Fear the Fryzlwulf!

Watch your backs, MMers. Our most recent investigation brought us to North Monmouth, right off Route 202, along the shores of Wilson Pond. North Monmouth is a technically an unincorporated village, part of Monmouth proper. There are lot of summer homes around the pond, there's Tammy's One Stop, a gas station-slash-general store (and pizza and sub shop, don't forget), and Ray's Autos, though that looks like it's more of a museum to rust than a working mechanic. There's not much else, except for one heck of a whopper of a tale, going back all the way to 1963.

Wilson Pond, North Monmouth

Unlike a lot of the stories we investigate here at Malevolent Maine, this one seems fairly well documented. It started with a man, Juri Fryzlwulf (pronounced "Frizzle-wolf"), a Polish immigrant who moved to North Monmouth in the early 1960s. Fryzlwulf was a loner by nature, keeping to himself despite the large Polish community in the Monmouth area. 

On a few occasions, Fryzlwulf was seen running through his fields naked. This was usually in the late evening or early hours just before dawn. One witness described him as, "Naked as the day he was born. Well, that's not exactly right. He was wearing some sort of belt. It looked like fur. But he didn't have any pants on. You could see... well, you know. The belt didn't make much sense."

Many people assumed that Fryzlewulf was some sort of naturalist and as long as he wasn't bothering other people, they left him to his own devices. He might be a little eccentric, but he was mostly harmless. All of that changed in the summer of 1963, however. 

Edwin Simonet

Edwin Simonet was out for his early morning walk. He liked to be up before the birds, he said. He would walk the two and a half mile loop around his house, which brought him along Wilson Pond for about a mile. "In the mornings, it was just as beautiful as could be," he said. Simonet was a math teacher at Monmouth Academy, lived alone, and was well known and respected in town. He was forty years old in 1963, and when we sat down to talk to him, he was just as spry and sharp at 98 as the man he was half a lifetime ago. Here's Edwin:

"I remember that day just as clear as this morning. It was June 28th, a Friday. School had gotten out the week before. I have to tell you, even for teachers, summer vacation is like a rebirth of new life. The air is suddenly sweeter, the sky bluer. It's like while you were sleeping someone came and touched up the world. There's a weightlessness about late June and July. A sense that there is no evil in the world and there never could be. That morning was like that, like the world was free and alive and good. How wrong I was."

Simonet was doing his usual loop when he came to a particularly wooded area near the pond. He heard something then that didn't sound right. "It was a voice, a man's voice, but it was high and reedy. It was talking really fast, like he was trying to convince someone of something." That's when he saw something through the trees, a brief flash of skin.

Simonet couldn't take us out to the area. He lives at the Heron Pointe Senior Living Center in Monmouth, and while his mental faculties are still intact, he doesn't move around very well these days. Still, he was able to draw us a map of where it was, and true to it, we were able to find the spot easily enough. It's on the other side of the Plossay Road, across from Wilson Pond. It's pretty heavily wooded during the summer, a good place to hide.

The wooded area off Plossay Road,
where Simonet found Fryzwulf

As Simonet explained it, he saw that there was someone in the woods. He thought maybe someone needed some help and he went in. What he came upon shocked him. Seventeen year old Linda Williams had just finished Simonet's Algebra class that spring, so he knew her well. "She was standing there in her delicates.  Her clothes were in a little pile near by. She was standing there in her undergarments, her hands trying to keep herself modest."

Simonet said that Linda looked scared. Standing across from her was a man. He was naked save for a fur belt he had tied across his hips. 

"It was Fryzlewulf," Simonet told us. "No doubt about that." He tried to plead his innocence, but it was obvious to Simonet what was going on. He chased after Fryzlewulf but the man ran off, afraid to leave Linda alone, Simonet doubled back. 

The police searched for Fyzlewulf and found him barricaded behind the doors to his home. They arrested him and brought him to the jail. Linda Williams was not raped and claimed Fryzlewulf did not physically touch her at all, but her account of what happened was disjointed and made little sense. Here's a piece of he report:

"I... I went down there to swim. I was changing in the woods...it was a new bathing suit. a Two piece. My mom didn't know. That's when I saw him. That... man. Except he wasn't a man. He was... bigger...bulkier. His body didn't move like a man. So much hair. He... He kept saying, 'Please, please. Shhh. It's okay. Please.' And I saw... I saw.. I saw..."

There was very little they could charge Fryzlewulf with. The best they could do was indecent exposure. However, Linda Williams' father, Earl wanted to take matter into his own hands. He rounded up a posse of men and they went to Fryzlewulf's house. They jumped him and dragged him out of his home. Then they set his house on fire. Fryzlewulf went mad as his house went up in flames. One of the men, Brent Kirkwood recalled how Fryzlewulf almost threw them off and ran back into the house. "He kept screaming about his belt. How he needed his belt. How it was the only thing that could control it." Why the local fire department never responded to the house fire is unknown, though many suspect that Fire Marshall Carl Townes was part of the mob that came from the suspected child molestor.

After the house had burned down, the mob dragged Fryzlewulf to the woods where he had been arrested a few days earlier. There, they strung a rope up over a tree limb, looped the other end around Frylewulf's neck, and lynched him.

Things didn't go quite as planned though. Here's a report from Colin Hardy, another one of the men in the mob:

Artist's rendition of what Colin Hardy saw

"Earl was all fired up. We all were. Earl was a good guy. We all had kids. We could only imagine what that creep would have done to our kids if he caught them. Anyways, Earl was screaming and cursing him - Fryzlewulf, I mean - and the guy was just dangling there at the end of the rope. I had never seen a man die before, but Earl was a little older. He had been to Korea. But there he was twitching and jerking at the end of the rope, and the sun was going down. And I swear this is the God's honest truth, just as the sun went down all the way, Fryzlewulf's body started to twist and turn. Not like it had been. Like he was changing."

In the end seven of the fifteen men came forward and admitted their part of in the attack. To a man, every single one of them told the same story. All of these are on record at the Monmouth Police station. Fryzlewulf's body began to change. It lengthened in place. Bones cracked and regrew at different angles, skin split open and thick, coarse hair, fur, grew. HIs face shattered and turned more lupine. The creature at the end of the rope was half man, half wolf.

When the transformation was complete, the wolf-thing, snapped the rope around its neck. It snarled at the men and took a swipe at Earl Williams. slicing him across the belly. He would later be treated at the local hospital where he received twenty-three stitches. The medical records are private of course, but there are plenty examples of photographs showing the four slashes across his stomach. Then the creature that had been Fryzlewulf ran off.

Juri Fryzlwulf was never seen again. With no one to press charges, the men of the mob were not charged with anything. Again, the Police Chief happened to be a friend of Earl Williams. However, as previously stated the seven men who came forward with their stories of what happened, did so after several days. Many of the men said they could not live keeping secret what they saw.

The story of the Fryzlwulf does not end there, however. Over the next six decades the stories of a werewolf in the woods around Wilson Pond are regular occurrences. There have been multiple stories of mutilated deer found in the woods. Dogs and cats have gone missing; they're often found weeks later torn and shredded apart. In the late 80s there was three separate cases of people being attacked by a "tall, wolf-like creature." Game cameras, placed by hunters, have picked up several unexplainable images. The Fryzlwulf is described as standing over seven feet tall, with dark or black fur. It has the head of a wolf and human-like body. It runs on both two legs and four, and each appendage ends with a series of sharp claws.

Actual game cam footage from 2015

If Fryzlwulf is some sort of lycanthrope, he would be almost one hundred years old at this point. Still, the stories of Fryzlwulf roaming the woods have persisted. The beast is considered dangerous and should not be approached. As any long-timer in North Monmouth will tell you, when the moon is full, stay inside, lock your doors, and pray for no midnight visitors.

Stay safe out there, Maine.