Click on the above image for a full-framed view of Loren and some hidden friends.

Publisher and editor David Lineal’s monthly paper The Skeleton News will hit the Chicago streets on Friday, December 1, 2006. Included in the issue is an interview with yours truly, Loren Coleman.

They do not publish online, and instead maintain a humorously skeletal webpage. Because of that, David passes along his interview, and the article’s illustration (above by Chicago artist named Becca Taylor), for the readers of Cryptomundo. All the flattering but too generous (e.g. "great" and "foremost") descriptors are Mr. Lineal’s. Blush, blush.

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Making Time with a Monster Hunter

The Skeleton’s David Lineal speaks with great cryptozoologist Loren Coleman

In hundreds of scholarly and popular papers and 17 books published since the late-1960s, Loren Coleman has wetnursed cryptozoology, the scholarly pursuit of hypothetical animals, or cryptids, into a sturdy-legged childhood. His ink has fallen in almost every tributary of the well– from rumors of dinosaurs in the Congo, encounters with giant octopuses and other sea monsters, kangaroo sightings throughout the midwest U.S., reports of African bears, thunderbirds, mystery primates, and much more. Coleman is also perhaps the world’s foremost Bigfoot authority; his The Field Guide of Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates catalogues dozens of would-be primate species reported around the world, including the numerous North American cryptids often lumped together as "Bigfoot" (Coleman has asserted that the aforementioned kangaroo sightings may have been long-tailed primates).

Cryptozoology is densely smirked-upon intellectual terrain, but Coleman writes with a scientific reserve devoid of sensationalist trappings. His measured approach, coupled with the phantasmagoria of the natural world (for example, the improbable recent cryptids: giant squid, komodo dragon, mountain gorilla), stirs plausibility into the mystery. Spend a few days with his Mysterious America, or read through the thousands of first-person encounters of Lake Monsters or Bigfoot on the Internet, and you’ll appreciate immensely what a person like Loren Coleman just might be doing.

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Through your four decades of research, in what ways has public perception of cryptozoology changed? Do you think the public has grown more or less educated, interested in, or sceptical of cryptozoology?

First there is the awareness. When I first got involved with Ivan T. Sanderson in the early 1960s, there were literally less than six people actively interested and researching cryptozoology in general (outside of Bigfoot/Sasquatch) in North America. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of people who regularly exchange info, ideas, and news about cryptozoology worldwide. My 1999 book Cryptozoology A to Z (with Jerome Clark, via Simon and Schuster) was the first popular-level encyclopedia or handbook that was widely read. Since then, more people have written more books and more readers have become educated about cryptozoology. With such a large public movement to learn more about cryptozoology, of course, the skeptical community has countered with their own articles and books. But the debunking has not stopped the increased public perception that something is worthwhile here to research.

Has the willingness of the greater scientific establishment to listen to or respond to your work substantially changed since the late-60s?

Yes, it has increased positively. Many childhood fans of cryptozoology are now professors in universities.

What have been the most important or exciting moments for cryptozoology in the past 15 years? What advances or cryptid evidence do you think has gone underreported in this time?

Clearly, the most significance event was the discovery of Homo floresiensis, the "Hobbits."

The story is as remarkable as the finding of the first coelacanth [a jawed fish] off Africa in 1938, the living fossil thought extinct for 65 million years. The biggest story in anthropology for 2004 may become the event of many decades within cryptozoology. The editor of Nature, Henry Gee, in an editorial entitled "Flores, God and Cryptozoology," wrote: "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth….Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold."

* * * (Extensive wordiness on the Hobbits snipped.)

What’s the most potentially fruitful research happening in cryptozoology today? Are there well-funded projects searching for cryptids?

There is little fully funded research occurring today. The researchers pursuing the Orang Pendek in Sumatra are funded by the Flora and Fauna Society, which is positive.

What’s the state of yeti research today? About how many active yeti researchers are there?

Yeti research has grown cold. The [World Wildlife Foundation helicopter] crash in Nepal [in September, 2006] killed several individuals who were interested in Yeti. My hope is that the new Disney exhibition and forthcoming movies on the Yeti will help revitalize the search for Yeti.

What’s happening in international cryptozoology today?

In various countries, France, Russia, Vietnam, China, and Malaysia, there is some interest, but it is difficult to understand if any of these efforts are government-supported, which needs to be the next step to carrying this forward.

What technologies and tools of the near future do you anticipate having great impact on the field?

Technology will have some impact, such as sonar and sonic readings in lakes and lochs, and thermal imaging for Bigfoot. But it will be limited if there is no human elements support involved, in the field and fiscally.

Which cryptid mysteries do you think are most likely to be settled in the public eye in the next couple decades?

The discovery of a new Asian great ape, whether it is the Orang Pendek in Sumatra, the Ebu Gobo in Indonesia, or an unknown orang in China, will occur, I think, in the next 25 years.

Update: Cryptobuddy at Boing Boing David Pescovitz has posted a link to this blog, and also included a direct link to the Boing Boing podcast they did with me in October 2006
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