New At ICM

Today’s Portland Press Herald entertainment section, Go, highlights the International Cryptozoology Museum on their cover, as “Strange, weird, offbeat and downright wacky Maine,” or inside, at the end of an article entitled, “Et cetera: Only in MAINE.”

Author Shannon Bryan’s essay celebrates the “human ingenuity and natural processes have left weird and entertaining marks on our state.”

As the final paragraph, Bryan writes: “No roundup of the weird would be complete without Loren Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland. The museum, located beyond the shelves full of wonderfully odd reading material at the Green Hand Bookshop, displays Coleman’s monster collection. That is, his collection devoted to so-called monsters like Bigfoot, white-haired Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. The museum includes Sasquatch hair samples and footprint casts, an encased Fiji mermaid and a range of intriguing skulls, replicas and pop-culture memorabilia.

Meanwhile, on Monday, docent coordinator and museum curator Jeff Meuse, along with docents Philip and Jamison, moved in two new heavy five foot long glass display cases, formerly used in the PX at the Brunswick Navy base. Jeff and I spent the last few days reorganizing the Sea Serpent, Loch Ness Monsters, Mokele-Mbembe and related cryptoaquatic areas to incorporate the new cases. The new platform allows a better curating of the Lee Murphy Cadborosaurus too. The FeeJee Mermaid has been installed in a better location, near the popular items.

A one-of-a-kind movie prop from the 1999 A&E movie “P.T. Barnum” depicts the FeeJee Mermaid. Information on the creator, an artist in Quebec, is found in the museum.

Other areas have gotten a remake due to the shifting around, and the cryptid-Pleistocene mammal section is undergoing some changes.

I have reorganized all the Jersey Devil collection in a more central, visible location, due to the publication date of the book and the questions that are arising because of it.

Meanwhile, another new taxidermy mount has been added this week, a beautiful taxidermy item representing the megafauna of Africa, a blue wildebeest. More on how this ties into cryptozoology, at another time, unless a comment maker wants to beat me to the punch.

Patrons’ and supporters’ donations are greatly appreciated, and keep us an alive and ever-changing museum.

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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