The Top Cryptozoology Stories of 2016
In the 1940s, the Scottish-born zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson began using a word he coined, “cryptozoology,” to describe a new subdiscipline of zoology that studied hidden, as yet-to-be-discovered large animals. In the late 1950s, after a decade of correspondence with Sanderson, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans began formalizing “cryptozoology.”
Today, Sanderson’s and Heuvelmans’ precise approaches to the passion and patience of the field has grown into a more scientifically-aware cryptozoology. A history is being written about cryptozoology, as it grows older, year to year. I pass along a quick overview of the top areas of the high and low points of cryptozoology for the last year, 2016.
1. Recent Thylacine Sightings
Late in 2015 and early in 2016, reports (noted on map) of possible Thylacine (Tasmania Tiger) sightings from the southern tip of Australia gave new hope to finding this long sought cryptid. In March, Barrie Murphy was driving on the north end of Inverloch when an alleged Thylacine ran across the road. Murphy couldn’t see the head, but he was certain it had the animal’s distinctive markings on its body. “As I drove past it, I saw the stripes down its side and onto its flank,” he said.
2. Festivals and Conferences Explode In Number and Attendance
Cryptozoology, cryptotourism, and Bigfoot conferences and festivals became big business in 2016.
For example, this was the 15th year for the Mothman Festival which took place in September, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the sightings of Mothman in Mason County. Over 10,000 people attended.
Several well-attended conferences – such as the 15th Anniversary Texas Bigfoot Conference, the Ohio Bigfoot Conference, the first International Bigfoot Conference, Minerva Monster Day, Virginia Bigfoot Conference, Dogman Symposium, Arkansas Bigfoot Conference, Bigfoot Interaction Research Conference, and others – all took place in 2016. It literally was a year, perhaps as a distraction from the election news, when people wanted to get away to a monster event.
3. Museum News
The Year of 2016 saw exciting development news in terms of the long-term archiving of cryptozoology and Bigfoot materials and history.
In February 2016, David and Malinda Baker founded a new museum in Cherry Log, Georgia, called Expedition Bigfoot. The new facility, a modern museum made from a former bar, on Highway 515 promises to be a destination in the South for those interested in the “legend of Sasquatch.”
Meanwhile in Portland, Maine, the nonprofit International Cryptozoology Museum (ICM), founded a dozen years ago, in 2003, obtained a permanent new home in a newly built museum space on Thompson’s Point, a spit of land sticking out into the Fore River near the Atlantic Ocean. After raising nearly $100,000, including a generous grant from the Efroymson Family Fund, the ICM opened on July 1, 2016.
4. Monster Hoaxes
News services in November 2016 screamed “Nessie’s legions of fans around the globe were aghast when a possible usurper was declared in Alaska, and the internet went into meltdown as video footage showed what appeared to be a slithering, slimy 15-ft long creature covered in ice snaking its way through the River Chena.”
But the “trending” nature of the monster footage quickly faded away when the Alaskan Bureau of Land Management declared the “creature” was almost certainly a piece of water-sodden rope covered in “frazil ice” that had been caught on the pier of a nearby bridge. This wasn’t the first footage like this, as it happened in Iceland too, down to the frozen rope, and it won’t be the last.
5. Monster Documentaries Come Of Age
The successful indie documentary film production company Small Town Monsters (owned by Seth Breedlove) accomplished a hat-trick in 2016 when they premiered their third fact-based film, Boggy Creek Monster: The Truth Behind the Legend (co-producers Seth Breedlove & Lynn Blackburn) on November 12, 2016, in Fouke, Arkansas. The company had previously shot and screened their films, Minvera Monster (2015) and The Beast of Whitehall (2016) in venues across the country. By the end of 2016, Breedlove introduced his trilogy of documentaries as Volume 1: Bigfoot.
The series is to be congratulated for capturing the short-term phenomenon of specific regional Bigfoot sighting series, and documenting witness sightings before all the players vanish into history.
6. Wessie Makes National News
Reports of a giant mystery snake went viral. Beginning on June 23, 2016, serious sightings of a 10-foot-long snake were made and filed with members of the Westbrook (Maine) Police Department. The giant snake was seen by two officers at 3:30 AM on June 29, 2016, eating a beaver and swimming across the Presumpscot River, near Riverside Park in Westbrook, Maine, to Brown Street, where it disappeared into the brush. After a shed skin was found, and DNA tested, the news went national. It was found to have belonged to a female green anaconda, from a Peruvian population. The town decided to have a “Wessie Fest,” on October 22, 2016, a planned annual event, similar in nature to Peninsula, Ohio’s “Python Days” due to their 1944 reports.
7. New Wolf Confirmed
New animals were verified all year. One of the most exciting new findings is what was thought to only be a subspecies of the gray wolf known from India and Tibet, has been confirmed through Nepalese studies to be a unique new species. The verified new species will be called the Himalayan wolf. It is woolier and smaller than the gray wolf. The new full species wolf has white patches on its chest and throat, which are not seen in gray wolves. It has been proposed that the Himalayan wolf be reclassified as a separate species Canis himalayensis.
8. First Known Cryptotourism Death
Roquel Bain, 26, of Dayton, Ohio, was walking on an old but unknown to her, still active, railroad trestle, with her boyfriend, in east Louisville, shortly after 7 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2016. They were looking for the Pope Lick Monster, Kentucky’s version of an infrequently reported cryptid Goatmen. She was then hit and killed by a train when she was caught on the trestle near South Pope Lick Road.
It may have been the first recorded cryptotourism death in the USA.
9. Death of John Green and others.
The passing of several significant cryptozoologists and Bigfooters sent a cloud over the year. These included the loss of the world’s leading Sasquatch chronicler John Green (1927-2016), cryptozoology author Mark A. Hall (1946-2016), Sea Serpent researcher Ed Bousfield, coelacanth authority Peter Forey, and several others. In late news, Carolyn Harris, owner of the so-called “Mothman Diner,” died on Christmas Day.
10. International Cryptozoology Society
In January, the founding of the International Cryptozoology Society was announced. During the First International Cryptozoology Conference in St. Augustine, Florida, at the meeting of the Board of Directors of the International Cryptozoology Museum (ICM), on January 5, 2016, the Board voted positively in favor of creating a new scientific cryptozoology organization as an offshoot of the museum, with national conferences and a peer-reviewed journal.
The 2016 Lists: