By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

Bigfoot better stay on his toes.

A Maine scientist is preparing to put a $1 million bounty on the legendary beast and two others – the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster.

Loren Coleman, a professor at the University of Southern Maine, was mum on the details. He plans to release them on Halloween weekend, at a cryptozoology symposium at Bates College. Cryptozoology is a scientific discipline that tries to prove the existence of hidden or fantastic animals.

“It’s the time for something like this,” Coleman said. “Back in the 1960s, hardly anybody was talking about this. Today, it’s phenomenal.”

The $1 million bounty would be paid by an unnamed company to anyone who produces a photograph that leads to the live capture of one of the three creatures.

“We don’t want people running around with guns trying to kill something to get the money,” Coleman said. “It’s not a contest, either. It’s a very specific bounty that depends on the permanent capture of a live specimen, with emphasis on live.'”

Coleman, a cryptozoologist, has a private creature museum in Portland that houses dozens of plaster-cast footprints, allegedly left by Bigfoot, and an 8-foot replica of the beast. He’s considered one of the world’s leading experts on the giant, hairy biped.

Coleman will release some details about the bounty at a Bigfoot conference this weekend in Jefferson, Texas. He’s saving the rest for Lewiston. Organizers at the Bates Museum of Art are happy about that.

“We don’t mind at all,” said curator Mark Bessire. “We’re expecting some notoriety, to a certain degree. That’s partly why we scheduled this symposium over Halloween weekend.”

Coleman will give the keynote address, opening the symposium Friday night, Oct. 28, on the Bates campus. He and several artists from around the world will look at how fantastic creatures such as Bigfoot and Nessie have influenced mainstream art.

“What we like about the subject is that there is such a fine line between truth and fraud in the field, and that goes way back through history,” Bessire said. “We’re looking at how the possibility of these beasts becomes a part of the cultural canon.”

The symposium will include panel discussions about the science of fantastic creatures and artistic interpretations of their stories. It will feature two movies – a Discovery Channel documentary about the cloning of the extinct Tasmanian tiger, and a screening of “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” a 1972 flick about a small Arkansas town terrorized by a swamp monster.

Coleman doesn’t mind sharing the stage with admitted fakes and frauds.

“About 80 percent of the things in cryptozoology are hoaxes, mundane mistakes or misunderstandings about what’s actually out there,” he said.

But the $1 million reward is on the level, he said.

“The company that’s behind this really understands the situation,” he said. “They understand the interest in the creatures and monsters that are really out there and they are willing to step forward.”

Copy the Story Link