By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Monsters tend to lose their bite as soon as they’re dragged into the light of day.

That’s the lament of cryptozoologists, according to author and anthropologist Loren Coleman.

“Cryptozoology is the study of hidden creatures – of monsters,” he said. “But once they’re discovered to be real, we lose them. It stops being cryptozoology and becomes zoology.”

Coleman opened the Bates College symposium on cryptozoology Friday night with a keynote address to 60 artists, monster hunters and Bates students.

The symposium continues today with a discussion about monsters in art, presentations by artists and a screening of “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” a 1972 flick about a small Arkansas town terrorized by a Bigfoot-like swamp monster.

Coleman rattled off formerly fantastic monsters that are simply accepted now – from mountain gorillas and giant pandas to prehistoric coelacanth fish pulled from Indonesian waters and the okapi, zebra-like animals that live in the African jungles.

Science doubted those creatures for years, discounting folk legends and eyewitness accounts. It took serious effort and decades to prove that they really existed.

“So when people ask why we haven’t found Bigfoot yet, I say we haven’t been looking for that long,” Coleman said.

Hunting for the hidden creatures isn’t cheap, and there’s been a dearth of money dedicated to the effort since the 1950s. Cryptozoologists lost a chance at some earlier this month when Hasbro toys backed away from a $1 million bounty. Through its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, the company was set to offer the money for information that led to the live capture of one of Bigfoot, the yeti or the Loch Ness monster.

Fearing liabilities and lawsuits, the company changed its mind and withdrew the bounty.

“That’s a shame, because money really seems to get people’s attention,” Coleman said.

Now, he thinks sheer luck is the best bet to finding Bigfoot.

“I think we’re finally going to find Bigfoot when a logging truck runs one over,” Coleman said.

But the news of the bounty continues to spread. He’s scheduled on a spot Monday on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” as well as a segment on ESPN’s morning show “Cold Pizza.”

His is a real discipline, he said.

“I don’t like it being called paranormal or supernatural,” Coleman said. “I don’t like being lumped together with ghosts or UFOs.”

He understands the fascination – especially during Halloween.

“It’s a lot more fun to talk about this rather than listen to the same old ghost stories,” he said. “I’m glad some people are beginning to figure that out.”

Today’s sessions will consider fantastic creatures in the art world more. That includes representations of real creatures misunderstood until they were classified by science, as well as outright frauds.

The symposium is leading up to an exhibition set to open at the college in June. That exhibition will travel to Kansas City in October 2007.