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 Fury of the Moose Man

Happy Fourth of July, MMers! We hope you have a fun and safe weekend. It's been a trying year for many of us MMers, and we're not out of the woods yet, but this weekend, we'd like to remember the freedoms we do have and be thankful for those. With that in mind, we thought we'd present you with a story set during the time of the American Revolution.

Happy 4th of July, MMers!

Maine did not play a large part of the Revolutionary War, mainly due to its distance from both Boston and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and most of the action seen in this area were naval battles. The British did burn the city of Portland (back then called Falmouth) in October in 1775. Aside from this there were very few land skirmishes. Our story involves a rather infamous figure in early American history: Benedict Arnold. 

Benedict Arnold

Arnold is most famous, of course, for betraying the Americans, becoming the ultimate turncoat, and joining the British. Benedict Arnold wrote his name forever in the history books in 1779, but before that he was actually a well-respected general, and an early hero of Revolution. In 1775 he was ordered by George Washington himself to lead a 1,100 man expedition up through Maine en route to Quebec to attack the British stronghold there. The mission turned out to be somewhat of a failure as Arnold arrived in Quebec with just half the men he started with and his force was unable to take the city from the British. That's not exactly what makes this a Malevolent Maine story. 

See, Arnold and his troops were laid up for almost a month at the Great Carrying Place, in modern day Caratunk, Maine (just south of The Forks, on Route 201) where they planned to cross from the Kennebec River to the Dead River. There, disaster after disaster struck Arnold's men. A boat carrying supplies capsized and was lost. A "formidable number" of the men suddenly grew sick and died. A hurricane struck from October 19-21. Suddenly, it seemed like Benedict Arnold, who had become something of a hero up until this point, had suddenly run out of luck.

Then there were the stories of the Moose Man. Over forty reports of this strange apparition were reported by Arnold's men, including his second in command, Daniel Morgan, and the leader of the scouting part, Lieutenant Archibald Steele. All of the reports were similar enough that it is hard to discount them.

They all describe a figure somewhere between seven and eight feet tall, dressed in ragged torn clothing, possibly robes. The figure was described as thin to the point of emaciation, and his ribs could be seen through his torn clothing. He was described as having long fingers that seemed to be jointed in several extra places or, according to some reports, at odd angles. Where the man's head should have been was a moose skull. 

The Moose Man of the Dead River

The Moose Man, as they began calling the apparition, would appear to soldiers while they hunted the woods. At night it could be seen drifting between the trees on the outskirts of the camp. At first the Moose Man only observed the soldiers, disappearing when it was noticed, but as the men became more entrenched in the area, it began appearing more and more frequently.

"[It] brought a great sickness," Daniel Morgan wrote in a letter sent back home to the Continental Army headquarters. "Where the strange creature walked, disease followed. None of our medicines or treatments could cure the sickness, which began with crimson spots along the neck and face. These turned to blood and a thick, congestive cough. We lost a formidable number of men to the contagion the Moose Man spread among us."

Historians believe somewhere between 100 and 150 men died from this strange disease, which to this day has no rational explanation.

Arnold's scouts had forgotten to take into account how the terrain conditions would be impacted by rain and winter run off, and so the fifteen mile trek from Kennebec to Dead River became a slog. During the day, the men struggled portaging the boats and supplies, and night the Moose Man began raiding their camps. 

One soldier, Lieutenant Church told of how the Moose Man would come into their camps at night, in the darkest hours, and begin tearing the place apart, ripping through tents and men alike. Several reports emerged of corpses left behind, their heads and spines removed, never to be recovered. Another fifty or so men were believed to be killed in the raids by the Moose Man.

Arnold ordered the creature, who he believed to be a native, to be hunted and brought to justice. Several parties went out into the woods, only one returned. Of the ten man team, two of the soldiers returned, both with grave injuries. They were incoherent, speaking only of the, "thing things that moves beyond the trees." One of the men succumbed to his injuries, the other never recovered his sanity and was sent back to the military base at Skowhegan, where he would eventually take his own life in 1780. 

Was the freak hurricane natural 
or was it caused by the Moose Man?

It was the freak hurricane, rare of that part of the state that complete broke the morale of Arnold's troops. On October 18th, the scouting party, led by Lieutenant Archibald Steele encountered what they believed to be a camp of the Moose Man. They found a small fire pit surrounded by several large stones, some reaching five or six feet high. Atop each of these stones a blackened, burned skull had been set. Strange symbols had been drawn onto the stones with a sticky black substance and even the ground, soft earth, was covered with markings drawn into.

"I have never seen anything like it in all my days," Steele wrote in a report back to Arnold. "Bones and sticks arranged in a strange manner. Skulls looked at us with empty eyes. No way to indicate if these were our soldiers or not, but several of my men believed so."

That morning the men awoke to a steady rain which only intensified. By evening, it had turned into a full hurricane. Rain and wind lashed the men. There were reports of half inch hail. Trees were uprooted around the men. One man died when a tree fell directly onto him, snapped in half by a gust of wind. Today, experts estimate the hurricane that struck Arnold's men was a Category 3, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 111-130 mph. 

Several men reported seeing the Moose Man at the height of the storm, illuminated for brief seconds by flashes of lightning, fists raised to the heavens. 

By the time the storm finally blew away on October 21, many more of Arnold's men were dead. Over four hundred men decided that they had had enough. They deserted Arnold, returning back to Boston by way of Augusta and points south. The remaining men redoubled their efforts. They hardly slept, instead moving as rapidly as they could, determined to leave the cursed area behind them. 

When the less than 600 of the men who had set out with Arnold from Boston finally arrived on the outskirts of Quebec on October 30, they were weak and starved. Many men were marching with injuries they could not rightly explain. Several others were sick with unknown diseases. They had not slept in several days and complained of haunting calls in the night and a tall, shadowy figure that stalked them. 

The battle for Quebec was ultimately lost - the Continental forces were woefully unprepared for the fortifications of the British. Benedict Arnold was wounded and Daniel Morgan taken captive. Many of the soldiers who survived the battle, retired soon after, claiming the horrors not of the battle, but of the 350 mile trek through the Maine wilderness had been too much. Arnold, of course, would famously go on to be instrumental in the Battles of Saratoga before ultimately defecting to the British.

What was the strange Moose Man the troops encountered in the wilderness? Was it an angry native? A vengeful spirit? Did it cause the mysterious illness and somehow summon an impossible hurricane? Or was it just a fictional scapegoat for a growing contingent of men who had grown tired of this failed expedition? 

The Moose Man has been seen for hundreds of years

Reports of the Moose Man have persisted over the the two hundred and fifty years since Arnold's men encountered it. Many have claimed to see the Moose Man just on the edge of their vision, peering out from behind a tree or rock. Several people have claimed to have been chased by the apparition, and one hiker claims the Moose Man killed his companion, though the man was later found guilty of the murder. Still, none of been as much a victim of the Moose Man's rage as Benedict Arnold and the men of his unfortunate mission.

So, if you're in the area of Caratunk and the Dead River, 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.

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.

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.

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!

Needle Ghost Mayhem

We hear a lot about ghosts here at Malevolent Maine, but this one is crazy! At a mental health institute up in Augusta we have reports of a terrifying and powerful apparition haunting the halls. Jeff Patrick, former night janitor and caretaker of the facility, has reported that he had an encounter with the ghost, and it changed his life in the worst possible way. 

Jeff reported that the institute gave him the creeps since the very first night, “I came in for my shift on the very first day, and there was this super weird sound coming from the second floor. I went to see what was up, and there wasn’t anything at all. Second night same thing but there was a weird floating orb. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t stay there long after I saw that I ran back, put my headphones in, listened to some Floyd, and went about my night.” 

Jeff said he avoided whatever made the noise for a few months after those first encounters, but one fateful night two months ago had a different outcome. “It was time for me to mop the second floor hallway, so I got my bucket ready, headed up there, put on my tunes real loud so I couldn’t hear much then I went at it. Halfway through I look up and I see this half see through guy just drifting past me, heading down the hall towards the pharmacy. I yell at it but it just keeps on drifting. I watched it disappear into the pharmacy and I tried following it. Usually the pharmacy is locked up but today for some reason it was open. I go in and see this thing just hucking stuff every which way, I go to reach out and stop it and I feel this sharp pain in my arm. I pull my arm out of the ghost and sticking out of it is a syringe. It must have been some kind of pain killer or sleep medicine, because I woke up in the morning with the security guard standing over me with a big frown on his face.” 

The institute fired Jeff for stealing, and doing drugs on the job, there is even a pending criminal case. Jeff claims that he had nothing to do with the theft and that the “damn ghost” did everything. 

We believe Jeff and truly feel sorry that he lost his job and might end up going to jail over these supernatural shenanigans. If you are ever in Augusta avoid the mental health institute, the ghost there might just get you like it got Jeff. Stay safe out there, Maine!

The Night Jean Massacre

Okay, heads up MMers, today’s story is our darkest, most terrifying report yet. This one comes from Strong, in Franklin County, an old mill town on the banks of the Sandy River, and while none of the individuals involved are still alive, the former sheriff of Strong was willing to share everything he remembers from the case.

Welcome to Strong!

It started when the Happy Sun Folk moved to Strong in the spring of 1967. The Happy Sun Folk, or the HSF as they referred to themselves, were a communal living society. They lived on an old farm their founder, Willem S. Fuller purchased. Their entire philosophy was free living. They worked together to live off the land sharing whatever they had with each other. The HSF believed that anything and everything physical was temporary and transient. It was the spirit or essence that was true. They were ostensibly a collective of artists, philosophers, and free thinkers, but what they really were was a cult.

The Happy Sun Folk

As sheriff Pat Sampson put it, “The Happy Sun Folk worshipped Fuller. He was their father, their husband, their god. If he said jump, the HSF did. If he said fly, they’d do their damndest to do it.”

They were tolerated by the people of Strong, but never really fit in. They mostly kept apart from the townsfolk, and in exchange they were allowed to live their hippie lifestyle up at their farm.

That all changed on the night of October 13, 1968. There were reports of screams coming from the HSF farm, Sunnyville, as the members called it. It wasn’t that uncommon to hear screams though; the HSF was into primal scream therapy and other odd “rituals” that were seen time to time from hunters and hikers who wandered a little too close to the farm by accident. These screams were different. They were more “painful” as the police reports indicated. They “sounded like someone was getting slaughtered,” according to one witness.

The big building

Finally the police had enough of the complaints and drove up to Sunnyville just after 11 pm. What they found was the most gruesome scene Sheriff Sampson had ever seen. We’ll let him describe it. We have to warn you this is quite graphic, so our more sensitive readers may want to skip ahead to the next section.

Sampson: “When we got up there, the farm was all quiet. It was just three of us, me, Bill Dempsey, and Jimmy Coloumbe. Jimmy was a rookie, just his first year on the force, and after what we saw…well, he didn’t make it maybe another month before he up and moved to Florida. Said he got a better job opportunity, but we all knew the truth, after what we saw up at the farm, he just couldn’t do it anymore. As for Bill, well... I guess I’ll get to that in a bit.

"The farm was all quiet and dark, but there was this weird smell in the air. It was like the smell that lingers after a fire. No, that ain’t right. It was like the smell in the air after a lightning strike. Fire and smoke, sure, but it was like the very air itself had been burned. We made our way to the big building. It was an old barn they had converted into their church or meeting hall or whatever. The door was locked, from the outside, which we thought was a little odd, but we’ll get back to that too. We knocked a few times, but no one answered. No one answered anywhere on the farm, but that smell… and something else, seemed to be coming from the big building, so eventually, me and Bill Dempsey kicked down the door. 

"What I saw stays with me to this day. I’m 89 years old and I’ll be the first to admit my memory ain’t what it was, but this is something that’s still just as clear as the day I saw it. The Happy Sun Folk were all in the meeting hall, all of them, we later confirmed that. Every single one of those hippies was locked in their own hall. And there was a bonfire burning in the middle of the room. It had been big, but by the time we got there it had burned down low. It was throwing an eerie red light all around the room. Maybe that made it worse, maybe that made it better, but I tell you, before we even saw the HSFers, I was already scared to the dickens.

"They were all there, like I said, all scattered around the room like they had been tossed there by a strong wind or something. They had been torn apart, and when I say torn apart, let me ask you, have you ever seen a man eat a chicken? Like ripping the wing bones apart, or tearing the leg off the body? It was like that, like someone, something, had just come in there and torn those poor bastards to shreds.

"There was blood everywhere, up and down the walls, the floor was sticky with it. Flies had already started to settle down to their feast. And that smell, it was worse inside the big building. It was that same burnt smell, but mixed with the blood of course. There was something swampy about it, like that rotting smell. I know this isn’t doing it justice, but it’s the best I can do. It smelled wrong; it smelled evil. And there, on the far wall, someone had written in blood two words. They’re seared into my mind and I wish for the life of me I could have made sense out of them. Someone had written, ’Night Jean’ in their own blood.”

Pretty gruesome, right? We warned you. But the story isn’t over. See it turns out that one of the HSFers, a young woman named Sandra Carmichael was still alive, despite some pretty serious injuries. While the officers secured the building, Sandra reached out to Officer Dempsey and clutched his leg. 

She only said a few words before she died right there in Bill Dempsey’s arms.

“There’s something beyond” she said. “We called to it and it came. Eyes like lost stars. Hair - oh God, I think it was hair, let it be hair, black and gray and hanging over its face. It moved. It moved in impossible ways. The Night Jean. We didn’t know. We didn’t know. Forgive us.”

Could this be what the HSF saw?

There were no foreign fingerprints on the bodies, anywhere on the big building, or anywhere on the farm that the police could find. There was no evidence of anyone being at Sunnyville that night aside from the members of HSF. Police found no footprints, tire marks, no weapons and no blood anywhere outside of the big building. In the end, the most brutal and horrific homicide in Maine history had to be labeled an unsolved mystery. The police offered their best guess at the time - that one of the members had gone insane and attacked the others before killing himself - but that couldn’t explain the savagery, the torn limbs and severed heads. In the end there was no explanation that made any sense, so everyone did their best to simply move on.

“Poor Bill,” Sheriff Sampson told us. “That girl dying in his arms, hearing her last words. It got to him. He was never the same after that. Two years later he put his service pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

The case of the Night Jean Massacre was never officially solved and remains a cold case to this day, but Sampson has a theory, one that’s grown in his mind in the five and a half decades since that awful night.

“I think they were doing something up there, something they shouldn’t have. Maybe there are things we’re not supposed to understand, creatures that exist beyond our universe. Maybe that crazy cult opened a portal or whatever and let something in, something that didn’t like our world, that hated its very existence. They called themselves the Happy Sun Folk, but they let in the night, and I think it killed them.”

Stay safe out there, Maine.

The Ghost Pig

 Okay, MMers, this one's a bit of a cheat, but it was too good to pass up. As you know, we're really focused on the paranormal and unexplained here in Maine, so when this story first crossed our inbox we weren't sure we wanted to use it - not because of the content, but because of its location. After much internal discussion, we agreed to make this one exception. So without further ado, we bring you the Ghost Pig of Effingham, New Hampshire.

The Ghost Pig

Effingham is a small town just over the Maine border. Boasting just over 1,400 people, the town was actually incorporated back in 1778. The story, which we heard from John Darling, author of the the book, The Wind Beneath the Eaves: An Oral History of Southern New Hampshire, involves Martin Leavitt, the grandson of the town's founding father in the year 1775. 

Martin Leavitt on his farm, 1775

Martin Leavitt was the third son of Moses M. Leavitt. He was a meager pig farmer living in the shadows of his more successful father and brothers. When the British troops came through Effingham (then known as Leavitt's Town) they demanded quarters from the locals. Many of the citizens reluctantly agreed. The commander of the British troops insisted that Leavitt slaughter his prize pig, Rufus, to feed his men. Leavitt refused, he had raised Rufus from a baby and he knew the pig very well could change his fortune. The commander threatened to burn Leavitt's far to the ground, slaughter his entire stock, and seed the earth with the pig's blood. 

Eventually Leavitt conceded, but before he did, he cursed the British. "Eat this pork and its owner will never leave you," were the words he was reported as saying. Some claim he mixed his own blood with the pig's to make a charm, some say his words were more of a jest than a serious hex, but the story seemingly ended there. 

Until it didn't.

For the next two centuries stories of the ghost pig began circulating out of Effingham. Multiple reports claim to have seen or heard the beast outside the area where Leavitt's pig farm once stood. One report from a hiker claimed that while, "walking in the woods, I suddenly heard a deep, grunting sound. There was the sound of the ground being trampled and bushes snapping. Whatever it was, it sounded huge, like the size of a compact car. I turned around, trying to find where it was coming from. All I saw were tusks the size of my arm and two burning red eyes." The hiker ran for his life and when he finally turned around again, he was alone. 

But the stories don't end there. People have reported trampled trash barrels, ransacked gardens, and smashed open camps. The ghost pig seems like a mutated, giant form of Rufus. He has been known to charge people, causing them to be injured leaping out of the way, before disappearing. At least two victims have claimed to have actually been trampled by Rufus, and a third victim appeared at the hospital with gore wounds from the beast's tusks. The one thing all of the stories have in common is the rage of the creature. 

Local citizens have embraced the story oft he Ghost Pig. There's Ghost Pig Brewery over on Route 25. There's Rasta Rufus Dispensary, even a statue dedicated to Martin Leavitt and the Ghost Pig int he center of town. 

Ghost Pig Brewing Co, Effingham, NH

"He's a hero to us," said Wayne DeWinter, the owner and head brewer at Ghost Pig Brewery. "We all heard the stories of Rufus growing up. A lot of us have seen or heard him. When I was thirteen, walking through the woods behind my parent's house with Bobby Taylor and Mike Smith, we heard him. He doesn't squeal like a pig on tv, He grunts and snorts, real scary stuff. We just ran, man, but we knew it was him. We knew."

If you're ever in Effingham, stop in for one of DeWinter's IPAs (that's India Pig Ale) or a Ghost Pig Porter, just make sure if you hear anything in the woods, you run away. You don't want to come face to face with the Ghost Pig of Effingham.

Stay safe out there, Maine (and New Hampshire)! 

Video Game Virus?

Happy New Year, MMers! We hope your holidays were happy and bright and you haven't broken your New Year's resolutions yet. We've got a bit of an interesting one for you today and it involves video games. This one came to us from Bill in Camden. 

How many hours did we spend on this baby?

In 1991 Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. It was a massive hit. Many of our readers have fond memories of Mario, Yoshi, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Final Fantasy, and many other classic video games. At the time, most games were still developed in Japan and then imported here in America. While we got plenty of the major games, there were still a number of games that never made the transition over to the US, including Final Fantasy V, Shin Megami Tensei, and Tales of Phantasia. Most of the time this happened because it wasn't financially worth it to import the games, but in the case of Dark Hour: Story of a House there was a far different reason.

Dark Hour was developed by an independent programmer, something unpopular at the time. In fact, so the rumor goes it was developed by one man, Mita Shuji, a former employee of Nintendo.. The story goes that Shuji made twelve copies of the game to share with developers at Nintendo. No one would ever talk about their beta testing of the game, but officials at Nintendo refused to give the copies back to Shuji. Several employees who played the game swore they would never speak about what they had witnessed, but did claim to feel sick afterwards. Dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and fainting were all common side effects. Reports even indicated that several of the people who played the game suffered from chronic headaches, mood swings, and general fatigue as much as six months after playing the game. In the end, Nintendo confiscated all twelve copies and destroyed them. 

Except, according to the rumors, there was a secret thirteenth copy that Shuji kept for himself. He mailed this to a random gamer in America, from a list of name she pulled from Nintendo Power magazine subscribers. According to the internet, this unnamed gamer received the game in the mail and assumed he had won a prize. He popped the game into his Super Nintendo and started to play Dark Hour: Story of a House. The game was in Japanese, of course, and he couldn't understand much of it, but he found he couldn't stop playing the game. 

He spent hours playing it, neglecting much of his personal life. He went to work, came home, and started playing Dark Hour. He stopped showering, stopped eating. He was wasting away playing the game. And when he wasn't playing the game, he was working on translating it. Remember, this was in the day before the Internet had really taken off, so this gamer, who the online community has named DGZ - Dark Gamer Zero (or sometimes just Gamer Dark) did most of this translation the old fashioned way, learning Japanese and painstakingly translating each line of dialogue.

We imagine it looked close to this.

No one really knows what Dark Hour is about. Most claim that the game starts in an abandoned house. The player wakes up and has to make his or her way from room to room. That's where the stories differ though. Some versions of the legend say that each room of the house gets more and more disturbing until the final rooms are so sinister that the player can no longer stand it. Other versions of the story claim that each room gets bleaker and bleaker, more simplified, more white space. By the end of the game the player is faced with the void and is left questioning how the house is any different than their own lives.

Either way, the stories all agree that the game only truly ends when the player is driven mad. The stories claim that DGZ finished his translation and made twelve copies of the game. He put these in the mail to twelve random people, then he went home and killed himself. 

What could get worse than this?

Whatever happened to the twelve English copies of Dark Hour is unknown. The story goes that each person who plays the game to completion is driven insane. Rumors have circulated for years that eight of the physical copies of the game cartridge have either been confiscated or destroyed. Each cartridge was labeled with a Japanese character for numbers 1-12. Only cartridge 三  (#3), 八 (#8), 九 (#9), and 十二 (#12) still exist. Several sources claim the game has been uploaded to the dark web, but a cursory (and really cursory; you never know what you will find - or what will find you - on the dark web) search did not turn up any hits. Still, the rumors persist that it can be found, played, copied, and shared if one truly knows where to look.

How does this game induce sickness and madness? Why would Shuji create a game to do this? And what is it really? What do players see in those final screens? Those are unanswered questions we may never discover the truth of. Video games are meant to be a fun source of entertainment, and for as much as some choose to rail against the violence in these games and their corruption of the youth of the world, it appears that is only true of one game: Dark Hour: Story of a House.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Fungus Deer

Welcome back MMers this one comes to us from Mary who lives in Wiscasset. Mary is a retired woman who lives alone and likes to spend as much time as she can outside, she loves power walking around her property which is set back a ways from the road, she likes to play in her garden, and has fun setting up feeding areas for the local wildlife. She has bird feeders, spreads out peanuts for the squirrels, and in the fall she goes and buys as many cheap apples as she can to feed the deer. 

One older buck has been coming to see Mary every year for years. She knows it's the same one because it has uneven antlers, one side is much larger than the other, she figures this is also the reason a hunter hasn’t taken him down yet, he wouldn’t make a very good trophy. However last fall when she saw the old man in the yard his antlers were even stranger. He had what looked like thick white cobwebs growing over his tines. The old buck was also stumbling a bit and seemed to have trouble biting into the apples. Mary thought he looked a bit drunk almost and was worried that the apples she had bought might have gone bad or started to ferment. Eventually the buck strolled off and she didn’t see it again until this fall. 

Picture of Mary's backyard/garden

Mary reported that the old buck showed up again, but the strange white cobwebs on his antlers had spread over his entire head, almost completely covering the deer’s eyes, nose, and mouth. He was acting even stranger than the previous year. He moved very slowly, had no interest in the apples Mary had put out and would just stare at her house. When a younger deer stumbled by her yard and the old buck was still there, it kept its distance from the old deer. As the younger animal went to eat an apple, the old buck sprang into motion and attempted to gore it.  The young deer seemed mostly unharmed but Mary saw that some of the white gunk from the old buck’s antlers was transferred to the other deer. 

Our best guess as to what the white substance looks like

Mary isn’t sure what is going on with this deer, what is wrong with it or if it will start spreading through the local population, but she is extremely worried about the whole affair and asked us to spread word about it. So if you see any deer with this white substance on them please inform your local game warden or report it to the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. Whether it is a fungus, a parasite, or something otherworldly we need to make sure it doesn’t become an epidemic. Stay safe out there Maine!