Maine’s Mystery Beast Banner

Rogier van Bakel, his wife Debbie, and their two delightful daughters (one shown above) came by over this Christmas weekend to drop off the unique Paul Szauter sideshow art, entitled the Maine’s Mystery Beast banner.

Van Bakel is a well-traveled, well-spoken journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. We had a good talk about all matters of cryptozoology and Forteana, and I showed them some of the items around my in-house museum. Of course, various crypto-artifacts (including the 8 ft tall Bigfoot and other objects) are enroute back from Kansas City, and may be here by the spring, depending on weather.

As you may recall, in a gift of proactivity, Rogier, through reading David Pescovitz’s posting about it on Boing Boing learned that the banner was available in an auction a few miles from where he lives and he snatched it up for me. I deeply appreciate the triad of events that took place involving Szauter-Pescovitz-van Bakel to save this unique and rare popular culture-art-cryptozoo item for cryptozoology history.

I can’t say it any better than David Pescovitz’s comment, after van Bakel’s high bid:

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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