Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman

Pike Place Mystery

Bones Found near Pike Place Not Human by Jim Valley, 710 KIRO Reporter The King County medical examiner’s office says bones found near the Pike Place Market in Seattle are not human. An investigator said Wednesday an anthropologist made the determination, but didn’t say what kind of bones they were. They were found with seashells Monday by workers in the crawl space of the Virginia Inn. A half dozen members of the Duwamish Tribe, who had suspected the bones were human, held a ceremony at the market, playing drums and singing an “honor song” to ancestors. Tribal chair Cecile Hansen [...]

Ural Mystery

Mysterious Deaths of 9 Skiers Still Unresolved by Svetlana Osadchuk, The St. Petersburg Times. Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats. Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius. Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of “a compelling unknown force” — and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret. The [...]

Iriomote Wildcat

Today, I received directly from Japan, for the museum, the above shown replica of the Iriomote wildcat (Prionailurus iriomotensis), a classic animal of discovery for cryptozoology. It may be only a minor figurine at 2.5 inches long to some, but I find it significant that such care has been bestowed onto this important replica. A mere three decades ago, this cat found itself moving from the world of being a cryptid to a felid zoological reality. The Iriomote wildcat remains a mysterious species, even now, years after its discovery, as evidenced in this recent essay below. Unlike this stuffed Iriomote [...]

More New Salamander Info

Two new pinky-sized salamander species and one the size of a fingernail have been discovered crawling around in a remote Costa Rican forest. The new species, found by botanist Alex Munro of the Natural History Museum, London, and colleagues while on expedition, are among 5,300 plants, insects and amphibians recorded during three explorations of La Amistad National Park on the Costa Rica–Panama border. La Amistad is the biggest forest reserve in Central America, yet it remains one of the least explored places in the continent. These new discoveries, announced today, increase the number of salamander species in Costa Rica from [...]

Abominable Snow Rabbit

Take an enjoyable historical break, sit back, and watch this just posted crypto-cartoon from 47 years ago: The Abominable Snow Rabbit is an eight minute 1961 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones and co-directed by Maurice Noble, with a story by Tedd Pierce. (For whatever reason, the video version here is six minutes long.) While the cartoon’s title, according to such sources as Wikipedia, allegedly “is taken from the phrase and horror film, The Abominable Snowman,” I must observe that knowledge of the Abominable Snowman was culturally [...]

Gobi Kulan Soon At Edinburgh Zoo

I have mentioned Przewalski’s horse before, regarding their presence in zoos (as above) and concerning their replica appearance (as below). The Przewalski’s horse, a Pleistocene megafauna survivor, extinct in the wild, can be called a “living fossil,” in the popularized employment of that phrase. Certainly, this horse is of interest to cryptozoologists, as mentioned earlier. The species (Equus ferus przewalskii, Equus caballus przewalskii, or Equus przewalski poliakov – classification is debated) is the last truly wild horse, first recognized by zoology in Mongolia in 1881. But if you live in or visit Scotland, you can see another unique wild horse [...]

Scare Fest Appearance

It has just been announced that I will be a presenter at The Scare Fest, the biggest Horror and Paranormal Convention in the Southeast USA. The event is three horror-filled-days on September 12, 13, and 14, 2008. I am intrigued to learn that this gathering will take place in the heart of Fayette County, Kentucky! The Scare Fest will be held at the Lexington Convention Center in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the largest convention centers in the state. I’ll have to explore the twilight language significance of the Fayette Factor while I am there. Here’s some more info from the [...]

Madagascar’s Cryptids

Harry Trumbore’s drawing of Madagascar’s kalanoro, from The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates. New species of lemurs keep being discovered in Madagascar. But there’s a long history of other cryptids being reported from the world’s fourth largest island. Besides the big three (Kalanoro, Elephant Bird, and Man-Eating Tree) that have historically been most discussed in cryptozoological and cryptobotancial circles regarding Madagascar, what lesser zoological cryptids are discussed from there? What other strange animals exist in the literature, many of which were noted in passing at Cryptomundo, after I first published information from near that corner of the [...]