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!

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.

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!

The Son of Adam

 

Good Morning, MMers. We've got a Deep Dive for you today that will take us through one of Maine's most grizzly events. Many of our readers will remember the Son of Adam killing spree that gripped the state from 1996 to 1997. Here's a quick recap for those of you who need a refresher.

On July 2, 1996, at 11:30 PM, man walked up to Amy Camire while she was smoking a cigarette outside of a bar in Portland. He fired a single round of .38 Special into the back of Amy's head, then ran off into the night. There were only a few witnesses, and none of them got a good look at the shooter. Amy Camire was pronounced dead at the scene.

Several of the police sketches of the Son of Adam suspect

That kicked off a series of murders, all of them happening either late at night or in the early hours of the morning, with most happening between midnight and 2 AM. On August 15, 1996, Paul St. Cyr and his girlfriend, Christine Bouchard were shot in the head while sitting in St. Cyr's car. Bouchard was killed instantly. St. Cyr was taken to Maine Medical Center where he died on August 16th due to his injuries. Again, there were few witnesses and no positive identification could be made.

The killer struck again on August 30th, killing two young women, Jennifer Lachance and Lily Whitten, as they walked home from a party. A sixth victim, 24 year old, Kimberly Malley, was shot a month later while she sat in her car, after leaving a bar at midnight. Police believe she was smoking before she drove home. She was shot once in the neck and a second time in the head. This time the police found a letter from the killer left at the scene, placed in the victim's lap. It read:

YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTAND ME, BUT YOU DO NOT. I AM THE DARKNESS. I AM THE TOOTHY GRIN IN THE NIGHT. I AM THE ORIGINAL SON OF ADAM. YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT ME. I KILL BECAUSE I HAVE TO. BECAUSE I CARE. THE WHORES AND THEIR ACCOMPLICES MEAN NOTHING. ONLY THE BLOOD. ONLY THE SAKRIFICE [sic] MATTER. WHEN OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN DEATH COMMANDS, I MUST OBEY.

YOU CAANOT FIND ME. YOU CANNOT SEE ME. I AM THE BEAST WITH A THOUSAND FACES. I AM THE MORNNG STAR FADING AWAY. WHEN I LOOK AT MY WINDOW AND I SEE WHAT YOU HAVE MADE OF THIS WORLD, I AM SICK. I WILL REMAKE THE WORLD IN MY IMAGE. BLOOD AND CHAOS.

THE SCREAMS ARE THE LULLABY TO MY MOTHERS EARS. MOTHER MARY. MOTHER LILITH. MOTHER MAY I. SHE DANCES AND SWAYS TO THE MUSIC I MAKE. IF I MAKE HER SMILE SHE WILL LET ME OUT TO PLAY. 

I AM NOT DONE. I AM ONLY BEGINNING. DO NOT STOP ME. PORTLAND IS MY INSTRUMENT AND I AM THE COMPOSER. THE SYMPHONY IS NIGH. MOTHER WILL SING AND I WILL KNOW HER GRACE. 

I AM WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

I AM WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

SINSEERLY[sic],

MR. DEATH DEALER

Over the next three months, two more women, Beverley Lyons and Annemarie Wilcox were killed, bringing the total dead up to eight. All of the victims were shot with the same .38 Special. Police released several sketches of the shooter but differences in these sketches became apparent and speculation began that there might be multiple shooters.

On December 11, 1996 Portland Press Herald reporter Sam Wentworth received a letter from the so-called Son of Adam killer. Portions of it are printed below:

HELLO SAM!

I AM THE SON OF ADAM BUT I AM NO CAIN. HERE AMONG THE DIRT AND THE FILTH I WATCH. AND WAIT. AND DREAM...

...I KILLED THEM. KILLED THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE HARLOTS. BECAUSE THEY WERE WRONG. I WILL KILL AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN...

...IF YOU TRY TO STOP ME, TRY TO FIND ME I WILL KILL YOU. KILL YOU ALL AND DANCE ON YOUR CORPSE. I WILL DRIN YOUR BLOOD AND EAT YOUR FLESH.  SO GIVE UP NOW. BEFORE ITS TOO LATE FOR YOUR. FOR YOUR MOTHER. YOUR FATHER. YOU SON. YOUR DAUGHTER. YOUR WIFE.

-SON OF ADAM

The Son of Adam didn't attack again until March 12, 1997. By that time, paranoia and run rampant in the streets of Portland and the surrounding Maine communities. Many young women feared they would be the next victim. On March 12, the Son of Adam shot Stephenie Berger as she sat in her car outside her boyfriend's house. She had just dropped him off after a night out when the killer approached the car and fired a single shot. The bullet struck her in the top of the head, but surprisingly, Berger survived. 

Matthew Locke, the Son of Adam killer

Three more victims - Allison Roberts, Jessica Humphrey, and her boyfriend Marcus Woods - lost their lives in following months.

Eventually, on June 27, 1997, after almost a year of fear and violence, police identified 26-year old Matthew Locke as the Son of Adam killer. They arrested Locke as he exited his apartment on the afternoon of the 17th.  Locke was quoted as saying, "You found me. You found me. I'm Son of Adam," as the police surrounded him. Locke's arrest ended a year of terror and brought an end to the bloodiest crime  spree in Maine's history.

---

If it had ended there, that alone would have made a fairly horrific tale. Locke was found guilty of 11 counts of murder and sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences. For a long time, people believed the story of the Son of Adam killer was finally over.

That all changed in 2003 when journalist Sam Wentworth, the same reporter who had received one of the Son of Adam's letters, received a second letter from Locke. This one indicated that Locke would be interested in speaking with Wentworth, on the record about his crimes.

Wentworth agreed and set up an interview. Locke indicated during their talk that he had not acted alone during the killings. In fact, Locke claimed there had been at least three people who had actually pulled the trigger. Locke claimed that he had shot Camire, Malley, and Jessica Humphrey and Marcus Woods. When pressed, Locke wouldn't provide any names. He claimed he was worried about the safety of his family. 

Locke told Sam Wentworth that he had been part of a group that had met in Deering Oaks and had told him where it was they had met. Wentworth went to that area, an old pumping station, and found that it was covered with graffiti, much of it Satanic in nature. This led him to believe that Locke may have been involved with a Satanic cult and that perhaps they were the accomplices in the Son of Adam crimes.

Two months later, Locke mailed detective Chris Dawson, one of the men responsible for his arrest, a copy of the book, The Secret Lore of Magic, a book on Satanism, black magic, and the occult. On page 162, Locke had written in the margins, "SUN NOT SON." On page 197 he drew the symbol for an atom.

This led Dawson to discover something called the Church of the Atomic Sun. The Church, or CAS as it was sometimes referred, was a group who were dedicated to mastering the secrets of the occult. They believed that the Apocalypse was coming and that after it would come a new age on enlightenment. They believed that the Apocalypse was going to be an all out war between all the people of Earth and that only the strong and pure would survive the nuclear holocaust that would ensue. The cult was founded some time in the early Nineties by a man named Randall Perry. Born in 1970, Perry started his group by bringing together several other young people who were interested in the occult. They would meet in part of Deering Oaks Park late at night. They would drink wine, smoke marijuana, and practice black magic rituals. By 1994, Matthew Locke had joined CAS. Dawson was able to corroborate this with several members of CAS who had since reformed their ways. Many of them were unwilling to speak on the record about their involvement in the group.

One who did, however, was Bryce Harriman. Harriman had been a senior in high school during 1996 and claimed he would often go to the park to hear Randall Perry preach to his group. "It was all fun," he told Dawson in 2004. "At first, I mean. We'd get together, drink, get high. Perry would talk about magic and ripping back the veil of the world. We all had code names, either based on like old serial killers or Satanic stuff, you know? You know, the kind of stuff that an angsty teenager would find cool."

Of interest, was that he claimed Matthew Locke used the code name Berkowitz, the name of the Son of Sam killer, an obvious inspiration for Son of Adam. In addition, Harriman claimed that Randall Perry used the codename Cain, the Biblical first son of Adam.

He said he stopped attending CAS meetings when Perry and another man he didn't know, brought a dog to the park. He said that together, several members of CAS - most he didn't know by name - but including Perry and Matthew Locke sacrificed the dog, painting Satanic symbols with on the walls and floor of the pump house. This was a month before the first Son of Adam killing.

Bryce Harriman, 2003

Harriman also told Dawson that the Church of the Atomic Sun's purpose was to bring about the Apocalypse. They would play the part of Satan, who in their mind was a counterculture figure meant to represent the struggle against the oppressive society that had created such tension. They believed they could usher in the new era by instigating random acts of violence. This, they believed, would trigger a war between the races, which would eventually lead to the Last War, a nuclear war that would destroy the world and prepare it for those who would come next.

Harriman positively identified Locke as being a member of CAS.

In September of 2003, Randall Perry, now living in Vermont, was arrested and brought back to Maine.  Dawson was shocked to see that Perry resembled one of the early police sketches of Son of Adam. Perry was charged with murder. Before his trial, Perry was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide. He was found hanging by a bed sheet.

Randall Perry

At this time Wentworth redoubled his efforts to get Locke to talk more. In the wake of Perry's death, Locke admitted to being a part of the Church of the Atomic Sun and that Randall Perry had committed at least two of the murders. Locke admitted to being there, watching. He claimed there was still at least two other shooters, one man and one woman, though he would not name them out of fear.

In February of 2004, Bryce Harriman was found dead in his apartment in Auburn of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A symbol had been carved on his chest that some believe had a Satanic connection. Some believe the symbol is a backwards P and a lowercase b, the atomic symbol for lead, as in a bullet. Others believe it is an S for Satan, or perhaps even Son of Adam. There was some suspicion that Harriman's death was actually a homicide, though no evidence of this was ever presented to the public.

Sam Wentworth, the journalist who had first received a letter from Son of Adam, became convinced that Matthew Locke had been part of a Satanic cult that had orchestrated the killings. He believed that Randall Perry to be one of the shooters and that there were others out there who knew the identity of the others. 

With new evidence, the District Attorney re-opened the Son of Adam case, but no new convictions ever came from it. The belief was that Perry had radicalized Locke and together they had perpetuated their crimes in order to sew chaos and terror.

Here's an excerpt from Wentworth's book, Adam Raised a Cain: The Year of Terror in Portland: "Son of Adam. the Church of the Atomic Sun. It wasn't hard to see the connection. Adam. Atom. Son. Sun.  The police were happy with Perry's conviction and his death wrapped everything up nicely. Still, I couldn't forget the fear I had seen in Matthew Locke's eyes when he refused to speak of the other members. I remembered Bryce Harriman who had done nothing but name names of a ten year old Satanic cult and was now dead. There was more to this still uncovered. I was sure of it."

---

Wentworth would dedicate the next fifteen years of his life to uncovering what he claimed was the true story behind Son of Adam. Many dismissed him as losing his own grip on reality, going deeper and deeper down rabbit holes. Even Chris Dawson, one of the key architects in exposing the conspiracy killings, couldn't keep up with Wentworth.

"Sam was going places I just don't think the evidence pointed. He was looking for an answer, you understand? He wanted this grand Satanic cult story. He tried to drag in killings in other states, in other times, claiming they were all related. It was interesting stuff if you were looking for a story, but the evidence just didn't hold up under much scrutiny."

Wentworth was convinced there was someone else involved in the Church of the Atomic Sun. From the people he spoke with who knew Locke and Perry - none of whom would go on the record - Wentworth believed that it wasn't Randall Perry that was the head of CAS. He thought there was someone else, some shadow figure that had pulled all the strings.

According to his notes, Wentworth poured over every piece of evidence he could get his hands on. He remembered a line from the Son of Adam's first letter, mentioning Mother Mary, a reference many believed to be the Virgin Mother Mary, Jesus' mother, though some believed could be a reference to The Beatles' song, "Let it Be," of which Matthew Locke considered himself a super fan. Wentworth thought there might be more to it than just that.

Digging into both killer's pasts, Wentworth discovered that Perry had an aunt, coincidentally enough, named Mary Adams. Mary, a single mother, had one son, a year older than Randall Perry: Daniel Hunter.

Daniel Hunter had little digital footprint for Wentworth to follow. There was a report of an arrest in 2001 for shoplifting, but that was all he could find. Still, it felt a little too close to home to just dismiss. Hunter was the literal son of Adams, his mother maiden name which she retook after separating from Hunter's father, John. Wentworth became convinced that Hunter was the other man who had brought the dog to Deering Oaks for the sacrifice with his cousin, that he might be the mastermind behind the Son of Adam killing spree. 

Daniel Hunter had dropped off the grid entirely. Mary Adams, his mother, had died in 2000 after a battle with breast cancer. Wentworth was able to track down Hunter's father, Brian Hunter. Brian was a banker, now living in Ohio. He hadn't any contact with his son since Daniel had been twenty. 

"Things didn't end too well with me and his mom," Brian Hunter said in an interview with Wentworth in 2007. "I didn't see Dan too much after that. Maybe once a month at first, then less and less. I'd get a card from him on Christmas, send him one on his birthday, that kind of stuff. When I moved to Ohio, that was really the end of it."

Brian Hunter went on to say, "Dan was always a smart boy. Really good with people. Charismatic. People seemed to gravitate towards him. He was a good writer, too! He wanted to make comic books, I remember that. I still have some he did with his cousin back when they were kids. Randall? Hmm, Randy was a good kid, too. Quieter than Dan. Dan was the leader and Randy the follower, you know?"

Wentworth believed that it was Daniel Hunter who had been the mastermind of the Church of the Atomic Sun. Perhaps Harriman had misremembered, or all of the secret code names had been to distract everyone from the real leader. Either way, Wentworth believed that it was Hunter who had been behind all of the killings.

This was only reinforced when Brian Hunter sent him a scanned image of one of the comic books that Daniel Hunter and Randall Perry had made when they were eleven years old. It was a super hero story, a Superman-style hero, who used the power of nuclear energy to fight evil. The name of the comic?  ATOMIC SON.

Atomic Son comic by Hunter & Perry

That was all that Wentworth needed. It was the final piece of proof in his mind about the truth CAs. Daniel Hunter and Randall Perry had created the Church of the Atomic Sun to radicalize disenfranchised youth in order to caused death. He believed that Hunter, or some associate had found a way to silence Harriman when he started talking too much, and perhaps he had even killed his own cousin in jail. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to reopen the investigation again. The Maine State Police insisted that Locke and Perry had been the only two working together. They considered the Son of Adam case closed.

Sam Wentworth passed away in 2019 from lung cancer. He went to his grave believing that the true evil had somehow escaped justice. There were dark forces at work, he believed, and that true evil still lurked somewhere in the shadows. Many accused him of pushing a narrative that he wanted, as opposed to going where the evidence led him, but Wentworth never strayed.

Matthew Locke remains in custody in the Maine State Prison. In 2002 he was stabbed by an inmate in the neck, but he survived. He refuses to speak with journalists. He has released several videos, claiming he has reformed, renounced Satan, and is an avowed atheist. He will be up for parole in the year 2136, long after his death.

Daniel Hunter, if he is still alive, remains at large. His whereabouts are unknown. To this date no evidence has connected Daniel Hunter to the Son of Adam killings.  

Recently discovered picture of Daniel Hunter from his high school yearbook
and the police sketch from the St. Cyr/Bouchard shooting.

This might be one of the more bizarre cases in Maine's history: a serial killer, a Satanic cult dead set on bringing about the end times, and maybe a killer still on the loose after all these years.

As always, 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!

Arctic Cat

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

The Arctic Cat Marty owned back in the day

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

Sketch of the old man

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

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

Genius Party

Here's one that might be music to your ears, MMers. A sixteen year old minor from Falmouth (who we won't name for his protection) recently hosted his sixteenth birthday party when things got a little strange. The boy was acting as DJ for his party while his friends - other kids from his school - danced and cheered him on. 

It was at a birthday party just like this.

"I had the whole set up, my laptop, my Pioneer 4-channel controller, I even had my dad's old turntable, you know, a record player," the kid told us. "I had been mixing for a little while. Everyone was really into it, you know? I'm a really good DJ. I thought I would mix some of my dad's old records in. Like, the old school scratching thing."

After playing through various pop hits of the 80s, the boy pulled out a record he didn't immediately recognize. "It was black, right? I mean, they're all black. But the label in the center was black too. There wasn't anything written on it except, 'Adolphus Winn,' my great-grandfather."

Adolphus Winn was born in 1895 in Portland. By 1916 he had become an accomplished composer and musician. He released several compositions which had gained him some acclaim, but in 1916 he largely disappeared from public life. He continued to compose and record music by himself. By the 1930s he had fully embraced the new technology - vinyl recording.

Adolphus Winn's record looked something like this

What his sixteen-year old great-grandson had discovered was one of Winn's private recordings from his "quiet years." 

"I thought it would be pretty cool to put it on, maybe I could freestyle over it," the boy told us. "So I started spinning it, but it was all this weird piano music. So I thought, I'd reverse it."

When the sixteen-year old DJ played the record backwards that's when everything changed.

"They all stopped dancing," he says. "They just stood there. Then they... they just went crazy."

There were twenty teenagers at the party. Upon hearing Adolphus Winn's music played in reverse they froze for a moment before running around. They all grabbed for things to write with and started scribbling furiously. When they couldn't find pens and pencils, they grabbed whatever they could find. One boy used the frosting from the three tier birthday cake. A girl used a knife to scratch into the wood floor. Several kids tore into their own flesh and used their blood to write on the walls, floors, and tables.

"It was crazy," the teenager told us. "It was like they were possessed or something. They just kept writing. They couldn't stop until I stopped playing that song."

All in all, the episode lasted one minute and thirty-nine seconds before the plug was pulled on the speakers and the adults rushed to quiet the manic teenagers. As the music ended, they began to calm from their frenzied writing, but a new panic had set in. They could not recall what had been happening or what they were doing.

Like this if everyone was writing down genius level thoughts.

When asked about what his friends were writing, the aspiring DJ had this to say:

"I don't know. I couldn't see it all. [One kid] wrote a bunch of math problems, like crazy advanced equations and whatnot. One of the others drew like plans for some kind of machine. It didn't make any sense to me, but it looked advanced, like really complex. I think one of the girls was writing a play. She... she was using her own blood. She'd covered one of the white table cloths."

Four minutes after the music ended, the birthday boy says, men in black suits and cars arrived. They ushered everyone out of the room and began taking pictures. They wouldn't say what had happened or what the writings meant. In the end, of the twenty party-goers who had been affected, eighteen were sent to local hospitals. All are expected to make full recoveries. By the time the boy and his family were allowed back into their home, the entire place had been cleaned.

"It was like nothing had ever happened," he says. "There was even a new cake waiting for me. They  took my great-grandfather's record, though."

What exactly happened when Winn's composition was played backwards? Did it somehow inspire over a dozen youths to spontaneously create. Were they channeling some strange energy?

For now, no one is saying anything. The boy's parents did not want to be interviewed for this piece, nor did any of the victims or their families. For now, this will have to remain just another unsolved mystery.

Stay safe out there, Maine!

The Night at Crannog's Field

Crannog's Field in Unity has always been known as a bit of an odd spot. Owner, Sebastian Jenkins tells us that the big field has often been a gathering spot for hippies, college kids, and the occasional coven of witches. That's right, witches.

Crannog's Field, Unity, ME

"There's a group of witches, or as they like to be called, practitioners of wicca, and they come out every couple of full moons," Jenkins told us. "They dance around, do some chanting. No big deal. They also come out once every turn of the season during the day. They tend to dance in the nude, but, no offense to those ladies, no one really wants to see that, if you catch my drift."

Crannog's Field is a big clearing in the middle of the woods. You might not even know it's right there off the Waterville Road if you were driving through. The locals know, however. The story goes that it was in this field that the original Quaker settlers hanged three women accused of witchcraft. Ever since then the spot has been one of the more interesting locations in the town. "It draws a pretty eclectic crowd," Jenkins says, "but they're all pretty harmless. A little dancing, maybe a little drinking or other extracurricular activities, if you know what I mean. For the most part everyone just sorta leaves everyone else alone."

But this isn't a story about Quakers or middle-aged wiccans. It's a story about six people found in the field twelve days ago. June 5th was a full moon, but according to Sebastian Jenkins, the local wiccans weren't there that night. "The ladies had the night off," he laughed. "I don't know who was out in the field that night. I don't always check - like I said everyone's very respectful."

The morning of June 6th, the six people, four women and two men, stumbled out of the field onto the stretch of Route 139 known as the Waterville Road. They were naked, confused, and had no idea where they were.

The monolith discovered in Crannog's Field

"So far the six individuals discovered in Crannog's Field have been unable to tell us anything about their identity or why they were out there," Police Chief Bret Carson told us. "We believe they are telling the truth but at this time, we have no idea what happened in the field that night."

The six people all appear in their late twenties to mid-thirties. They do not remember their names or any personal information. No personal items were discovered in the field to identify them. In fact, the only thing discovered in the field was a giant stone monolith. The stone is nine feet high and appears to have sprouted from the ground. Both Jenkins, the field's owner, and several locals we spoke to agreed that the stone had not been there before. It is as if it appeared over night.

The rock was covered in soot as if it had been in a fire, but there was no trace of a fire anywhere. Written in the soot, near the top of the monolith was one word: Az'azouzis. This does not appear to be a word in any language and there are no matches on the internet for it. At the time of this writing, the meaning of the word is unknown.

The six people did not recognize the word, but according to Chief Carson, they all had a visible reaction upon hearing the word. "They shivered," he told us. "Like they were cold. It's June. It was 75 degrees that morning, but when they heard that word, they acted like they had just walked into a blizzard."

Who are these six? What were they doing out in the field that night? And what or who is Az'azouzis? If you have any information, you should contact the Maine State Police.

Do you know any of these people?

Stay safe out there, Maine.

The Reference Section

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

The USM Library

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

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

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

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

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

Stay safe out there Maine!