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.

Cranberry Bog Boys

 

Heads up, MMers! Rumors have it, there's a cranberry bog over in Turner with quite a malevolent history. Now, we couldn't quite find an exact street address for these bogs, but it shouldn't be too hard to find them if you're willing to risk a look. We're not sure we recommend that, and maybe after reading this you won't either.

First, cranberries grow in wetlands called marshes or bogs. A bog is layered gravel, peat, and sand that gathers and collects water. Cranberries grow a lot like strawberries except in a bog instead of soil. These aren't typically deep, maybe three feet. You've probably seen the juice commercials with the guys standing up to their hips in the bog. From a distance it can look like a field of red berries, and you might not even realize until it's too late that it's actually water.

Anatomy of a cranberry bog

Leo Guerin, a longtime resident of Turner actually contacted us about this story. Guerin is 77, a retired machine fabricator who worked forty-two years at Pratt & Whitney. An amateur gardener and somewhat of a local historian, Guerin heard about the cranberry bog boys when he was a teenager. We met him for a few beers at the local Elks Lodge in Auburn, where he shared with us the story.

Leo Guerin, local historian

"When I was eighteen I joined the Elks," he told us. "This was 1962. You could drink at eighteen back then.When I joined there were a lot of veterans, the guys who had fought in World War II, who came in here for drinks after work or on a Sunday afternoon after church. I was too young for the Big One and because I broke my hip in a skiing accident I wasn't eligible for Vietnam, but I loved hearing those stories. They're the ones that got me into history. Local history, see? Because no one ever knew those stories. Some of those guys, those vets, are the ones I heard about the Bog Boys from. Thats' what they called them. Bog Boys."

The creature they called a Bog Boy is a humanoid being, but it appears to be covered in layers of mud and ooze, as if it has just emerged from a muddy swamp or puddle. Bits of sticks and plants cling to them. Their faces are partially concealed by the ooze, but they appear to have eyes of some sort and their mouths continually yawn open as if searching for something. They are slow moving, but relentless. Guerin claims they are easy to outrun if you know where you're going, but its easy get turned around out in the woods around the cranberry bogs.

The cover of Goosebumps #15: You Can't Scare Me. Makes you wonder if
R. L. Stone or artist,Tim Jacobus had heard the legends of the Cranberry Bog Boys.

"The old GIs told me that the first Bog Boy started showing up around 1947 or 48. Around that time a kid went missing. As near as I could determine it was either Tyler or Thomas Martin. I've seen conflicting reports. Anyways, they searched the whole town but there wasn't much they could do. Martin was eighteen, so a lot of people figured he up and moved."

But that's not what the GIs believed and it's not what Leo Guerin believes either. Guerin believes that Martin fell into the wild cranberry bog. Maybe he had been out drinking, maybe he just got turned around and lost, but Guerin believes he somehow fell into the bog and drowned. 

"Think about it, if you were disoriented and fell, the layers of peat and muck that would get kicked up, plus the tangle of cranberry plants, it would be enough to snarl you all up. Maybe hold you under just long enough to drown."

Why the police never found Tyler/Thomas Martin's body in the bog is a mystery, but by 1948 enough people had begun to see this so-called Bog Boy, that there was a brief investigation. The police turned up nothing of course, but some of the locals began to suspect something nefarious had happened. There started to be whispers that the ghost of the Martin boy had returned, mingled with all the muck of the bog. The stories went that he had gotten lost in the bog and was trying to find his way back home, not realizing he'd been dead for over a year. Not much came of the whispers and over time, sightings of the Bog Boy stopped and the story, like many local rumors, dried up.

By 1962, when Leo Guerin was old enough to drink at the Elks Lodge with the WWII veterans, rumblings of the story of the Bog Boy had begun again. That's because that year Ellis Saucier, the seventeen year old son of the local barber, had gone missing. Guerin says he knew Saucier who had been a few years younger than him in school.

Ellis Saucier, left, in 1962, the year of his disappearance

"He wasn't what you'd call an angel or a teacher's pet. I think the polite term is ne'er-do-well. Always getting into some kind of trouble, always looking for trouble, you know?"

The area was searched, including the bogs, but Saucier was never found. There was a rumor he had run off to Boston to join a gang, but there wasn't much evidence of that. In 1962, Bog Boy sightings had started up again, only now the stories claimed there were two of them.

"Every fifteen years, like clockwork," Guerin told us. There were several empty beer glasses on the table between us. "Every fifteen years another kid goes missing from town. The last one was back in 07. You might remember that one? Zachary Clarke? There was all that news coverage? And you know what? Right around that time the stories of the Bog Boys kicked back up again. There were four of them by then. Tyler Martin in '47, Ellis Saucier in '62, then Michael Coulombe in 1977, and Joshua Landry in '92. All of them young, between sixteen and nineteen. All of them missing, no trace ever found."

In 2007 Leo Gurein was 63, preparing for retirement. A lot of the veterans who had told him the story of the Bog Boy back in 1962 and passed away or were living their last few years in assisted living centers, but Guerin said there were still whispers of the Bog Boys. 

"I don't know how the story passed down from each generation. Parents telling their kids, I guess. Warning them about staying out of the woods at night, like a boogeyman, I suppose. But in '07, when the Clarke boy went missing, everyone started talking about Bog Boys again, and sure enough, the sightings increased. This time there was five of them."

The stories claim that if you encounter the Bog Boys to run as fast as you can. They're not terribly fast, but their open arms and yawning mouths are easy to get tangled in, especially now that there's a pack. The stories claim that if they catch you, they'll drag you back to the bog and pull you underneath the waters to lie with them until they rise again.

No one knows what exactly these Bog Boys are. The only pictures are blurry and can be written off as tricks of the light, strange angles, and active imagination. In recent years, and as technology has gotten more advanced, there is still no evidence of any bodies buried in the cranberry bogs. Still, the stories persist. Whether they are an elaborate prank or the actual ghosts of the missing boys, no one is sure. But Guerin is. 

"Oh, it's them, all right. The missing boys. The dead boys. They're angry they died or they don't want to be alone, or whatever, but it's them all right. I've got no doubts about that," he said, draining the last of his beer. We offered to pay for the drinks, but he waved us off. "I'm just happy to have someone to talk to. When my grandson told me about your website thing, I knew I had to reach out to you fellas. There aren't too many of us left that remember how this all started."

We left Leo Guerin soon after. He waved to us from the doorway of the Elks Lodge. As we pulled out of the parking lot, he went back inside and sat back down at the table where he had told us his story. We could see him order another beer.

A cranberry bog

We did some research into this story before writing this. Guerin's timelines does seem to check out. Tyler/Thomas Martin, Ellis Saucier, Michael Coulombe, Joshua Landry, and Zachary Clarke all went missing from the Turner area. No bodies were ever found, and no evidence of them turning up anywhere else has ever been presented. The youngest, Joshua Landry, was sixteen. Michael Coulombe was the oldest, just nineteen years old. To date their cases are unsolved, though every lead has since gone cold.

This does not take into consideration the many other missing peoples that have happened over the years. In the Turner area, just outside Auburn, there have been 46 missing persons since 1947. Their ages range from 6 to 81. Many of them are assumed to have moved for various reasons. The most infamous, was the Britney Redlon case from 1997. Britney was eight when she went missing under suspicious circumstances. Her father, Bradley Redlon was the prime suspect in her disappearance, though he refused to say anything. Many people believed Redlon killed and disposed of his daughter, though no case has ever been brought against him.

Still, the similarities in Guerin's stories are perhaps too much to discount. All five of the missing boy are around the same age. All of them were described as less than popular or well-liked. They were all, for lack of a better term, misfits with penchants for the kind of irritating trouble teenage boys find themselves in. Interestingly enough, they all came from broken homes.

We spoke with several people who have claimed to have encountered the Bog Boys at various times. Their stories are all different, different times of day, different years, different numbers of Bog Boys. The stories are consistent about several things - the appearance of the Bog Boys as moaning, mud-covered creatures with open arms and reaching arms, and the locations of all of these encounters. Everyone one of them has been around the cranberry bogs.

One last note, if the Bog Boys return every fifteen years to seek a new victim, 2022 would be fifteen years from Zachary Clarke's disappearance in 2007. If Leo Guerin is correct, that would mean that sightings of the Bog Boys should begin happening soon, and that any young man between sixteen and nineteen years old from Turner, should stay as far away from the cranberry bogs as possible.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

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!

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!

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.

The Androscroggin River People

Heads up if you're thinking of traveling to the Androscroggin River this summer, MMers. This is an old story, one you probably know if you've been around the bend a time or two here in Maine, but it's a good one, and one worth repeating for the newer generation. We're talking, of course, about the Androscroggin River People.

This story, believe it or not, dates back all the way to 1754, during the French and Indian Wars. British Corporal Eustis H. Gardner was leading a group of soldiers up the river to engage with French troops when he says they encountered a strange creature swimming alongside their boat. This is an excerpt from Corporal Gardner's journal:

T wast the regular size and rough shapeth of a sir though t wast cov'r'd in blue-green scales.  Its hands and feet w're massive, did shape liketh an oar, tipp'd with raz'r sharp claws.  Its eyes, though beneath the wat'r burn'd crimson.  T did swim 'longside our boat f'r five full minutes bef're t did swim off.  I, n'r any of mine own men, has't nev'r seen aught liketh the beast.

A woodcut inspired by Gardner's journal

Famed New England explorer, Bernard Pollack, claimed he encountered a similar creature in 1789, while mapping out the Androscroggin. He claims that while he and his Native American guide, Moxus, were canoeing the river, a fish-man swam up along side them. It leapt out of the water like a fish, before diving back down, hardly making a splash. Pollack claimed that the fish-man seemed to be leading them down a smaller river that branched off from the Androscroggin. Pollack and Moxus followed the fish-man until he lead them to a small village on the shore of the river, where he counted no less than seven of these fish-people. It should be noted, however, that Pollack was a bit of a braggart, known to exaggerate his own exploits to fill his pockets.

Sightings of the Androscroggin River People continued into the modern era. Randy Kramer, a Boy Scout leader, claimed to have encountered one in 1973 while taking a group of boys on an overnight canoeing trip. This is from an interview Kramer gave in 1980 to Boys Life Magazine:

Could this be what Randy Kramer encountered?

"I got up in the middle of the night and left my tent to relieve myself. I took maybe ten steps out towards the riverbank when I heard something I thought might have been a snake, but could have just been the tall grass moving. I looked up and I saw a pair of red eyes staring back at me. I froze, and realized I was in real danger. I could tell the thing was about to pounce, but then the clouds drifted away from the moon. In the moonlight I could see what it was - it was...and I know how crazy this sounds, it was a fishman. I knew right what it was. We'd even told a campfire ghost story about it that night. It was one of the River People. Quick as an eel, it dove back into the river and swam off. I don't think I slept a lick that night."

No one knows quite what the River People are. They appear to be some sort of fish/man hybrid. Whether there is more than one or how long these creatures can live is unknown. Many people believe there could be generations of these fishy creatures living up and down the Androscroggin River. 

One last interesting note is that the word Androscroggin comes from Abenaki tribe and it translates to "deep-dwelling river." Could this name refer not to the depth of the river itself but the name of the creatures that live in it? Noted author of weird and horror fiction, H. P. Lovecraft is known to have often visited this area of Maine. Is it any coincidence his stories are filled with a race of fish-people known as Deep Ones? 

Did Lovecraft know?

Hmmm.

Stay safe out there, Maine!