Fungus Deer

Welcome back MMers this one comes to us from Mary who lives in Wiscasset. Mary is a retired woman who lives alone and likes to spend as much time as she can outside, she loves power walking around her property which is set back a ways from the road, she likes to play in her garden, and has fun setting up feeding areas for the local wildlife. She has bird feeders, spreads out peanuts for the squirrels, and in the fall she goes and buys as many cheap apples as she can to feed the deer. 

One older buck has been coming to see Mary every year for years. She knows it's the same one because it has uneven antlers, one side is much larger than the other, she figures this is also the reason a hunter hasn’t taken him down yet, he wouldn’t make a very good trophy. However last fall when she saw the old man in the yard his antlers were even stranger. He had what looked like thick white cobwebs growing over his tines. The old buck was also stumbling a bit and seemed to have trouble biting into the apples. Mary thought he looked a bit drunk almost and was worried that the apples she had bought might have gone bad or started to ferment. Eventually the buck strolled off and she didn’t see it again until this fall. 

Picture of Mary's backyard/garden

Mary reported that the old buck showed up again, but the strange white cobwebs on his antlers had spread over his entire head, almost completely covering the deer’s eyes, nose, and mouth. He was acting even stranger than the previous year. He moved very slowly, had no interest in the apples Mary had put out and would just stare at her house. When a younger deer stumbled by her yard and the old buck was still there, it kept its distance from the old deer. As the younger animal went to eat an apple, the old buck sprang into motion and attempted to gore it.  The young deer seemed mostly unharmed but Mary saw that some of the white gunk from the old buck’s antlers was transferred to the other deer. 

Our best guess as to what the white substance looks like

Mary isn’t sure what is going on with this deer, what is wrong with it or if it will start spreading through the local population, but she is extremely worried about the whole affair and asked us to spread word about it. So if you see any deer with this white substance on them please inform your local game warden or report it to the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. Whether it is a fungus, a parasite, or something otherworldly we need to make sure it doesn’t become an epidemic. Stay safe out there Maine!

Midnight Mansion

Off the beaten path in Hallowell, Maine sits a mansion, now well past its prime. MMer Willy took care of the place for a few winters around fifteen years ago. The owner had passed away even before Willy took over as winter caretaker, but the family kept paying for someone to stay there in the winter months, just to keep the pipes from freezing and animals from chewing on the wiring.

Willy thought it was a pretty sweet gig he had going, he was given a food budget, got to spend time in the big house all by himself, and all he had to do was little maintenance tasks to get paid. The house wasn’t in the best shape however, even when Willy took over he realized it would need larger renovations than what he was capable of, and every time he talked to the owners he brought that up, but they refused to do anything major.

The strange part comes in when Willy would wake up in the middle of the night for a snack, a glass of water, or a refreshing mint. As he would walk toward the kitchen, every part of the house that the moonlight hit as it streamed in through the arched windows would look brand new. The faded wallpaper would look vibrant in the silver light, the scuffed tables and chairs looked freshly stained and polyed, the dusty threadbare rugs would be lush. It was strange but he always chalked it up to bad eyes, and his evening double whiskey or three. He never saw anything else strange, but every once in a while he would catch a drift of music throughout the house, some bop from the 50’s he couldn’t recognize.

Willy says the mansion is still there today but it wouldn’t be safe to enter it. He left his job as winter caretaker when the ceiling of one of the rooms on the third floor collapsed, and the family refused to spend money on having it fixed.

Not the actual Mansion, Willy wouldn't share a picture or a specific location

While it would be fascinating to see this midnight transformation in person, we would suggest that no one look for or enter this mansion as it is falling apart, and would be dangerous for anyone to explore. Stay safe out there, Maine!

Unanswered Questions - November 2020

 

Okay MMers, here are some questions that have been burning in our brains...

• Who is the man that appears on the corner of Stevens and Woodford in Portland on the third Friday of each month at 11:15? He's always holding that one green balloon with the x drawn on it. He wears a long tan overcoat and he only ever shows up for fifteen minutes. If you watch closely, he disappears at exactly 11:30. Who is he? Where does he come from? Where does he go?
• Why do all the fish in Crescent Pond have no eyes? Seriously, ever single fish. What's in the water that's mutating the fish? Is it safe to eat?
• How does the Wooly Man of Weld manage to evade capture? Some of the best hunters in the state haven't been able to catch him? How is that even possible?
• When is the best time to perform the ritual of Sarnem? According to some covens it's midnight on the night of a full moon. Other claim the best time is the first night of a new moon right before the clock strikes 13 (that's 1 AM for you non-pagans). All covens agree though Sarnem is the path and the way, whatever that means. Maybe a better question is what is Sarnem? 
• Where did Mary Lestage go in 1984? She was in a locked bedroom with no windows. How did she disappear and how has no one found her?
• What's in that cave in over in Kingfield and why does the town have it roped off with police tape? What are they hiding in there? Oh, and what happened to the four people who went in but never came out?

That's it for this installment. As always, if you have answers to these, don't forget to email us at malevolentmaine@gmail.com. Stay safe out there, Maine!

Hero of the Iron Works

Good news this time, Malevolent Mainers! One of the most iconic employers in Maine is Bath Iron Works. Jerry has worked at Bath Iron Works for twenty years, “Usually as you are putting a ship together” Jerry says, “everything gets to be pretty routine, after a while you start not to think too much about the massive slabs and beams of steel that get moved around and put into their place.”  Jerry went on to tell us of one particular day when he and his crew were working on a destroyer. 

“I want to keep the other guys anonymous, because they might get unwanted attention when this gets out. But as we were putting this destroyer together I was up operating the crane to lower this massive cross beam into place so we could get it welded in. My crew was down below waiting for it to go into place.” Jerry paused here and took a deep breath. “Well everything was going fine but as I was lowering the bean into place I watched as the connection between the hook and the main hoist line started to stretch and then an instant later there was a massive pop as they separated and the beam started to free fall.”  A member of Jerry’s crew was startled by the pop and looked up to see the beam falling almost directly on top of him. 

Luckily for the man about to be crushed he was about to get some help from another member of Jerry’s crew. “Well I don’t want to use his real name, but Mike jumped up almost immediately to help. Now Mike was never considered the brightest bulb on the crew but he was a good guy and a great welder, I knew that he was just trying to help but I couldn’t help but think Mike was gonna get crushed too, and I couldn’t bear the thought of one death on my hands let alone two. Well Mike, that crazy bastard, as that beam fell towards him and the other guy, he jumps up in the air just about as this 2000 pound piece of steel is coming down on top of them and he just bats it out of the air.”  The beam ended up falling diagonally across the hull of the destroyer and the two men were safe. Jerry couldn’t believe his eyes, Mike had done a superhuman feat to save his friend and coworker. 

Jerry went on to say that Mike stayed with the crew for another few years but neither he nor the rest of his crew ever saw any other examples of superhuman abilities out of the man. With all the strange and otherworldly stories we report on, its nice to have one where the phenomenon seems to be looking out for humanity. Stay safe out there, Maine, and if you ever find “Mike” make sure you buy him a cold one!