Mary Green Goes Ballistic
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 11th, 2006
On Tuesday, October 10, 2006, Cryptomundo began to receive emails from Mary Green demanding that a photograph that was reprinted here from a Will Duncan posting – which supported Duncan’s pro-Carter farm position – be removed from our site. It has now been removed. Allow me to share the background and emails regarding this exchange. As can be seen in these emails, Mary Green has given her permission for these emails to be posted fully so you all can see what an evil person I am. Intriguingly, her call for the photograph to be taken down has ended up censoring the “evidence” of her own claims.
The backstory begins with an email Green sent along to the Editor on this site, reminding Cryptomundo that her book “has an ISBN number,” and stating that “legally, you cannot use a photograph…without our permission.”
Green also noted: “It’s bad enough you allow such trash to be written about us which are slanderous and will be dealt with eventually, without your allowing others or yourself to post a photograph from this book. You are NOT using this for educational purposes either!”
Trying to take a reasonable tone, I wrote, in reply:
Loren Coleman:
The Cryptomundo site’s use of the stated photograph for the critique of the material cited falls under the fair use provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law.
In allowing for fair use of copyrighted material–for reporting news, conducting research, and teaching–without need to obtain the copyright holder’s permission, the U.S. Copyright Law says that fair use is determined in a particular case by considering (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I pointed out to Green that hers was not a “valid argument against the review, critiquing, and consideration of the minor material that was posted allegedly from it.”
I let Green know that if I removed the photo, I would allow my readers at Cryptomundo an insight into why this was happening, of course. I mentioned that: “As it is now, our discussion encourages both sides of the debate and leads to potential sales of your book.”
Green’s reply, giving her response and side of history, was as follows, here given without any edits:
Mary Green:
You go right ahead and spew forth more lies. There are many. I do have a right to ask you to remove this photograph, and you are not falling under any category of the copyright laws, and in fact, you are threatening me if I continue to ask you to remove it. I am simply asking you to remove a copyrighted photograph from your site which is simply nothing more than a blog type situation. It doesn’t attract anyone but those who wish to gossip. It also doesn’t say anything for your character either. Refusal to remove a copyright photograph shows your stubbornness and ill will, as usual, toward any respectful communication between Janice Carter and myself.
Janice was never approached by your brother, Jerry Coleman, yet he says she refused to comply with an interview. In fact, he drove up and talked with her one day in September, not knowing who she was, and talked to the gentleman who was with Janice and when she approached, Janice asked if she could be of some help to your brother, Jerry Coleman, and Bob Coppen, and Gerry Bacon. They said NO. One of the men shook her hand, and they simply drove off, refusing to speak with her.
So post this is you feel is necessary, but I will not be threatened when you are the wrong doer. Just because you don’t believe in our work, doesn’t mean you can break a copyright law by using a fair use act on a blog web site gossip fest, and also make statements about us, such as Cartergate, Follow the money. We are not of the type that wants to sell books just for the sake of selling them.
This may be your motive, using negative and false and misleading statements in order to sell your type of books which are simply words taken from others about their sightings, and not of your own personal experience, and publishing the same thing over and over again.
If that’s the way you choose to do business, fine, but it’s not a very honest way of making a living. That is my opinion of the matter only. If you can make money like that, go for it. I don’t care. I made a simple request to have you remove a copyright photograph, and if you do not wish to honor it, then post this if you like.
I’m sure if I had a photograph posted on my web site without you permission from one of your books, you would raise holy war against me, which you do any way and have since the first time I made my first post on the old IVBC group. You insisted back then that I could not have seen a bigfoot in Tennessee, simply because you thought there were none here.
Please, and I’m asking you kindly, remove a family photograph, which does support our case for how woodsy the farm was back then, as most people look at this case from NOW, and not as it was in 1944-45 and on up to the time Janice left the farm after her grandfather died and her grandmother had to go into a nursing home.
It doesn’t matter about what your idea is on why you think this photograph should be there. I’ve asked for a courtesy for you to remove the photograph because it is not your photograph to use without asking permission to use it from a copyright and registered work. Just because you found it used on the cryptozoology.com forum board, does not make it right for you to reuse it without asking permission.
Don’t tell me it’s not my right to politely request you to do so, because I know it is. I don’t wish to cause problems, but I do not think it serves you any purpose to have it there in the first place. A link to it from your blog to the crypto forum is in better order because you did not ask permission to use it. You knew it was a copyrighted photograph before you took it upon yourself to personally use it without permission. We were not extended any common courtesy for use of said photograph. I have always asked for permission to use someone else’s photographs and writings and I expect the same courtesy to be paid back to me, no matter what your opinion of me is.
I don’t frighten, nor do I scare easily when someone threatens me as you have done in this e-mail. It would leave me with no recourse but to post publicly about your refusal to be kind hearted and honest and remove it when asked politely to do so.
I also know you will edit this and post just what you want this to say, but if so, I will post it all in its entirety before you edited it as many have found that you do in your yahoo e-mail groups, blogs, etc. You may try to make me into some type of horrible person for asking you to remove a photograph belonging to a copyrighted book and its authors. It is just whatever you wish to do, Mr. Coleman. I suppose all of the books I have purchased of yours and support I’ve given you by sending others to you to buy your books was a part of my so called hostility now simply because I asked you to remove a photograph that does not belong to you.
I think Mary Green’s unedited email speaks for itself. I then shared with her my reply, based on information just sent to me by my brother:
Loren Coleman:
According to a new development, Mr. Will Duncan says this photograph is not from your book. Since the photograph was never taken from your book but via Mr. Duncan’s posting, and it is now being said to not be from your book,
this entire communication appears to be unnecessary.
Green replied, not addressing my email points at all but, once again, sharing her tantrum with me via:
Mary Green:
YOU have a copy of my book. There’s no excuse for you not to look in my book and see it is there. Your tone is the one that is dismaying. The number on the photograph are also those in my book. We published that photograph in the book and NOTHING has been changed since then. I suppose your time is so precious to you and not to me. What a waste of a human being you are. This goes along with the untruths from you in the past. Needless to say I will make a point of this in public forums. I am also sending this e-mail to Mr. Duncan. He knows full well this is a photograph 50 Years.
Green need not have threatened me about editing her words, as she does several times in these emails. Her comments, even the ones containing incorrect or biased data, are fully here for all to read.
People can judge what they wish about this interaction. Needless to say, while I was the messenger regarding Jerry Coleman’s investigation, and opening this to both sides of the discussion of the debate – as did occur in the comments section here – it is obvious Green likes to make things personal.
This all is unfortunate, but shows much about the personality of Mary Green, who wants us all to believe she has some truths to tell us about her Bigfoot in Tennessee. If she is so afraid of a published photograph here that supports her position and the discussion it stimulates, what else is being hidden?
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WARNING: Off-topic, profane, and off-color comments are grounds for deletions via automatic software, automatic editing, robotic scans, and human editors. This is a kid-friendly site and shall remain so. This is not a chatboard, open forum, and/or email exchange arena. Comments are heavily edited and no explanations of said actions will be forthcoming, so we can get on to the business of reporting the next story.
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.
Doug,
I have no idea about the mans creds, however I can tell you that on at least two BF forums he has been questioned about them. As of today I have seen no reply as to what university/school he went to.
I also must say that I find it rather comical that a man that has never actually met either woman can attest to their honesty/integrity. Albeit though that I am willing to call them hoaxers/fakes. So maybe I am being a bit too cynical.
well, I might as well throw something in too! Mary Green and I communicated through emails for a year or so, as I was so interested in what she had to say (when I first met her). It didn’t take too long before she kind of went “a little wacko” on me too. She blamed it on her health. She would tell me how she and a couple of her close friends (don’t remember names) would go to a couple of certain secluded areas not far from her home and spend hours before dark leaving bags of hard candy (skittles, m&m’s, and wrapped candy) for her clan of hominids. Most nights they claimed to have actually seen one or two creatures come out and sit down and eat these candies right in front of them. It kind of reminded me of “E.T.” at times, but I didn’t know then what I know now. It was like when I asked too many questions, Mary would “back away”, and eventually just quit writing me. She seemed a little psychotic at times, but most of us have some problems. Whether some of her website is true, only God knows for sure (and Mary). It is only a shame that when someone like her comes along and you find out later that it may be all a hoax, then what is to say that everything else is too? It sort of made me lose some interest in this phenomenon. We all love excitement and a good mystery, and we sure hate to see it all come to an end. Oh well, who’s next?
I would rather know the truth, even if the truth disproves a cherished theory.
You’re right, arbigfoothunter, we all love excitement and a good mystery. That’s why the Maine Mutant dog became such a media phenomenon. Remember one of the women in Maine who found it said something like they “hoped it would turn out to be something special.”? They did sincerely hope that they had found something out of the ordinary, and they were probably very disappointed when it turned out to be a stray dog.
But something like this, where people bend over backwards to try to use anything to support their fabrications about Bigfoot, is an insult to those people who really are dedicated to trying to prove the creatures existence and so, preserve it.
Long time reader, first time poster.
I’ve been reading over this site for quite some time now, and as compared to other sites, I noticed rather quickly that everyone here is intelligent, generally well spoken, and very civil about everything they have to say, even if they disagree.
I can’t, however, blame anyone for feeling the way that they do about this “Mary Green” situation. It’s.. silly, is really the only word I can think to use. Since I first got interested in Cryptozoology, I’ve been sorting through absolutely endless amounts of information, on every kind of Cryptid I can find, and though I can’t say I’ve read the book (I don’t have the cash to go out and buy something barely worth my time, for sure), from everything I’ve heard thus far, this woman is giving those who have a genuine interest, a genuine contribution to the “Bigfoot” world, a seriously bad name.
And it might not have even been -so- bad, if she hadn’t posted threatening E-mails, and basically had a tantrum over the posting of a picture, I don’t think. Bad, but.. not to this level. She doesn’t need anyone’s help in being proven a fraud, a liar, and a cheat, she’s wearing a great big sign around her neck.
At any rate, Loren, I have to commend you greatly on the way you handled the situation, I’ve had to deal with people like that before, and it’s definitely not easy to keep your cool, even when you know you haven’t done anything wrong.
Thank you. – Devlin
Silly may be a bit of an understatement. I’ve seen some truly odd things, including what I am convinced may be a member of the species currently known as Champ in the Hudson River, I’ve seen and heard an incredibly large quadruped outside my house, and even seen a 1-1/2 inch aquatic larvae that currently goes under the moniker of Devil Worm, and so have a fair bit of experience w/ CZ, and present that, along w/ my expansive knowledge of idiots, prehistory, and natural history as my “credentials” in this situation, and can calmly state that this entire incident should join TB in that well-known branch of true pseudoscience known as “Hoaxology 101.”
To Mr. Tarrant,
With all due respect to Mr. Bayonov, in reading his book, ‘In The Footsteps Of The Russian Snowman”, I find him to be a bit of a romantic and too inclined to believe most of the stories he hears, especially from poor, rural folk he believes are incapable of lying. His credentials might not mean much if he’s lost his objectivity.