Please click on this image for a larger view of this thing. What is this? What could this be? This is a body of what Dave’s Pawn Shop claims to be a Chupacabras in a display case at the downtown El Paso, Texas shop. What do you think it might be? It does sound as if the shop has a number of gaffs, including mummified FeeJee mermaids, a supposedly shrunken head, and Pancho Villa’s alleged trigger finger. Is this one different? Is it a Chupacabras, as indicated in an article from the El Paso Times? Could this mummified body be [...]
Civil War Dinos
Finally, photographic proof positive of Civil War soldiers with a Triceratops? Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: photos of impossible things that appear to have been taken a long, long time ago. Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing For the link, go here. Now, within our CryptoZoo world here at Cryptomundo, similar photographs have turned up, some showing photoshopping and some not. Take for instance, what are we to make of the above picture of soldiers wearing Civil War (or War Between the States) uniforms while an apparent pterodactyl is at their feet? Verdict: photoshopping. Meanwhile, the following photo is not done [...]
Olaf, Grover Krantz and Bigfoot
Do you know the story of Olaf the Giant and the Anthropologist? This Valentine’s Day, as I mentioned here, is the 5th anniversary of the death of Professor Grover Krantz, Bigfoot researcher, who passed away at the age of 70. Krantz, it will be recalled, was the author of Big Footprints (Boulder: Johnson, 1992), revised as Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence (Seattle: Hancock House, 1999), and the editor of The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids (Calgary: Western Publishing, 1984, with archaeologist Vladimir Markotic). Grover’s special type of academic vinegar is missed today. As many people know, Krantz would leave no stone unturned [...]
New Parrot Species A Fake?
The Australian government’s drawing of the extremely rare Coxen’s Fig-parrot (Cyclopsitta diophthalma coxeni). The photograph of the “new” species of fig-parrot is unavailable, but the bird would resemble this species. The Australian newspaper for (tomorrow) Tuesday, February 13, 2007, is reporting the Australian government is withdrawing support for the “reported discovery” of a new species, the so-called blue-browed fig-parrot reported to live in the rainforests of southern Queensland. In November, 2006, John Young, his company, John Young Wildlife Enterprises, and Queensland Environment Minister Lindy Nelson-Carr announced the discovery of the new species, based on a photograph. The bird shown closely [...]
American Dime Museum Closes – Part II
Please see Part I for more details on the closing and upcoming auction of the American Dime Museum; please click here. Now come enter the museum, via photographs from the American Dime Museum, Barbara Matteson, and Brian at acurse.com. You are walking up to the brick building, come inside, meet your host, and begin to look at the wonders. The images are given uncaptioned to recreate the feel of the tour, in which the attendees were required to do more research, scratch their heads, and walk away pondering. In the end, remember, for our purposes, these are all gaffs, creations [...]
American Dime Museum Closes – Part I
We’re losing another great piece of Baltimore personality. It was esoteric and great and hilarious and very fitting for this city. Maybe it was just too good to be accepted by enough people. – John Waters, Baltimore filmmaker and director of Pink Flamingos Photo credit: Barbara Matteson. A tradition eight years in the making based on wonders, gaffs, and sideshow fakery going back hundreds of years is closing. The American Dime Museum first opened in Baltimore in 1999, but has gone the way of many such sites. The cost of keeping it open has become too much. It is no [...]
A Life Explored In Words
I sometimes neglect the fact that few people know really what I have written, in total. Today, for example, a young man emailed me with this message: “How many books have you done Loren? I have only come across two.” Well, I can forget myself, often, for many reasons. It happens. Ha ha. Memory and lists of things-to-do aside, one reason is that there are many ways to count the unfolding of my life that occurs via my modest library of written works. You can look at “how many” in terms of various editions, revisions, and reprints. Or you can [...]
Bigfoot’s Beckjord Has Cancer
Bigfoot badboy Jon-Erik Beckjord has released a statement that he has cancer. In conjunction with this release of information, Beckjord says he is trying to sell, once again, his copy of the Patterson-Gimlin footage of a Bigfoot at Bluff Creek, California, taken on October 20, 1967. The footage is available on most good documentaries about Bigfoot, but, as Beckjord has noted in his past attempts to sell it on eBay for one million dollars ($1,000,000), he feels his copy is unique. How he obtained that copy is not known and not stated. Beckjord, states for the first time, as far [...]
Byrne: Marx/Biscardi Bigfoot Photo Hoax
Has anyone noticed that Tom Biscardi is still using the Ivan Marx film clips discredited by Peter Byrne in 1971? Perhaps people have failed to even look at the frames from the 1970s’ films? Or read their history? The notorious alleged 1970s Bigfoot trickster and Ivan Marx associate, who attempted to pull off the “send in your money and see the Bigfoot I’ve captured” trickery on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, may be in a neighborhood near you. Old news, right? Rapidly having departed Happy Valley, California, and disassociated from past associates in Las Vegas, Tom Biscardi has [...]
FeeJee Mermaids & Other Gaffs
The easiest pseudocryptozoological exhibition items to have, of course, are often the gaffs and hoaxes. Among those in most cabinets of curiosities are the Feejee mermaids and the furred trouts, both taxidermy fakes. I have my share. I use them to let people know these objects are often shown as “almost real” specimens. Most honest sideshow owners displaying them often merely only ask “What is It?” or “Is it Real?” But slowly the drift has been, perhaps due to eBay, for people to present these items as cryptozoological, from “unknown animals.” For cryptozoologists, we need to be aware of this [...]
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