Old Books, Classics, and the Minnesota Iceman
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 5th, 2008
I’m away in New York City, doing Yeti business, of course, including launching the new classics, like Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life (PayPal me at [email protected] $25 marked “For ABSM Book” and I’ll send you, postpaid, an autographed copy, a hardback of this new printing to any USA address, for this one-time discount price). See the end about news of another classic to be reprinted.
But, anyway, I left something for you to read on Saturday.
Before I get into the crop of new cryptozoology books on the horizon for 2008 in a forthcoming post, how about a trip back to the days when it was oh so difficult to just print the volumes we use to read?
Forget about writing them (which I appreciate is hard enough), take a look at what it took to get a book out the door before computers:
I’ve learned from cryptozoologists in France that Bernard Heuvelmans’ book on the Homo pongoides will be republished this Spring, but with an important new update and edition: the new volume of Heuvelmans and Boris F. Porchnev’s (1974) L’homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant will contain all the color photographs from the archives that were taken in Minnesota.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
great news! I hope some young anthropologists will take a look at it.
I hope it will be printed in english.
Would it contain any updated information on what the iceman was and what happened to it? I remember buying the Argosy magazine with the article and pictures when it came out. I think this was my first exposure to the possibility of sasquatch type creatures.
I don’t thinks so calash. No one knows what happened to the real body. Heuvelmans, Hansen and Sanderson are dead, the mysterious owner (if he ever existed) is unknown and probably dead too. You have to get to the source of the mystery: To Vietnam or Pakistan where these creatures (neandertals or not) still survive.
Little did I know at the time….
One summer, when I was a teenager, I went to the state fair of Texas and strolled down the midway. Years previously I had gone to the “freak shows” and had seen the “monkey girl”, “alligator boy”, “two-faced boy”, three legged man, Siamese twins, and the “abominable snowman” (a fellow with elephantitis of the feet).
This particular summer the “freak show” was less an attraction. Instead, I saw the “woman turns into a gorilla in front of your very eyes” show and a sideshow of a frozen “caveman” found floating in an iceberg. Little did I know at the time that both these shows would later relate to my crypto passion concerning sasquatch.
The “frozen caveman” was, of course, the later famous, or infamous, Minnesota Iceman. You really couldn’t see much, the ice was white. But I could make out the sparse, coarse hair and the underlining tan skin. It reminded me of a chimp.
Later, at the girl morphs into a gorilla show, a smoke and mirrors deceit, I was surprised that folks in the audience really jumped in fright when the “gorilla” broke loose from its cage. Decades later I would learn that the gorilla suit used in the show was typically made by Phillip Morris, the fellow who claimed to sell his gorilla suit to Roger Patterson for his bigfoot film at Bluff Creek.
My brush with sasquatch, twice in one day!
The story of the Iceman, in an article by Ivan T. Sanderson in Argosy magazine in, I think, the mid-1960s, is what first got me interested in “wildmen”, and really in cryptids in general. From there I went on to devour everything I could find by Sanderson.
Whether the Iceman was real or not, I owe a lot of my curiosity about cryptid animals to that article that I read as a child.
jerrywayne – Thanks for your story of the iceman at the Texas State Fair. I, too, remember seeing the sideshow of the man frozen in ice during a trip to the Texas State Fair during the ’60s. There was not much to see and I was kind of disappointed. The exhibit was in a trailer, as I remember, and you looked over into the ice at the figure. Seemed about the size of a man and what you could see of the face (through the ice) was very ugly. Not a very flashy exhibit. I’ve read several things about the iceman recently, including in Loren’s “Mysterious America.” I’ve wondered if that was “the” Minnesota Iceman I remembered. It seems my memory was not playing tricks on me.
Loren – Thanks for the EB film. I grew up on them in school in the ’50s and ’60s. Too bad students these days don’t get to see them, even as historical reference. I’m looking forward to the book.
I too remember seeing the ice-man as Royal American Shows rolled through Winnipeg many years ago. My Dad took me to see it in the side shows and I was scared stiff!! I’m sure it was the same as the above one and not the “copy”. I also saw that one and I think it was at a summer fair in Bemidji Mn. It would be a fantastic thing to track the ice-man down but, I just don’t see it happening. Most likely long gone by now…sadly.
I saw it in 72 outside a mall near Cleveland. Fun to look at, but undoubtedly one of the copies out by then. Again it was in a trailer. I think the Article was in Argosy about 68. It was still a lot more fun than most of today’s hoaxers, who sorely lack in imagination.