Rapid Fire - June 2021

Welcome to summer MMer’s, check out these stories, it's another Rapidfire!

• Body in the Gravel: With all the road work going on right now to fix all those damn potholes, there are gravel trucks everywhere. One road crew led by Larry Ouellette reported to us that they had an awful scare. As they were spreading out the gravel they uncovered what looked like a human arm sticking out of the pile, it was covered in scrapes and cuts as if it had been through the blender, “we all took a few minutes to settle our nerves called our supervisor” Larry told us, “but when we went back to dig out the rest of the body, there wasn’t nothing there at all, like it got up and walked off on its own.” Was this some prank from a fellow road worker, a body that someone dragged off, or something more sinister, something undead?  Either way be on the lookout for strange things as you pass road work this summer

The model of table Bernie owns

• The Bonebiter: Bernie is a massage therapist in Lewiston, he booked a new client a few weeks ago and he has major regrets about that. The man seemed normal enough at first, said he had thrown out his back a month or so ago and really needed some massage for pain relief. “He said he was nervous cause he had never gotten a massage before, asked me if I would just stand by him for a minute or two before I started and hold his hand. So here I am sitting in this guy’s living room holding his hand, when he leans over and sinks his teeth into my forearm.” Bernie immediately drew back from the man and pushed the massage table over, catapulting the man onto the floor, the man quickly grabbed his clothes and ran from the house, as Bernie ran to his car locked his doors and called the police. “I gave them the guy’s information but, they couldn’t find any record of him and it wasn’t even his house, it was up for sale but he had apparently removed the for sale sign before I got there.” Bernie went to the ER after and had his arm treated, he complained of deep pain in his arm so they did an X-ray, apparently the man’s teeth had actually sunk into the bone, and left it full of micro-fractures. Bernie is still recovering, “first I had to fight the infection off, now I  have to wait for the bones to heal. The whole time I have just felt terrible, I have no energy, I’m tired all the time. I just wish I had avoided that client.” If you are a massage therapist in the Lewiston Auburn area, please be careful as you book clients, this man is still at large, we can only hope that he has stopped biting bones!

A photo of Emily from last month

• Girl from Nothing: We need your help MMers! This story comes to us from Emily Thomas who was raised in the Maine Children’s Home for Little Wanderers in Waterville. Emily, like most people who grow up in her situation, is trying to find her biological family. However the weird part is, no one who works or who has worked previously at the Children’s Home has any recollection of how Emily came to be there. There are no documents that show when she arrived or who dropped her off. The state has no record of her parents or even a birth certificate for her, she has never been issued a social security card either. Officially she doesn’t exist and yet she is a living breathing human being. We will include a picture here of what she looks like now but there are no pictures of her as a child, but all the employees remember that she has been in the Children’s Home since she was four years old. If you know of any children dropped off at the Children's Home in Waterville around 16 years ago, please get into contact with us. 

• Homeless Prophet: Multiple people have reported that there is a man roaming around Portland talking about fate. Everyone who reports interacting with him says he doesn’t seem drunk, or under the influence in any way, he speaks eloquently and doesn’t display any odd behaviors, all he does is approach people and talk with them. His favorite topic is how time is fixed, that people will always make the same choices, the future cannot be changed, fate is inescapable. He tells people that he was always meant to live a vagrant life, he tried to have a family, a job, a home and it just wasn’t meant to be. He says he has seen his own future, and as long as he spreads his message of fate being set, something good will happen to him. If you are in Portland and want to hear more of his message, seek him out, buy him a meal and settle in for the philosophy of unchangeable fate. 

• The Mad Splicer: A sharp eyed reader named Trevor has made a connection between several stories we have published. He pointed to our stories Arctic Cat, The Pamola, and Specimens in the Shed, and said there were similarities between them. In an email Trevor laid out his theory, “It was the jars in the shed that was the connection, the feather, antler, and finger, couldn’t that be related to the Pamola? The things on its back could have been wings that had died and shriveled up. Then there was another jar with a cat’s ear, and a few bolts, that was the Arctic Cat! Whoever owned the shed was doing crazy experiments combining things, and some of his creations are still walking around!” Trevor went on to label this unethical scientist, the Mad Splicer, and we can’t think of a better name ourselves. If you have information on this man or have run into one of his creations, please reach out to us, we will keep you all updated with any further developments in this story. 

Is this a sketch of the Mad Splicer?

As always, MMers, if you encounter something spooky, something unexplainable, something supernatural or otherworldly, send it to us. Who knows, your story might just make the blog?

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Specimens in the Shed

Imagine you are eleven years old, you and the kids from your small town are out exploring the woods because there isn’t much else to do. In your journeys you come across an old shed and curiosity gets the better of you. What is inside leaves you so unnerved that as soon as you can you move away from the place your family has called home for over 100 years. This is exactly what transpired when Adelaide McPherson, Addie for short, and her friends stumbled across an old shed in the woods nearly forty years ago.

Garfield Plantation in Northern Maine

Garfield Plantation is a tiny town in northern Maine, the population as of the 2010 census was a whopping 81 people. As you can probably guess it is a place that appreciates a slower pace, one where you can lose yourself in the natural beauty of our state. Addie remembers her time growing up in Garfield Plantation fondly. Except for what she and her friends discovered in the woods all those years ago.The children of Garfield Plantation formed a close bond, they would always ride the miles between their houses and meet up to play in the woods. Addie walked us through what it was like “Its not like kids are today where they are always on their iphones, or playing nintendos, we made our own fun. We girls would pick flowers, and bake ‘mud pies’, one time Jimmy Erickson chipped a tooth on one cause it had a rock inside it. We laughed a lot when that happened.”  

The shed was on the border of the property of the Erickson family she told us, and they didn’t even like the kids playing back there. “They were worried about us playing on the rusty old farm equipment that was parked out beyond the back field in the tree line, but I think deep down they knew that something else was going on out there.”  The kids stumbled upon the shed one day in mid-summer, and were quickly intrigued by it, “Jimmy didn’t even know about it, or why it was there, and it was basically on his family’s property” Addie told us. “Carl who was the bravest of us, probably the dumbest too, but no one minded cause he was the one who dealt with all the gross stuff, nests of snakes, big old cobwebs, and the like. Well Carl he runs right up to the shed and tries to open the door, it had this big iron door, which was odd, but it was basically rusted right to the frame. So he goes around to one of the windows, they were this thick tinted glass, like thicker than the bottom of an old fashioned coke bottle, and peeks inside.” The kids quickly gathered around him and what they saw inside the shed was shelves up shelves of jars, filled with liquid and all sort of odds and ends that were hard to identify through the thick tinted glass. 

The door was rusted shut, like this

“We hatched a plan right then” said Addie. “Carl and Jimmy were going to grab some tools from their dads and the next day we were going to get into that shed and see what it was all about. On the way home the boys wouldn’t stop talking about it, guessing what the shed was for, the top theory was it was an old moonshiners shed, and they were thrilled at the prospect of getting a taste of moonshine from one of those jars.” 

The next day the kids all gathered together, “Jimmy had brought a hammer and a screwdriver, hoping to pop the hinges off the door. Carl had brought a crowbar, so he could try to pry it open, or worst case break a few windows and climb in.” But when the kids reached the shed the door was already ajar. Slowly, one by one, with Carl in the lead they entered the shed and gawked at the shelves upon shelves of jars. 

Addie says the jars were similar
to this type

Each was about three quarters filled with “a thick green liquid” Addie said. But the contents besides the liquid in each jar were completely different. “Lots of parts and pieces from animals and things. I shiver just thinking about it. Little tiny eyes, bones, tufts of fur. But there was bigger stuff too. This one jar had a big piece of antler, a long white feather, and what looked like a finger, but I really hope it wasn’t. Another was a bit odd as it had a metal bolt in it, what looked like the ear of a wolf or a big cat, and an eye that looked just a little too human for my taste.They boys were in awe though, they couldn’t stop oohing and awwing, one would pick up a jar and slosh it towards the other, and the other would push them away, and it would start all over. Jimmy was about to scare Carl with one particularly nasty jar full of what looked like teeth, but he dropped it and it shattered all over the floor. After that we booked it away from the shed, I never wanted to go back. I didn’t want to think about the kind of person that would have a shed like that, why would they collect all those things?”

Addie never felt comfortable in her home town again, not knowing if a neighbor she knew and loved was the one collecting weird trophies, or if there was some madman who lived in the woods. “The boys went back to the shed a few times after that but they said by the end of the summer all the jars had been taken from the shed, the only evidence they had ever been there was the stain the green liquid had left and little shards of glass.” 

Is there a mad scientist, or scientist wanna be in the woods of northern Maine, was it a disturbed neighbor, a naturalist who didn’t like visitors? Who can say what it was, but it is definitely odd. If you have stories similar to Addie's please reach out, we would like to know if this phenomenon continued. Stay safe out there, Maine!

Bitter Pill to Swallow

What's up, MMers? This story comes to us from Melinda Hardy, a nurse at Stephens Memorial Hospital. She tells us that one of the women she worked with for five years, another nurse (who wished to remain anonymous) told her this story. "[She] was totally the most honest person I have ever met. She wouldn't lie to save her soul," Melinda told us. 

The story starts about ten years ago, somewhere around 2010 or 2011. A patient came to see a doctor at a private practice where the other nurse worked before coming to Stephens. This patient suffered from chronic pain due to a motorcycle accident a year prior. He had recovered from his injuries, but the pain still lingered. Ibuprofen wasn't cutting it anymore, so he went to the doctor to get some relief. They tried a number of different prescription pills, but nothing seemed to take. In the end, the doctor gave him something different.

What did "Billy's" doctor prescribe him?

"My friend told me she hadn't seen pills like that before," Melinda said. "She didn't recognize the name, but that's not that uncommon. There's always new varieties coming out. She just assumed it was some new brand that a pharmaceutical rep had given to the doc."

The patient, we'll call him Billy, took the pills. He called the doctor's office two days later claiming he felt better than he had in months. The pain was gone. The doctor was pleased with the treatment and had Billy come back in a month later for a check up.

They continued a treatment of the medication, but the nurse was surprised that Billy kept coming into the doctor's office to get his medication. "Usually a patient gets a prescription filled at a pharmacy, right?" Melinda told us. "Doctors don't usually give out medication directly, but my friend, I guess for as weird as the situation was, she just trusted her doctor."

Two months go by, with Billy taking these pills. Maybe they're experimental, maybe generic, but maybe - as this nurse was beginning to suspect - it was something more illegal. "But the treatment was working, and when you're in healthcare long enough, you start to realize that whatever works is the best medicine," says Melinda. "He tells them that the pain is gone. He feels great, but that he feels a little numb, like he can't feel anything at all. Well, this alarms the doctor, who tells him that loss of feeling could be a possible side effect. He suggests Billy keep taking the medication unless something doesn't feel right, and that at his three month check up, they'll determine whether or not the numbness has gone away and how to treat that."

But Billy never showed up for his three month appointment.

It wasn't until a month later, that the nurse, now concerned because Billy had always been punctual, decided to call the police for a wellness check. They found Billy in his house; he had been dead for over a month.

"It wasn't an overdose, no siree," Melinda told us. "When the police got there, they could tell something was wrong. They call it in or whatever and when they go inside, there's blood all over the kitchen. They find a rotten leg in the kitchen sink."

It was Billy's leg. They found his other leg in the living room. In the bathroom they found his left arm. They found fingers from his right hand in a trail leading to the bedroom. Billy was on the bed. He had finally bled out. They found the battery operated carving knife he used to sever his limbs.

"He couldn't feel anything, you see?" Melinda told us. "The medication, it made him numb. It took away his pain, but it took away all his pain. He couldn't feel a thing, so when he took the knife to his leg, there was nothing. So he just kept going. 

"At least," she added, "that's the way my friend told it to me.

Pretty wild story. It has just the perfect touch of campfire ghost story to it. So, of course, we at Malevolent Maine did our research. It was a little difficult to find out much without specific names. However, we were able to trace Melinda's nurse friend back to a now closed doctor's office. Using that region as our search bubble we came up with one police report of a thirty-something male being found dead in his home. There was no mention of cause of death. A little more digging did uncover reports of a motorcycle accident about two years before the reported death. There weren't any names attached to the news stories, but again the area and physical descriptions seem to match.

So what do you think, MMers? Could there be some sort of pill out there that makes you feel so numb you could hack yourself apart? It's a a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but our guys are telling us it's probably true.

Be careful what you put in your bodies, MMers

Stay safe out there, Maine.