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!

Do You Hear What I Hair?

Happy Tuesday, MMers! Today’s report comes from up in Kingman in Penobscot County. Stuart Fields recently contacted us about some corn that he purchased from the local Jones Family Farm. Though the farm grows everything from beets to their famous “big, juicy blueberries,” they are most well known for their corn and their aptly named “Maize Maze.” Well, Stuart gave us a call and had some troubling information for us.

Corn Silk

“You know that kind of stringy hair that an ear of corn has when you are shucking it? Well, I bought a bag of corn from Jones Family Farm the other day, and my daughter and I were shucking the corn while my wife was finishing up the potato salad inside. About  halfway through the bag, my daughter, Anna, screamed bloody murder and threw down her corn. ‘What’s the matter, honey?!’ I asked. ‘That corn! That one has hair in it! Like Mommy’s!’. Her voice was trembling as she tried to get the words out.”

We went on conversing with Stuart for quite some time, but he kept harping on that same point. Hair. Hair in the corn. Blonde hair, like his wife’s. While we all know that corn silk is standard in an ear of corn, we’ve never heard of human hair where the corn silk should be. Stuart contacted us immediately after his experience, but he didn’t dare go back to JFF.

So, MMers, we decided to give a call to the farm ourselves to question further. The owner, Bartholomew “Bart” Jones, was at first unavailable, so we left a message with our contact information, hoping to hear back.

Luckily, around 10:30 AM the next day, we got a call. Our caller ID read the number from Kingman. We were excited to say the least. Unfortunately, it was not Bart on the other line. It was his stepdaughter, Helen. While Helen said that she had no idea why there would be actual hair in their corn, she promised that she would look into it for us.

And here is where the story gets mighty interesting, MMers. Helen called us back around 4 PM, after she had time to speak with her stepdad. She sounded disappointed, frustrated, and a little bit shaken up.

“Well, I went to go ask daddy Bart about the hair, and, well, he just snapped at me. Told me to get the heck out of his office if I knew what was good for me. You see, daddy Bart has a temper, but he’s been so much better about controlling it lately. I don’t know what came over him when I asked him about that hair.”

So, without wanting to push Helen much further than we already had, we here at Malevolent Maine decided to take matters into our own hands. We wanted to see the farm with our own eyes, hear the sounds with our own ears. We arrived at the farm the next day around 11 AM or so, and we quickly approached the barn and bought some corn. After we had brought it out to the car, we tore apart the ears, but to no avail. It was just regular corn with the standard corn silk. Lucas went back into the store for another bag, this time from the back of the rack. Again, nothing. No hair, just silk.

Frustrated, but not completely discouraged, we decided to head down to the “Maize Maze.” Not wanting to appear obvious, we went with a gardening trowel and nothing else. The maze was elaborate and immaculately maintained. It was as if the maze had been groomed that very morning. Even the dirt ground was neat and tidy. Slowly but surely, we worked our way through the maze, grabbing a few pieces of corn here and there and opening them up to see what was inside. After we were in the maze for about 20 minutes, two young boys ran by us, giggling and chasing each other. There was a third boy a few paces behind. He stopped and took one long glance at us before moving on through the maze.

 

Inside the maze

We moved on about another fifty feet or so, and Chris noticed something. “Hey, come here. Do you see that?!” Chris was pointing to what looked like blonde hair sticking out of the dirt on the side of the path. “You sure that’s not just corn silk?” “No. But let’s find out!” Lucas, crouched down with the trowel, grabbed the strands and confirmed that it didn't feel like corn silk, at least not fresh corn silk. Right as he plunged the small handled spade into the ground, we heard a booming voice from behind us.

“HEY! WHAT THE HELL YA’LL DOIN’ DIGGIN’ IN MY CORN?!” As we turned, we saw a big mass of a man moving swiftly towards us. He was well above six-feet tall, and at least 300 pounds. Daddy Bart. At first, we were frozen in space and time, unable to move or speak. Finally, Chris spoke up. “Sorry sir! We just thought we saw something poking out of the ground. We will be on our way!” Bart looked at us, and then at the spot Lucas was still kneeling in. “You boys better get your asses out of here, if you know what’s good for ya!”

And so we left in a hurry, MMers, and we regret that we don’t have more information. While we don’t have enough evidence to contact the police, we encourage you all to stay away from Jones Family Farm, and particularly Big Daddy Bart.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

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!

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!

Lost Lady of the Plains

Have you heard of the Lost Lady of the Plains? The Blueberry Plains, that is. If not, pay attention MMers. 

The Blueberry Plains around Route 99 in Kennebunk

This story comes from the Blueberry Plains in Kennebunk. This vast stretch of blueberry bushes is a great place to spend an afternoon if you're looking for a great place to get some authentic wild Maine blueberries. If you happen to be there around dusk, be on the lookout for an older woman who appears to be lost.

Artist's rendition of the
Lost Lady of the Plains

According to several witnesses, this woman appears to be somewhere in her mid- to late-sixties. She has short, white hair, and what appears to be a light blue sweater or light jacket and a pair of sensible, gray slacks. She approaches pickers with an empty pail and lost, longing look in her eyes. She has been reported to ask people, "Have you seen Wallace?" or "My husband. I can't find my husband. I... don't know where I am. I'm so scared."

Reports claim that this apparition is harmless. After a few moments of looking around, she'll wander off again, in a lost shamble, until she disappears among the blueberry bushes. Often times visitors of the Blueberry Plains will claim to hear a woman's voice, raised in a cry, distant as if carried by a soft breeze, calling, "Waaaalllaaace? Waaaalllaaace?"

No one knows who this woman is, but it is clear she is a spirit or ghost. No records of a woman going missing at the Blueberry Plains have been found and there are no reports of a man named Wallace losing his wife in the vicinity, but this phantom has been spotted among the blueberries for thirty years or so. 

One witness to the Lost Lady of the Plains, Karen Baker of Sanford, tried to snap a picture of the ghostly woman as she walked away.

Karen Baker's picture showing the Lost Lady of the Plains

"I swear she was standing right there. Right in the middle of the trail. I could see her plainly, wearing that blue jacket. Her sneakers were so white against the green of the bushes. But she didn't show up in the picture. That's when I knew for sure this wasn't some sort of hoax or tall tale," Karen said.

So, if you're ever out on the Blueberry Plains and you're approached by an elderly woman looking for her husband, Wallace, just kindly tell her that you haven't seen him, but you'll keep an eye out. 

And wish her well.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

No-Head Nellie

Usually our stories tend to be a bit on the... dark side, MMers, but today we've got a a heartwarming story for you. For this one we're traveling all the way to Johnson Mountain Township just south of Jackman. The story comes to us by way of Brock Easton who claims his great-grandfather had a dog with no head. As unbelievable as this seems, there are plenty of records of No-Head Nellie that seem to corroborate Brock's story. We'll try to stick to just the facts. 

Weston "Butch" Easton and his wife, Margery, 1938

Brock's great-grandfather, Weston "Butch" Easton lived in Jackman in the 1930s and 40s. One of the family dogs gave birth to a litter of pups and one of them was born with no head. Butch figured the pup was stillborn because of its deformity, so he was completely surprised when the headless pup began to crawl around. Butch immediately brought the pup to a local vet, who after his initial skepticism, did pronounce the pup as alive. He recommended that Butch put the animal down as it would never lead a full life. Butch refused. Instead, for the next fifteen years he raised No-Head Nellie and loved her as dearly as any animal companion.

According to Brock, who heard all of this from his grandfather, Butch's son, Carter, Butch took No-head Nellie on the road, showing her at local fairs and carnivals. Butch would feed Nellie through an IV injection, twice a day. Nellie could walk, run, wag her tail, even shake hands and roll over. If all this sounds incredible, it really is. To this day scientists have no idea how Nellie lived for fifteen years! But here's the proof. Brock has a picture he found in his grandfather's stuff. The picture was labeled 1947.

No-Head Nellie circa 1947

On top of that we were able to uncover a flyer from the 1949 Fryeburg Fair, and sure enough it mentions Butch Easton and his amazing No-head Nellie. Brock is working on going through the rest of his late grandfather's possessions, hoping to find more pictures from his great-grandfather, but he does recall his Grampa Carter (who passed away in 2019 at 92 years old!) telling stories of No-Head Nellie. He recalls his grandfather had a photo album full of Butch and Nellie's adventures, but so far Brock has been unable to locate it. He even remembers his grandfather telling him that Ripley's Believe it or Not at one point wanted to purchase Nellie's remains after she passed, however he was unsure whether the sale actually happened.

Brock Easton is attempting to put together a museum for No-Head Nellie. He says that if you or anyone you know has any information or possible pictures of No-Head Nellie, please contact him at: no-headnellie@yahoo.com. We'll keep our eyes peeled and hope you will too!

Help out Brock! Find some old pics of No-Head Nellie.

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!

Rapid Fire - April 2021

It’s time for some more Rapid Fire, MMers!

• Speaking of Rapid Fire, there was a report out of Lebanon of a small lizard engulfed in flames. It was reported by local Bobby Newark that the old house on Mill Road was burned down by this “tiny fire dragon.” While this theory was quickly dismissed by the Lebanon Fire Department, Bobby swears up and down that it’s the truth. After all, he saw it with his own eyes.

• You know the paper mill up in Old Town? Well, when the wind is blowing just right, you can smell it from the University of Maine campus. Joseph Lundgren, a freshman residing in Cumberland Hall, reached out to us. “Yesterday the smell from the paper mill was so strong. Normally, it just smells like rotten eggs or sour milk. But today, it smelled like something else rotting. Like a corpse decomposing or something…” What is rotting at the paper mill, MMers? Is it just the paper, or is it something more...grotesque?

What's that smell?

• “Crinkle crinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” Today we had another report of a potential Crinkle Face in Maine. James Rideout, a Newfield resident, wrote this to us: “The other night I was looking through my telescope at some constellations. When I was looking at Orion’s Belt, I could have sworn that I saw the stars aligned in the shape of Crinkle Face. I only know about it from your blog, and I really hope that it’s just in my head.” We here at Malevolent Maine take Crinkle Face very seriously, and we want to warn you again of the dangers of Crinkle Face. While we hope that it was just James’ imagination at work, we can’t be 100% sure. God, we hope.

• Last, but certainly not least, MMers, we had a report lost in the mail way up from Presque Isle. The letter was supposed to be delivered in March, but we just received it this week. Harry Bordeau reported an interesting phenomenon he experienced while tapping his maple trees, as he does every year around this time. Here is part of Harry’s letter, “I tapped the tree as I always do, but that wasn’t sap. It was a gooey substance, kind of like that Nickelodeon slime, but it wasn’t green. It was an orange-yellow color, and it smelled like hand sanitizer or some cleaning solution.” While we don’t know what infiltrated Harry’s tree, we do know that there was a reported UFO sighting up in Presque Isle back in January. And while we don’t know what this unidentified “slime” is, we would be willing to bet it’s not from this world…

Is there sap in that tree?

Well, that's it for today, MMers. As always, feel free to send us any strange happenings from around the state. Stay safe out there, Maine!

Merchandise!

Good news Malevolent Mainers, we now have a Merch store! If you would like to rep Malevolent Maine and support us at the same time, please visit our store!

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.

Cinema Nocturna

Okay, MMers, this one is weird even by our standards. It comes to us from a reader named Chen from Biddeford. He told us about a secret movie theatre somewhere in Biddeford or Saco that shows rather, odd arthouse films. 

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!

Letter from the Future

Just a quick one for you this week, MMers. Meagan from Falmouth wrote in with story about a former co-worker of hers. Meagan works at an insurance office and tells us that the guy who worked in the cubicle next to hers claimed to be from the future.

"Brandon was always a weird guy," Meagan told us. "Kept to himself a lot. Maybe because no one really believed him when he talked."

As Meagan tells it, Brandon claimed to be from the year 2076. He was born in the year 2040 and had traveled back through time in an experimental procedure at his job at Jackson Laboratories. When he first started at Meagan's work he would always talk about all the things he knew. This would have been somewhere around 2008 or 2009. 

"He would tell us stuff like, did the plane crash happen yet? Did Tom Brady win his seventh Super Bowl? What about Trump? We thought he was just weird, ya know?"

Brandon kept trying to tell people what he knew of the future, to warn them of things that were coming. No one took him too seriously, and after three years, he simply disappeared one day. "He didn't show up to work. No one really knew much about him socially, but eventually HR had the police go to his house. They didn't find him, but his walls were covered with weird math equations. You know, like in Good Will Hunting or whatever? And there was a big scorch mark on the floor and wall in one corner, like something had exploded."

That was the end of the story, except that a few weeks later, Meagan received a letter in the mail, from Brendan. "It was postmarked from right before he disappeared," she told us. "Maybe it got lost at the post office or something, but when I got it gave me a shock. I hardly ever talked to him even though we worked right next to each other. He was nice enough, but not so much that I figured he'd write me a letter."

The letter explained that Brandon had finally figured out how to go back to his own time. He was going to conduct the experiment the night he disappeared. "Before he left he wanted to warn me or some things coming," Megan said. "He told me to invest in Bitcoin. This was back right before it boomed in 2010. He mentioned the pandemic. A lot of what he wrote has come true, so it's got me a little worried about the stuff that is still to come."

Brandon's letter to Meagan,
reprinted with her permission

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Mirror, Mirror

Happy Valentine's Day, MMers! We've got a great story for you out of Garland, up in Penobscot County. Curtis Walker claims he's from a parallel reality, one very close to this one, but with several key differences. Walker tells us one morning, two years ago, he was out in his front yard trying to start his weed-whacker. It didn't start on the first pull, but that was nothing new. It was on his third tug of the pull cord, when he claims he passed through some sort of membrane into this one.

"It was like being encased in Jell-o," he said. "Except I didn't move. I wasn't the one in the Jell-o - the whole world was. It was like a thick, jiggling wall that I was being pushed through. It was only a second and then the feeling was gone."

The membrane between worlds or tasty dessert?

Walker's weed-whacker started right up and he went to town edging his lawn. When he was done, he put the wee-whacker away in the shed and came inside to cool down. That's when he realized something was wrong.

"There's a woman standing there in my kitchen. I lived alone, you see."

After a moment, Walker recognized the woman as Alice Kramer, a girl he dated in high school, twenty-five years before. She didn't think anything of it, but he was shocked to find her standing there. As Walker explained it, in this world - our world - Curtis Walker and Alice Kramer married young, right out of high school, but in Walker's original world, Alice Kramer died in a horrible car accident right before graduation. 

But that's not the only difference. In his world, Russia landed on the moon first, Jeb Bush won the presidential election in 2016, and Tom Selleck was Indiana Jones. Walker went on to note a bunch of other differences, but he said none of them seemed all that important. The world was pretty much the same, just some of the details were different. 

This makes us wonder who played Han Solo?

After the car crash in his world, Walker's heart was broken. He never quite got over losing Alice at such a young age. Now, suddenly here in our world, it was like waking up from a bad dream. 

"It's my second chance," he told us. "And I'm not going to waste it."

For her part, Alice says she believes her husband. "He just knows too much about this other world to be making it up. No offense, but Curt was never that smart."

According to public records, Curtis Walker and Alice Kramer married in 1995. He has worked for the post office mechanic pool for twenty years. He's been to birthday parties, holidays, sporting events, you name it. No one noticed a difference on that day in the summer where Walker crossed over.

It does beg the question, however, if this Curtis Walker crossed over to our world and was reunited with the love of his life, what happened to the other Curtis Walker, the one that was from this reality? Still, one can only help but feel happy for Walker, who wakes up everyday next to a woman he thought he'd lost forever.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Happy Valentine's Day!