What Are People Thinking?

I was gone most of yesterday, on the road, and returned very late last night. Yes, I don’t live here in front of this screen. 🙂

I came back to find an email inbox filled with the strangest messages. Two topics with similar themes popped out.

First, one group was about someone in the field who had put a “bounty” on me despite the fact that what this person was disturbed about had nothing to do with me, wasn’t posted by me, and the foundation for any concern was not coming from me. But since it was here on Cryptomundo, I guess the assumption is that I am responsible.

Then, I also found an upset and apparently angry email from an eyewitness I interviewed, well, about 27 years ago. It seems the individual, who now is famous in their own right, had viewed an appearance of me on a cable television program this week. The person had seen me, a photo they had taken, and apparently some archival film, which I have to believe must be from an old news report about this witness.

What words did this individual email me? This person expressed “disappointment” in me because I had “used” their “photo and footage” with “no credits and not a word of” the site where the photograph was taken.

Needless to say, I was an interviewee on the reality program this person mentioned. But, hey, I am not the show’s producer, director, or have any connection to the people behind that production. I wasn’t the source of anybody’s photographs or footage for that program.

Of course, I was merely interviewed by a television company for a possible program, just as the eyewitness has been over the years. I don’t own, produce, edit, or assemble these television programs, any more than other eyewitnesseses, cryptozoologists or skeptics shown do.

While being filmed, I have been treated royally, tricked, lied to, and taken advantage of by various producers since I first appeared in a television interview in 1969. You give your interview, and then walk away, hoping for the best. What you get from the company and your relationship with producers are just like life, indeed, and very reflective of the human condition.

For me, the payback of being on documentary programming has been a more popularized acknowledgement of cryptozoology, and the ability to use the magic of the media to educate widely about many cryptic subjects. For all the bad producers, the incredibly friendly, good, and enlightened ones I have met along the way outweigh all those negative experiences.

But I am constantly surprised and floored that now that I am a minor celebrity in the world of cryptozoology, if I am associated with a program, a conference, a blog site, or a written work that I might be part of, I am then automatically given this supposedly imagined incredible power to be in control of everything that goes into the production. What are people thinking to not understand that so many others make the real decisions?

It is remarkable, down through the years, how many people have come to think that just because I appear in a program I am to be held responsible for the entire content. Or how photos were added or footage chosen. Do people really forget about all the production components, the editors, and the other people involved?

It is as silly as people blaming me for everything that happens here at Cryptomundo, and then try to invade my privacy (if they don’t like what they see).

I guess it is time for a “cease and desist” order, humm, as the down side of cryptocelebrity is the reality that death threats, stalkers, and harassers do exist.

If anything happens to my kids – or an ex-wife, for that matter – or to me, due to the fact someone has placed a “bounty” on me, especially as the intelligent person behind this “bounty” must be aware I am “not” Cryptomundo…well, let’s hope it doesn’t go there.

It is a bit disturbing to hear someone thinks that placing a “bounty” out there, in this day and age, via the internet, is a smart thing to do.

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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