An Evening with... Richard Freeman

A rare opportunity to join the LAPIS crew in Blackpool for an evening with cryptozoologist and long time friend of LAPIS Richard Freeman.

This will be held on 12th October 2024 starting at 7.30pm, at our usual haunt, The Guards Club, 37E Whitegate Drive, Blackpool, FY3 9DG. Due to the size of the venue entry will by advance ticket only.

Tickets are priced at £7.00. We do not send out tickets for online purchases, your email from PayPal is your confirmation. You may wish to print it out but there is no need as we will simply need your name at the door.

SEARCHING FOR REAL MONSTERS

In this talk Richard Freeman, cryptozoologist, author, explorer and Zoological Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology will recount his adventures all over the world on the track of unknown animals, For a quarter of a century Richard has travelled the globe investigating reports of real life monsters. Some of these are creatures utterly unknown to science, some are beasts once thought extinct but that may be surviving today and yet others are known species grown far beyond the recorded maximum size.

His adventures have taken him to the Gobi Desert in search of the much feared Mongolian deathworm, the mountains of north India on the track of the yeti, the forests of Tasmanian hunting for the Tasmanian wolf, the swamps of Guyana where the giant anaconda lurks, the rainforests of Sumatra on the trail of orang-pendek, a new species of ape, Tajikistan in search of the Caspian tiger, once thought to be extinct and the Caucasus Mountains on the hunt for the almasty, the Russian wildman.

Richard will show pictures from his expeditions and talk about future projects and other strange creatures he would like to hunt. He will also answer questions and give advice to those wishing to enter the strange and exciting field of cryptozoology, the search for unknown animals.

Richard Freeman is a working cryptozoologist, author and explorer. He searches for and writes about unknown animals. The melodramatic may call him a monster hunter. He has hunted for creatures such as the yeti, the Mongolian death worm, the giant anaconda, the almasty, orang-pendek, the gul, the naga, the ninki-nanka, the Caspian tiger and the Tasmanian wolf. He is the Zoological Director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology. This is the world’s only full time mystery animal research organization. It is based in North Devon, England.

A former zookeeper, Richard has worked with over 400 species from spiders to elephants, but lists crocodiles as his favourite.

He has lectured at the Natural History Museum in London and the Grant Museum of Zoology as well as the Last Tuesday Society at Viktor Wynd's Little Shop of Horrors. Richard is also a regular contributor to the magazine Fortean Times.

He has written books about cryptozoology, folklore and monsters including "Dragons: More Than a Myth?", "Explore Dragons", "The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia: An A to Z of Japanese Monsters", and "Orang-Pendek: Sumatra’s Forgotten Ape". However he has recently branched out into horror and weird fantasy with "Green Unpleasant Land: 18 Tales of British Horror" and "Hyakumonagatari: Tales of Japanese Horror Book One". His latest work is an overview of cryptozoology and a chronicle of his own expeditions entitled "Adventures in Cryptozoology volumes one and two". He has just written a book of high strangeness fortean cases called "The Highest Strangeness", and a two volume work on man-eating animals that the publishers have unfortunately forced him to call "Creatures that Eat People".