Media Alert: Lake Monsters

Being broadcast tonight, and reportedly to be repeated for months to come, will be "Weird Travels: Lake Monsters" (Sunday, 23 October 2005, 10:00 p.m. Eastern) on the Travel Channel. The episode details cryptozoological research and hunts for the Loch Ness Monsters (Nessie) at Loch Ness, Scotland, and Champ at Lake Champlain in New York, Vermont, and Quebec.

The producer and crew stopped by to interview me on August 10, and they had just been to Lake Champlain. My time with them was serious and well-balanced. They did tell me that they had just taped footage of the Vermont Expos mascot, Champ, so I wondered how this travelogue might look in the end.

But, hey, I’m interested in the cultural impact of cryptozoology, so that choice made sense to me. Let’s see if the translation to the screen works out okay.

After the program has aired…It was a decent overview of Nessie and Champ, with each getting about a half hour each. Gary Campbell, Dick Raynor, Adrian Shine, Willie Cameron, and George Edwards were interviewed to hold the Nessie story together. It very much reminded me of a visit to the Loch, with these folks being the ones there who are the spokespeople for the current situation. On the Champ side, they used Sandra Mansi and myself, mostly, to chronicle that story. One disappointing feature was their continued notion that there was one Champ in Lake Champlain and one Nessie in Loch Ness. But in general, it was a well-balanced program with high production values.

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.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •