Pop Culture

Eastern Cougar Mysteries

On display at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology: The verified casts (one shown above, the other below) of credible eastern cougar tracks found in Massachusetts in 1990. Naturalist Helen McGinnis’ of the Eastern Cougar Foundation, during January 2007, has raised some questions about the above during their “Project Hoax.” A Mystery Melanistic Felid captured on film in Florida turned out to be a black bobcat. Helen McGinnis, in the late 1970s, gathered evidence and privately published her findings in papers widely distributed to cryptozoologically-minded associates saying she thought upwards of 40% of the mystery cats in that state were melanistic. [...]

We’ve Been Webby Nominated!

Someone is watching us! Actually, lots of people. For several months, Cryptomundo has ranked #1 as the most popular cryptozoology site in the world, beating out, in overall rank by three times, the next most visited site, and by six times, the third ranked cryptozoology site. This week your universal praise and readership reached a level for which I could hardly have hoped. Cryptomundo was “invited” (a form of “nomination”) for a Webby. The Webby Awards is the preeminent International award for the Internet, honoring the world’s best Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites – the [...]

Mystery Beast Thrice on Top Ten

The Lewiston Sun Journal has posted, in the midst of their current home page, a new listing (with links) of their most viewed news articles for 2006. Their earlier listing of the general story of Turner, Maine’s mysterious monster as number six was based on unknown criteria. This new online-based ranking of individual articles reinforces the common knowledge of those working at the paper – the Mystery Beast stories last summer sold the most newspapers for the L/A media organization over the most days in the reporters’ recent memory. As you can see below, story numbers 1, 5, and 9, [...]

23 Skidoo: Goodbye Robert Anton Wilson

My old friend Robert Anton Wilson has died. I learned of the news from my friends Patrick Huyghe and David Pescovitz. I’m sure someplace, Bucky Fuller, Timothy Leary, Charles Fort, and Robert Anton Wilson are deciding whether it’s time to play supercheckers or Texas hold ‘em. I corresponded with Robert Anton Wilson (RAW as he sometimes was called) from the 1970s through the early 1990s, until his health and his in-and-out self-exiles moved him near-and-far from many people. In the waning years, like many, I kept in touch via friends of friends, as it were. Wilson had a universe of [...]