Pollyanna speaks at Cryptozoology Conference

Over the years Pollyanna has spoken to a diverse range of associations and societies, but she never expected to find herself addressing the largest annual gathering of mystery animal investigators in the English speaking world!

Pollyanna meets CFZ director Jon Downes and a yeti at the conference. The yeti is the one in the middle.

However she was invited to give a presentation about the yeti skull she viewed in a remote Bhutanese temple, at the ‘Weird Weekend’ an annual event organised by the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the world’s only professional Cryptozoology organisation. Two weeks prior to the event Pollyanna and CFZ director Jonathan Downes were guests on a BBC Radio Sheffield phone in programme centered around possible yeti sightings.

Before the conference began, Pollyanna and Anna-Louise had chance to meet and chat to many of the attending Cryptozoologists. “It was fascinating to find out more about their work” Anna-Louise commented “But also quite strange …. usually when we talk about our expeditions to find endangered species the stories of our journeys sound quite interesting, but in this company we felt very dull! Whereas we went to Siberia to search for tigers here we talked to people had just returned from an expedition to Russia to find the Almasty (a wild hominid), and while we were in the rainforests of South America looking for jaguars, they have been on expedition to similar areas to find Chupacabras (unidentified vampire creatures which prey on livestock). Although we think we set ourselves a hard task trying to find snow leopards in the Himalayas, at least we know the animals we are trying to find actually exist!” Although the conference was quite tongue in cheek at times, in fact the work of the CFZ in trying to track down mythical or extinct animals which may survive in remote places is fascinating. Many new species are found each year – and one day the yeti might be among them!

Following the media frenzy about her sighting in the first half of the year, an interview with Pollyanna about her sighting of a yeti scalp was also recently broadcast on BBC news programme The World Today, and she has been invited to guest on the documentary ‘Monsterquest’ which is currently in production for
The History Channel.

The Conference was filmed for broadcast on the CFZ’s internet TV channel CFZTV. You can watch the footage of Pollyanna’s talk, and the following Q&A session at CFZ TV

Above : Pollyanna with the ‘photofit’ Yeti sketch

The original Yeti sketch was displayed to the public for the first time at Pollyanna’s gallery, for the duration of the Land of the Thunder Dragon exhibition in June 2008.