Not Bigfoot vs the IRS

When weird meets the IRS

By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 2008

Loren Coleman wants to make it clear: This isn’t Bigfoot versus the Internal Revenue Service.

Sure, Coleman, the author of books on [Bigfoot, cryptozoology,] Mothman and a field guide to lake monsters and sea serpents [& another field guide on Bigfoot], has spent the last year as the subject of an IRS audit. He first had to convince the federal government there is such a thing as cryptozoology; and that, yes, it’s possible to dedicate a museum to mostly yet-to-be-found creatures.

But he’s trying to cast the experience in positive terms – “They’re my best friends these days” – while trying to raise money to keep the museum, and himself, afloat.

Coleman, just back from several lectures about dragons [and mostly cryptozoology] at the Royal Alberta Museum, “really came out of the closet about the IRS,” as he put it, on his blog June 26.

He said people have commented to him about how candid he was about the stress, the risk of foreclosure and his finances, such as cashing in his teacher’s retirement account for a down payment on his Portland home in 2003. His International Cryptozoology Museum takes up the first floor.

“The IRS says I really need to have a ‘separate income stream,'” Coleman said. He’d been blending money from his books, appearances and the museum into the same account. He was on a 10-year plan to get the museum into a bigger space, but that has to happen sooner. The goal is to be somewhere in downtown Portland, with a gift shop and regular hours, by the end of 2009.

After he made a public appeal in that June 26 blog, readers at Cryptomundo.com donated $6,328 in eight days. Funds have slowed since. This week he received $50 from a class of home-schoolers with a note from their teacher.

Coleman said he wants to raise $15,000 by the end of August and $30,000 by the end of the year for the mortgage, museum and other expenses.

“The 8-foot-tall, 500-pound Bigfoot is not easy to move around,” he said.

Negotiations are ongoing with the IRS. Coleman described it as being in round two, appeal number three. He anticipates owing thousands between the government and tax attorney’s fees.

“If anything, the IRS has propelled me to new heights,” Coleman said. “Actually, they have stimulated me to make the museum [more] income-producing.”

Coleman has upcoming crypto talks at the Beyond Reality Event in Bretton Woods, N.H., later this month; ScareFest in Lexington, Ky., in September; and the Mass Monster Mash in Watertown, Mass., and the Boston Museum of Science in October.