April 29, 2010

AOL Highlights Nessie Story


Lee Speigel, a well-known radio program host on the unexplained, from the 1970s and 1980s, has resurfaced. He is now a writer, working with the new head of the “Weird News” section of AOL News, Buck Wolf. It is a very small world. Wolf was one of the first people, when he was at ABC News in 2003, to interview me about the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Anyway, Lee reached me at the ICM yesterday, to interview me about the 1938 letter news out of Loch Ness.

Here are some of the quotes from his article, “Police Tried to Protect ‘Nessie’ From Hunters“:

“I think that there are gigantic, unknown seals that have yet to be discovered from all of the Northern Hemisphere lakes, and Loch Ness is a prime example,” said Loren Coleman, who runs the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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Coleman, 62, thinks the release of Fraser’s letter is overwhelmingly important because it validates that the Scottish government — despite public pronouncements to the contrary — at the time was secretly concerned that there were real creatures there and wanted to protect the “monsters,” or unknown animals that lived in the lake.

“It’s a breeding population — there have been multiple sightings of more than one creature,” said Coleman, who in 1999 gave the keynote address to the first International Cryptozoology Symposium ever held at Loch Ness.

“The other big thing that nobody talks about,” he told AOL News, “is that it’s only six miles to the ocean, and there have been about 27 sightings of these creatures on land, crossing the road, and described as a walrus-type animal or a big slug.”

…it’s important to protect these animals, says Coleman, who’s considered the world’s leading living cryptozoologist.

“I think that any species like this that hasn’t easily been found are certainly low in numbers. And the last thing we want to encourage is to think that people, looking for a pot of gold, can go out there and hunt these creatures to near extinction. We really have to undermine the greed motivation that is behind a lot of these hunters.” And, Coleman says, what the Loch Ness monster eventually turns out to be will most likely shake science up.

Loren Coleman 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.

Filed under Breaking News, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Media Appearances, Men in Cryptozoology, Museums