(196) More on the giant octopus
On May 4th 2003, James Eadon forwarded me an e mail from a Frenchman called Michel Raynal.
Raynal had contacted him about me and the excerpts from Coincidences concerning the giant octopus which he must have got hold of through Google references to my work at Eadon´s site. He said that he had been unable to obtain the book and asked if Eadon could photocopy pages and send them to him.
He also explained that he and other biologists were currently examining samples of the tissues of the 1896 Florida globster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globster
I got back to Monsieur Raynal and sold him the book. He also revealed that the first results of the three teams working on the 1896 tissues indicated that it was not a cetacean!
A few days later I e mailed him that I had footage of the 1999 expedition to Bermuda and asked if he would be interested in buying copies. He said that he certainly would, but replied on May 25th that the price I quoted was beyond his means. He added that he might be interested in purchasing transcripts of the interview which I had filmed with seafarer Teddy Tucker.
On June 5th I e mailed to agree to his offer and quote a small price for the transcripts. On June 11th, I got another e mail from him -
Sorry for my long silence. I had some problems with my E-mail box. Now it is OK.. You speak of coincidences ? Well, I have received a proposal by a publisher for a book on the giant octopuses!!! So, I am more than ever interested in your video investigations in Bermudas, and I am ready to purchase the 15 cassettes...
The French cryptozoologist had been interested in the giant octopus for 20 or so years and, indeed, had already had something on his website about my expedition for several years.
Yet it was only now, as my name turned up in connection with Eadon’s site when he searched the web, that he got in touch.
And it was also now, as three teams under his directorship had at long last got around to a DNA analysis of the 1896 sample (the importance of which I had discussed in 1999 with Professor Roy Mackal, who said he still had slivers of it in his freezer, and which I had mentioned in my 2000 article on my expedition in the Fortean Times) that an independent proposal for a book on the subject (the publisher was "L’Oeil du Sphinx"- a specialiser in Fortean phenomena) came his way.
That offer made him change his mind and pay me for a copy of my video record.
As part of the deal I authorised the sending of a sample of the Bermuda Blob, a mysterious mass which washed up in Bermuda in 1988, from Teddy Tucker in Bermuda to Monsieur Raynal for analysis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Blob
Then in late June 2003 a huge mass of tissue beached in southern Chile and media reports detailed that Raynal was one of several biochemists from around the world who were being called upon to examine the tissues. He was, like me, excited by the find, but also like me he felt that it was most likely to prove to be a whale carcass, as subsequent analyses confirmed. But for a while the whale (as it turned out to be) was world news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3039102.stm
On September 11th 2003 he contacted me to say that an English translation had just appeared of B. Heuvelman’s long established classic of cryptozoology: Le Kraken et le Pulpe Colossal. He accurately observed that "The giant octopus is really in the news!"
Raynal had contacted him about me and the excerpts from Coincidences concerning the giant octopus which he must have got hold of through Google references to my work at Eadon´s site. He said that he had been unable to obtain the book and asked if Eadon could photocopy pages and send them to him.
He also explained that he and other biologists were currently examining samples of the tissues of the 1896 Florida globster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globster
I got back to Monsieur Raynal and sold him the book. He also revealed that the first results of the three teams working on the 1896 tissues indicated that it was not a cetacean!
A few days later I e mailed him that I had footage of the 1999 expedition to Bermuda and asked if he would be interested in buying copies. He said that he certainly would, but replied on May 25th that the price I quoted was beyond his means. He added that he might be interested in purchasing transcripts of the interview which I had filmed with seafarer Teddy Tucker.
On June 5th I e mailed to agree to his offer and quote a small price for the transcripts. On June 11th, I got another e mail from him -
Sorry for my long silence. I had some problems with my E-mail box. Now it is OK.. You speak of coincidences ? Well, I have received a proposal by a publisher for a book on the giant octopuses!!! So, I am more than ever interested in your video investigations in Bermudas, and I am ready to purchase the 15 cassettes...
The French cryptozoologist had been interested in the giant octopus for 20 or so years and, indeed, had already had something on his website about my expedition for several years.
Yet it was only now, as my name turned up in connection with Eadon’s site when he searched the web, that he got in touch.
And it was also now, as three teams under his directorship had at long last got around to a DNA analysis of the 1896 sample (the importance of which I had discussed in 1999 with Professor Roy Mackal, who said he still had slivers of it in his freezer, and which I had mentioned in my 2000 article on my expedition in the Fortean Times) that an independent proposal for a book on the subject (the publisher was "L’Oeil du Sphinx"- a specialiser in Fortean phenomena) came his way.
That offer made him change his mind and pay me for a copy of my video record.
As part of the deal I authorised the sending of a sample of the Bermuda Blob, a mysterious mass which washed up in Bermuda in 1988, from Teddy Tucker in Bermuda to Monsieur Raynal for analysis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Blob
Then in late June 2003 a huge mass of tissue beached in southern Chile and media reports detailed that Raynal was one of several biochemists from around the world who were being called upon to examine the tissues. He was, like me, excited by the find, but also like me he felt that it was most likely to prove to be a whale carcass, as subsequent analyses confirmed. But for a while the whale (as it turned out to be) was world news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3039102.stm
On September 11th 2003 he contacted me to say that an English translation had just appeared of B. Heuvelman’s long established classic of cryptozoology: Le Kraken et le Pulpe Colossal. He accurately observed that "The giant octopus is really in the news!"
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