Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman

Mothman Festival ‘06

Annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant – September 16-17, 2006 Point Pleasant — Organizers plan to add some new activities at the Fifth Annual Mothman Festival in downtown Point Pleasant next weekend. Above: Mothman Museum director Jeff Wamsley holds his most recent book, Mothman: Behind the Red Eyes. With him is museum co-worker Todd Wiseman, an Ohio University film student making a documentary about Mothman. Among the new events are a Mothman weight and power lifting contest, organizers said. In addition, visitors can expect events held during past festivals, including haunted hay rides. The festival begins at 10 a.m. Saturday [...]

New Mystery Animal Photograph

Is this photograph the “Mystery Animal” seen for decades in West Virginia’s Potomac Highlands? This picture was taken by an automatic digital camera set on private property in a 3000 acre wilderness in which no human inhabitants live. It was caught on film on August 8, 2006 at 0700 Hours. Since the original owners do not want to become embroiled in the heated Eastern Mountain Lion mystery debate, the Eastern Puma Research Network will be fielding all responses for this photograph. The EPRN can be reached via email at epuma [at] beaconnet [dot] net. Photograph courtesy of the initial West [...]

Sumatran Rhinos Are Living Fossils

Zoologist Darren Naish has written a thoughtful essay on “Are Sumatran Rhinos Really Living Fossil?” His blog is in response to my comments on the “living fossil” issue, discussed here. I disagree with Naish’s restrictive parameters, of course, as I see this more an issue of educational semantics influenced by zoology, not ruled by it. Darren Naish’s approach is worthy of your attention and he has every right to his very informed point of view. Needless to say, in this case, I was employing the “living fossil” definition that this rhino species is “a living species/clade with many ‘primitive’ characteristics [...]

New Bird Discovered in India

New Multicolored Bird Found in India September 12, 2006 A new bird species has been found in India, the first time such a discovery has been made here in more than 50 years, an astronomer and keen bird watcher said Tuesday. The multicolored bird (Bugun liocichla) was spotted in May 2006, in the remote Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh near the border with China, said Ramana Athreya, a member of Mumbai’s Natural History Society. Athreya, who found the bird, named it after the Bugun tribe, which lives in the area. The bird has a black [...]

Flatwoods: September 12th

It looked worse than Frankenstein. It couldn’t have been human. Kathleen May. The smell was like oil on hot metal. You know, that greasy, sweet, slippery odor, slightly burnt and perhaps even appealing. But then more and more of it seemed to be saturating the molecules all around. It filled your nose. It permeated your pores. It made you sick to your stomach. It wouldn’t go away. The creepy feeling was close, something beyond the knowing, beyond understanding. The dog was sick; the boys ran down the hill. In two days, the dog was dead, and no one thereabouts would [...]

9/11 Creature

On the night of September 11, 1997, Ines Valdivieza and her 6-year-old daughter observed a small creature, brown in color with large red eyes, run from a pig-pen area in Colonia Revolucion Mexicana, Mexico. It made high bounding strides and disappeared into the dark. Five hogs were later found dead, completely drained of blood with strange scars on their necks. Source: Albert S. Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database, 1997, citing Pascual Rolando Pacheco Herrera.