Updated May 8, 2013.
Regular hours are listed below.
Please note, there is a “last admission” policy one-half hour before closing. Doors will be locked at those times, but visitors already admitted will have until posted closing time to view exhibits.
The International Cryptozoology Museum™
Director/Founder: Loren Coleman
Assistant Director: Jeff Meuse
Ours is the world’s only cryptozoology museum.
Visit our unique gem in the beautiful city of Portland, Maine, year-round .
Join our nonprofit educational and scientific mission.
REGULAR HOURS
Open: Mondays ~ Noon to 4 PM (Last Admission 3:30 PM)
Open: Wednesdays through Saturdays ~ 11 AM to 4 PM
(Last Admission 3:30 PM)
Open: Sundays ~ Noon to 3:30 PM
(Last Admission 3:00 PM)
Closed: Tuesdays
Admission prices (cash or check only):
Babies in your arms and/or in strollers (who neither walk or crawl) = Free
Children (kids 12 and below) = $5.00 each
Everyone else (13 and older) = $7.00 each
An adult must accompany all children. Dropping off kids is not allowed.
Please place your cellphones on vibrate or silence. Thank you.
Newest cryptid exhibits
Several new exhibits have been enhanced or newly installed during Spring 2013, including ones on the Dover Demon, the Montauk Monster, the Jersey Devil, and the Napes/Skunk Apes. Please come visit us to see those.
At the end of 2012, Hollywood model maker Lee Murphy’s full-sized Gigantopithecus-oriented Bigfoot head was added.
Jeff Johnson replica (above) of the Loch Ness Monster is on exhibit at our new well-lit ICM (below) location on Avon Street.
Photos, above/below, by Ryan Dube
New Art Routinely Added:
Art inspired by cryptozoology is being added routinely and continuously.
The International Cryptozoology Museum is expanding its collection every week.
One of our newest art additions is A Bigfoot family visits a human family’s campsite, a 3D piece by artist Alec Cloud McPherson. We appreciate and celebrate, for example, his donation, for it is quite engaging, creative, and humorous.
We appreciate cryptozoology-inspired art.
The International Cryptozoology Museum supports local and national artists, and its collection now contains, for example, artist several of Carolina artist Andy Finkle’s paintings, including his representations of several cryptids and individual portraits of Finding Bigfoot’s Cliff Barackman and the ICM’s Loren Coleman (below). All cast members of Finding Bigfoot are in the collection now. Other old and new researchers, discoverers, and cryptozoologists are the collection.
One individual portrayed is National Geographic Channel’s Beast Hunter Pat Spain (below). Pat is the generous donator behind the purchase of a sizable group of Finkle’s paintings. (See the gathering of many artists’ inspired works in the “Art Room” at the museum, next to our main “Evidence Room.”)
We receive a several hundred visitors a year. We have hosted special groups, from school field trips to college class visits, from wedding parties to national celebrities performing in Portland, from stay-at-home dads and moms looking for a unique outing to scientists here at conferences, from cruise ship sightseers to international tourists. Several people have driven straight here from, for example, Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Florida, and northern Maine. Visitors have come from Nepal, Australia, China, and from cities including London, Paris, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and hundreds of other worldwide locations. Cryptozoology fans, Bigfooters, zoologists, anthropologists, students, skeptics, families, and some with no knowledge of cryptids have all enjoyed their visits with us.
Photo: International Cryptozoology Museum™
Above is our mid-century modern “cryptozoologist’s study” art installation in the expanded ICM. The Hillary Yeti Expedition flag is the first item obtained by Loren Coleman in 1960, beginning his mission to build a historical and educational cryptozoological collection, which has resulted in this museum. Travelers appreciate the vintage settings of our exhibits, as much as the cryptozoology. In front of that area are the actual hair samples from Hillary’s expedition.
Our expanded, enlarged location is located at 11 Avon Street, Portland, Maine. This is just around the corner from our former Congress Street location. Please use “11 Avon Street, Portland, Maine” for GPS purposes.
Erik Gosselin’s one-of-a-kind movie prop FeeJee Mermaid created for the 1999 A&E film, P. T. Barnum.
After our massive move and re-curating resulted in a new home for old favorites: the full-sized art sculptures of the Crookston Bigfoot (by Curtis Christensen), Freaky Links’ pterodactyl (by Haxan sfx), P.T. Barnum’s FeeJee Mermaid (above, by Erik Gosselin), the Naden Harbor Caddy (by Lee Murphy), and other cryptid and new species replicas, evidence, and more. Our fiberglass coelacanth (from Fantastic Fish) is the only life-size exact model of the first 1938 specimen displayed in North America.
Admissions and on-site donations are welcome. Greater donations will be appreciated to help with our on-going new design, larger space requirements, and additions to the collection we are making. Your generous support is needed and appreciated.
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The museum may be open on major holidays when other museums are closed. Check back here to see our schedule. This is a public museum and appointments are not necessary. Introductory brief overviews are given as all visitors arrive, a map is distributed for free, and special off-hour tours are only available for groups at an extra fee.
The museum is mentioned on the local tourist map, on the Duck Tours and sometimes during the scenic trolley and cruise-related rides. It is easy to find. We are located on the Portland Metro Bus Route 1, near Avon Street, on Congress Street. The Amtrak train from Boston arrives a little over a mile from the museum, as do the major bus lines. It is a short cab ride from the train or bus stations. We are right off I-95, then off I-295, for those driving. Congress Street is a major throughfare in downtown Portland, and our site on Avon Street is right off Congress Street. We are located next to Joe’s Smoke Shop’s parking lot, down Congress Street from the Children’s Museum and the Portland Museum of Art. On-street parking is available nearby, or simply use the parking garage attached to the Eastland Hotel on High Street a couple blocks away, less than a 5-minute walk.
Loren Coleman, Willow Creek, CA, 1975, with Jim McClarin’s redwood Bigfoot sculpture.
The mission of the museum is to share the items cryptozoologically collected since 1960 by Loren Coleman and from other donators in recent years with Mainers, New Englanders, out-of-town visitors, tourists, teachers, home-schoolers, researchers, scholars, professors, colleagues, students, documentary filmmakers, news people, scientific cryptozoologists and the general public.
The International Cryptozoology Museum™ in Portland, Maine, includes exhibits about cryptids (beyond Bigfoot & Nessie). We also feature displays about the finds of “living fossils” and other classic animals of discovery — the successful cryptozoological stories. One of the most famous, of course, is the coelacanth, as featured in the ICM logo. We have a lifesize model in the museum.
Our one-of-a-kind movie prop, the FeeJee Mermaid, is a sterling example of a fake in the museum demonstrating the skeptically open-minded approach to investigating cryptid reports to be found here. We also have a more traditionally created FeeJee Mermaid, as well, from the Miami artist Juan Cabana, shown below.
Critical thinking is important to this museum.
We have many rare and unique pieces of remarkable evidence. Some of the items on exhibit are actual hair samples of Abominable Snowmen, Bigfoot, Yowie, and Orang Pendek. A letter from the actor Jimmy Stewart is on display as he is linked to the Pangboche Yeti hand mystery. Fecal matter from a small Yeti was collected by the Tom Slick-F. Kirk Johnson Snowman Expedition of 1959, and the ICM’s sample has been featured on three television series: In Search Of, MonsterQuest, and Mysteries at the Museum. A footprint cast taken in 2001, during an alleged Thylacine encounter, is among the over 3000 items on exhibit.
A life-size model of Caddy is also contained in the collection, as well as the 8 ft tall Crookston Bigfoot and a large number of Bigfoot, Yowie, and Snowman footcasts. Because Loren Coleman has been on various television documentaries and programs, there are props from Lost Tapes, In Search Of, MonsterQuest, Freaky Links, Beasts of the Bible, and other shows.
During the last year, the museum was featured in History’s Ancient Aliens: Aliens and Monsters. Loren Coleman, in 2011, was also found discussing Mothman on Discovery Channel’s Will Shatner’s Weird or What? and “Maine’s Mystery Beast” and “Tom Slick’s Yeti Samples” on Travel Channel’s Mysteries At The Museum. You may see him in documentary television reruns going back to the 1980s, frequently rebroadcast on many cable channels.
Oftentimes, various editions of the 35+ books by Loren Coleman are available, as well as other items for sale, in the ICM bookstore/gift shop. Autographs may be obtained, when the author is present, as he usually is, unless he is doing fieldwork or on location for a documentary taping.
This is an educational/scientific/natural history museum containing over 3000 items on display. As of September 15, 2011, we are an official State of Maine nonprofit corporation.
Your donations are important.
Please click on the button below to take you to PayPal if you would like to help us out with a donation.
If you wish to send in your donation via the mails, by way of an international money order or, for the USA, via a check or bank money order, please use this snail mail address:
Loren Coleman
International Cryptozoology Museum
PO Box 4311
Portland, ME 04101
Thank you!!
Art by Craig LaRotonda for Yankee.
We are featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Yankee Magazine, and via a full-page ad in the August 2011 issue of Portland Monthly Magazine. The museum was noted as the most unique museum to visit in the “Best of USA” picks in the May 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest. Numerous other awards and list selections have occurred in 2009 and 2010, as well as mentions and good reviews on Roadside America, Atlas Obscura, Yelp, Huffington Post, MSNBC, and Trip Advisor.
Late in 2011, the museum was featured on radio (in Spain, Russia, China, UK, Ireland, as well as on Radio Free Europe and Coast to Coast AM), in newspapers/online news (in Huffington Post, AOL News, Christian Science Monitor, Portland Daily Sun, USM Free Press, Enterprise News, and 136 other news sites), and various television programs (such as Boston’s Chronicle and Portland’s 207).
Serena Altschul of CBS Sunday Morning is shown during the taping of the program at the museum (Mary Lou Teel, producer).
If you still are having a hard time deciding to visit, remember, you can watch a quick video about us at this link:
CBS Sunday Morning on November 11, 2012.
Other televised museum appearances in 2013 include our forthcoming travelogues on TWC, Discovery, Travel Channel and other reality programming channels.
Ruth Harkness, discoverer of the Giant Panda, painting by Andy Finkle
Visitors’ Guidelines:
Photography is encouraged for personal and educational use. You consent to allow us to use your photos in social media and publications with our permission for you to photograph our exhibits. Professional photographers please check in with staff. No filming may occur in the museum without the expressed permission of the director.
Cell phones on vibrate are required of all guests. Talking on cell phones is not allowed, and you will be asked to leave, have your conversation outside, and then granted readmission.
This is a formal collection and archival museum. Touching and handling of items is not allowed. However, we are a kid-friendly, youthful, and adult-oriented educational collection with many levels of enjoyable explorations being encouraged and possible.
We are happy to inform you we have a public restroom, greatly expanded space (pre-Oct 2011 reviews, therefore, are incorrect), and a slowly expanding giftshop with autographed books, cryptid replicas, footprint cast copies, and teeshirts for sale.
Sorry, we do not take credit cards. In our modest gift shop, purchases may be made with check or cash. There is an ATM next door at Joe’s Smoke Shop.
To obtain our monthly newsletter, please click here:
Donations are greatly appreciated to support our educational and scientific missions.
Board of Directors
Loren Coleman, Maine
Caleb Cone-Coleman, Maine
Dan Porter, Maine
Malcolm Cone-Coleman, Massachusetts
Jeff Meuse, Maine
Patrick Huyghe, Virginia
Attorney: Frederick Veit, New York
Contact Info
Loren Coleman, Director and Founder
International Cryptozoology Museum™
Post Office Box 4311
Portland, ME 04101
or
11 Avon Street
Portland, ME 04101
Email: lcoleman@maine.rr.com
Loren Coleman. Photo by Greta Rybus
The ICM was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning on November 11, 2012.
(See the video at the link.)
The screening of Cryptotrip at the museum on March 10th was a success.
Look for other future screenings of cryptozoology movies.