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!

Here's one right from the horse's mouth, MMers. Tom and Chris, two of our lead investigators here at Malevolent Maine, recently experienced a little firsthand unexplained phenomena of their own. They were driving to investigate  a claim about a so-called "witch tree" in Limerick (check back soon for the complete story). They were traveling along Route 5 when they saw signs indicating a town up ahead.

The map clearly shows no suck town exists.

"We're pretty familiar with the area," Tom said. "So the sign - you know one of those green signs that indicates the miles to the different towns - had a name we'd never seen before."

The sign indicated a town in between Waterboro and Limerick called Wilton Hills. This wasn't a town either of them had ever heard of before, and so they took a slight detour, following the signs that led them to this town.

"To be clear," Chris said. "This town is not on any map of Maine. Now, maybe that's not that unusual a little farther north or for those tiny little towns of only a handful of people, but this wasn't the case for us. This was a town that did not exist - could not exist - and yet, we were pulling up to their main street, just as real as the day." 

Our intrepid investigators found a thriving little town similar in size to say downtown Saco. There was a general store, diners, a barbershop.. They passed an elementary school, a fire department, pawn shop. You name it, the town seemed to have.

"It was quaint," Tom said. "Like the kind of little downtown you'd see in a movie or tv show."

The two got out and walked around for a bit. "We talked to some people on the street, just as normal as could be." They even went into a local coffee shop and got some java and a bagel. "The food was real. It tasted just fine," Chris said. "It was real good, actually."

Shocked and surprised by the town that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere, the two made sure to take a lot of pictures.

Unanswered Questions - November 2020

 

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

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

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

Flight 129

Hello and Happy Fourth of July Weekend, MMers! We got thinking about the brave men and women who fought for our independence and it got us thinking about that growing collection of military-related oddities we've accumulated. So today, we thought we'd share the story of missing Flight 129.

The Night at Crannog's Field

Crannog's Field in Unity has always been known as a bit of an odd spot. Owner, Sebastian Jenkins tells us that the big field has often been a gathering spot for hippies, college kids, and the occasional coven of witches. That's right, witches.

Crannog's Field, Unity, ME

"There's a group of witches, or as they like to be called, practitioners of wicca, and they come out every couple of full moons," Jenkins told us. "They dance around, do some chanting. No big deal. They also come out once every turn of the season during the day. They tend to dance in the nude, but, no offense to those ladies, no one really wants to see that, if you catch my drift."

Crannog's Field is a big clearing in the middle of the woods. You might not even know it's right there off the Waterville Road if you were driving through. The locals know, however. The story goes that it was in this field that the original Quaker settlers hanged three women accused of witchcraft. Ever since then the spot has been one of the more interesting locations in the town. "It draws a pretty eclectic crowd," Jenkins says, "but they're all pretty harmless. A little dancing, maybe a little drinking or other extracurricular activities, if you know what I mean. For the most part everyone just sorta leaves everyone else alone."

But this isn't a story about Quakers or middle-aged wiccans. It's a story about six people found in the field twelve days ago. June 5th was a full moon, but according to Sebastian Jenkins, the local wiccans weren't there that night. "The ladies had the night off," he laughed. "I don't know who was out in the field that night. I don't always check - like I said everyone's very respectful."

The morning of June 6th, the six people, four women and two men, stumbled out of the field onto the stretch of Route 139 known as the Waterville Road. They were naked, confused, and had no idea where they were.

The monolith discovered in Crannog's Field

"So far the six individuals discovered in Crannog's Field have been unable to tell us anything about their identity or why they were out there," Police Chief Bret Carson told us. "We believe they are telling the truth but at this time, we have no idea what happened in the field that night."

The six people all appear in their late twenties to mid-thirties. They do not remember their names or any personal information. No personal items were discovered in the field to identify them. In fact, the only thing discovered in the field was a giant stone monolith. The stone is nine feet high and appears to have sprouted from the ground. Both Jenkins, the field's owner, and several locals we spoke to agreed that the stone had not been there before. It is as if it appeared over night.

The rock was covered in soot as if it had been in a fire, but there was no trace of a fire anywhere. Written in the soot, near the top of the monolith was one word: Az'azouzis. This does not appear to be a word in any language and there are no matches on the internet for it. At the time of this writing, the meaning of the word is unknown.

The six people did not recognize the word, but according to Chief Carson, they all had a visible reaction upon hearing the word. "They shivered," he told us. "Like they were cold. It's June. It was 75 degrees that morning, but when they heard that word, they acted like they had just walked into a blizzard."

Who are these six? What were they doing out in the field that night? And what or who is Az'azouzis? If you have any information, you should contact the Maine State Police.

Do you know any of these people?

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Black Tarot Part II

Update, MMers! Back in March we ran a story about a series of disturbing tarot cards appearing in random people's mailboxes. We spoke to four individuals who received these cards with no explanation. You can read about it here. Well, since then we've heard from two more Mainers who have received these packages.

Up first is Brenda Williams. Brenda is the head librarian at the Madison Public Library. Three days ago she received the now familiar to our readers, black envelope addressed to her. Again there was no return address, no stamp. It was as if the envelope just appeared in her mailbox.

The envelope Brenda received

Inside were five cards from the deck we're calling the "Black Tarot." Brenda received The Shaman, the Queen of Wands, the II of Sigils, the V of Blades, and the Knight of Blades. Again, we're unsure of the meaning of these cards or the purpose. We don't know who is sending them or why, but state police have determined that these cards are indeed just paper cards. There are no harmful substances on them and no one has been harmed because of these cards. Still, they can be quite unsettling.

Brenda Williams' spread

"I don't like them," Brenda said. "I don't know who sent them or why they thought this was a good prank. It's not funny to terrorize people. These are disgusting and whoever is doing this is disturbed."

The other set of cards was sent to Kerri Delong in West Paris. Much like the other recipients, her cards showed up mysteriously in the mailbox over night. "I check my mail every day," Kerri told us. "One morning they were just in there, waiting for me." Kerri also sent us a picture of her cards:

Kerri Delong's spread

 "I don't like touching them," she said. "They're... they're not slimy, but they feel wrong. Like cold, somehow. But not paper. They feel like... like cold skin. I mean, I know they're not. It's obvious they're just paper, but still... something about them just creeps me out."

We also have an update on our original four recipients. To a person each of the original four - Larry Gilbert, Sharon Messina, Dominic Stoddard, and Sara Burgess - all of them now claim their cards have disappeared. 

"It's the craziest thing," Larry Gilbert said over the phone. "I left them right in the envelope in a drawer. When you contacted me about them, I went to check. The envelope is still there, but the cards are gone. No one would have taken them. I didn't throw them out. They're just gone, like they melted away."

The other three also confirmed similar stories. The cards are gone, but the envelope remains. We reached out to Brenda Williams about taking possession of her cards and she was more than willing to oblige.

"Get them out of my house," she said. "I never want to see them again."

We now have her set of Black Tarot cards in our possession here at our office. We will monitor them every day and give any updates we may find. For now, we'll keep you updated and stay safe out there, Maine.