The Meat Suit Man

Welcome back, MMers! It has been  LONG time coming, and before we dive into today's story, we feel we owe you guys a bit of an explanation. In August we were surprised by the Feds showing up at our office. No, not the men in black Feds (unfortunately) but just your regular federal officer. It seems that we popped up on the radar because of a story we had posted and they asked us to turn over all of our research on the matter. We, of course, agreed and assisted with their investigation however we could. Because of their ongoing case, we were asked to refrain from posting anything new to our site. We're happy to say everything has ben resolved and we're ready to keep bringing you the weird stories from all over the great state of Maine. We want to state clearly that at no time was Malevolent Maine under investigation or accused of any wrongdoing; we were simply abiding by the guidelines we were given.

We have their permission to continue, we promise!

So, we're back, and we're ready to jump into a rather strange story we think you'll find interesting as we enter our third year of strange and weird reports. We're calling this one The Meat Suit Man of Harrison.

Harrison, Maine is located just east of Bridgton, across the aptly named Long Lake. A loyal reader, Martha Atwood, contacted us about a story she heard from her husband, George, who passed away in 2018. George had lived his whole life in Harrison and first told the story to Martha sometime around 1985. According to George sometime around 1977 a man named Warren Gray went missing. He had been something of a local pariah, shunned by many of the townsfolk.

"George said he was a smallish man, about my size," Martha told us (Martha Atwood is 5'5", by the way). "He never did anything wrong, really. He was just sorta different."

Gray wasn't well liked in town, with hardly any friends. He was unmarried, lived on the outskirts of town, and never held a real job for very long. There are no reports of any criminal behavior for any Warren Grays in the area, and we haven't been able to find a reason for the public shunning. However, the fact remained that he was quite the outcast.

"George used to say that a lot of people in Maine went missing between the summer of '76 and the winter of '77," Martha said as she Zoomed with us from her kitchen table. "A lot fo them probably just up and ran away from their problems, but he said a bunch of them, mostly big men, just simply disappeared."

According to reports from the Maine State Police and a thorough search of the Portland Press Herald, there was a marked uptick of missing persons cases. Malevolent Maine was unable to determine the size of the missing people, however.

As the story goes, soon after Warren Gray disappeared, a large man, heavily clothed started to be seen in the area around Harrison. "George said he was walking home from the Depot Street Tavern one night. It would have been around '78, I guess. It was after midnight and George said he came across a big man stumbling down the road in the opposite direction. George said he'd had a few, but the guy looked like he'd had a few of his own too."

The man was big, George guessed about six-six or six-seven, and he stumbled around as if his boots were made of cement. His arms flapped around. "Looked like a kid trying to get out of his winter clothes, you know?" Martha told us.

As George passed the man, he offered a greeting, assuming he was another late night carouser heading home after a night of drinking. The big man grunted a greeting that George thought was muffled, sounding like it was coming from beneath a scarf, despite the fact that the man only wore a large hooded sweatshirt.

It was at just this moment that the moon came out from behind a cloud. George told his wife Martha, and numerous other people over the years that he had been scared plenty of times in his life, but seeing the face of the man who he passed by that night was about the scariest thing he had seen. We'll let Martha tell it:

Artist's rendition

"The face was all scarred up, thick black stitches sewn everywhere. George said it looked like a Frankenstein or something. He said the eyes didn't match up, like they were too small or like the face was pulled the wrong way."

George Atwood didn't linger but broke into a sprint, trying to put as much space between him and the thing he had encountered. He would later tell his wife he expected to hear the plodding, heavy footsteps of the thing chasing after him, but he got home with no further altercations.

Over the next several months there are several other sightings of the creature. All of the stories are the same: big, heavy man, heavily scarred or stitched together. One of the men who saw the thing was Brent Carter, a local farmer who saw the thing walking through his fields one night. We were able to track down Mr. Carter, and while he didn't want to sit down for an interview, he did agree to answer some of our questions.

"I knew Warren Gray fairly well. We weren't close or nothing, but he had worked several summers on the farm. He didn't say much and wasn't much of an agreeable guy, but I'd had a few cold ones with him after a long days work. When I saw that thing in my field, I had no clue what it was, but it had Warren's eyes. I was certain of that much. They were swimming in that great big wreck of a face. They looked like they didn't belong there, like they were sunk deep, but they were Warren's eyes, alright. That's when I began to suspect something was up."

A few weeks later a group of young men came across the shambling man along a dirt road where they were out partying. They called to the man, but got no response, so in their drunken state they attacked him. One of the men, Isaiah Rideout grabbed onto the sweatshirt the large man wore and tore it off his back. He told us last week over the phone:

"Of course I remember it. Like it was yesterday. It was the weirdest damn thing I'd ever seen. There was a seam going down the guy's back and a thick zipper. Like the kind you have on a winter coat. It had come down a little and I could see inside of him. There was something else in there, someone else. Like a little guy inside of a bigger guy. You know what I mean?"

Is this what George Atwood, Brent Carter, and Isaiah Rideout saw?

No one was ever able to prove what Rideout saw, though when asked both Martha Atwood and Brent Carter agreed that matched the descriptions of what they had seen and known. Whispers began to spread about the Meat Suit Man and the stories quickly caught on.

Supposedly all of the missing people from around the area had been killed and their bodies turned into a suit of some kind, much like the Marvel character Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr. in the 2008 movie. Except the heavy suit of wasn't made of metal but human flesh. Brent Carter believes it was somehow Warren Gray. That the strange local pariah somehow tried to reinvent himself by creating a new man for him to walk around in. The fact that Gray was known to be on the smaller side only supports this theory.

The Meat Suit Man was seen only a few more times and disappeared for good by 1980. Some stories go Gray died, suffocated by his own suit. Others claim he caught a bacteria infection from the cadaverous suit he had made. But that's not what George Atwood believed. As Martha told us, George always believed that Gray had moved away. 

"He was never much of a people person and once folks started figuring out who this Frankenstein guy was, he ran off. George always said that the Meat Suit Man had gone north. Every time he'd hear stories about hunters encountering something in the north woods, all of those Bigfoot sightings and whatnot, he always thought they were Warren Gray, living on his own."

Is the Meat Suit Man roaming through the woods of Aroostook? No one knows, but he intend to keep looking.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Last Ride Road

 Good Morning MMers, we've got a bit of a road story for you this time around. It deals with a certain section of Route 220, just north of Waldoboro that's come to be known as Last Ride Road. Since 1953 there have been seventeen fatal car crashes on this stretch of road. Nearly all of those crashes have been single vehicle, and the vast majority have involved only one occupant.

Route 220 just outside Waldoboro

The legend begins in the summer of 1953 when eighteen year old Brenda Thompson was returning from a date with her boyfriend. They had gone to the local bowling alley and returning late around 11:00 PM. Brenda and her beau got into a quarrel and despite the fog that had drifted in sometime while they had been enjoying the evening, Brenda demanded that her boyfriend pull over. She got out of the car and started walking in the direction of home. Her boyfriend, Tom Allen drove beside her for a few minutes, trying to convince her to get back into the car, but when she wouldn't, he drove off. Eventually Tom decided it was best to go back and get Brenda instead of letting her walk all the way home, so he turned around and started back to where he had left her. 

His concern for his girlfriend, coupled with the thick fog made driving difficult. By the time he saw Brenda walking up the middle of the road, it was too late. He slammed on the brakes, but struck and killed Brenda Thompson.

Is the ghost of Brenda Thompson still searching
for a ride all these years later?

Since then many have claimed to see the ghost of Brenda Thompson walking that stretch of road, wearing the same pink skirt she wore on her final date. Many will tell the story of driving that part of Rt. 220 late at night and seeing the shadowy figure of a teenaged girl standing in the middle of the road, beckoning for a ride. 

One Colton Campbell claimed to see the ghost of Brenda Thompson in the fall of 1999. He was driving home from a Halloween party with two of his friends when they came upon Brenda standing in the middle of the road.

"I thought she was in a costume," Campbell told us. "You know, like one of those poodle skirts from like Grease or something. She looked like she needed a ride, so we pulled over. She climbed into the back seat with Mark."

Right away, Campbell said he noticed something was off with the girl. She didn't speak much, only muttering, "Where's Tom?" over and over again. Campbell said it grew cold in the car, so he turned the heat up. 

"No matter how hot I cranked it, the car never got warm. It was cold, like a winter night," he said.

The radio began to squawk with static, no matter what station Campbell put it on. His skin began to crawl and he noticed his friends were starting to get pretty nervous too. 

"It felt like someone was looking into my head," Campbell told us more than twenty years later. "I know it doesn't really make any sense, but it felt like someone had unscrewed the top of my head and was poking around in there."

Finally, it grew too much for Campbell and his friends. They pulled the car over and ran out, leaving the motor running. They ran five miles to the closest house, woke up the owners by knocking loudly, and used their phone to call their parents.

"I've never been more scared in my entire life," Campbell said. "Never."

Campbell's car was recovered exactly where he had left it. There was no trace of Brenda Thompson or any other girl wearing a pink poodle skirt. 

Is this the ghost of Brenda Thompson?

Others have not been as lucky. The sightings of Brenda Thompson looking for her lost love have lasted for over fifty years. There have been many late night crashes along the stretch of road where Brenda died. There have been few survivors. Each one of them recalls seeing a teenager in a pink skirt moments before their crash.

Colton Campbell and the few who have taken the Last Ride Road and survived warn against stopping. They say its best to avoid picking up strangers late at night, or better yet, take an alternate route.

"Just stay away," Campbell said. "I wish I had."

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Missing in Acadia

A lot of the stories we write about on Malevolent Maine are pretty dark, but this one is spooky for a lot of different reasons. So be warned, MMers, this one may disturb you.

Maine is a beautiful state with many scenic places to go visit. There are thirty-two state parks in Maine. There's only one National Park however: Acadia National Park. Our story starts there, but as we soon found out, it didn't end there. 

Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island

On June 12th, 2003, seven year old Nicholas Adams disappeared from his campsite. Nicholas was camping with his parents, Jim and Robin, and his aunt and uncle, Cathy and Sam Ferguson, and their two children, Billy, 6, and Amanda, 9. They were staying at the Blackwoods campground in Acadia National Park, hiking, swimming, and enjoying nature. 

Nicholas Adam, 2003

The kids were playing together while the parents relaxed around a small campfire. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon and they had recently come back from a hike. The kids were playing hide and seek with one another. Nicholas was the "seeker" and both of his cousins could hear him coming through the woods just behind the campsite.

Little Nicholas never found his cousins, and soon afterward, they both gave up and trudged back to the campsite, complaining about their cousin. Soon after the adults began to worry. They quickly searched the area around the campsite, shouting for Nicholas. They called 911 and Search and Rescue teams were soon dispatched. Over one hundred people searched for three days with no sign of Nicholas. Bloodhounds got two different scent trails but both of them led nowhere. Nicholas had vanished.

He remained missing until just last week. For eighteen years no trace of Nicholas Adams was ever discovered. There were no scraps of clothing, no bone fragments, nothing to indicate Nicholas had ever even been in the area. That changed last week when on July 19th hikers discovered some remains on Sargent Mountain, about six miles away from Blackwoods campground. The hikers found the remains in a rocky area, a stretch of the mountain that is quite steep and a moderately difficult climb.

They found one of Nicholas's sneakers partially hidden by a rock, the torn remains of his pants, and a single human tooth. Forensic scientists are still working to determine whether the tooth belongs to Nicholas Adams, but there is no denying the clothing is his: his initials had been written on both the tag of his pants and his sneaker. There were no traces of blood or DNA on the clothing. There is also very little wear and tear on the clothes. They do not look like they have been sitting on the side of a mountain for the past eighteen years.

The investigation remains ongoing and we'll update you as we learn more.

In our research for this blog post, we uncovered some interesting statistics. Every year in Maine about one hundred people go missing. California, on the other hand, leads the nation with over 2,000. The Adams disappearance isn't the first case of a missing person in Acadia National Park. There have been two other missing persons cases from Maine's only National Park and both of, though separated by over fifty years with Nicholas Adams' disappearance are strangely similar.

On August 20, 1983, three year old Bret Walker disappeared while hiking Cadillac Mountain with his parents. They were taking an easy trail, not taking the hike too seriously, just going as far as they thought they could with little Bret. At one point, both parents took their eyes off their son, just for a minute or two. They soon realized Brett was gone. Again, a search was conducted, no trace of Brett Walker was found. His parents were considered prime suspects but were later cleared by police. Bloodhounds were called in and led rescuers to a certain section of Cadillac Mountain, but then would go no further. According to reports, both hounds laid down on the ground and whimpered. They had to be dragged off the mountain. No trace of Bret Walker was ever found.

Anthony Stearns, right, 1956

Again, in July of 1956, five year old Anthony Stearns went missing while fishing with his grandfather near Bubble Pond. As with the other cases, Anthony simple disappeared. A fisherman several yards from where Anthony and his grandfather, Michael Stearns were fishing, told police that he saw the boy right around the time he disappeared. He didn't have any fishing gear and he asked the man if there were any bears in these woods before walking off in the opposite direction from where he had come from. That man was the last known person to see Anthony alive. An extensive search and rescue operation was undertaken, with over fifty volunteers combing the area where the boy was last seen. Nine months later, Anthony's body was discovered two miles from the shore where he had been fishing, in an area that would have proven difficult for a five year old to climb to, but one that had been searched multiple times by the rescuers. There was no apparent cause of death - Anthony had sustained no injuries of any kind. The National Parks Service deemed his death an attack by a mountain lion, though there was never any strong evidence of this.

Allan Dwight (middle) in 1995 with cousins after his rescue

There was one other case we found while doing our research and this is the one that began to turn us onto this really being a Malevolent Maine story our readers would want to know about. This one is pretty similar to the other three. In 1994, Allan Dwight went missing while hiking with his parents on Pemetic Mountain. Fairly similar to Bret Walker, in '83, his parents' attention drifted away for a moment or two and they realized that Allan was no longer behind them. They began a frantic search involving the park service and local authorities. Thirty hours later he was discovered, alive, tired and hungry, a mile and a half from where he had first gone missing in difficult terrain that would have proved all but impossible to a child. Again, this was a place rescuers had scoured earlier.

When asked what happened, Allan Dwight told police that he had seen someone who looked like his grandfather who had told the boy to follow him. They hiked off the path for what felt likes miles tot he boy until they came to a cave or a room of some kind, Allan wasn't quite sure. The boy claimed there were machines all over the floor that looked to him like, "broken spaceships or robots" and he saw weapons on the walls, though when pressed for more information about these weapons or what they were, he could provide no other information. 

He claimed that inside the cave or room the person he thought was his grandfather turned to him, and now his eyes began to glow, "like there was a lightbulb inside his head." The boy realized the person wasn't his grandfather and started to get scared. He claims the man told him not to worry, that he had been chosen, and that "though he had grown in his mother's womb, he was not destined for this world." Those are exact words that five year old Allen Dwight told investigators, not the typical fare for five year old boys in the 90s. 

Furthermore, Allan told police that the man had placed his hands on Allan's shoulders and squeezed really hard. That was the last thing Allan remembered and when he woke up he was alone in the woods just before he was discovered by the rescuers. Allan did have scratches of some kind on his shoulders, but investigators believe it was from a tree or a branch or perhaps something that Allan climbed beneath.

Police determined that Allan's grandfather, who was along on the trip but had remained back in the campsite, could be ruled out as a potential suspect. The grandfather had been in the camp the entire time, talking with someone in the neighboring campsite. Though he did tell investigators that the night before Allan went missing he had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He said he felt a man's hand clamp down on his neck and whisper something in his ear, though he couldn't understand the words. Then he was gone. The grandfather assumed it was just someone who had too much to drink, but he did have a bruise on the back of his neck.

So what is stalking young children in Acadia National Park? Could it be a coincidence? Over active imagination and wild animals? Could it be purely human predators? Perhaps, but here's where things get even darker.

It turns out that hundreds of people, most of them young children, go inexplicably missing from National Parks each year. In fact, there are over 10,000 unsolved missing persons cases just from National Parks all over the country, places that many consider to be safe, family-friendly places, maintained by the U.S. government. Many of the stories are similar to the ones we uncovered from Acadia. Some eerily so. Researcher David Paulides, in his book series, Missing 411 (of which at least documentaries have also been made), details many of these cases. In fact, the disappearance of Bret Walker is documented in his book, Missing 411: Eastern United States. These books are a little hard to come by, but any intrepid researchers can find them on Amazon, though be prepared to pay a hefty price.

In many of these cases, including the ones here in Maine, the police seem cagey, almost flippant about their investigations. They seem to latch on to the simplest theory and run with it, despite lack of evidence to corroborate said theories. Often times in these cases the FBI or the military is called in to help with an investigation. These are duties regularly scheduled for National Guardsmen, but in plenty of these cases armed active Green Berets have been called in. What might these authorities know that they're not saying?

As Paulides alludes to in his books, it appears that something paranormal may be preying upon children in our National Parks. Could it be that something has been here, maybe has always been here and that it or they roam our National Parks, occasionally taking children for some nefarious purpose? Perhaps - and this is pure speculation on our parts, here - perhaps that is why the National Parks were first established, as a way to contain and track whatever it is that is taking the children.

What is taking children at our National Parks?

Sobering thoughts, MMers. To date, the National Parks Service does not maintain a list of missing persons, something repeatedly called for by the families of the missing. Perhaps if the data were readily available, people might reconsider their next family vacation.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Reed Music

Eyes open, MMers!

It's that time of year, and we thought we'd pass on a curious story we had sent to us here, at Malevolent Maine. This one involves those swampy, marshy places that seem to pop up all over the place for the few months of mud season, sorry, Spring, but are gone by summer. Here's, Terry from Newfield:

"Those little swampy spots have always freaked me out, ever since I was a kid. My old man told me there were water moccasins in the water and quicksand. He told me about a kid he knew when he was a boy who got stuck in a quicksand pit and died. But that's not what freaks me out. That's just common sense. No, it's the reeds that gives me the willies."

That's right: the reeds. Terry recounts how as a boy he was out playing near one of those swampy patches that formed along the river behind his grandparents' house. He was staying well back from the actual water, remembering the lessons his dad taught him, when he sense something watching him. He looked to the reeds, thinking that would be a great place for someone, or something, to hide, but he couldn't see anything.

That's when he heard it. High-pitched, thin flute-like sounds floated faintly towards him. His first thought was that it was the sounds of the reeds blowing in the wind. But there was no wind; it was a totally calm day. Terry went back to whatever he was doing. Soon he heard it again, coming from another cluster of reeds. Again, he felt like he was being watched.

"It was like being stalked."

"It was like a song," Terry told us. "But not. It was like a madman's idea of what a song should be. It was like one of those backwards played song."

The song kept fading and coming back, always from a different cluster of reeds. It lasted for maybe twenty minutes, and the entire time Terry continued to feel like he was being watched. Finally, he ran back to the house.

He thought nothing of it until ten years later when he was out fishing along a marshy stretch of river. "I heard it again. Same weirdo music, same feeling of being watched." Terry heard it a third time when he was out hunting when he was forty-five. He never saw anything, but the overwhelming sense of danger always made him leave the area quickly. 

"It was like being stalked," Terry said. "Like one of those lion shows on tv. Except I wasn't the lion, I was the deer or whatever. And that music... I've never heard anything like it. It's... it's hard to even explain, but it didn't sound like it came from this world. Like it was something from another world or whatever."

And here's the part that really freaked us out, MMers. 

"It doesn't make any sense, but that weird flute music... it sounded like a growl."

What was hiding in the reeds?

Stay safe out there Maine!

Beware the Portly Man

As we near the summer months and the tourists begin to arrive, I feel the need to remind you all of the strange encounters many people have had over the years with the Portly Man. Each summer at least one or two people, native Mainers and tourists alike, report long unwilling roadtrips with a rather rotund, older gentleman. Whatever this being is, they don't seem to be malevolent, everyone even though they don't agree to go on the trip reports having a grand ol' time. However they are gone for days or even weeks at a time and at the complete mercy of the Portly Man. They say he takes them to wine tastings, art exhibits, small arthouse plays, and antique shops. Once he has had his fill of their company the Portly man often drops them off somewhere in the Old Port, and they soon regain their faculties and find their way home. Most people are uninjured and genuinely feel a strong connection to the old man, but they never see him again.

So if you are are spending your summer vacation in Maine this year please be aware of the strange danger/opportunity the Portly Man represents. He will not harm you but you will be away from friends, and family for an undetermined amount of time, while he takes you on his little adventure. If you would like to avoid the Portly Man, these are the types of locations he typically appears at:

1. Amateur Plays (Schools, Small Productions)
2. Yard Sales
3. Breweries and Wine Tastings
4. Portland Museum of Art (and other similar locations)
5. Antique Stores and Pawn Shops

An artists rendition of the Portly Man

The vehicle the Portly Man drives

Stay safe out there, Maine, avoid the Portly Man, unless you feel like having the trip of a lifetime!

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!

In the Potato Fields

This story comes to us from a new MMer named Andrea who lives up in Aroostook County. She lives in a small town nestled in a bend of the St. John River. Her family has always been potato farmers, and they plant fields upon fields of them every year. However she was always warned by her grandmother never to go out into the fields during the nights leading up to harvest. Andrea told us that she listened to her grandmother for most of her life and avoided the fields, until her teenage years when she and her friends stayed out just a little too late one night.

As they covered what was left of their bonfire for the night, Andrea parted ways with her friends and began to walk home through the potato rows. The moon was just bright enough for her to avoid tripping if she walked slowly. On her way home she was met with a whistling shriek, she stopped in her tracks as small shadows skittered in and around her legs. She panicked and began to run, more shrieks errupted as she ran. She stumbled and landed face first in a large mound of potatoes that had been freshly dug up. As she scrambled to pick herself up her hand found what felt like a potato but it had a strange leathery outer shell, and was warm to the touch. Upon picking up the object there was a symphony of shrieks and strange chittering sounds. She clutched the odd potato like object to her chest and ran back towards her house.

As she neared her house she turned back and saw several small creatures with large eyes following her. She quickly entered the house and closed the door. The next morning the only evidence of the creatures was the scratches on her front door no higher than her knee and the now cold object she had picked up. It wasn't a potato, nor was it a rock, she has no idea what it is but suspects its an egg of some sort. This was nearly twenty five years ago, but she still keeps the object as a reminder of her strange encounter in the potato fields.

Andrea sent us these photos of the object

If you are ever in norhthern Maine during the potato harvest, make sure you stay out of the fields at night, you never know if these little creatures will be around! Stay safe out there, Maine!

The Witch of Woodland Valley

Good afternoon, MMers! With summer rapidly approaching and the weather improving, we wanted to take some time to warn you about potential harm found in a seemingly safe hobby. As you may know, there is a disc golf course in Limerick called Woodland Valley Disc Golf. You may have even played a round there yourself at some point in time. However, what you didn't know is that there is an evil spirit that haunts the grounds. If you've ever played there, you may have experienced a chill crawling up your spine around the sixth hole on the Grizzly Bear course. The hollowed out tree that marks the hole? Well, that's not there by accident. 

Back in the early 1690s, long before Maine was granted statehood, a woman named Isabelle Houser was arrested, and later convicted, for practicing witchcraft. It was said that she used her powers to lure young boys and girls out into the woods, pierce their ankles with rusty nails, hang them from a tree, and slowly drain the blood and life force out of them until they expired. Many believed that this was Isabelle's way of staying young, as she was 102 years old according to local records, but she didn't appear to be a day over 70. Once she was convicted and found guilty of witchcraft, murder, and other unmentionables, it was decided that she herself should hang from the same tree she had drained so many children from. So, the noose was readied, and Houser was hanged until death. The locals decided to not bother taking her body down afterwards, as she "deserved to rot" for what she had done. Six days after Houser's hanging, the middle of the tree seemingly imploded on itself, leaving only the hollowed out trunk that exists now. Interestingly enough, the tree hasn't changed shape since those days. Some say that it has an impenetrable hex that can never be removed. 

After her death, there were numerous reports of strange activity in those woods. Some reported hearing cackling in the distance, others heard the cries of desperate children. If you got close enough, you might even be able to smell, even see, the fresh blood of innocent children dripping down the tree's bark. 

Britney Bernard in the Hollowed Tree

In recent years since the disc golf course's opening on those "hollowed" grounds, a trend has started in which players pose in the hollowed tree for a photo opportunity. In 2017 a local, Britney Bernard posted a picture to her Instagram of her posing in the infamous tree. Britney was found dead six days later, cause unknown. We tell you this today, MMers, to warn you while you are out in those woods. If you hear a strange noise, smell the scent of freshly spilled blood, or even feel something brush against your shoulder, you should pick up your disc and leave the grounds before it is too late. Stay safe out there, Maine! 

Black Dog of the Woods

Attention Malevolent Mainers, this one is serious. A report has come in from a MMer who goes by Greg, that he just narrowly escaped a malevolent entity. This man was driving on I-95 near a long stretch of thick woods when he noticed a large black dog getting dangerously close to the road. He pulled over and approached the animal which seemed friendly. The dog barked and moved towards the woods, often looking back at the man, as if to get him to follow. The man worried that the dog's owner might be in some danger followed the dog into the woods. The dog led the man deeper and deeper in, constantly looking back at him, his tongue lolling out of his head.

When Greg became worried that they hadn't found the owner after ten minutes he began to turn around and head back towards the road. As the dog noticed him turning to leave it began growling, Greg immediately back toward the highway and the dog chased him. Greg just barely made it back to his truck as the dog began tearing at his pant leg. He escaped narrowly with only slight injuries. As he looked in his rearview mirror he saw the dog's demeanor change once again from vicious to friendly as it went back to the side of the highway to wait once more.

If you see a black dog on the side of the road and you have the urge to help it or look for its owner, please use extreme caution. Before you get too far from your car, turn around and see if the dog reacts, if it does leave immediately, if it doesn't feel free to continue following the dog.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Photo of a similar dog sighting from the late 1970's

My Great Aunt Married a Ghost

We've got a real weird one for you, MMers, so hold on. Shelly Macintosh, a college student out of Westbrook, tells the story of her great aunt, who she claims married an actual ghost!

The woman in question, Mary Kaminski, was a spinster well into her fifties, according to her great-niece Shelly. "She was always a bit of a homebody, if you know what I mean. She liked cats, jigsaw puzzles, that sort of thing. Super nice, though."

As Shelly tells it, Mary met a man who moved into the apartment across the hall from hers. "He was older, maybe seventy, seventy-five. Pretty old school, but still a nice guy. We all thought it was cute he and Mary were dating."

The couple was soon married and moved in together. For a few years things were great. Mary and her husband, a man named Donald Warren, were happy. It was like a breath of fresh air for the couple. "They both seem reinvigorated, full of life," Shelly told us. "It was great!"

But then things started to change. "I noticed that Don always walked about the war and his experiences," Shelly continued. Don would tell stories of practicing with live ammunition and that his friend William Corbell jumped up too soon and was shot in the head. He used terms that were outdated, that didn't seem to be a part of the modern world.

"At first, I thought he was just an old man, you know?" Shelly told us. "Like he came from a different generation. You know it's not right, but sometimes you just have to accept that he's stuck in his ways. You know what I'm saying?"

It wasn't until Don mentioned the Battle of Blackburn's Ford that Shelly began to seriously question. "It didn't sound like a World War II battle or Korea, or Vietnam or whatever. So I did a little research and I found  that Blackburn's Ford was a Civil War battle in Virginia. Well, I thought that was odd, so I did a little more research."

It turns out that the 113th Infantry Unit from Maine, under the leadership of one General James A. Cluthcher took part in that battle. It was a bit of a rout by the Confederate troops, and many of the Maine brigade perished in the battle. 

Including one Private Donald M. Warren.

"My first thought was, okay this is weird. Maybe it was like an ancestor of his," Shelly said. "Then I googled a few more things and I found the story about his friend William Corbell getting shot during a training exercise, and suddenly the pieces started coming together."

The outdated manner of speaking, the hatred for Southern States, his stories of a nebulous war that sounded nothing like modern warfare. Shelly was convinced he was a ghost. The real kicker was when she found a picture of Private Donald Warren and compared it to one of the man who had married her great aunt.

Donald Warren, 2020

Private Donald M. Warren, 1861

"I was scared," Shelly admitted. "So i burned some sage and doing some reading on the internet, I found a... not a spell, I guess, but a ritual? I don't know what the right word is, but it was to cleanse the spirits of the lingering dead. I went over to Mary's house one day when I knew her and Don were out and I said the words I printed off the website. I left the little charms and symbols it told me to draw."

Shelly never saw Don again. According to Mary he disappeared one night while she was asleep. It was as if he had never been there at all. Mary became depressed and after a few months, just a few days shy of her sixty-third birthday, she passed away in her sleep. Shelly suspects it was from a broken heart.

"She really loved that guy, and I guess he really loved her. I know he was a Civil War ghost or whatever, but maybe I shouldn't have intervened. Maybe I should have just let them be happy. Wherever we go when we die, I hope they're together."

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Poverty Pond Poltergeist

This story comes to us from MMer Mike who lives on Poverty Pond in Shapleigh. After a long day of ice fishing Mike retired to his kitchen for a hot cup of cocoa and as he was looking out on the lake he saw a figure moving around carrying what looked to be a manual ice auger. It was strange to Mike because just a few minutes earlier he had been completely alone on the lake, but he quickly got over the unnerving feeling.

As Mike began moving around his kitchen, whipping up a quick ‘suppah’ he paused every now and then to look out his front window. In the moonlight he could see the figure pausing for a few minutes to drill a hole, then it would get down on its hands and knees and it looked like it shoved his whole arm into the whole he just finished. Mike thought this was a bit odd, but maybe the man just had a few eccentric fishing habits. However everytime he paused in making his dinner Mike saw the man further down the lake, making a long string of holes, and every time he would stop and push his arm deep inside. “He must be freezing by now” Mike thought to himself, so he put on the tea kettle to make the man a bit of hot cocoa. By the time Mike had the cocoa ready and flipped his floodlights on so he could avoid the holes the man had drilled, the figure was gone.

Photo sent in by Mike, we have circled all the holes drilled by the figure

Was this just a man who had a strange way of trying to catch fish? Someone trying to fish something out of the pond? A ghost looking fruitlessly for something it had lost? Or something more Sinister. In our humble opinion at Malevolent Maine this sounds like a poltergeist of some sort, no other phantom could interact with the real world like that.

In any case avoid Poverty Pond at night unless you have a nice shack to stay in to avoid interacting with whatever is out there, stay safe out there, Maine!

The Night Jean Massacre

Okay, heads up MMers, today’s story is our darkest, most terrifying report yet. This one comes from Strong, in Franklin County, an old mill town on the banks of the Sandy River, and while none of the individuals involved are still alive, the former sheriff of Strong was willing to share everything he remembers from the case.

Welcome to Strong!

It started when the Happy Sun Folk moved to Strong in the spring of 1967. The Happy Sun Folk, or the HSF as they referred to themselves, were a communal living society. They lived on an old farm their founder, Willem S. Fuller purchased. Their entire philosophy was free living. They worked together to live off the land sharing whatever they had with each other. The HSF believed that anything and everything physical was temporary and transient. It was the spirit or essence that was true. They were ostensibly a collective of artists, philosophers, and free thinkers, but what they really were was a cult.

The Happy Sun Folk

As sheriff Pat Sampson put it, “The Happy Sun Folk worshipped Fuller. He was their father, their husband, their god. If he said jump, the HSF did. If he said fly, they’d do their damndest to do it.”

They were tolerated by the people of Strong, but never really fit in. They mostly kept apart from the townsfolk, and in exchange they were allowed to live their hippie lifestyle up at their farm.

That all changed on the night of October 13, 1968. There were reports of screams coming from the HSF farm, Sunnyville, as the members called it. It wasn’t that uncommon to hear screams though; the HSF was into primal scream therapy and other odd “rituals” that were seen time to time from hunters and hikers who wandered a little too close to the farm by accident. These screams were different. They were more “painful” as the police reports indicated. They “sounded like someone was getting slaughtered,” according to one witness.

The big building

Finally the police had enough of the complaints and drove up to Sunnyville just after 11 pm. What they found was the most gruesome scene Sheriff Sampson had ever seen. We’ll let him describe it. We have to warn you this is quite graphic, so our more sensitive readers may want to skip ahead to the next section.

Sampson: “When we got up there, the farm was all quiet. It was just three of us, me, Bill Dempsey, and Jimmy Coloumbe. Jimmy was a rookie, just his first year on the force, and after what we saw…well, he didn’t make it maybe another month before he up and moved to Florida. Said he got a better job opportunity, but we all knew the truth, after what we saw up at the farm, he just couldn’t do it anymore. As for Bill, well... I guess I’ll get to that in a bit.

"The farm was all quiet and dark, but there was this weird smell in the air. It was like the smell that lingers after a fire. No, that ain’t right. It was like the smell in the air after a lightning strike. Fire and smoke, sure, but it was like the very air itself had been burned. We made our way to the big building. It was an old barn they had converted into their church or meeting hall or whatever. The door was locked, from the outside, which we thought was a little odd, but we’ll get back to that too. We knocked a few times, but no one answered. No one answered anywhere on the farm, but that smell… and something else, seemed to be coming from the big building, so eventually, me and Bill Dempsey kicked down the door. 

"What I saw stays with me to this day. I’m 89 years old and I’ll be the first to admit my memory ain’t what it was, but this is something that’s still just as clear as the day I saw it. The Happy Sun Folk were all in the meeting hall, all of them, we later confirmed that. Every single one of those hippies was locked in their own hall. And there was a bonfire burning in the middle of the room. It had been big, but by the time we got there it had burned down low. It was throwing an eerie red light all around the room. Maybe that made it worse, maybe that made it better, but I tell you, before we even saw the HSFers, I was already scared to the dickens.

"They were all there, like I said, all scattered around the room like they had been tossed there by a strong wind or something. They had been torn apart, and when I say torn apart, let me ask you, have you ever seen a man eat a chicken? Like ripping the wing bones apart, or tearing the leg off the body? It was like that, like someone, something, had just come in there and torn those poor bastards to shreds.

"There was blood everywhere, up and down the walls, the floor was sticky with it. Flies had already started to settle down to their feast. And that smell, it was worse inside the big building. It was that same burnt smell, but mixed with the blood of course. There was something swampy about it, like that rotting smell. I know this isn’t doing it justice, but it’s the best I can do. It smelled wrong; it smelled evil. And there, on the far wall, someone had written in blood two words. They’re seared into my mind and I wish for the life of me I could have made sense out of them. Someone had written, ’Night Jean’ in their own blood.”

Pretty gruesome, right? We warned you. But the story isn’t over. See it turns out that one of the HSFers, a young woman named Sandra Carmichael was still alive, despite some pretty serious injuries. While the officers secured the building, Sandra reached out to Officer Dempsey and clutched his leg. 

She only said a few words before she died right there in Bill Dempsey’s arms.

“There’s something beyond” she said. “We called to it and it came. Eyes like lost stars. Hair - oh God, I think it was hair, let it be hair, black and gray and hanging over its face. It moved. It moved in impossible ways. The Night Jean. We didn’t know. We didn’t know. Forgive us.”

Could this be what the HSF saw?

There were no foreign fingerprints on the bodies, anywhere on the big building, or anywhere on the farm that the police could find. There was no evidence of anyone being at Sunnyville that night aside from the members of HSF. Police found no footprints, tire marks, no weapons and no blood anywhere outside of the big building. In the end, the most brutal and horrific homicide in Maine history had to be labeled an unsolved mystery. The police offered their best guess at the time - that one of the members had gone insane and attacked the others before killing himself - but that couldn’t explain the savagery, the torn limbs and severed heads. In the end there was no explanation that made any sense, so everyone did their best to simply move on.

“Poor Bill,” Sheriff Sampson told us. “That girl dying in his arms, hearing her last words. It got to him. He was never the same after that. Two years later he put his service pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

The case of the Night Jean Massacre was never officially solved and remains a cold case to this day, but Sampson has a theory, one that’s grown in his mind in the five and a half decades since that awful night.

“I think they were doing something up there, something they shouldn’t have. Maybe there are things we’re not supposed to understand, creatures that exist beyond our universe. Maybe that crazy cult opened a portal or whatever and let something in, something that didn’t like our world, that hated its very existence. They called themselves the Happy Sun Folk, but they let in the night, and I think it killed them.”

Stay safe out there, Maine.

The Ghost Pig

 Okay, MMers, this one's a bit of a cheat, but it was too good to pass up. As you know, we're really focused on the paranormal and unexplained here in Maine, so when this story first crossed our inbox we weren't sure we wanted to use it - not because of the content, but because of its location. After much internal discussion, we agreed to make this one exception. So without further ado, we bring you the Ghost Pig of Effingham, New Hampshire.

The Ghost Pig

Effingham is a small town just over the Maine border. Boasting just over 1,400 people, the town was actually incorporated back in 1778. The story, which we heard from John Darling, author of the the book, The Wind Beneath the Eaves: An Oral History of Southern New Hampshire, involves Martin Leavitt, the grandson of the town's founding father in the year 1775. 

Martin Leavitt on his farm, 1775

Martin Leavitt was the third son of Moses M. Leavitt. He was a meager pig farmer living in the shadows of his more successful father and brothers. When the British troops came through Effingham (then known as Leavitt's Town) they demanded quarters from the locals. Many of the citizens reluctantly agreed. The commander of the British troops insisted that Leavitt slaughter his prize pig, Rufus, to feed his men. Leavitt refused, he had raised Rufus from a baby and he knew the pig very well could change his fortune. The commander threatened to burn Leavitt's far to the ground, slaughter his entire stock, and seed the earth with the pig's blood. 

Eventually Leavitt conceded, but before he did, he cursed the British. "Eat this pork and its owner will never leave you," were the words he was reported as saying. Some claim he mixed his own blood with the pig's to make a charm, some say his words were more of a jest than a serious hex, but the story seemingly ended there. 

Until it didn't.

For the next two centuries stories of the ghost pig began circulating out of Effingham. Multiple reports claim to have seen or heard the beast outside the area where Leavitt's pig farm once stood. One report from a hiker claimed that while, "walking in the woods, I suddenly heard a deep, grunting sound. There was the sound of the ground being trampled and bushes snapping. Whatever it was, it sounded huge, like the size of a compact car. I turned around, trying to find where it was coming from. All I saw were tusks the size of my arm and two burning red eyes." The hiker ran for his life and when he finally turned around again, he was alone. 

But the stories don't end there. People have reported trampled trash barrels, ransacked gardens, and smashed open camps. The ghost pig seems like a mutated, giant form of Rufus. He has been known to charge people, causing them to be injured leaping out of the way, before disappearing. At least two victims have claimed to have actually been trampled by Rufus, and a third victim appeared at the hospital with gore wounds from the beast's tusks. The one thing all of the stories have in common is the rage of the creature. 

Local citizens have embraced the story oft he Ghost Pig. There's Ghost Pig Brewery over on Route 25. There's Rasta Rufus Dispensary, even a statue dedicated to Martin Leavitt and the Ghost Pig int he center of town. 

Ghost Pig Brewing Co, Effingham, NH

"He's a hero to us," said Wayne DeWinter, the owner and head brewer at Ghost Pig Brewery. "We all heard the stories of Rufus growing up. A lot of us have seen or heard him. When I was thirteen, walking through the woods behind my parent's house with Bobby Taylor and Mike Smith, we heard him. He doesn't squeal like a pig on tv, He grunts and snorts, real scary stuff. We just ran, man, but we knew it was him. We knew."

If you're ever in Effingham, stop in for one of DeWinter's IPAs (that's India Pig Ale) or a Ghost Pig Porter, just make sure if you hear anything in the woods, you run away. You don't want to come face to face with the Ghost Pig of Effingham.

Stay safe out there, Maine (and New Hampshire)! 

School's Out

Listen up, Believers! Some readers in the Southern Maine region have informed me of something we need to pass on to you. Supposedly there's an abandoned school hidden in the woods somewhere between Sanford and the New Hampshire border. The story goes that there's a ghost that haunts the old school. It's supposedly the spirit of the old PRINCIPAL. No one really knows who this guy is and no real records of him can be found, but he's had a HAND in several reported hauntings in the area.

Two of our loyal viewers confirmed this is real. They even sent along some pictures of the old school. It's quite a hike into the woods, but if you're up for an adventure, you can find it. They reported that the air inside the old principal's office felt cold, and they heard an eerie laugh float through the abandoned halls.  

Be aware, as is always the case at Malevolent Maine we are not responsible for any bodily or spiritual harm that may come from your visiting any of the haunted sites we report on. You're entering at your own risk and any possessions, hauntings, or emotional damage done is on your own head. Please, stay safe out there, Maine.

Abandoned school in Southern Maine

MMer, Dan (Last name redacted) claims he felt a presence in this classroom.

"This is where we heard that creepy laugh," says MMer, Susan Crennel.

Unanswered Questions - December 2020

 

Welcome back to some more unanswered questions, MMers!

• Who is at the bottom of the old well on the abandoned farm in Chesterville? More importantly, why have they kept screaming "Tenon?" for the past twenty years?

If you hear, "Tenon!" coming from the bottom of a well... run!

• Why will Cobbie, the sea monster living in Cobbosseecontee Lake, only show itself at dusk?

• When is it okay to call the feds about aliens invaders? After the first visit? The second? The third? The Herrins out of Patten are on visit #4!

Fifth time's the charm?

• What lived under the bed in Caleb Clover's room? And why did it move to Lucas Cruz's? Has anyone seen Caleb lately?

• Where exactly is that fountain of youth in the Bethel area? Asking for a friend.

• How do you drive a vampire off your property after you accidentally let him in? Lots of garlic, crosses, holy water, and a blessing or two from the local priest doesn't hurt, according to Norman Reed of Brighton.

No visitors or vampires!

Stay safe out there, Maine!