The cryptozoology museum, which has displays of discovered and undiscovered creatures from Bigfoot to sea serpents, will be leaving Portland, but not until 2025, the museum director said Saturday.
The International Cryptozoology Museum, which opened in Portland in 2003, is the only such museum in the world, according to director and founder Loren Coleman.
The goal is to stop leasing and own its own building and consolidate the Portland and Bangor museums, Coleman said. “We are looking at a property, an art deco building built in the 1940s,” Coleman said. After the purchase is finalized this month or in 2023, plans call for restoring the building, which is on outer Broadway in Bangor.
The Portland museum will remain open until the move, Coleman said.
People come to the cryptozoology museum from all over the world, wanting to learn about discoveries of creatures thought to be extinct and creatures that have yet to be proven real, Coleman said. Exhibits include cryptids (Bigfoot and Nessie), fossils and a seminal cryptozoological discovery, the coelacanth, a 5.5-foot model of a fish found alive in Africa in 1938 that was thought to be extinct, Coleman said.
The Portland museum is at Thompson’s Point near the children’s museum, open 10-4 every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.
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