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!

Rapid Fire - June 2021

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

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

The model of table Bernie owns

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

A photo of Emily from last month

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

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

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

Is this a sketch of the Mad Splicer?

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

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Specimens in the Shed

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

Garfield Plantation in Northern Maine

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

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

The door was rusted shut, like this

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

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

Addie says the jars were similar
to this type

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

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

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

Reed Music

Eyes open, MMers!

It's that time of year, and we thought we'd pass on a curious story we had sent to us here, at Malevolent Maine. This one involves those swampy, marshy places that seem to pop up all over the place for the few months of mud season, sorry, Spring, but are gone by summer. Here's, Terry from Newfield:

"Those little swampy spots have always freaked me out, ever since I was a kid. My old man told me there were water moccasins in the water and quicksand. He told me about a kid he knew when he was a boy who got stuck in a quicksand pit and died. But that's not what freaks me out. That's just common sense. No, it's the reeds that gives me the willies."

That's right: the reeds. Terry recounts how as a boy he was out playing near one of those swampy patches that formed along the river behind his grandparents' house. He was staying well back from the actual water, remembering the lessons his dad taught him, when he sense something watching him. He looked to the reeds, thinking that would be a great place for someone, or something, to hide, but he couldn't see anything.

That's when he heard it. High-pitched, thin flute-like sounds floated faintly towards him. His first thought was that it was the sounds of the reeds blowing in the wind. But there was no wind; it was a totally calm day. Terry went back to whatever he was doing. Soon he heard it again, coming from another cluster of reeds. Again, he felt like he was being watched.

"It was like being stalked."

"It was like a song," Terry told us. "But not. It was like a madman's idea of what a song should be. It was like one of those backwards played song."

The song kept fading and coming back, always from a different cluster of reeds. It lasted for maybe twenty minutes, and the entire time Terry continued to feel like he was being watched. Finally, he ran back to the house.

He thought nothing of it until ten years later when he was out fishing along a marshy stretch of river. "I heard it again. Same weirdo music, same feeling of being watched." Terry heard it a third time when he was out hunting when he was forty-five. He never saw anything, but the overwhelming sense of danger always made him leave the area quickly. 

"It was like being stalked," Terry said. "Like one of those lion shows on tv. Except I wasn't the lion, I was the deer or whatever. And that music... I've never heard anything like it. It's... it's hard to even explain, but it didn't sound like it came from this world. Like it was something from another world or whatever."

And here's the part that really freaked us out, MMers. 

"It doesn't make any sense, but that weird flute music... it sounded like a growl."

What was hiding in the reeds?

Stay safe out there Maine!

Beware the Portly Man

As we near the summer months and the tourists begin to arrive, I feel the need to remind you all of the strange encounters many people have had over the years with the Portly Man. Each summer at least one or two people, native Mainers and tourists alike, report long unwilling roadtrips with a rather rotund, older gentleman. Whatever this being is, they don't seem to be malevolent, everyone even though they don't agree to go on the trip reports having a grand ol' time. However they are gone for days or even weeks at a time and at the complete mercy of the Portly Man. They say he takes them to wine tastings, art exhibits, small arthouse plays, and antique shops. Once he has had his fill of their company the Portly man often drops them off somewhere in the Old Port, and they soon regain their faculties and find their way home. Most people are uninjured and genuinely feel a strong connection to the old man, but they never see him again.

So if you are are spending your summer vacation in Maine this year please be aware of the strange danger/opportunity the Portly Man represents. He will not harm you but you will be away from friends, and family for an undetermined amount of time, while he takes you on his little adventure. If you would like to avoid the Portly Man, these are the types of locations he typically appears at:

1. Amateur Plays (Schools, Small Productions)
2. Yard Sales
3. Breweries and Wine Tastings
4. Portland Museum of Art (and other similar locations)
5. Antique Stores and Pawn Shops

An artists rendition of the Portly Man

The vehicle the Portly Man drives

Stay safe out there, Maine, avoid the Portly Man, unless you feel like having the trip of a lifetime!

The Pamola

Broccoli field in Northern Maine

Raul is a fairly accomplished hunter and outdoorsman, he's hunted all over the state of Maine and even taken several trips out west to hunt various game out there. Never in his life has he seen anything like what he saw on a grey Tuesday afternoon last October. Raul was out in the broccoli fields of northern Maine, he had discovered several years ago that it was where moose liked to spend a lot of time, and that was exactly what he was after.

It was getting towards dusk and Raul just wasn’t having much luck, he had seen a small bull but he really wanted to fill his freezer this year. But just as he was about to give up he saw a pair of large tracks leading into a nearby thicket of saplings. He quickly followed them, but as he did an uneasy feeling settled into the pit of his stomach, something wasn’t right about these footprints. The pattern of the footfalls was wrong for a moose, whatever this creature was, it only walked on two legs. Raul laughed to himself and was fairly certain another moose hunter was pranking him, or maybe these fake hoofprints were meant to steer novice hunters away from the prime real estate. Either way Raul felt like he had been duped. 

But luck still seemed to be on his side, he heard something large rusting through the brush nearby and when he looked up he saw the large antlers of a moose weaving in and out of the saplings just up ahead. The antlers were pretty high up and had a great spread, Raul guessed it was big enough to fill a couple freezers, and he began to stalk the beast, until he could get a good broadside shot on it. 

There was a clearing in the thicket as it opened into the path to the broccoli field and Raul hoped that the big bastard would wander its way out there. He kneeled down near the end of the thicket and got ready for when the moose made its exit. What he saw next was unexpected. There was the head, large, black eyed, with a towering set of antlers. But attached to that head was the long gangly torso and legs of a human man. Out of the back of this creature their sprouted two long blackish brown protrusions that hung limp all the way down to its knees. To the top of its antlers the creature was probably close to nine feet tall. 

A tattoo design based on the Pamola

Raul held his breath, lowered his rifle, and waited for the thing to pass. “It was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever seen, it was unnatural, I don’t know how many times I made the sign of the cross after it left” Raul said. “As much as I wanted to forget it, I couldn’t, I remembered its black eyes, I remembered it swaying back and forth as it walked, I remember those dead things sticking out of its back. I still dream about seeing it, and everytime I wake up in a cold sweat.” Raul’s obsession led to him researching sightings of this creature, and slowly he remembered his time in the boy scouts, when he and his troop had climbed Mt. Katahdin. “We climbed up Pamola Peak, and I remember as we stopped for water one of the dad’s told us all about this ancient Abenaki myth about a man with the head of a moose and the wings of an eagle. It was a Pamola, an ancient guardian of the land. I don’t know if what I saw in the woods was it, or some creepy imitation, but I don’t want to see it ever again.”

We did some research and we confirmed the mythology behind this sighting. It is in fact an Abenaki legend, although it is usually tied to the area around Mt. Katahdin, and where Raul sighted the creature was quite a few miles away from there. There is also the fact that the creature Raul saw had no wings, or at the very least its wings had decayed past the point of use. 

Either way, be on the lookout for the Pamola, and stay safe out there Maine!

Ticks, Black Flies, and Witches, OH MY!

It's getting to be that season MMers, ticks and black flies are out in full force. But are the pests accosting you just part of the natural season cycle or are you being targeted by disgruntled neighbors, coworkers, or ex’s? Reports have reached us here at Malevolent Maine that there is a coven of witches operating somewhere in Southern Maine. This coven in order to make enough money to pay for exotic supplies is taking orders for hex totems that draw pests such as ticks and black flies to unsuspecting homes. 

What a totem could look like

We interviewed someone who was a new potential member of this coven who ultimately decided against joining. She told us her name was Talia, but also said that wasn’t her real name. “Well I’ve always been super into the occult and alternative lifestyles, but once I was actually in with these people I realized how weird they were.” Talia told us about strange initiation rituals where they had to kill small animals such as squirrels and rabbits, and make trinkets and totems out of their bones. “It was pretty icky” she said, “I was really uncomfortable the whole time, but some of the other people were really into it.” Some of these totems would then be used to hold the hexes that bring pests down on unsuspecting people.  

What a totem could look like

The leader of this coven was known simply as the Betrothed. “When I asked why she was called that, I was told it was the highest title of the coven. It meant she was like literally engaged to marry the devil, like satan you know? And that sketched me out.” Talia said that after a few weeks she started trying to figure out how to get out of the group. “Eventually I told them that I couldn’t participate anymore because my dad was sick. He wasn’t, but it was the only way I could figure out how to get out of all that. They offered to heal him but it would take more than a few little animals, but I declined.” 

Talia says that if you are experiencing any sort of curse or hex be sure to look around your home/property for small totems made of sticks or bones, tied with hair or strips of leather. This is most likely the source of the misfortune befalling you. She also warns against joining any sort of occult group “It seems fun at first, and sometimes you feel powerful, but eventually they will ask you to do something you aren’t comfortable with. It isn’t worth it.”  

Check your house for these totems, avoid occult groups, and stay safe out there, Maine!

First Crinkle Face Sighting in Maine

Sorry to start the week with such bad news, but we at Malevolent Maine have been informed that the nationwide phenomenon known as Crinkle Face has made its first appearance in Maine. A University of Maine student returning from Spring Break has been taken to a mental health facility in Augusta after experiencing symptoms of the Crinkle Face Phenomenon. For those of you who are unaware, Crinkle Face is a phenomenon of unknown origin, it easily spreads from person to person, and eventually causes a psychotic break down which can lead to violent behavior. The person infected begins to see their reflection in a distorted way (we will include an artists interpretation below), then they begin to see others the same way, until eventually they snap and commit heinous crimes. It is unknown if the student at the university spread Crinkle Face to anyone else, but we will continue to monitor the situation.

Signs to be aware of if you think someone you know might be developing Crinkle Face:
1. Complaining about seeing odd things out of the corner of their eye
2. Avoiding mirrors or other reflective surfaces
3. Increased agitation or paranoia
4. Violent outbursts
5. Mutilation of their own face.

If anyone you know develops or displays any of the above symptoms please do not go near them and immediately report them to the authoritiies. Stay safe out there, Maine, don't get Crinkled!

Artist interpretation of what a person experiencing the Crinkle Face Phenomenon sees.

In the Potato Fields

This story comes to us from a new MMer named Andrea who lives up in Aroostook County. She lives in a small town nestled in a bend of the St. John River. Her family has always been potato farmers, and they plant fields upon fields of them every year. However she was always warned by her grandmother never to go out into the fields during the nights leading up to harvest. Andrea told us that she listened to her grandmother for most of her life and avoided the fields, until her teenage years when she and her friends stayed out just a little too late one night.

As they covered what was left of their bonfire for the night, Andrea parted ways with her friends and began to walk home through the potato rows. The moon was just bright enough for her to avoid tripping if she walked slowly. On her way home she was met with a whistling shriek, she stopped in her tracks as small shadows skittered in and around her legs. She panicked and began to run, more shrieks errupted as she ran. She stumbled and landed face first in a large mound of potatoes that had been freshly dug up. As she scrambled to pick herself up her hand found what felt like a potato but it had a strange leathery outer shell, and was warm to the touch. Upon picking up the object there was a symphony of shrieks and strange chittering sounds. She clutched the odd potato like object to her chest and ran back towards her house.

As she neared her house she turned back and saw several small creatures with large eyes following her. She quickly entered the house and closed the door. The next morning the only evidence of the creatures was the scratches on her front door no higher than her knee and the now cold object she had picked up. It wasn't a potato, nor was it a rock, she has no idea what it is but suspects its an egg of some sort. This was nearly twenty five years ago, but she still keeps the object as a reminder of her strange encounter in the potato fields.

Andrea sent us these photos of the object

If you are ever in norhthern Maine during the potato harvest, make sure you stay out of the fields at night, you never know if these little creatures will be around! Stay safe out there, Maine!

The Witch of Woodland Valley

Good afternoon, MMers! With summer rapidly approaching and the weather improving, we wanted to take some time to warn you about potential harm found in a seemingly safe hobby. As you may know, there is a disc golf course in Limerick called Woodland Valley Disc Golf. You may have even played a round there yourself at some point in time. However, what you didn't know is that there is an evil spirit that haunts the grounds. If you've ever played there, you may have experienced a chill crawling up your spine around the sixth hole on the Grizzly Bear course. The hollowed out tree that marks the hole? Well, that's not there by accident. 

Back in the early 1690s, long before Maine was granted statehood, a woman named Isabelle Houser was arrested, and later convicted, for practicing witchcraft. It was said that she used her powers to lure young boys and girls out into the woods, pierce their ankles with rusty nails, hang them from a tree, and slowly drain the blood and life force out of them until they expired. Many believed that this was Isabelle's way of staying young, as she was 102 years old according to local records, but she didn't appear to be a day over 70. Once she was convicted and found guilty of witchcraft, murder, and other unmentionables, it was decided that she herself should hang from the same tree she had drained so many children from. So, the noose was readied, and Houser was hanged until death. The locals decided to not bother taking her body down afterwards, as she "deserved to rot" for what she had done. Six days after Houser's hanging, the middle of the tree seemingly imploded on itself, leaving only the hollowed out trunk that exists now. Interestingly enough, the tree hasn't changed shape since those days. Some say that it has an impenetrable hex that can never be removed. 

After her death, there were numerous reports of strange activity in those woods. Some reported hearing cackling in the distance, others heard the cries of desperate children. If you got close enough, you might even be able to smell, even see, the fresh blood of innocent children dripping down the tree's bark. 

Britney Bernard in the Hollowed Tree

In recent years since the disc golf course's opening on those "hollowed" grounds, a trend has started in which players pose in the hollowed tree for a photo opportunity. In 2017 a local, Britney Bernard posted a picture to her Instagram of her posing in the infamous tree. Britney was found dead six days later, cause unknown. We tell you this today, MMers, to warn you while you are out in those woods. If you hear a strange noise, smell the scent of freshly spilled blood, or even feel something brush against your shoulder, you should pick up your disc and leave the grounds before it is too late. Stay safe out there, Maine! 

Black Dog of the Woods

Attention Malevolent Mainers, this one is serious. A report has come in from a MMer who goes by Greg, that he just narrowly escaped a malevolent entity. This man was driving on I-95 near a long stretch of thick woods when he noticed a large black dog getting dangerously close to the road. He pulled over and approached the animal which seemed friendly. The dog barked and moved towards the woods, often looking back at the man, as if to get him to follow. The man worried that the dog's owner might be in some danger followed the dog into the woods. The dog led the man deeper and deeper in, constantly looking back at him, his tongue lolling out of his head.

When Greg became worried that they hadn't found the owner after ten minutes he began to turn around and head back towards the road. As the dog noticed him turning to leave it began growling, Greg immediately back toward the highway and the dog chased him. Greg just barely made it back to his truck as the dog began tearing at his pant leg. He escaped narrowly with only slight injuries. As he looked in his rearview mirror he saw the dog's demeanor change once again from vicious to friendly as it went back to the side of the highway to wait once more.

If you see a black dog on the side of the road and you have the urge to help it or look for its owner, please use extreme caution. Before you get too far from your car, turn around and see if the dog reacts, if it does leave immediately, if it doesn't feel free to continue following the dog.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

Photo of a similar dog sighting from the late 1970's

Cinema Nocturna

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

Downtown Biddeford, ME

The way Chen tells it,  he had a buddy, Abraham were out drinking in Biddeford. They had gone to a few bars and sometime between 11 pm and midnight, the two found themselves walking to their next destination. 

"To be honest, I'm not really sure where we were. We were somewhere around the bridge, but we'd had a few and everything got a little blurry after that. We stumbled around for a bit, down some side streets. There's all these old brick buildings that have been turned into cafes and shops and stuff."

Chen and Abraham found themselves outside of a brick building with no windows and a dark purple awning. There were steps that led down to a thick metal door with a wire mesh window in the door.

"I remember it because that cover over the door. It was purple - like a real dark purple - and I don't think I'd ever seen something like that before."

Thinking it was another bar, maybe one of the speakeasies that have opened in a lot of southern Maine cities, the friends went down to the stairs and knocked on the door. They saw a pair of eyes peer out at them from the window for a second, and then the door opened.

According to Chen a tall, thin man dressed in a tuxedo stood in the doorway, holding a lit candle. "It was an old style tux. He looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie." The man's face was pale and thin, with deep shadows beneath his eyes. "He told us he had been waiting for us and was glad we had arrived."

Artist's rendition

The man ushered Chen and Abraham into a hallway and then into a room. At first, they couldn't see anything because it was so dark. "But as our eyes adjusted we saw that it was like a movie theatre. It was small, maybe not much bigger than like a classroom or something. There were old wooden seats set up in rows and we could there were people scattered around the room, sitting in small groups of twos and threes."

The patrons all seemed to be wearing black or dark clothes and we staring up at a blank, dark screen. The tall man ushered Chen and Abraham to some empty seats and told them to get ready for the show. He was back a moment later, offering the men glasses of what appeared to be wine.

"We were looking to hit up one last bar, but we found this little artsy movie theatre. We were just drunk enough to think this whole thing was pretty funny, and besides, we got some free wine. It was pretty bitter and didn't taste like any wine I'd ever had, but we thought whatever, right?"

All of a sudden the light on the projector came on and the room was filled with a pale light. The tall, thin man was standing in front of the screen.

"Welcome to the cinema nocturna!" the man said. "We are ever so glad you could make it. What you are about to see is an original creation. I hope it will grab you as it grabbed me."

Then he clapped his hands twice. The theatre went dark for a second and then the movie began.

Chen described the film to us.

"There were all of these creepy images."

"It was black and white. It was a bunch of random shots. Like, there was a a shot of a fox slinking through the woods. There was another one, like one of those time-lapse shots of a mountain like crumbling or eroding or whatever. There were lots of real random stuff. I remember there was a skull. There was a fire that died down, and then I think they reversed the video and it sprang back to life. I can't remember a lot of it. But there was this awful music playing. Like screeching violins kind of. Maybe some sort of weird flutes. And, here's the crazy thing, that music sounded like it was coming from inside the room. There wasn't a band or anything, but it sounded like it was right next to me."

Chen began to feel dizzy. Maybe it was the alcohol or the film or some combination of the two, but he started to feel sick. "My head was swimming. I felt like I was outside of my body, but also deeper inside than I had ever been. It was like... like being high, but not in a good way. Not going to lie, I started to get pretty freaked out."

Chen looked around, but everyone else seemed entranced with the film. He tried to get Abraham's attention, but his friend stayed focused on the movie. "I remember looking down at the wine glass and it looked like... it looked like blood. I pout it down on the chair beside me and stood up."

Chen told Abraham he was going to be sick and he needed some fresh air. His friend made some noncommittal response, and then Chen lurched away. He thinks he remembers seeing the tall man staring at him questioningly, but he admits that could have been a false memory. He staggered his way out of the cinema as the images continued to flash on the screen and the music kept blaring.

"The images were getting more and more disturbing. And that music just drilled down into my brain."

Finally after what felt like a long time, Chen crashed through the door and up the steps. He leaned against the cold brick building and breathed in the fresh night air.

"I don't know how long I was out there. I must have passed out or fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew it was morning."

But here's the real kicker, MMers, the brick building with the purple awning was gone. Chen was in an alley behind a coffee shop and a law firm. 

"I figured maybe I just wandered off. Like I said I was pretty drunk. But I've gone all over Biddeford and Saco looking for that building. It's a purple awning, right? How hard should that be to find? I can't find it anywhere. It's like it never existed. I've asked everyone I can about that place and no one has ever heard of the theatre or the cinema nocturna."

As for Abraham, no one has seen him since the night they wandered into the movie theatre. There's security footage of Chen and Abraham walking out of a bar at 11:17. Street cameras have them walking up Main Street. They turn off onto a side street, and that's the last anyone has seen of Abraham. At the time of this writing Chen has been cleared as a suspect, but the whereabouts of his friend is unknown. If you have any information about Abraham Baldwin, please contact the Maine State Police.

Abraham Baldwin, missing since May 16, 2020

We asked around and we have heard some rumors of an underground theatre, the cinema nocturna, popping up in other towns. Westbrook, Auburn, and Bangor have all had unconfirmed sightings of the underground arthouse. Several witnesses remember the tall, thin man, and one person, who wished to remain anonymous, experienced similar symptoms as Chen. Who or what this obscure theatre is and what its true purpose is, remains unknown at this time.

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!

Letter from the Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon's letter to Meagan,
reprinted with her permission

Stay safe out there, Maine.

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)!