Bigfoot in the Classroom

Today, Wednesday, February 20th, I journey north to give a 1:10 pm to 2:00 pm lecture in a classroom at the DP Corbett building at the University of Maine at Orono. This event serves as a contemporary example of how cryptozoology and Bigfoot studies are being used in colleges, universities, and, yes, in secondary and elementary settings.

Do you think this college class is being given in the anthropology or zoology department? Actually, neither.

The course involving the subject of 50 years of my passionate research interest is English 101, an introductory composition course required of all first year UMaine students.

Mohlmann told me: “The students are reading about Bigfoot and writing papers on Ray Wallace, the Patterson-Gimlin film, the depiction of a cryptohominid in The Legend of Boggy Creek, and whether they find the biological or paranormal explanation of Bigfoot more plausible. Dr. Pat Burnes who runs the composition program here fondly remembered a lecture you gave here at UMaine some years back when grad students were teaching a similar pairing of books. ”

That’s when Mohlmann, hearing he had a live cryptozoologist and author only a few hours away, contacted me and arranged my lecture there today.

This week, the students in the class are “working on papers dealing with the Patterson-Gimlin film. Students will be examining the film and reading yours and Dr. Meldrum’s take on the film as well as some other articles to construct arguments as to whether the film could have been hoaxed or if a hoax seems unlikely,” Mohlmann writes.

Mohlmann continues: “I’ve been interested in cryptozoology since I was in kindergarten and remember a book I would continually check out of the school library called Bigfoot: Man, Monster, or Myth.”

All in all, this university English course serves as another great example of how cryptozoology can be and is being employed in classrooms around the country. Nick Mohlmann’s casual observation about his kindergarten days illustrates how it all can be begin, in elementary school libraries.

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.

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