The Meat Suit Man

Welcome back, MMers! It has been  LONG time coming, and before we dive into today's story, we feel we owe you guys a bit of an explanation. In August we were surprised by the Feds showing up at our office. No, not the men in black Feds (unfortunately) but just your regular federal officer. It seems that we popped up on the radar because of a story we had posted and they asked us to turn over all of our research on the matter. We, of course, agreed and assisted with their investigation however we could. Because of their ongoing case, we were asked to refrain from posting anything new to our site. We're happy to say everything has ben resolved and we're ready to keep bringing you the weird stories from all over the great state of Maine. We want to state clearly that at no time was Malevolent Maine under investigation or accused of any wrongdoing; we were simply abiding by the guidelines we were given.

We have their permission to continue, we promise!

So, we're back, and we're ready to jump into a rather strange story we think you'll find interesting as we enter our third year of strange and weird reports. We're calling this one The Meat Suit Man of Harrison.

Harrison, Maine is located just east of Bridgton, across the aptly named Long Lake. A loyal reader, Martha Atwood, contacted us about a story she heard from her husband, George, who passed away in 2018. George had lived his whole life in Harrison and first told the story to Martha sometime around 1985. According to George sometime around 1977 a man named Warren Gray went missing. He had been something of a local pariah, shunned by many of the townsfolk.

"George said he was a smallish man, about my size," Martha told us (Martha Atwood is 5'5", by the way). "He never did anything wrong, really. He was just sorta different."

Gray wasn't well liked in town, with hardly any friends. He was unmarried, lived on the outskirts of town, and never held a real job for very long. There are no reports of any criminal behavior for any Warren Grays in the area, and we haven't been able to find a reason for the public shunning. However, the fact remained that he was quite the outcast.

"George used to say that a lot of people in Maine went missing between the summer of '76 and the winter of '77," Martha said as she Zoomed with us from her kitchen table. "A lot fo them probably just up and ran away from their problems, but he said a bunch of them, mostly big men, just simply disappeared."

According to reports from the Maine State Police and a thorough search of the Portland Press Herald, there was a marked uptick of missing persons cases. Malevolent Maine was unable to determine the size of the missing people, however.

As the story goes, soon after Warren Gray disappeared, a large man, heavily clothed started to be seen in the area around Harrison. "George said he was walking home from the Depot Street Tavern one night. It would have been around '78, I guess. It was after midnight and George said he came across a big man stumbling down the road in the opposite direction. George said he'd had a few, but the guy looked like he'd had a few of his own too."

The man was big, George guessed about six-six or six-seven, and he stumbled around as if his boots were made of cement. His arms flapped around. "Looked like a kid trying to get out of his winter clothes, you know?" Martha told us.

As George passed the man, he offered a greeting, assuming he was another late night carouser heading home after a night of drinking. The big man grunted a greeting that George thought was muffled, sounding like it was coming from beneath a scarf, despite the fact that the man only wore a large hooded sweatshirt.

It was at just this moment that the moon came out from behind a cloud. George told his wife Martha, and numerous other people over the years that he had been scared plenty of times in his life, but seeing the face of the man who he passed by that night was about the scariest thing he had seen. We'll let Martha tell it:

Artist's rendition

"The face was all scarred up, thick black stitches sewn everywhere. George said it looked like a Frankenstein or something. He said the eyes didn't match up, like they were too small or like the face was pulled the wrong way."

George Atwood didn't linger but broke into a sprint, trying to put as much space between him and the thing he had encountered. He would later tell his wife he expected to hear the plodding, heavy footsteps of the thing chasing after him, but he got home with no further altercations.

Over the next several months there are several other sightings of the creature. All of the stories are the same: big, heavy man, heavily scarred or stitched together. One of the men who saw the thing was Brent Carter, a local farmer who saw the thing walking through his fields one night. We were able to track down Mr. Carter, and while he didn't want to sit down for an interview, he did agree to answer some of our questions.

"I knew Warren Gray fairly well. We weren't close or nothing, but he had worked several summers on the farm. He didn't say much and wasn't much of an agreeable guy, but I'd had a few cold ones with him after a long days work. When I saw that thing in my field, I had no clue what it was, but it had Warren's eyes. I was certain of that much. They were swimming in that great big wreck of a face. They looked like they didn't belong there, like they were sunk deep, but they were Warren's eyes, alright. That's when I began to suspect something was up."

A few weeks later a group of young men came across the shambling man along a dirt road where they were out partying. They called to the man, but got no response, so in their drunken state they attacked him. One of the men, Isaiah Rideout grabbed onto the sweatshirt the large man wore and tore it off his back. He told us last week over the phone:

"Of course I remember it. Like it was yesterday. It was the weirdest damn thing I'd ever seen. There was a seam going down the guy's back and a thick zipper. Like the kind you have on a winter coat. It had come down a little and I could see inside of him. There was something else in there, someone else. Like a little guy inside of a bigger guy. You know what I mean?"

Is this what George Atwood, Brent Carter, and Isaiah Rideout saw?

No one was ever able to prove what Rideout saw, though when asked both Martha Atwood and Brent Carter agreed that matched the descriptions of what they had seen and known. Whispers began to spread about the Meat Suit Man and the stories quickly caught on.

Supposedly all of the missing people from around the area had been killed and their bodies turned into a suit of some kind, much like the Marvel character Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr. in the 2008 movie. Except the heavy suit of wasn't made of metal but human flesh. Brent Carter believes it was somehow Warren Gray. That the strange local pariah somehow tried to reinvent himself by creating a new man for him to walk around in. The fact that Gray was known to be on the smaller side only supports this theory.

The Meat Suit Man was seen only a few more times and disappeared for good by 1980. Some stories go Gray died, suffocated by his own suit. Others claim he caught a bacteria infection from the cadaverous suit he had made. But that's not what George Atwood believed. As Martha told us, George always believed that Gray had moved away. 

"He was never much of a people person and once folks started figuring out who this Frankenstein guy was, he ran off. George always said that the Meat Suit Man had gone north. Every time he'd hear stories about hunters encountering something in the north woods, all of those Bigfoot sightings and whatnot, he always thought they were Warren Gray, living on his own."

Is the Meat Suit Man roaming through the woods of Aroostook? No one knows, but he intend to keep looking.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Missing in Acadia

A lot of the stories we write about on Malevolent Maine are pretty dark, but this one is spooky for a lot of different reasons. So be warned, MMers, this one may disturb you.

Maine is a beautiful state with many scenic places to go visit. There are thirty-two state parks in Maine. There's only one National Park however: Acadia National Park. Our story starts there, but as we soon found out, it didn't end there. 

Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island

On June 12th, 2003, seven year old Nicholas Adams disappeared from his campsite. Nicholas was camping with his parents, Jim and Robin, and his aunt and uncle, Cathy and Sam Ferguson, and their two children, Billy, 6, and Amanda, 9. They were staying at the Blackwoods campground in Acadia National Park, hiking, swimming, and enjoying nature. 

Nicholas Adam, 2003

The kids were playing together while the parents relaxed around a small campfire. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon and they had recently come back from a hike. The kids were playing hide and seek with one another. Nicholas was the "seeker" and both of his cousins could hear him coming through the woods just behind the campsite.

Little Nicholas never found his cousins, and soon afterward, they both gave up and trudged back to the campsite, complaining about their cousin. Soon after the adults began to worry. They quickly searched the area around the campsite, shouting for Nicholas. They called 911 and Search and Rescue teams were soon dispatched. Over one hundred people searched for three days with no sign of Nicholas. Bloodhounds got two different scent trails but both of them led nowhere. Nicholas had vanished.

He remained missing until just last week. For eighteen years no trace of Nicholas Adams was ever discovered. There were no scraps of clothing, no bone fragments, nothing to indicate Nicholas had ever even been in the area. That changed last week when on July 19th hikers discovered some remains on Sargent Mountain, about six miles away from Blackwoods campground. The hikers found the remains in a rocky area, a stretch of the mountain that is quite steep and a moderately difficult climb.

They found one of Nicholas's sneakers partially hidden by a rock, the torn remains of his pants, and a single human tooth. Forensic scientists are still working to determine whether the tooth belongs to Nicholas Adams, but there is no denying the clothing is his: his initials had been written on both the tag of his pants and his sneaker. There were no traces of blood or DNA on the clothing. There is also very little wear and tear on the clothes. They do not look like they have been sitting on the side of a mountain for the past eighteen years.

The investigation remains ongoing and we'll update you as we learn more.

In our research for this blog post, we uncovered some interesting statistics. Every year in Maine about one hundred people go missing. California, on the other hand, leads the nation with over 2,000. The Adams disappearance isn't the first case of a missing person in Acadia National Park. There have been two other missing persons cases from Maine's only National Park and both of, though separated by over fifty years with Nicholas Adams' disappearance are strangely similar.

On August 20, 1983, three year old Bret Walker disappeared while hiking Cadillac Mountain with his parents. They were taking an easy trail, not taking the hike too seriously, just going as far as they thought they could with little Bret. At one point, both parents took their eyes off their son, just for a minute or two. They soon realized Brett was gone. Again, a search was conducted, no trace of Brett Walker was found. His parents were considered prime suspects but were later cleared by police. Bloodhounds were called in and led rescuers to a certain section of Cadillac Mountain, but then would go no further. According to reports, both hounds laid down on the ground and whimpered. They had to be dragged off the mountain. No trace of Bret Walker was ever found.

Anthony Stearns, right, 1956

Again, in July of 1956, five year old Anthony Stearns went missing while fishing with his grandfather near Bubble Pond. As with the other cases, Anthony simple disappeared. A fisherman several yards from where Anthony and his grandfather, Michael Stearns were fishing, told police that he saw the boy right around the time he disappeared. He didn't have any fishing gear and he asked the man if there were any bears in these woods before walking off in the opposite direction from where he had come from. That man was the last known person to see Anthony alive. An extensive search and rescue operation was undertaken, with over fifty volunteers combing the area where the boy was last seen. Nine months later, Anthony's body was discovered two miles from the shore where he had been fishing, in an area that would have proven difficult for a five year old to climb to, but one that had been searched multiple times by the rescuers. There was no apparent cause of death - Anthony had sustained no injuries of any kind. The National Parks Service deemed his death an attack by a mountain lion, though there was never any strong evidence of this.

Allan Dwight (middle) in 1995 with cousins after his rescue

There was one other case we found while doing our research and this is the one that began to turn us onto this really being a Malevolent Maine story our readers would want to know about. This one is pretty similar to the other three. In 1994, Allan Dwight went missing while hiking with his parents on Pemetic Mountain. Fairly similar to Bret Walker, in '83, his parents' attention drifted away for a moment or two and they realized that Allan was no longer behind them. They began a frantic search involving the park service and local authorities. Thirty hours later he was discovered, alive, tired and hungry, a mile and a half from where he had first gone missing in difficult terrain that would have proved all but impossible to a child. Again, this was a place rescuers had scoured earlier.

When asked what happened, Allan Dwight told police that he had seen someone who looked like his grandfather who had told the boy to follow him. They hiked off the path for what felt likes miles tot he boy until they came to a cave or a room of some kind, Allan wasn't quite sure. The boy claimed there were machines all over the floor that looked to him like, "broken spaceships or robots" and he saw weapons on the walls, though when pressed for more information about these weapons or what they were, he could provide no other information. 

He claimed that inside the cave or room the person he thought was his grandfather turned to him, and now his eyes began to glow, "like there was a lightbulb inside his head." The boy realized the person wasn't his grandfather and started to get scared. He claims the man told him not to worry, that he had been chosen, and that "though he had grown in his mother's womb, he was not destined for this world." Those are exact words that five year old Allen Dwight told investigators, not the typical fare for five year old boys in the 90s. 

Furthermore, Allan told police that the man had placed his hands on Allan's shoulders and squeezed really hard. That was the last thing Allan remembered and when he woke up he was alone in the woods just before he was discovered by the rescuers. Allan did have scratches of some kind on his shoulders, but investigators believe it was from a tree or a branch or perhaps something that Allan climbed beneath.

Police determined that Allan's grandfather, who was along on the trip but had remained back in the campsite, could be ruled out as a potential suspect. The grandfather had been in the camp the entire time, talking with someone in the neighboring campsite. Though he did tell investigators that the night before Allan went missing he had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He said he felt a man's hand clamp down on his neck and whisper something in his ear, though he couldn't understand the words. Then he was gone. The grandfather assumed it was just someone who had too much to drink, but he did have a bruise on the back of his neck.

So what is stalking young children in Acadia National Park? Could it be a coincidence? Over active imagination and wild animals? Could it be purely human predators? Perhaps, but here's where things get even darker.

It turns out that hundreds of people, most of them young children, go inexplicably missing from National Parks each year. In fact, there are over 10,000 unsolved missing persons cases just from National Parks all over the country, places that many consider to be safe, family-friendly places, maintained by the U.S. government. Many of the stories are similar to the ones we uncovered from Acadia. Some eerily so. Researcher David Paulides, in his book series, Missing 411 (of which at least documentaries have also been made), details many of these cases. In fact, the disappearance of Bret Walker is documented in his book, Missing 411: Eastern United States. These books are a little hard to come by, but any intrepid researchers can find them on Amazon, though be prepared to pay a hefty price.

In many of these cases, including the ones here in Maine, the police seem cagey, almost flippant about their investigations. They seem to latch on to the simplest theory and run with it, despite lack of evidence to corroborate said theories. Often times in these cases the FBI or the military is called in to help with an investigation. These are duties regularly scheduled for National Guardsmen, but in plenty of these cases armed active Green Berets have been called in. What might these authorities know that they're not saying?

As Paulides alludes to in his books, it appears that something paranormal may be preying upon children in our National Parks. Could it be that something has been here, maybe has always been here and that it or they roam our National Parks, occasionally taking children for some nefarious purpose? Perhaps - and this is pure speculation on our parts, here - perhaps that is why the National Parks were first established, as a way to contain and track whatever it is that is taking the children.

What is taking children at our National Parks?

Sobering thoughts, MMers. To date, the National Parks Service does not maintain a list of missing persons, something repeatedly called for by the families of the missing. Perhaps if the data were readily available, people might reconsider their next family vacation.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

The Stymwood Cemetery

 Well, we're halfway through summer, MMers. A lot of you are on vacation, traveling, checking out all the myriad sites Maine has to show off. Here's one more for you to go see! The Stymwood Cemetery in Elliot, almost all the way at the southern tip of the state.

The Stymwood Cemetery

Long time friend of the blog, Rachael Burgess (or RBSmoothe as she's known on the blog) turned us on to this little graveyard and its owner, Brenda Howard. Located just off the Brixham Road, Howard lives on a five acre piece of property that has been in her family for many generations, going all the way back to 1816. 

"My father was Bernie Lynch," Howard told us. "His father was William Lynch, and so on and so forth all the way back to Robert P. Lynch, who came here from Boston. This land has always been in our family, and all of the male Lynch's are buried here."

The plot of land was farm at one point, but a lot of it has grown over with woods now. The original house burned down in 1901. It lies on the far end of the property. The new house was built soon after, though it was demolished in the 1950s and a new home rebuilt on its site. This house, the house Brenda Howard grew up in and still currently resides has been remodeled a few times so though it's still clearly an older home, there's still a modern feel to it. 

The family cemetery, inexplicably called Stymwood is closer to the filled in stone foundation of the original house than the current one. There's a dirt road that leads almost directly to it, apart from where Brenda Howard lives. She has made a small parking area nearby where people can park for a bit and stroll through the graves, the earliest of which dates back to 1850. 

"People like to come by and look," Howard says. "It's a bit of local history. The Lynchs have always been here in Elliot and a lot of old timers still remember some of them. Plus, the legend doesn't hurt."

The legend Howard is referring to concerns now just who is buried in the Stymwood Cemetery but how they're buried.

Sometimes they come back

See, since Robert P. Lynch was buried in 1850, all of the Lynch men have been buried with the coffins upside down. This odd tradition dates back to the original Lynch's death. Brenda Howard's ancestor was fifty-four when he died. A horse kicked Lynch in the head. He lingered in a coma for three days before dying. He was buried on a Saturday.

They found Robert P. Lynch sitting on the porch of his house two days later, still in the clothes he had been buried in. At first his family thought they had made a mistake, but no, Lynch was still dead. They assumed someone was playing a nasty trick on them and reburied him. Again, two days later he was back. This time, quite by accident they buried the coffin upside down, so the lid was facing downward.

After that Lynch stayed buried. 

The strange incident was largely forgotten until Lynch's eldest son, Robert W. Lynch died of typhoid. He was buried in the family cemetery next to his father. Again, two days after his burial, the younger Lynch was back, this time in the barn. He was promptly buried with the coffin upside down.

Since that time all of the Lynch men have been buried in the Stymwood cemetery, all with their coffins facing downward. Not the women, however. A few of the early Lynch women, notably Robert P. Lynch's wife, Eustis, and the daughter of Robert W. Lynch, Elizabeth, are buried in the Stymwood Cemetery. None of them ever returned.

"See, they thought the Lynch men came back on their own," Howard tells. "For whatever reason, they thought that the Lynches has some unfinished business and kept returning. So they buried them with the coffin facing down, so they couldn't get out. That seemed to work."

Since then, twenty-nine Lynch men have been buried lid side down in the Stymwood Cemetery, including Brenda Howard's father, Bernie who died in 2011.

"Yeah, we buried dad upside down," Howard told us. "We had to."

Twenty-Nine Lynch Men are buried in Stymwood.
All upside down.

And it doesn't end there. Brenda Howard's husband died in 2015, though he isn't buried on site. Their eldest son, Brian, however is. He was killed while serving oversees in the Middle East. He too, is buried lid side down.

"It's just become a tradition, you know?" Howard told us. "Do I really think they'll come back if we don't bury them the right way? No, of course not. It's just what we do. What we've always done."

Feel free to visit the Stymwood Cemetery. Take pictures with the large sign that explains its history. Howard tells us that no one in the cemetery is dangerous. At least not now that they're buried properly.

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!

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!

The Wells of Lucifer

Here's a creepy one for you, MMers. Over in Hiram, the locals report a phenomenon that defies explanation. They call it the Wells of Lucifer and the citizens of Hiram will warn you away if you ask about it. 

The Wells themselves are a series of three holes in the ground, arranged in a loose triangular configuration. Each one is about three feet in diameter, about the size of an old well. Hot air seems to rise out of the holes. No one is quite sure how far they go down, but at least three hundred feet is the most current guesstimate. The origin of the wells is unknown, the landowner claims they just appeared one night in 1974. 

One of the Wells of Lucifer

But the appearance of these devil holes isn't what makes them terrifying; it's the sounds that emanate from the wells.

Their screams can be heard on the surface

Multiple visitors to the Wells have noted that screams that rise up from the depths. The stories claim that these are tortured souls, screaming from the bowels of hell. These strange sounds are no mere myth either, they have been reported and recorded  multiple times. However, the twisted screams seem to have physical reactions in the people that hear them. The most common is a feeling of slight nausea and sinus pressure. One visitor claimed it was like his brain had suddenly swelled and was trying to push against his skull. The longer a person stays and listens to the screams, the more adverse the reactions become. To date, the longest a person has stayed, leaning over the wells, hearing the screams has been just under five minutes. That person was hospitalized and later released.

We talked to several people who have visited the Wells of Lucifer and all of them agreed that the area had an eerie aura to it. They felt as if someone were watching them. They all agreed the screams, which start low, seemed to get louder and louder, the longer they stood there. In the end, each one of them stumbled away, feeling disoriented and sick.

We also visited the Wells, and can confirm their supernatural nature. We were able to lower some recording equipment down into the hole, about two hundred and fifty feet down. We were only able to record a few seconds of audio before our equipment broke. We've posted the audio below. Listen at your own risk, MMers, this is pretty scary stuff.

The Wells of Lucifer

Stay safe out there, Maine.