WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

CFZ IN THE NEWS: CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS WOULD LIKE TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY NOW

Members of the CFZ outside of Myrtle Cottage. Photo via
In the idyllic English countryside of northern Devon, on Back Street in the little town of Woolsery (nee Woolfardisworthy, population 1,123), sits Myrtle Cottage. For much of its existence, the cottage served as the family home of British Colonial Service Officer J.T. Downes, and was a place of utter normalcy. Now the home belongs to Downes’ son, Jonathan, and since 2005 it has become a rendezvous for people from all over the world to meet and discuss the presence of predatory wildcats on the English moors; proposed expeditions in search of draconic serpents in the swamps of South Sudan; and the validity of a recent spate of anecdotes about Papua New Guinean villagers building stockades to guard against murderous, 30-foot lizards raiding them from the depths of uncharted forests.
Woolsery is now the headquarters for Jonathan Downes’ Center for Fortean Zoology, which operates its museum, library, filmmaking studio, and small on-site publishing house from the cottage. But despite its studious veneer, Fortean Zoology, is not an established and/or respected academic discipline. It’s Downes’s new moniker for cryptozoology, the search for undiscovered and mythical beasts. More colloquially, it’s the world of monster hunters—a world of sincere, often-bumbling believers, but also of hoaxers and profiteers who’ve sullied the title.

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