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

Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum Director Loren Coleman talks concerning 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 hooked up archive put aside for students and fellow cryptozoologists, and a 10-year plan to construct a brand new museum that’s 10 instances the scale of his in style 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 unique 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 rely.

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

The star in Bangor when the brand new museum is constructed may 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 suppose 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 will have any books on cryptozoology?’ The phrase wasn’t even getting used again then. I joke with a few of my buddies, ‘Nicely, 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 bit of the museum is devoted to the Beast of Bray Highway, 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 may 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 in style 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 just a few.

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 yr.

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 really helpful as the primary cease on Atlas Obscura’s “The Nice American Bigfoot Tour.”

Reveals rotate out and in for area. 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 exterior the Worldwide Cryptozoology Museum just lately at Thompson’s Level in Portland. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

“One factor that’s occurred — to start with 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 in search of the enormous salamander over the summer time, in California. I commissioned a 6-foot-long bronze large salamander to go in the midst of the museum in Portland, together with the totally different materials that we’ve obtained pursing that quest.”

The expedition used conventional and underwater drones, and didn’t discover the six-footer rumored because the 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 plenty of Bigfoot and a bit 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 discovered 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 all around the nation,” Coleman stated. “Now that our museum is nearly 20 years outdated, now I’m the guide all over the world to inform individuals how you can do it.”

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

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

His Maine plans for now embrace opening the bookstore and archive at 585 Hammond St. in Bangor, which may also characteristic some small reveals, in addition to transferring there together 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 concept is to create a museum from the bottom up in Bangor,” he stated. “We will have more room and actually mix archives, workplace area and an enormous quantity of exhibition area. 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 workers which might be in coaching, I actually see a long-term imaginative and prescient, a dream that may 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 yr, one among them being “an actual survey of mermaids and mermen all the world over,” with the late Mark Corridor.

(Entry to the archive will probably be principally restricted to researchers; it received’t be open to most people.)

Certainly one of lots of 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 enjoying playing cards throughout a bookstore go to, may luck into discovering him there.

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

“That, and ‘legend,’” Coleman stated. “I at all times joke with these individuals who try this, ‘So long as you set the phrase ‘residing’ in entrance of that . . .’ I by no means thought I might 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 in search of one thing unusual. Some are concerned with thriller or nature. Some, however not many, need to are available in and scoff.

“I’ve discovered by virtually seven many years now that cryptozoology is a gateway science,” Coleman stated. “One mom that got here in, she stated, ‘I’m actually frightened about Johnny. I believe he’s going to develop up and break his life as a result of he’s concerned with cryptozoology.’ I stated, ‘No, don’t fear, don’t fear. He may develop up and develop into an engineer.’”