yet-discovered creatures, pure historical past, parapsychology, ufology and extra — as much as Bangor, future house of the Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum Bookstore. He has an connected archive put aside for students and fellow cryptozoologists, and a 10-year plan to construct a brand new museum that’s 10 occasions the dimensions of his widespread vacationer vacation spot at Thompson’s Level in Portland.

Whereas the brand new bookstore and archive are opening this spring, there’s nonetheless years left to benefit from the authentic Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum, the place the well-known Patterson-Gimlin footage performs on a loop and each inch is crammed with plaster casts, pop artwork, sculptures and tales of witness sightings of cryptids to quite a few to depend.

The star at Thompson’s Level is the 8.5-foot-tall Crookston Bigfoot, large, crafted out of two musk oxen hides — essential photograph op.

The star in Bangor when the brand new museum is constructed would possibly simply be a 9-foot-tall papier-mache Wendigo created by members of the Penobscot band from Indian Island.

However first, there’s that quantity of volumes to prepare and shelve.

The museum options a number of castings of footprints of Bigfoot. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

“It’s simply unbelievable to assume what 100,000 books seems to be like,” stated Coleman, 74. “Once I began in 1960, I went to the librarians and stated, ‘Do you’ve gotten any books on cryptozoology?’ The phrase wasn’t even getting used again then. I joke with a few of my mates, ‘Effectively, I hadn’t even written any but, so there weren’t many within the library.’”

His curiosity was piqued younger — Coleman’s sixth-grade instructor helped him land his first artifact, a flag from the 1960 abominable snowmen expedition led by Sir Edmund Hillary — and he opened his Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum in August 2003.

A piece of the museum is devoted to the Beast of Bray Street, a wolf- or bear-like creature allegedly witnessed in 1936 in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

Coleman purchased an outsized home in a Portland neighborhood so he might dwell on prime and fill the primary ground with all method of plaster Bigfoot casts, books, paintings and skulls. It was open by appointment and widespread with movie crews, from “Bizarre Travels” to “Monsterquest,” wanting to interview Coleman about lake monsters, sea monsters, swamp monsters, mutant canines or Bigfoot, to call a number of.

By 2009, the museum was off to Congress Avenue. Two years later, bigger quarters nonetheless on Avon Avenue.

And in 2016, it landed at Thompson’s Level, the place he counts about 15,000 artifacts and welcomes 20,000 guests a 12 months.

This winter, it was featured on AAA’s “Distinctive Museums of the Northeast,” within the BBC’s “5 of the world’s most uncommon museums” and beneficial as the primary cease on Atlas Obscura’s “The Nice American Bigfoot Tour.”

Reveals rotate out and in for house. Proper now, you’ll discover the doorway laid out with Chris Murphy’s “Sasquatch Revealed” exhibit, which traveled the nation earlier than discovering a house on the museum.

Loren Coleman stands outdoors the Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum lately at Thompson’s Level in Portland. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

“One factor that’s occurred — at first when all of this grew to become the museum, it was all my artifacts. Since that point, we’re getting relatively massive figures or artifacts or replicas,” Coleman stated. “We sponsored an expedition on the lookout for the large salamander over the summer time, in California. I commissioned a 6-foot-long bronze big salamander to go in the course of the museum in Portland, together with the completely different materials that we’ve obtained pursing that quest.”

The expedition used conventional and underwater drones, and didn’t discover the six-footer rumored for the reason that Nineteen Twenties, “however they obtained some new lore and new eyewitness accounts, in order that was thrilling,” he stated.

A rendering of the Dover Demon is on show on the museum. Three youngsters in Dover, Massachusetts, say they noticed the large-eyed creature “with tendril-like fingers” in 1977. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

Search for that exhibit later this fall.

Laid out on two flooring, the downstairs at Thompson’s Level is crammed with cupboards celebrating the Loch Ness Monster, Dogmen, dinosaurs that perhaps didn’t die out and even “crypto-brewoology”: a group of Sasquatch Stout, Snallygaster blended whiskey, darkish lager from Lake Monster Brewing and different spirits.

Upstairs, it’s a number of Bigfoot and slightly Coleman, with memorabilia from his lengthy profession and plenty of appearances, together with, as of final month, a one-off customized motion determine by artist Charlie D. Perez.

“One factor that I’ve realized since I began this in 2003, which appears to me like yesterday, wanting on the long-haul, is that now I’m seeing museums — Bigfoot museums, Mothman museums — popping up everywhere in the nation,” Coleman stated. “Now that our museum is sort of 20 years previous, now I’m the marketing consultant all over the world to inform individuals how one can do it.”

And if another person tries to open a global cryptid museum, just like the particular person he’s advising in Germany?

“I’ll all the time be capable of say that we have been the primary,” he stated. “Maine is all the time the primary, proper?”

His Maine plans for now embrace opening the bookstore and archive at 585 Hammond St. in Bangor, which may also function some small reveals, in addition to shifting there along with his spouse, Jenny, a member of the museum’s board, and finally plotting that new monster-sized museum.

One of many prized shows on the museum is an early assortment of Bigfoot artifacts. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

“Area is cheaper, and there’s much more of it, in Bangor, so the long-term thought is to create a museum from the bottom up in Bangor,” he stated. “We will have extra space and actually mix archives, workplace house and an enormous quantity of exhibition house. Whether or not or not I’m nonetheless alive is an unknown, however as a result of it’s a nonprofit, and 501c3, and I’ve employees which are in coaching, I actually see a long-term imaginative and prescient, a dream that can dwell on. My legacy will dwell on past me as a result of I’m setting it up that method.”

He’ll have 100 of his personal books within the archive underway, 40 he’s written and 60 extra he wrote chapters or introductions for. Two extra are due out this 12 months, considered one of them being “an actual survey of mermaids and mermen all internationally,” with the late Mark Corridor.

(Entry to the archive will likely be largely restricted to researchers; it received’t be open to most of the people.)

One among a whole lot of posters and indicators on the museum. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

Coleman anticipates taking a hands-on function in Bangor, so followers of beastly mysteries dropping by for a Rougarou or Pukwudgie T-shirt, or a deck of Bigfoot taking part in playing cards throughout a bookstore go to, would possibly luck into discovering him there.

Energetic within the discipline for greater than 50 years, he’s been referred to as the “Godfather of Cryptozoology” and the “world’s main, residing cryptozoologist” by conference promoters.

“That, and ‘legend,’” Coleman stated. “I all the time joke with these individuals who try this, ‘So long as you place the phrase ‘residing’ in entrance of that . . .’ I by no means thought I’d be an ‘elder statesman,’ elder cryptozoologist. It’s all a part of the sport.”

He will get the sense that some individuals visiting the museum are vacationers on the lookout for one thing unusual. Some are taken with thriller or nature. Some, however not many, wish to are available and scoff.

“I’ve discovered by way of nearly seven a long time now that cryptozoology is a gateway science,” Coleman stated. “One mom that got here in, she stated, ‘I’m actually fearful about Johnny. I believe he’s going to develop up and spoil his life as a result of he’s taken with cryptozoology.’ I stated, ‘No, don’t fear, don’t fear. He would possibly develop up and change into an engineer.’”

Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum Director Loren Coleman talks in regards to the museum throughout a tour. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

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