Deep Dive: The Grey Fool

We here at Malevolent Maine try our best to limit the scope of our investigations to the border of our great state, but sometimes we aren’t always able to do that. We have become obsessed with this figure of the Grey Fool that has been appearing in the dreams of people around the state. And while it is affecting people in the state, the history of this figure has roots outside the state, even outside the country. We promise not to delve into this kind of content too often, but we wanted to take this opportunity to share our research with you in a new feature called a… Deep Dive!

Let’s start with a baseline on what a jester or fool really was back in the day. Contrary to popular culture’s portrayal of the role of the jester, it was actually a fairly prestigious position often occupied by nobles. They often took on the role of advisors to the monarch they served in addition to being entertaining at parties. They were one of the few people in the court who were allowed to speak freely and frankly to the king and as such they were treated respectfully. Even when kings dismissed fools they were never overtly punished, some were ex-communicated but it is rare to find evidence of a king physically punishing a jester, or executing them. 

King Louis the IX

This is where the Grey Fool comes in, we here at Malevolent Maine suspect that the Grey Fool is actually an apparition or residual psychic image of a man named Sanson de Craon. Sanson was the third son of an aristocratic French family and came to notability during the seventh crusade when he followed Louis the IX into battle. After they all returned from the crusade, Sanson was tapped to be Louis' court jester. For a few years Sanson fulfilled the role dutifully, always providing sage advice to the king, and entertaining the king’s guests with songs and long bawdy tales. However one winter in the court records we see Sanson begin complaining of strange dreams. Dreams of him walking through a desert. 

Sanson became erratic and irritable, often talking nonsense as opposed to the sharp wit he had exhibited before. His last conversation before he was removed from his role with King Louis is strange to say the least. He rambles about the end of days, the need for humanity to submit to something. He urges King Louis to kneel before the King Beyond the Desert, and this is when as expected King Louis releases Sanson from his service. Oddly enough that wasn’t the end of Sanson’s days as a jester, he relocated to Scotland and was quickly taken into the court of the King there, who appreciated his manic and crazy behavior. His term there lasted an even shorter amount of time before he was kicked out, a few months if that. Sanson then found himself in a role as a Jester in Poland. This appointment lasted only a few days.

What lies beyond the Dream Desert?

The Duke of Greater Poland was Boleslaw the Pious, and Sanson like in his previous two positions suggested he should kneel before this King Beyond the Desert figure. Bolesław took this very poorly and turned Sanson out into the street and urged the crowd gathered there to turn him into a proper fool, the crowd tore off his clothes and forced him to wear quickly patched together grey clothes. Then things turned even more violent as they dunked him repeatedly in water until he was gasping for air. They then threw him wet through foundry ashes and dragged him through the street. It all culminated in him being hanged in the town square. Sanson’s luck had finally run out. 

What drove this former soldier and nobleman to throw away his position and his life, what about this dream drove him insane? Who is the King Beyond the Desert, can he be reached in the dreams? Is everyone who has these dreams doomed to the same fate as Sanson de Craon? 

These dreams seem to pose a huge threat to those who experience them, please reach out to us if you or anyone you know has experienced them or seen the Grey Fool in their Dreams. 

Stay safe out there Maine!

The Grey Fool

There have been a lot of uneasy nights for our readers lately. Olivia from Bangor has reported to us here at Malevolent Maine that she is dealing with dreams that involve a terrifying figure. She hasn’t slept well in weeks and it is beginning to affect her life. “I’m an accountant” Olivia told us, “And as I was processing a client’s taxes just last week I dozed off. I’m just so tired all the time, and every time I fall asleep I’m afraid I’ll see him.” 

Olivia told us about this figure she sees in her dreams, and we have to say, we can’t blame her for not wanting to fall asleep. “You know those old timey jesters that kings used to have, the outfits they wore? The patches of different colors? He wears clothing like that but instead of it being colorful it is all in black, white, and grey.  He doesn’t have the weird hat, but he does have the shoes with the little bells at the end.” 

A jester in Motley

You’d expect someone dressed like a jester to be happy and bounce around right? But the way Olivia describes this figure is ominous at best, and terrifying at worst. “His skin is ashen grey, not a normal color at all, and his neck is bent at this weird angle. He just stares at me, occasionally he will walk towards me or point. That might not sound bad but it always makes me so uncomfortable. It feels unnatural to be near him.” 

We hear at Malevolent Maine like to take reports about strange dreams, sleep paralysis, night terrors and the like with a grain of salt. And Olivia’s report of this Grey Fool was disturbing, but it wasn’t much to go on, just a standard nightmare. That was until we got another report similar to her’s. 

You might remember Javier from when we talked about shared dreams last time, he was constantly waking up in a desert full of bleached bone trees. He was frustrated because he felt like he was looking for something in his dreams and never could quite reach it. Well Javier thinks he finally found what he was looking for. 

“What was over the horizon was this weird upside down pyramid. It was the color of jet or maybe obsidian. And well I call it a pyramid because that is what it mostly looked like, but every
time I leaned one way or the other and looked at it that way it seemed to have sides that folded or unfolded, like the shape was something I couldn’t fully understand.”

A black upside down pyramid?

It doesn’t end there though, eventually Javier made his way inside that oddly shaped building. “The hallways were black too, and smooth as glass...it was like a labyrinth in there, hallways that twisted and turned, dead ends. I felt like Jack Torrence at the end of The Shining.” Then Javier went on to describe a figure that he met inside the structure. “He wore motley like a  medieval jester, but it was colorless, just like his face which was this grey color. It looked like his neck was broken the way he held it.” 

Unlike Olivia, Javier has only experienced the Grey Fool that one time, “I never found him again, and have only dreamed of the inside of the black pyramid a few times since.” 

Has this being been making people dream about him and the realm he lives in? Is he in control or just trying to warn these people of something worse? Either way we will continue to investigate these dreams and the effects they have on people. Stay safe out there Maine!