The Pamola

Broccoli field in Northern Maine

Raul is a fairly accomplished hunter and outdoorsman, he's hunted all over the state of Maine and even taken several trips out west to hunt various game out there. Never in his life has he seen anything like what he saw on a grey Tuesday afternoon last October. Raul was out in the broccoli fields of northern Maine, he had discovered several years ago that it was where moose liked to spend a lot of time, and that was exactly what he was after.

It was getting towards dusk and Raul just wasn’t having much luck, he had seen a small bull but he really wanted to fill his freezer this year. But just as he was about to give up he saw a pair of large tracks leading into a nearby thicket of saplings. He quickly followed them, but as he did an uneasy feeling settled into the pit of his stomach, something wasn’t right about these footprints. The pattern of the footfalls was wrong for a moose, whatever this creature was, it only walked on two legs. Raul laughed to himself and was fairly certain another moose hunter was pranking him, or maybe these fake hoofprints were meant to steer novice hunters away from the prime real estate. Either way Raul felt like he had been duped. 

But luck still seemed to be on his side, he heard something large rusting through the brush nearby and when he looked up he saw the large antlers of a moose weaving in and out of the saplings just up ahead. The antlers were pretty high up and had a great spread, Raul guessed it was big enough to fill a couple freezers, and he began to stalk the beast, until he could get a good broadside shot on it. 

There was a clearing in the thicket as it opened into the path to the broccoli field and Raul hoped that the big bastard would wander its way out there. He kneeled down near the end of the thicket and got ready for when the moose made its exit. What he saw next was unexpected. There was the head, large, black eyed, with a towering set of antlers. But attached to that head was the long gangly torso and legs of a human man. Out of the back of this creature their sprouted two long blackish brown protrusions that hung limp all the way down to its knees. To the top of its antlers the creature was probably close to nine feet tall. 

A tattoo design based on the Pamola

Raul held his breath, lowered his rifle, and waited for the thing to pass. “It was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever seen, it was unnatural, I don’t know how many times I made the sign of the cross after it left” Raul said. “As much as I wanted to forget it, I couldn’t, I remembered its black eyes, I remembered it swaying back and forth as it walked, I remember those dead things sticking out of its back. I still dream about seeing it, and everytime I wake up in a cold sweat.” Raul’s obsession led to him researching sightings of this creature, and slowly he remembered his time in the boy scouts, when he and his troop had climbed Mt. Katahdin. “We climbed up Pamola Peak, and I remember as we stopped for water one of the dad’s told us all about this ancient Abenaki myth about a man with the head of a moose and the wings of an eagle. It was a Pamola, an ancient guardian of the land. I don’t know if what I saw in the woods was it, or some creepy imitation, but I don’t want to see it ever again.”

We did some research and we confirmed the mythology behind this sighting. It is in fact an Abenaki legend, although it is usually tied to the area around Mt. Katahdin, and where Raul sighted the creature was quite a few miles away from there. There is also the fact that the creature Raul saw had no wings, or at the very least its wings had decayed past the point of use. 

Either way, be on the lookout for the Pamola, and stay safe out there Maine!