Exterior of the current museum building.
The International Cryptozoology Museum is a museum displaying cryptozoological objects, specimens, and art pieces located in located at 11 Avon Street, Portland, Maine, in the United States. Founded by Loren Coleman and opened in 2003, it is the only dedicated cryptozoology museum in the world.
History[]
The collection of the International Cryptozoology Museum originated as Loren Coleman's personal collection of cryptozoological items, collected over the course of the second half of the Twentieth Century. The first of these items, acquired in 1960, was a flag used on the World Book's Snowman Expedition to the Himalayas led by Edmund Hillary and Marlin Perkins.[1]
Wishing to share these items, Coleman founded and opened the International Cryptozoology Museum, based on the first floor of a house purchased for the storage of the collection in Portland, Maine, in August 2003. The initial items on display included Coleman's own collection, as well as a number of sculptures and paintings created specially for the museum.[1] The museum was temporarily closed in 2006, when a number of major items were loaned to the travelling Bates College Cryptozoology exhibition.[2]
By 2009, the museum collection had become too large to be comfortably displayed in Coleman's home, and he was offered space in the back of what would become a bookstore, The Green Hand, by owner Michelle Souliere. After raising enough money through donations from across the world, including the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, the International Cryptozoology Museum was moved to the new building on a three-year lease, officially registered with the town clerk of Maine, and reopened on 1 November 2009. Over eighty visitors attended on the first day, and an official ribbon cutting ceremony held a few days later attracted more than two hundred people.[1]
However, it soon became clear that the new room (five hundred square feet) was also too small. This, combined with the fact that Souliere's husband wished to utilise the location, prompted Coleman to move the museum to a nearby venue six times as large, at 11 Avon Street, Portland, Maine. The second reopening was held on 31 October 2011, and was attended by almost four hundred visitors.[1]
Notable exhibits[]
In its current form, the International Cryptozoology Museum has two floors, the first of which contains general items relating to general cryptids, including thylacines, the Dover demon, the Montauk monster, the Jersey devil, napes, the skunk ape, giant ground sloths, giant beavers. lake monsters, and giant spiders, as well as hoaxes. Items displayed include a life-sized bronze thylacine statue, and a thylacine footprint cast taken in 2001; a tatzelwurm model created by Kim Parkhurst; a fiberglass replica of a coelacanth displayed in America in 1938; various models, fossils, and toys of prehistoric animals and cryptids; and taxidermy hoaxes including jackalopes and furred trout. Also on display are various film props, including a pterosaur from Freaky Links and a Feejee mermaid from P. T. Barnum.[1][3]
The second floor is dedicated to items related to Bigfoot and other hairy hominids, most famously the 8' tall, 500-pound Crookston Bigfoot statue, created by Curtis Christensen in 1990 and acquired by Coleman in Summer 2004.[2] Other Bigfoot-related items include around one hundred plaster casts of Bigfoot, yeti, yowie, and orang-pendek tracks; Bigfoot and yeti hair samples; a Gigantopithecus-inspired Bigfoot head created by special effects artist Lee Murphy; "Esau," a sasquatch "reborn doll"; a letter from actor James Stewart, relating to the Pangboche hand; and yeti fecal matter collected by the Tom Slick-F. Kirk Johnson Snowman Expedition of 1959.[1][3]
External links[]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Coleman, Loren History of the ICM | International Cryptozoology Museum cryptozoologymuseum.com [Accessed 23 May 2019]
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Coleman, Loren Cryptomundo » Crookston Sasquatch Sightings cryptomundo.com [Accessed 23 May 2019]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Coleman, Loren Exhibits | International Cryptozoology Museum cryptozoologymuseum.com [Accessed 23 May 2019]