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Mark Chorvinsky (1954 -2005)
Too brief a life
by Loren Coleman |
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 Mark
Chorvinsky was born in Philadelphia, on March 4, 1954. A magician
from the age of seven, Chorvinsky acquired an interest in mysteries,
and a desire to explain them, in his childhood. As an adult, Chorvinsky became a filmmaker and bookstore owner.
Chorvinsky's film productions were independent and usually not
feature
length. His short motion picture Strange Tangents was screened at
the
American Film Institute, the Library of Congress and film festivals
at
Cannes, Berlin, and Los Angeles. "It's about a young sorceress who
tries to save her dying master with the help of her friend, a
3-foot-tall talking salamander," Chorvinsky told a reporter in
October 1989. (Later, he would create short video documentaries on
his debunking investigations, such as Strange World, in the
mid-1990s.)
In the early 1980s, Chorvinsky devoted endless hours categorizing
the data collection of the International Fortean Organization, while
running his commercial bookstore, Dream Wizards, in suburban
Rockville, Maryland. Displeased with the administration of INFO,
Chorvinsky broke with the group, then founded and became the editor
of Strange Magazine in 1987. His magazine reflected Chorvinsky's
journey in Fortean investigations, at first publishing detailed
overview articles on phenomena, but then slowly moving to more
skeptical and debunking articles on cryptozoological and unexplained
subjects, as well as the occasional sympathetic pieces.
Chorvinsky was one of the first to discuss the possible role of
Washington state construction magnate Ray Wallace in the seminal
hominological events in 1958, when Jerry Crew found the now-famous
"first" Bigfoot prints -- or, at least, the first to be labeled as
such. Chorvinsky, an outspoken skeptic of the 1967 Roger
Patterson-Bob Gimlin Bigfoot film footage, suspected that the clip
was a hoax. In columns in Fate Magazine and in essays in Strange
Magazine, Chorvinsky tied his theories especially to the Hollywood
special-effects award winner John Chambers (although Chambers denied
his role to investigator Bobbie Short). Another favorite debunking
focus of Chorvinsky's was the Loch Ness and Owlman work of fellow
magician, Englishman Doc Shiels. Chorvinsky carried on decades-long
debates on these topics with his critics.
Chorvinsky had a light side, and it appeared most often when he was
able to share his passion for the magic of the movies as seen in
cryptozoological topics. He contributed an appendix to my book, Tom
Slick and the Search for Yeti (1989), on the role of Abominable
Snowmen in the cinema, and he often described how he enjoyed writing
that essay. In his later years, Chorvinsky seemed to return, as with
the piece he wrote on the truth behind The Exorcist, to reflective
examinations that overlapped his deep interests in film and Fortean
topics.
One of Mark Chorvinsky's favorite Charles Fort quotations was from
New Lands: "There is not a physicist in the world who can perceive
when a parlor magician palms off playing-cards."
On Saturday, July 16, 2005, Mark E. Chorvinsky of Rockville,
Maryland (the
son of Irma and Milton Chorvinsky), passed away after a long battle
with
cancer. He was a devoted father and family man. He left behind his
wife
Laurel Chiat, his son David S. Chorvinsky, and brother Ted and
sister
Pamela. Mark Chorvinsky was a fellow of a tight-knit group of
Forteans in
Maryland and the District of Columbia, including his good friends
Doug
Chapman and Mark Opsasnick. Before he fell ill, Chorvinsky
maintained an
extensive network of international colleagues via email contact and
his
publishing efforts.
July 28, 2005 |
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