Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman is one of the world's leading cryptozoologists. He is a well-known media consultant and author on the topics of cryptozoology, unusual phenomena, and inexpliable human behaviors.   Coleman has written books and more than three hundred articles, has appeared frequently on radio and television programs, and has lectured from Idaho to Loch Ness. He has been both on- and off-camera consultant to Fox/USA Network's "In Search Of," NBC-TV's "Unsolved Mysteries," A & E's "Ancient Mysteries," History Channel's "In Search of History," and "History's Mysteries," Discovery Channel's "In the Unknown, " and other reality-based programs. He contributes cryptozoology columns, "On the Trail," to the London-based magazine Fortean Times, and "Mysterious World" to Fate, as well as articles to The Anomalist and Fortean Studies.  In 2000, he served as the Senior Series Consultant to the new "In Search Of..." program which is scheduled for broadcast on Fox and USA Network. On 20 October 1997, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the famous filming of a Californian Sasquatch, Loren Coleman was one of the first ten inductees into the Roger Patterson Memorial Bigfoot Museum in Portland, Oregon. In December 1999, he was named "Bigfooter of the Year" by the Center for Bigfoot Studies of California. Coleman, born 12 July 1947, in Norfolk, Virginia, has been investigating, in the field and in the library, cryptozoological evidence and folklore since the Abominable Snowmen caught his interest in 1960, leading him to research mysterious panther sightings and reports of apes in the American Midwest. He has traveled to 45 states, throughout Canada, Mexico, Scotland, and the Virgin Islands interviewing witnesses of lake monster, Sasquatch, giant snake, mystery feline, phantom kangaroo, thunderbird, and other cryptid reports and folklore. His first articles were published in 1969. He went on to write two books with Jerome Clark (The Unidentified [1975] and Creatures of the Outer Edge [1978], both published by Warner). In the 1980s, Coleman wrote Mysterious America (1983), Curious Encounters (1985), and Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (1989), all bestsellers for Faber and Faber. In 1999 Loren Coleman co-authored two books: one with Patrick Huyghe called The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (Avon); the other with Jerome Clark called Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature (Simon and Schuster/Fireside).   The Year 2001 saw the publication of his expanded and updated, Mysterious America: The Revised Edition from Paraview Press. Coleman has an undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where he majored in anthropology, minored in zoology, and did some summer work in archaeology. He received a graduate degree in psychiatric social work from Simmons College in Boston. Coleman was admitted to the Ph.D. programs, and took doctoral coursework in social anthropology at Brandies University, and in sociology at the University of New Hampshire's Family Research Laboratory.  He has been an instructor, assistant/associate professor, research associate, and documentary filmmaker, in various academic university settings, since 1980. He has written extensively in human services, having authored, coauthored, or edited eight books, including the commercially successful Suicide Clusters (Faber and Faber, 1987), which was a Psychology Book Club alternative selection, and appeared on "The Larry King Show" discussing it. His work on the suicides of baseball players was covered in Sports Illustrated, the Sporting News, ESPN, and by all the major media and wire services.