Maine Bigfoot Hunt: Cryptozoology or Cryptotourism?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 31st, 2012
The Portland Daily Sun published an article today about an upcoming “hunt” next weekend for Bigfoot in Maine:
Maine Ghost Hunters Plan Bigfoot Hunt by David Carkhuff
When Maine Ghost Hunters go camping, they don’t tell ghost stories around the campfire. They search for Bigfoot.
From Friday, Aug 3 through Sunday, Aug. 5, Maine Ghost Hunters, a paranormal investigation group, will gather in an “undisclosed and remote wooded area in the deep woods of Northern Maine. True Bigfoot country, by all rights,” according to the “meet-up” announcement.
The paranormal hunters also hope to bring a Bigfoot expert along for the weekend, the group announced. Participation will be by arrangement. Maine Ghost Hunters plan to invite people they know.
“We’re principally paranormal investigators,” said Maine Ghost Hunters co-founder Tony Lewis. “We just started doing Bigfoot hunting.”
The weekend event comes fresh off a midweek ghost hunt at Portland Public Library, when members of Maine Ghost Hunters will join the Portland Public Teen Library for a paranormal investigation.
“It was the team’s idea,” Lewis said of the excursion into the woods of northern Maine to camp and hunt for Bigfoot.
“We’re putting together a lot of meet-ups,” he said.
Typically, Maine Ghost Hunters frequent haunted locations, cemeteries, old buildings.
Lewis and Kat McKechnie of Bowdoinham, two of the cofounders of Maine Ghost Hunters, talked in the spring with a few of ther other members about expanding their focus and including a search for the Sasquatch legend.
“Because he’s not a species of animal that’s been proven to be in existence … we could say it’s in the realm of the paranormal,” Lewis said.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman stands inside his museum on Avon Street in Portland. (David Carkhuff Photo)
Loren Coleman, curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, which features exhibits on “hidden animals” such as Bigfoot, said he prefers to view the question of an upright, hairy mammal roaming the woods from a scientific perspective.
“I think we have to look at it in terms of cryptotourism, it’s not related to the ghost or paranormal area but it’s related to biology and zoology,” Coleman said of the Bigfoot legend.
“What’s happened with Bigfoot is it’s become a modern eco-tourism, we call it cryptotourism, people used to go out and go camping and do birdwatching or orient toward mountains, now people actually go out and look for Bigfoot,” Coleman said.
“I think the possibility for Bigfoot in northern Maine is slight,” he added, assessing the chances of success. “If there are reports up there, and there are some sightings, that’s probably some interlopers from the boreal forests, the mountain range forests of Quebec and New Brunswick. There doesn’t seem to be a viable living population in northern Maine. … You get those kind of outbursts of sightings and then they disappear so it doesn’t seem as if there’s any routine, breeding population of Bigfoot in Maine right now.”
Lewis said Maine Ghost Hunters will go equipped with the tools of the trade to document any sightings.
“We have a half dozen night vision handicams for video,” he said. “We film everything, we put together documentary style videos.”
Sometime in October, the group likely will air the results of the Bigfoot hunt.
This is no luxury outing. The group warns of no bathroom facilities, no conveniences, just a chance at “roughin’ it” in the deep woods.
But the meet-up post adds, “This is going to be an adventure we’ll be talking about for a long time!”
For the rest of the article, about the ghost hunters’ library appearance on August 1st, see here.
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.
Well, when people classify the search as “paranormal,” I quote Bob Dylan:
And I just said, good luck.
Go were the money is…..create a story people will come, just like they do on some of the episodes of destination truth.