Maine Media Discusses Leeds Loki
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 9th, 2010
Did a five-toed print look like it had four-toes after snow melt?
The Lewiston Sun Journal published the following article in this morning’s edition. Below is an enhanced, edited version of that news item, so as to clarify some points:
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Coleman dubs new sighting ‘Leeds Loki’
By Kathryn Skelton, Staff Writer
Mar 09, 2010 12:01 am
LEEDS — He’s calling the area the Turner Triangle and this beast the “Leeds Loki.”
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman [with Jeff Meuse, Chief Docent Coordinator at the International Cryptozoology Museum] visited Line Road last week to do [their] own investigation into a couple’s claim that something like Bigfoot walked in front of their car.
On Monday, Coleman said that the man had reported seeing something hairy, 7 feet tall and walking upright cross the road on the morning of Feb. 8 near the Greene-Leeds town line. The woman with him put its height at closer to 6½ feet.
Coleman is protecting the couple’s identity, so far only communicating with them through a friend.
“They’re just afraid it would ruin their lives because of all the ridicule,” Coleman said. “They’re really very skittish.”
Coleman, who has a museum in Portland dedicated to mostly unconfirmed creatures (Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the Jersey Devil), was involved several years ago in naming the Turner Beast, a black animal that created enough mystery that it made national headlines before being unmasked as a dog. [Coleman identified it to news reporter Mark LaFlamme as a dog from the beginning, but the final verdict awaited DNA analytic confirmation.]
The area has had other historical Bigfoot sightings, he said, as well as sightings of animals described as black panthers and cougars. Mystery cats, Coleman said, seem to live in one place year-round; he questioned whether Bigfoot migrates through the area in spring and fall.
“I think what’s happening, we may have a Turner Triangle where there’s a lot of marshy lands,” Coleman said. “My conceptualization is that the whole area is more wild than the people in Lewiston or Portland understand.”
Eric Nickerson lives on Line Road, a quarter-mile from the point of the sighting. He said he’s never seen anything strange in the woods there. In the early 1980s, however, 8 miles away on Turner Center Bridge Road, he claims his brother saw a Bigfoot and, that riding home one day on his bike, he himself was chased by one.
“It was right behind me for a ways,” Nickerson said. “Thank God, the house was there — I don’t know if it might have caught me or not.”
A family member has called History Channel’s “MonsterQuest” to offer up several stories, he said.
Coleman has been featured before on the monster show.
Bill Dubois, manager at the family business Red Roof in Leeds, said people had been in the store gossiping about the sighting, though most of the information was second- or third-hand.
“The people that saw it seemed pretty spooked,” he said.
His take on whether something could be in the woods out that way: “In this world, you never know. I have one customer that was just a Bigfoot freak; he believes in it. Telling him, he got all excited.”
International Cryptozoology Museum, Portland, Maine photo
A photo of an alleged Bigfoot print in the snow, was taken 10 days after a sighting on Line Road in Leeds. Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who came to the area last week to investigate, estimated the print to be 14 to 16 inches long.
[Those with new sightings or more information may reach director Loren Coleman or docent coordinator Jeff Museum at 207-518-9496, or stop by the International Cryptozoology Museum, 661 Congress Street, Portland, Maine on Wed-Sat , 11-6, Sunday, Noon-5, with further details.]
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.
In the account, it says that a creature, walking upright was seen to “cross the road.” I’ve read many such accounts of people, driving through the woods in their cars, see a bigfoot-type creature “cross the road.” The one significant thing that occurs to me is the fact that wherever this creature beds down that evening, must be within walking distance of that road. This seems remarkable to me that it might have a “home,” “nest,” “area” within walking distance of a well-travelled road. If so, can the rest of his family members be much farther away? Or is this just a single individual on a long foraging trip, far from family? I can conceive of someone sighting a bigfoot deep in the forrest out in the Pacific Northwest, or the like, but the number of “sightings” of bigfoot, close to well-traveled roads in various locations in the US, seems quite remarkable. If the accounts are accurate, then bigfoot must live a lot closer to us than we imagine. Any other conclusions?