Back from Texas
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 17th, 2005
The conference in Texas was, once again, an event not to be missed. I’ve just landed late tonight in Portland, to find, of course, my email box filled and the phone message machine overflowing. I’ll have to deal with all of that tomorrow, but for now, around midnight, it will be just thoughts of good memories of many warm and generous people sharing stories, fun moments, and themselves. Thanks to all of you and the time you gave to make my journey to and from Texas, and there, so enjoyable. I’ll have some reflections that I will share over the next few days. But tonight, I just want to mention that the first night, last Friday, Craig Woolheater, the conference host, was able to arrange a welcoming dinner with Dwaine and Virginia Dennis. Dwaine Dennis was the editor and owner of the newspaper in Jefferson, Texas, named the Jimplecute. In 1965, when his reporters began discussing the sightings and stories of a hairy hominoid (perhaps like Bigfoot), thereabouts, Dwaine got personally involved. Dwaine told me that the thing was seen back to at least 1960, but seemed to exit the area soon after all the uproar in 1965. That year, Johnnie Maples, 13, was chased home by a big, hairy, upright creature. Search parties formed. Hunts for it took place. The community was upset. The story got so blown out of proportion, however, that when I read about it in a newsletter in 1965, it talked about the hairy creature killing Maples. Such fantastic warpings frequently do happen in the wake of real encounters that are scary and shocking. Years after I read and collected that story, I passed it on to Craig who dug deep and found the real facts. Friday, it was great to see it come full circle, with a meeting with the man who had written the original story. Dwaine Dennis, by the way, while looking into the sighting, discovered large tracks at the local old foundry cemetery, and a pear tree had half-eaten fruit still attached. But he never saw the alleged local Bigfoot. The tracks may have had nothing to do with the hairy bipedal encounter of Maples, of course. And that was just the beginning of the conference weekend. More later.
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.
