My Daughter the Telekinetic

Calling all MMers, we have a reader who needs our help! Everett from Saco has written to us that his daughter has been exhibiting some strange phenomenon.  Everett says that his daughter Clara is three years old and for the first couple years of her life everything was completely normal, but lately some strange things have been happening in their home. 

Who wouldn't want some Oreos?

We called Everett and he told us his concerns, “The first time I noticed it was with the cookies. We keep the sweets up high so she can’t sneak any, I mean this shelf is up there, my wife has to stand on a chair to reach it. And one day I just see Clara walking around non-chalantly with this huge family pack of Oreos. We know she didn’t climb on a chair because…”  Everetts wife Vicky who was listening on the line as well piped up at this moment. “We know she didn’t climb because not only would she not be able to reach the shelf by standing on the counter but to even get on the counter she would need to pull a chair into the kitchen all the way from the dining room. And when we moved we specifically bought heavy oak chairs so the kids couldn’t move them around too easily.” 

“But the cookies were just the first thing, I brushed if off, maybe the cat had knocked them down or something. But last week during our bedtimes after we had read a few books I kissed Clara goodnight and shut the light off and closed her door gently. As soon as the door was closed the light popped back on. There is no way she instantaneously got out of bed, ran over to the light and flicked them on. She had to have done it from her bed.” 

At this point Everett and Vicky got quiet, and I heard a sniff over the line as if someone was trying not to cry. “So you think she has some sort of ability that lets her move things with her mind?” “Yes,” Vicky said. “She seems to have some sort of telekinesis, we had to look it up, the word for it I mean. Its a rare thing but according to a few Facebook groups I found, it is possible.” 

What is the human mind capable of?

Everett took a deep breath and then said “We were just hoping you could put this on your blog, so maybe some other readers could see it and spread the word, or even if one of them knows how to deal with this sort of thing, you could put us in contact with them? We love Clara to death, but this kind of ability is terrifying, we just want to make sure she has a normal life, and to do that we have to figure out what to do with this thing.”

If you or anyone you know has any sort of experience or expertise with psychic abilities or telekinesis please write to us here at Malevolent Maine and we will pass on your contact information to this distraught family. We need you MMers, stay safe out there, Maine!

Unanswered Questions - January 2021

 

We're back with another round of questions we just can't seem to shake, MMers. Hold on to your hats.

• When did Billy the Bull Moose at the Clarkson Animal Preserve die? And why is he still walking around in the woods?

• Who put the human skull at the top of the water tower in Arundel and for what purpose? Several local witches and warlocks claim it's a component to a deadly spell, but who is the target and when will it go into effect?

• How can you be in two places at once? We don't know, but you might want to ask Tyler Lancaster in Freeport and/or Winslow.

• What has six legs, two heads, and razor sharp teeth? We don't know either but it's terrorizing the farms in Raymond.

• Why did everyone in Beddington have the same dream on the same night? And why were they all walking through that empty temple?

Keep asking questions, MMers. If you have answers to these or any unanswered questions, please reach out to us at malevolentmaine@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Arctic Cat

Welcome back MMers! We know our motto is: We believe you, but this one is a little bit out there. This one comes to us from Martin, an old timer up in Millinocket, he's  been snowmobiling up there for more than forty years. Marty has met a lot of people in his clubs, and on long rides, but one man in particular always sticks out in Marty’s mind. “He never introduced himself” Marty said, “we passed him on the trail one time back in ‘79, we stopped to talk but he didn’t seem interested in anything but our snow machines.” Marty tells us that the man spent a long time studying and asking questions about his Arctic Cat snowmobile. “I walked him through how it worked, he asked me to rev the engine for him, and every time I did he would shake his head. He muttered a lot to himself. Said he liked the idea but the sound was all wrong. Then he just walked off.” 

The Arctic Cat Marty owned back in the day

Marty didn’t see the mystery man again for several years. Although his white hair had grown long and lanky, Marty quickly recognized the man the next time he appeared besides the trail. “He was pretty easy to recognize, he's got this big hooked schnoz, one of his eyes was a bit wonky, and he had more wrinkles than I have now” Marty said laughing. “He wanted to show us his new snow machine, and boy was it a beaut.” It was similar in style to Marty’s Arctic Cat but was larger, and when the odd man revved the engine it sounded much different than your average snowmobile. “He was proud of it that was sure, he followed us down the trail all day, but he was still standoffish, he didn’t introduce himself this time either, didn’t really talk to us except to ask questions, wouldn’t really say where he got the machine or what made it sound like it did. It made this real guttural sound, like a growl, sounded like a howl when it was wide open, only thing mechanical sounding was the reverberation from the straight pipe he had on it.”

Sketch of the old man

But this wasn’t the last time Marty saw the strange man, “After he parted way with us that second time, didn’t even say bye, I didn’t see him for another couple years. When I did I was riding solo along the trail and I saw smoke in the distance. It was the strange man’s snow machine and he wasn’t anywhere nearby. Being the good guy I am I stopped and gave it a look see. But the insides of that thing weren’t like anything I’ve ever seen before, I popped the hood and under a sheet of metal there was hardly any metal parts, it was mostly this kind of fleshy stuff. It was warm to the touch and felt just like skin. If I held my hand against it for too long, I could feel this rapid thumping in it, almost like a pulse but faster than any living creature should have. As I held my hand there it gave a growl like I had heard when he was riding it the few years before. Scared the bejesus out of me, sounded like a cougar or one of them lions from National Geographic. Then I heard a shout behind me and I stepped away from it. There was that man coming down the hill with what looked like a doctors bag, and a bunch of tools under his arm. He shouted at me again, told me to get the hell away from his Arctic Cat, and I didn’t need more motivation to get the hell out of there, so I booked it.”

Like we said, this is a weird one, one that is hard to wrap our heads around, but it is our duty to give our readers the benefit of the doubt. Marty says he hasn’t seen the man since, but the look and feel of the engine of that snowmobile still make him nauseous to this day. Who was this man, what did he do to create that snowmobile, has he done anything else as weird or frightening, is he still out there? If you see a man like Marty described, please avoid him or approach with extreme caution. Stay safe out there, Maine!

Hero of the Iron Works

Good news this time, Malevolent Mainers! One of the most iconic employers in Maine is Bath Iron Works. Jerry has worked at Bath Iron Works for twenty years, “Usually as you are putting a ship together” Jerry says, “everything gets to be pretty routine, after a while you start not to think too much about the massive slabs and beams of steel that get moved around and put into their place.”  Jerry went on to tell us of one particular day when he and his crew were working on a destroyer. 

“I want to keep the other guys anonymous, because they might get unwanted attention when this gets out. But as we were putting this destroyer together I was up operating the crane to lower this massive cross beam into place so we could get it welded in. My crew was down below waiting for it to go into place.” Jerry paused here and took a deep breath. “Well everything was going fine but as I was lowering the bean into place I watched as the connection between the hook and the main hoist line started to stretch and then an instant later there was a massive pop as they separated and the beam started to free fall.”  A member of Jerry’s crew was startled by the pop and looked up to see the beam falling almost directly on top of him. 

Luckily for the man about to be crushed he was about to get some help from another member of Jerry’s crew. “Well I don’t want to use his real name, but Mike jumped up almost immediately to help. Now Mike was never considered the brightest bulb on the crew but he was a good guy and a great welder, I knew that he was just trying to help but I couldn’t help but think Mike was gonna get crushed too, and I couldn’t bear the thought of one death on my hands let alone two. Well Mike, that crazy bastard, as that beam fell towards him and the other guy, he jumps up in the air just about as this 2000 pound piece of steel is coming down on top of them and he just bats it out of the air.”  The beam ended up falling diagonally across the hull of the destroyer and the two men were safe. Jerry couldn’t believe his eyes, Mike had done a superhuman feat to save his friend and coworker. 

Jerry went on to say that Mike stayed with the crew for another few years but neither he nor the rest of his crew ever saw any other examples of superhuman abilities out of the man. With all the strange and otherworldly stories we report on, its nice to have one where the phenomenon seems to be looking out for humanity. Stay safe out there, Maine, and if you ever find “Mike” make sure you buy him a cold one!

The Auditor

We naturally get nervous around those people who have control over our careers, managers, CEOs, supervisors. Rachel works for a large insurance company in Portland, it's a branch of a major national brand. Every year they have an auditor from the parent company come in to make sure they are following best practices and to see if they can tighten up any processes. Well this auditor is the same one every year and Rachel tells us that the amount of nervousness and stress he causes every year is unnatural. 

Portland Maine

By all accounts this man is extremely nice, “I’m not sure why he makes us all so nervous,” Rachel said. “He brings in coffee and a big box of munchkins every morning for the week or so he is here. He never raises his voice, and is respectful of our personal spaces. He cracks jokes and yet we all feel this existential dread when he is around.” You might be able to chalk this up to nervousness about losing one’s job, but Rachel’s branch is never recommended for restructuring or layoffs, in fact they are often upheld as a national exemplar. “He never suggests changes and often even takes extensive notes on how we do things so they can replicate it elsewhere. But still no one feels comfortable around him.”

He can't be that bad if he brings donuts right?

Rachel told us of a time that a younger employee, a new hire, was alone in the break room with this auditor. “Stevie couldn’t even look him in the eye, he had a cup of coffee but he couldn’t even drink from it his hand was shaking so bad. The whole time the auditor just stood there smiling at him and drinking his coffee in small sips. After he is gone we all just feel so drained, management who get just as nervous as we do, relaxes the dress code and lowers quotas, so we can relax a bit. I’ve worked for other insurance companies and there is stress when one of the higher ups comes around, but never to this degree, it's crazy and weird.”

We reached out to others at this company that Rachel has asked us not to name here. Other employees at this branch and others all over the country opened up to us about this auditor. Everyone confirmed that he seems like a nice guy never getting angry or confrontational, always telling silly jokes and bringing in treats. He should be well liked but everyone is glad when he leaves and reports feelings of terror and anxiety in his presence. No one can explain why. 

Is he using some kind of psychic field to make people afraid?

Is this auditor human? Does he have some kind of psychic power or field around him that causes others to cower in fear? Could he be an emotional vampire? It is hard to tell, if you have experiences with this individual or another like him please reach out to us. 

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Fear the Fryzlwulf!

Watch your backs, MMers. Our most recent investigation brought us to North Monmouth, right off Route 202, along the shores of Wilson Pond. North Monmouth is a technically an unincorporated village, part of Monmouth proper. There are lot of summer homes around the pond, there's Tammy's One Stop, a gas station-slash-general store (and pizza and sub shop, don't forget), and Ray's Autos, though that looks like it's more of a museum to rust than a working mechanic. There's not much else, except for one heck of a whopper of a tale, going back all the way to 1963.

Wilson Pond, North Monmouth

Unlike a lot of the stories we investigate here at Malevolent Maine, this one seems fairly well documented. It started with a man, Juri Fryzlwulf (pronounced "Frizzle-wolf"), a Polish immigrant who moved to North Monmouth in the early 1960s. Fryzlwulf was a loner by nature, keeping to himself despite the large Polish community in the Monmouth area. 

On a few occasions, Fryzlwulf was seen running through his fields naked. This was usually in the late evening or early hours just before dawn. One witness described him as, "Naked as the day he was born. Well, that's not exactly right. He was wearing some sort of belt. It looked like fur. But he didn't have any pants on. You could see... well, you know. The belt didn't make much sense."

Many people assumed that Fryzlewulf was some sort of naturalist and as long as he wasn't bothering other people, they left him to his own devices. He might be a little eccentric, but he was mostly harmless. All of that changed in the summer of 1963, however. 

Edwin Simonet

Edwin Simonet was out for his early morning walk. He liked to be up before the birds, he said. He would walk the two and a half mile loop around his house, which brought him along Wilson Pond for about a mile. "In the mornings, it was just as beautiful as could be," he said. Simonet was a math teacher at Monmouth Academy, lived alone, and was well known and respected in town. He was forty years old in 1963, and when we sat down to talk to him, he was just as spry and sharp at 98 as the man he was half a lifetime ago. Here's Edwin:

"I remember that day just as clear as this morning. It was June 28th, a Friday. School had gotten out the week before. I have to tell you, even for teachers, summer vacation is like a rebirth of new life. The air is suddenly sweeter, the sky bluer. It's like while you were sleeping someone came and touched up the world. There's a weightlessness about late June and July. A sense that there is no evil in the world and there never could be. That morning was like that, like the world was free and alive and good. How wrong I was."

Simonet was doing his usual loop when he came to a particularly wooded area near the pond. He heard something then that didn't sound right. "It was a voice, a man's voice, but it was high and reedy. It was talking really fast, like he was trying to convince someone of something." That's when he saw something through the trees, a brief flash of skin.

Simonet couldn't take us out to the area. He lives at the Heron Pointe Senior Living Center in Monmouth, and while his mental faculties are still intact, he doesn't move around very well these days. Still, he was able to draw us a map of where it was, and true to it, we were able to find the spot easily enough. It's on the other side of the Plossay Road, across from Wilson Pond. It's pretty heavily wooded during the summer, a good place to hide.

The wooded area off Plossay Road,
where Simonet found Fryzwulf

As Simonet explained it, he saw that there was someone in the woods. He thought maybe someone needed some help and he went in. What he came upon shocked him. Seventeen year old Linda Williams had just finished Simonet's Algebra class that spring, so he knew her well. "She was standing there in her delicates.  Her clothes were in a little pile near by. She was standing there in her undergarments, her hands trying to keep herself modest."

Simonet said that Linda looked scared. Standing across from her was a man. He was naked save for a fur belt he had tied across his hips. 

"It was Fryzlewulf," Simonet told us. "No doubt about that." He tried to plead his innocence, but it was obvious to Simonet what was going on. He chased after Fryzlewulf but the man ran off, afraid to leave Linda alone, Simonet doubled back. 

The police searched for Fyzlewulf and found him barricaded behind the doors to his home. They arrested him and brought him to the jail. Linda Williams was not raped and claimed Fryzlewulf did not physically touch her at all, but her account of what happened was disjointed and made little sense. Here's a piece of he report:

"I... I went down there to swim. I was changing in the woods...it was a new bathing suit. a Two piece. My mom didn't know. That's when I saw him. That... man. Except he wasn't a man. He was... bigger...bulkier. His body didn't move like a man. So much hair. He... He kept saying, 'Please, please. Shhh. It's okay. Please.' And I saw... I saw.. I saw..."

There was very little they could charge Fryzlewulf with. The best they could do was indecent exposure. However, Linda Williams' father, Earl wanted to take matter into his own hands. He rounded up a posse of men and they went to Fryzlewulf's house. They jumped him and dragged him out of his home. Then they set his house on fire. Fryzlewulf went mad as his house went up in flames. One of the men, Brent Kirkwood recalled how Fryzlewulf almost threw them off and ran back into the house. "He kept screaming about his belt. How he needed his belt. How it was the only thing that could control it." Why the local fire department never responded to the house fire is unknown, though many suspect that Fire Marshall Carl Townes was part of the mob that came from the suspected child molestor.

After the house had burned down, the mob dragged Fryzlewulf to the woods where he had been arrested a few days earlier. There, they strung a rope up over a tree limb, looped the other end around Frylewulf's neck, and lynched him.

Things didn't go quite as planned though. Here's a report from Colin Hardy, another one of the men in the mob:

Artist's rendition of what Colin Hardy saw

"Earl was all fired up. We all were. Earl was a good guy. We all had kids. We could only imagine what that creep would have done to our kids if he caught them. Anyways, Earl was screaming and cursing him - Fryzlewulf, I mean - and the guy was just dangling there at the end of the rope. I had never seen a man die before, but Earl was a little older. He had been to Korea. But there he was twitching and jerking at the end of the rope, and the sun was going down. And I swear this is the God's honest truth, just as the sun went down all the way, Fryzlewulf's body started to twist and turn. Not like it had been. Like he was changing."

In the end seven of the fifteen men came forward and admitted their part of in the attack. To a man, every single one of them told the same story. All of these are on record at the Monmouth Police station. Fryzlewulf's body began to change. It lengthened in place. Bones cracked and regrew at different angles, skin split open and thick, coarse hair, fur, grew. HIs face shattered and turned more lupine. The creature at the end of the rope was half man, half wolf.

When the transformation was complete, the wolf-thing, snapped the rope around its neck. It snarled at the men and took a swipe at Earl Williams. slicing him across the belly. He would later be treated at the local hospital where he received twenty-three stitches. The medical records are private of course, but there are plenty examples of photographs showing the four slashes across his stomach. Then the creature that had been Fryzlewulf ran off.

Juri Fryzlwulf was never seen again. With no one to press charges, the men of the mob were not charged with anything. Again, the Police Chief happened to be a friend of Earl Williams. However, as previously stated the seven men who came forward with their stories of what happened, did so after several days. Many of the men said they could not live keeping secret what they saw.

The story of the Fryzlwulf does not end there, however. Over the next six decades the stories of a werewolf in the woods around Wilson Pond are regular occurrences. There have been multiple stories of mutilated deer found in the woods. Dogs and cats have gone missing; they're often found weeks later torn and shredded apart. In the late 80s there was three separate cases of people being attacked by a "tall, wolf-like creature." Game cameras, placed by hunters, have picked up several unexplainable images. The Fryzlwulf is described as standing over seven feet tall, with dark or black fur. It has the head of a wolf and human-like body. It runs on both two legs and four, and each appendage ends with a series of sharp claws.

Actual game cam footage from 2015

If Fryzlwulf is some sort of lycanthrope, he would be almost one hundred years old at this point. Still, the stories of Fryzlwulf roaming the woods have persisted. The beast is considered dangerous and should not be approached. As any long-timer in North Monmouth will tell you, when the moon is full, stay inside, lock your doors, and pray for no midnight visitors.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

The Reference Section

There are a lot of terrible people out there, and those who have dealt with a life of suffering at the hands of bullies, abusers, and just general jerks, can easily spot someone who is dealing with the same situations they have been in. Grace Vickery was a student at USM in the early 2000’s and the library on campus was her sanctuary. She had always been a shy girl, and although she had plans to get out of her shell in college she had never found her crowd. So she kept to herself mostly either doing her school work or reading fantasy novels. Either way she was in the library a lot, and formed a close bond with the assistant librarian there who’s name was Mr. Davis.  Her junior year however her safe space was invaded by a group of athletes who were on the verge of being put on academic probation and had set up camp in the library to make themselves at least appear like they were doing something. 

The USM Library

The boys and their girlfriends weren’t just rowdy, whenever Grace walked by they would whisper under their breath and then laugh once they felt she was far enough away. One time a large football player pushed back his chair at just the right time to bump into Grace and she ended up falling to the ground and losing all the papers and books she had been carrying. They all made a big show of helping her up, but “they were snickering the whole time” Grace said. “It was so disheartening, it was the one place I felt at home there, I wasn’t bothering anyone, but as soon as they started coming there I felt like they zeroed in on me as the butt of their joke. One day I just couldn’t take it anymore so I headed deep into the reference section, just so I wouldn’t be near any of them, and so I could have a good cry. I thought I was alone but Mr. Davis came out of the rows and put his hand on my shoulder ‘Don’t let them bother you too much Grace’ he said, ‘they’re insignificant, no better than dumb oxes, and far more useless’.” “I laughed through my sobs,” Grace said, “Mr. Davis sat with me a while and said that the next time he saw them doing something to me he would ban them from the library forever. I got a little nervous at that, I thought it would only make it worse, so I told him not to worry, that I could deal with it. He just nodded and told me if I needed anything to let him know.”

The bullying went on however and as finals week approached Grace was worried that she wasn’t in the right mental state to study and pass all her finals. She cocooned herself in a cozy corner of  the reference section far away from her antagonizers.

“Next time I saw Mr. Davis back there, he asked if things had gotten worse. I told him no it was about the same, I just couldn’t deal with it and study at the same time. He stood up and motioned for me to follow him. He led me through rows upon rows of books, left turns, right turns, I almost lost track of where I was. In the furthest corner of the reference section he stopped, and pointed down a dimly lit row that was filled with dusty books. ‘There are ways of getting even Grace, ways to make people like that regret how shitty they are.’ I didn’t know what to say but was intrigued by the books so I followed him down the aisle. ‘It takes some studying but I know you are good at that’ he smiled, ‘but maybe one day one of them has a freak accident, one comes down with an illness, one is mauled by a rabid dog. These are things we can do with the right words, the right books.’ I can tell you that I was a little disturbed by what he said, but I can’t say it wasn’t appealing to me. To make these assholes pay for treating me like crap all the time, that was something I could get behind.”

Grace tells us that she spent probably an hour going through that section with Mr. Davis, exploring the old books. “Most didn’t have titles, at least not on the cover. When you opened them up a lot were in this weird script that I still haven’t been able to identify. It wasn’t Latin, I studied Latin, it didn’t appear to be Arabic, or a system of language like Japanese or Chinese. I was at a loss and still am.” Grace describes some books as bound in this thin paper like leather, that looked as though it had blue veins running through it, other books had blood stained pages. “All the while we were back there Mr. Davis talked about me joining some sort of exclusive group, one with power, one with the ability to shape the world. But I just couldn’t do it, it all sounded so wrong. I thanked him, but said it wasn’t for me, those people would change eventually or they wouldn’t, I didn’t have to be around them forever, and at the end of the day they meant nothing to me. I wasn’t going to waste however many years it would take to learn whatever it was Mr. Davis was offering just to get back at people that ultimately don’t matter. I still remember that language though, and the feel of the books, some days I regret rejecting him, knowing a spell or two would have been cool, but I also know if I had gone down that path I would have lost something of myself.”

If you are at USM in the library, although Mr. Davis is long gone, perhaps you too can find this hidden batch of books in the back. We do warn you about the dangers of delving into the dark arts however. 

Stay safe out there Maine!