The Museum - good news and bad news...

Construction of the museum is well under way, and we hope that the rest of the floor will be laid today. We would like to thank Travis Perkins builder’s merchants http://www.travisperkins.co.uk/ for having generously sponsored this leg of the project. However, the project is proving far more expensive than we had originally envisaged, and further stages of construction may have to wait until we can either raise the money, or get further sponsorship.

Here’s your chance to help. If you go to:

http://www.cfz.org.uk/mus/index.htm

you can make a donation to help us proceed. Every dollar and every pound helps, so if you are interested in what we do please help us. If everybody on our mailing liust alone was to donate just £5 or $10 we would have enough to complete phases 1 amd 2 of the museum plans immediately.

The name of every person who makes a donation through this webpage will be placed on the museum website,and on a board in the museum itself, marking them as a benefactor. People can also sponsor a particular exhibit or animalfor a year, and their name will be displayed prominently on the exhibit.

The concept of the museum is to present evidence for the existence of unknown animals (cryptids),alongside exhibits illustrating the habitat where these creatures are reported to live. The first four `habitats` will be:

Central African rainforest
Southern USA swampland
Amazon Basin
Southeast Asian hillstream

Alongside these habitats will be exhibits detailing local freshwater and marine ecology, and their linksto such local mystery animals such as `the beast of Exmoor`.

Other `habitats` will be added as time goes on, and there will also be permanent exhibitions, consisting of computer installationsand specimens brought back from our expeditions to

Puerto Rico
Thailand
Sumatra
The Gambia
Mongolia.






The latest building work...

CFZUSA

Six years ago my old mucker Nick Redfern surprised us all by moving to the United States. When I had appeared at the International UFO Convention in Nevada, I had fun, but all I had got out of it was a reputation as somebody who didn't believe in the ETH, and to refuse to play the American new-age game at any cost. When Nick made his second appearance there in the spring of 2001 he met the woman who was later to become his wife. He moved to Texas in the early summer and married her in the autumn. Sometimes fairy tales do happen.

As he was leaving, I asked him if he would start up a US office of the CFZ, and he agreed, on the proviso that he had to get everything sorted out and find his feet stateside first! Obviously, he has now found said feet, because the US Office is now very much open for business.

He has a lively blog HERE and is currently setting up an impressive netweork of field representatives for us.

The future is looking very bright indeed...

The CFZ Promo Video...... four years late

In 2003 we decided that it would be a great idea if we made a promotional video for the CFZ, explaining who and what we are, and what and why we do it! We have been intermittently trying to make this film ever since.

Yesterday, we finally finished it:



We are feeling very pleased with the result. If you like what you see, and if you are not already a member, you can join HERE

We are the largest and fastest growing cryptozoological organisation in the English speaking world, and we need your support. So sign up today!

At night all cats are grey.... sort of

I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO NIGEL’S MUM…..


Nearly ten years ago, my old friend Nigel Wright and I collaborated on a book called The Rising of the Moon. In it he quoted a rhyme that his mother had once told him:

“A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he heard, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard;
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?”

Nigel quoted the poem whilst relating the cautionary tale of how he was bamboozled by a group of students who had made a crop circle, and concluded. “Evidently I am no wise owl”.

As events have transpired, evidently, neither am I!

A couple of weekends ago, Corinna and I, together with Olly and Mark from the CFZ Permanent Directorate spent the weekend in Hull for the first annual conference by the Big Cats in Britain group.

Last year we attended another big cat conference in the east Midlands, organised by Merrily Harpur to launch her long awaited book on the subject. As events transpired poor Merrily was ill, and yours truly had to take over the helm. It was enjoyable enough, and I met up with several old friends, and met some new ones, but the events of last year fade into insignificance besides the events of this year's converence.

This was a far more cohesive affair, with an impressive list of speakers, (although, as I was one of them, I should not - perhaps - dwell on that subject for too long, for fear that I shall be accused of blowing my own trumpet unduly).

At every conference that I have ever attended the most important work takes place in the bar, usually late at night. Although I could well claim that this is why I am to be found in the bar late at night at most conferences, but that would be crass, and although I have the word `CRASS` emblazoned upon the T Shirt I am wearing, that is another story entirely!

Late on friday night, Corinna and I were sitting at a table in one of the darkest corners of the bar. We were talking to Di Francis, the one-time doyenne of British Big Cat research, who for various reasons has slipped beneath the radar in recent years. We had never met, and, while we talked away amicably I was rather uncomfortably aware that - over the years - I have maligned her in print on a number of occasions. Her thesis, first set out in a book called Cat Country in 1983, is that there is an indigenous species of British big cat, that at the moment is unrecognised by science.

I will make no pretence. I have always thought that this theory was palpable nonsense. After all, Britain is one of the best-explored countries in the world, and its wildlife has been thoroughly mapped and codified over the years. For about a hundred years from the mid 19th Century Natural History was the most popular pastime for Britons of all ages. Generations of children – and adults, for that matter – collected birds eggs, butterflies, pressed flowers, ferns, and shot everything that moved so the desiccated corpses could be preserved in home museums. Although new species of invertebrate are discovered occasionally in the British Isles, surely no species of indigenous vertebrate could possibly have escaped our notice.

Well, quite possibly not! About fifteen years ago I wrote a paper that was eventually published in Animals & Men, which suggested that the European green lizard was a hitherto undiscovered British resident. A few years ago in 2003 a colony of the western green lizard (Lacerta bilineata) was discovered in Dorset, the Pool Frog (Rana lessonae) was discovered to have been a British native (they are probably all extinct now), and it has also been suggested that the wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) and the European tree frog (Hyla arborea) are also natives. Whereas these assertions (with the exception of the pool frog, are still controversial, they certainly give one food for thought. (OK I admit that publishing an article called `I Told U So` in the now defunct Reptile World magazine was probably not the most tactful thing I could do, but I have not always been noted for my tact).

For more details on the green lizard saga, I refer you to the estimable Dr Daz

However, as is my wont, I have digressed mightily from my original train of thought. But…..

I shall now digress even further.

In my 1996 book The Smaller Mystery Carnivores of the Westcountry I suggested that the currently accepted status of several species of native British carnivore was completely wrong. Whereas Langley and Yalden (1977) had suggested that the Eurasian wildcat (Felis sylvestris), the polecat (Mustela putorius), and the pine marten (Martes martes) were extinct in southern England, and furthermore had been since the second half of the 19th Century, I suggested that this might not have been the case, and cited evidence that all three species were to be found in the western peninsula of England until the present day.

I also suggested that another species, the beeck marten (Martes foina) is also a British resident. Indeed it was considered such until 1879 when a zoologist called Edward Alston almost unilaterally decided that all records of there being two species of marten in Britain should be ignored, and that all specimens were actually M. Martes. I unearthed what I thought was a compelling body of linguistic and historical evidence to prove him wrong.

I published the book, and subsequently events in my personal and professional lives got in the way, and although I never actually forgot about the case of the British beech marten, I got on with other things, and left the mystery behind.

That was unil the first big cat conference in 2006. It was there that I met Jonathan McGowan. His biography on the BCIB site reads:

“Jonathan McGowan is Assistant Curator at the Bournemouth Natural Sciences Society, and head of its Mammals Section. He is a native of Dorset, an expert on both its rare and common fauna, and has observed both puma and panther-like big cats in the wild in the county several times, the first occasion being while he was badger watching in 1984. I have always been a keen naturalist and watched wildlife extensively. I have had any sightings of non-indigenous cats since 1984. I believe they should be thoroughly investigated, for many reasons. I would prefer people telephone me with any sightings, livestock killings etc.”

Jonathan is a thoroughly nice bloke and we got on like the proverbial house on fire. Over a late night beer the conversation somehow got onto beech martens, and I found to my great pleasure that his research had paralleled mine over the years and that we had totally coincidentally come to the same conclusions.

So, despite all the a priori evidence to the contrary it seems that it would be unwise to state that no new vertebrate residents of the British Isles will ever be discovered.

So why, despite the evidence in the above paragraphs did I still think that the idea of an indigenous species of British big cat was such a bloody stupid idea?

Firstly because of its sheer size. The animals described above, fascinating though they are, are still relatively small in size. I considered that the idea of a puma-sized animal having roamed the British Isles since the year dot was so unlikely to be practically impossible.

Secondly, most of the available evidence suggested that the big cats roaming our countryiside were of known species – mostly pumas and melanistic leopards. The fact that I saw a puma crossing the road in front of me on Bodmin Moor in 1997 merely confirmed me in this belief. Yes, I was aware that there were sightings of animals that really didn’t fit in to such a model, but – behaving much like the mainstream scientists that I have made a career out of baiting – I conveniently decided to ignore them. The strange looking animals that looked more like mastiffs than cats were, I believed, just dogs, and the accounts of two animals of different colours being seen together were purely incidences of released pets “sticking together” as they were familiar with each other from their days in captivity.

Thirdly, because of the lack of historic accounts of livestock predation. The British big cat phenomenon first took centre stage in the eyes of the media as a result of sheep kills. Ironically, although I had written as early as 1990 that I believed that the vast majority of these killings were the work of dogs, I contradicted myself when considering the lack of historical killings to be important evidence against the existence of a British big cat.

Then, late one Friday night in a boozer in Kingston upon Hull, it all changed.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make a couple of things clear:

1. I still believe that there are o-o-p pumas and panthers in the British countryside, and furthermore I still believe that they got there as a result of escapees from badly run unlicensed zoos, and from pets released in the wake of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act.
2. I still believe that the vast majority of `big cat` pictures, reputedly snapped in the British countryside, are merely large domestic moggies.

However, I now believe that Di Francis’s hypothesis regarding an indigenous species of British big cat, should be taken seriously, and that it would be unscientific (and grossly unfair) not to do so.

Why?

I’m getting to that bit. So let’s get back to the table in the dingy bar where Corinna, Di Francis and I were sitting with Mark North and Mark Frazer (founder of the BCIB group). We were sitting around making small talk when Jonathan McGowan and Darren Naish joined us. As I have said, I only met Jonathan last spring, but I have known Dr Daz for well over a decade.

I was quite surprised, therefore, when, as Di was talking, they started to giggle and nudge each other like naughty schoolboys. This was no way to treat someone even if you didn’t believe in her hypothesis, I thought. But it was soon obvious that something else was afoot.

Di was telling us about her hypothesis for the British big cat, and how her researches had led her to the following conclusions:

1. The species was sexually dimorphic.
2. The females were lighter in colour whilst the males had heavy, muscular, shoulders unlike those of any other car species.
3. The males were darker, and appeared to be more doglike than catlike in some respects.
4. Both sexes had strange foreshortened faces.
5. The animals were solitary except for mating.
6. The females moved their young each day to a new den, never staying in the same place once.

Di then got out a laminated print of a watercolour painting that she had done; a sort of identikit picture based on years of eyewitness statements. She passed it around, and Jonathan and Darren started to giggle even more. This was too much, and I was just about to glare disapprovingly, when Jonathan produced a photo album. Now, Jonathan is a wildlife photographer par excellence and his pictures are a joy to look at.

“Look at this” he said with a grin, and passed us a particularly unattractive photograph of a very dead animal.

To me, at least, the similarity between Di’s painting and Jonathan’s photograph is marked. The images have not been tampered with (except to flip them to the same orientation), and I wonder how many of you agree with me.

The photograph is of an animal found dead outside Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset. For a number of perfectly valid reasons (all of which earned him a good ribbing by the nasty sods of the big cat research community including yours truly), he was unable to take the corpse home, and as he thought it was probably a dead dog anyway, he wasn’t too disappointed when – upon his return – the carcass had vanished.

I interviewed Di and Jonathan. Here is an edited video of that interview:



The only bits that have been edited out refer to a series of photographs that, for the moment at leat, must remain under wraps.

Di also showed us some photographs that we are not at liberty to discuss at the moment, but sufficient to say, that if all the calculations which have been given are correct, they provide even more compelling evidence for the existence of an indigenous species of British big cat.

So, whether or not Di has been right for all these years, I have been wrong for not displaying the scientific open mindedness that I have condemned so many others for not displaying. So, I guess Nigel’s mum was right, and we should all seek to emulate that wise old strigiform.

WEIRD WEEKEND TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE

Tickets for the 2007 Weird Weekend are now on sale HERE

This year's event will be on the 17-19 August in Woolfardisworthy, North Devon.

The Weird Weekend is the largest yearly gathering of mystery animal investigators in the English-speaking world. Having run unbroken for seven years, the convention attracts speakers and visitors from all over the world and showcases the findings of strange phenomena investigators.

Cryptozoologists, parapsychologists, ufologists, and folklorists are descending on Woolfardisworthy Community Centre to share their findings and insights. Unlike other events, the Weird Weekend will also include workshops giving tips to budding paranormal investigators, and even a programme of special events for children. The Weird Weekend is the only fortean conference in the world that is truly a family event, although those veterans of previous events should be reassured that it is still as anarchically silly as ever!

The event is raising money for the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the world’s only full time, professional cryptozoological organisation.


At this stage - five months before the event - this timetable is ridiculously provisional, and the CFZ take no responsibility for disappointment caused by the non-appearance of any of the advertised speakers
THURSDAY
7.00 p.m Cocktail party at the CFZ. All Welcome.
Myrtle Cottage, Woolsery, Bideford, North Devon EX39 5QR
FRIDAY
Noon - 5.00 p.m Open Afternoon at the CFZ
Myrtle Cottage, Woolsery, Bideford, North Devon EX39 5QR
Community Centre
Doors open at 6.00
6.45 – 7.15 Introduction – to cryptozoology and the Weird Weekend
7.15 – 8.00 JON McGOWAN: Britain's Secret Wildlife
8.00-8.30 BREAK
8.30 - 9.15 PETER ROBINS: Wilhelm Reich and UFOs
9.15 - 9.45 BREAK
9.45 - 10.30 MATTHEW WILLIAMS Crop Circles
SATURDAY
Community Centre
doors open at 10.00
11.00 – 12.00 MIKE HALLOWELL: The ghosts of Marsden Grotto
12.00 – 12.30 BREAK
12.30 – 1.00 OLL LEWIS: Lake Monsters of Wales
1.00 – 1.30 BREAK
1.30 – 2.30 Dr CHARLES PAXTON: Predicting the existence of Sea Monsters
2.30 – 2.45 BREAK
2.45 – 3.00 QUIZ
3.00 – 4.00 IAN SIMMONS: Alien Mythologies in Modern Music
4.00 – 4.30 BREAK
4.30 – 5.30 GREGORIY PANCHENKO: The Russian Snowman
5.30 – 6.00 BREAK
6.00 – 7.00 ADAM DAVIES: Dinosaurs in the Congo?
7.00 – 7.30 BREAK
7.30 – 8.30 NICK REDFERN: The Man Monkey of Ranton
8.30 – 8.45 CFZ AWARDS
8.45 – 9.15 BREAK
9.15 – 10.15 JON DOWNES,RICHARD FREEMAN ET AL: The Monsters of the Lake District:2007 Expedition report
SUNDAY
Community Centre
doors open 10.30
From 10.30 for an hour Paul Vella will be conducting an informal workshop and presenting an exhibition of evidence for Bigfoot.
11.30 - 12.30 Dr. DARREN NAISH: Island Species; Extinct... or not?
12.30 – 1.00 BREAK
1.00 – 1.45 CHRIS MOISER: TBA
1.45 – 2.45 LARRY WARREN + PETER ROBINS: Excerpts and Outtakes:
Stories that Never Made it into "Left At East Gate."
2.45 – 3.15 BREAK
3.15 – 4.15 PAUL VELLA: 40 Years of the Patterson Bigfoot Film
4.15 - 4.45 BREAK
4.45 – 5.30 RONAN COGHLAN: TBA
5.30 – 6.00 JONATHAN DOWNES: Keynote Speech and Closing Remarks.

EVENING: Dinner at The Farmer's Arms
WORKSHOPS
Wildlife Photography by Jon McGowan
Making Monsters (Creaturama, Anthony James)
EXHIBITIONS
Big Cats in Britain (Mark Frazer, BCIB)
Creaturama (Anthony James)
Fortean Art Exhibition by Mark North
Exhibition: Pictures of Monsters by the children of Woolsery
Exhibition: Tropical Fish Photographs by Dr Iggy Tavares
Exhibition: Metamorphosis - exotic insects

In like a Lion.........

It's March already, and I thought that it was about time to check in with a little news. Firstly, and most importantly, Corinna and I are getting married on July 21st at the Parish Church, Clovelly, and the event will be attended by the great and the good of the fortean omniverse, who will then reconvene in the village a month later for the Weird Weekend It goes without saying that we are both very happy with the state of affairs although there is a heck of a lot to be organised and not much time to do it.




Work on the museum is continuing apace, and we are proud to announce our first sponsor: Travis Perkins one of the leading UK builder's merchants who have donated all the wood for the floor joists. We hope to be able to announce some more sponsors shortly.

We are just about to publish three more books: Catflaps! by Andry Roberts (which we published spiral bound about six years ago), The 2007 Big Cats in Britain Yearbook edited by Mark Fraser, and three years after the last one The CFZ Yearbook 2007.

It is the diversity of people within the CFZ that are its strength, and I think that this is illustrated very well in the diversity of articles in this yearbook. The range of subject matter, and writing style is dazzling, and ranges from the touching personal accounts of Oll Lewis and Lisa Dowley writing about their own experiences, and then extrapolating scientific data and theories from them, to the William Burroughsesque diatribe of Jon Hare, and the surrealchemical writing of Noella Mackenzie. We are also very proud to include the first scholarly examination of the `long necked seal` hypothesis for the sea serpent, to have been published since Oudemans in the late 19th Century.

On top of that, we have revamped the website, giving it the first major design overhaul for three years or so, and the Mongolia movie on CFZtv has now been seen by over 10,000 people. Not bad, when the year is only ten weeks old.

Slainte

A Special Day

John Downes (1925-2006)

Mary Downes (1922-2002)

Its St. Valentine's Day. No-one really knows who St. Valentine was. Indeed, his name was removed from the church calendar in 1969 by Pope Paul as part of the Vatican II purge of dodgy saints. This was one of the most unfortunate pieces of Roman Catholic PR of the last few years; they removed the official status of much loved saints such as St. Valentine and St. Christopher, on the grounds that they were of doubtful historical veracity, whilst retaining support for a whole slew of dull, but worthy ones that no-one really gave a damn about. Once again, those in power over us show very little understanding of what the people as a whole actually need or want!

However, I digress.

Today is not just the feast day of a probably fallacious patron saint of lovers. It has two far more important connotations for me personally.

Exactly a year ago, I was sitting by a hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit at Barnstaple Hospital. I was holding my father's hand, and waiting for the LED figures on the life-signs monitoring equipment by his bed to tell me that his long struggle was over. I sat with him for the last twelve hours of his life, and at 6.30 in the morning; 365 days and two and a half hours ago, he died.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss him. We had a pretty fraught relationship in life, but during his last eight months, as - together with the boys of the CFZ - I nursed him through his final illness, we became friends, and the old hurts were healed.

As I said at his funeral, I owe him a great debt. Everything that I have ever doine in my adult life, I was taught how to do by him. He taught me to drive, type, use the English language, lay out professional documents, build dry-stone walls, and even how to play the guitar. Without him I would not have achieved the things that I have achieved, and I would not be sitting here typing this now.

Rest in Peace, Dad.

This Picture was taken the night he died by Kaye Phillips,
who is the nearest thing I have ever had to a sister...

Five years ago today, my mother was dying in the same hospital. She and my father had been childhood sweethearts, since they met in 1932, and except for the years when my father was away at sea during the war, they were together for the next seventy years.

I cannot imagine the wrench it must have been for him when she died in March 2002. To have someone in your life for seven decades is unimaginable - at least for me, but I can understand why life was never the same for him after she died. I have always taken a great consolation in the fact that the two lovers were reunited on Valentine's Day.

There is a third reason why today is important to me. Well actually it is tomorrow, but who is quibbling?

Two years ago, tomorrow, I met Corinna, and - just like my father in 1933 - I knew that I had finally found the person with whom I wished to spend the rest of my life. Back in 1974 when my Dad was teaching me to play the guitar, he did so by using the pop songs of his youth. I resented the heck out of him for it. I wanted to be John Lennon, or Jimmy Page, not some weirdo music-hall singer of the 1920s, but the experience served me well. Not only can I now play guitar reasonably well, but I vaguely know a particularly trite song called "I want to marry a girl (just like the one that married dear old Dad)"

My mother was a remarkable woman. Together with my father they explored parts of West Africa that no European had visited for half a century or more, but she spurred him on to achieve extraordinary things. I truly believe that the semi-educated, and shy Grammar School Boy from Salisbury would never have risen to the heights of being Colonial Secretary in H.M Hong Kong Government, or have been made a companion of the Imperial Service Order, or any of the other things he did without her. I don't remember who it was who said that "behind every great man is a greater woman" but damn tooting!

On 15th February 2005, I met my "great woman". As I write this, she is putting together the last preparations for a last-minute dash up to the Lake District so we can interview another giant eel witness, and look at what may be some conclusive photographs. Its cold, its windy, and - to be quite honest - I don't want to go! But Corinna is pushing me in the right direction, in a markedly similar way to how my mother always pushed my father.

I think it is highly unlikely that we will have seventy years together - I have no intention of living to the age of 115 - but for however much longer we have together on this planet, I am not just in love with a beautiful and highly intelligent woman, but I am now in a partnership as strong, and as solid, as that of my parents. The shy, and semi-educated Grammar School boy from Bideford can now go on to great things! (And it's all down to one woman, and my Dad)

Dad, and Mum, I miss you!

Corinna, I adore you!

I love you both.