Cryptozoologists

Skeptical Monster Hunting

Dinah Voyles Pulver, the environment writer at the Daytona Beach News Journal has a good overview of the debunking of "sea monster" beachings at Tasmania, Bermuda, Nantucket and Chile. All were cetaceans, of course. She also lumps in the nearby 1896 St. Augustine beaching, as a whale too, but my emails with Roy Mackal tell me there may a surprise on the horizon about that one, in a new analysis being conducted. Could it be a giant octopus, after all? Also highlighted by Pulver is the work of cryptozoologist "Charles Paxton, a researcher with the wildlife population assessment department at [...]

Richard Greenwell (1942-2005)

An important figure in formalizing the organizational structure and tenets of cryptozoology, Richard Greenwell, 1942-2005, has died. J. Richard Greenwell, 63, cofounder of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC), died Tuesday night, November 1, 2005, shortly before 8 p.m. of cancer. He passed quickly and peacefully while surrounded by family in his home in Tucson, Arizona. On January 8-9, 1982, Greenwell, at the suggestion of Jerome Clark, along with Dr. George Zug at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. and Dr. Roy Mackal at the University of Chicago, embarked on the creation of the first formal scientific organization for [...]

New England Sea Serpents

The Search Continues for Cassie and her friends The coast seems a little bit lonelier these days. Cassie, the name I coined long ago to characterize these cryptids seen near Portland, Maine, was bestowed in the same tradition that all of these watery creature monikers are given – with location, location, and fun in mind. But it’s been a few years since anyone has seen Cassie, the Casco Bay Sea Serpent. As it turns out, of course, Portland is not alone in missing its New England Sea Serpents. "All Things Maine" blogger Christopher Dunham gives a historically good overview of [...]

Dover Demon still in the news

Off to the Boston area for a little trip down memory lane. Fox 25 News is interviewing me for a Halloween feature on the Dover Demon. The name, a moniker I coined to denote this small, weird, orangish creature seen by four witnesses in late April 1977, is one that stuck. The drawings by the eyewitnesses and the encounter itself have traveled down through the years as vivid images that appear to well up the closer we get to Halloween every year. The iconic Dover Demon even has been made into tiny Japanese figurines, and I’ve heard, characters in computer [...]