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!

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.

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!

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 Insubstantial Earth

We need your help MMers, to solve the strange and tragic disappearance of Owen Avery. Owen was ten years old in 2010. He was just your average 5th grader, he loved Transformers, Pokemon cards, and Beyblades. However, towards the end of the school year he started to become more withdrawn and nervous. His teacher and the school counselor quickly suspected something was wrong at home, however the family had already put two children through school and there had never been any issues with them. When the counselor was granted permission to do a home visit by the parents themselves, they could find nothing wrong. The family was perfectly normal if not loving. 

Madeline Hopkins was Owen’s councilor, “The family was welcoming and warm, they seemed to care deeply about Owen” she told us.  “They were concerned with his recent personality change too. Finally we all sat down with Owen and he told us what he was so worried about.” 

Owen had recently watched several movies that featured quick sand including The Princess Bride.

Princess Bride Quicksand Scene

He was growing increasingly worried that he would be sucked down into the earth, never to be found again. “We all tried to comfort him”, Hannah Avery, Owen’s mother, said. “We told him that only happened in movies, that quicksand wasn’t real and that he didn’t have to worry about the ground he walked around on. But he just kept crying, it breaks my heart knowing that he was so scared, I just miss him so much.”

For the next few weeks Owen kept confiding in anyone who would listen that he felt the earth wasn’t solid. Bruce Avery, Owen’s older brother was one of those confidants, “I always thought he was messing with me, Owen always had an active imagination. He said that every step he took the earth would move a little, either shake like jello or  try to suck at his shoes. I didn’t believe him, thought it was just a game he was playing.”

School ended and summer began for Owen and his siblings. Owen's parents still had to work but their children were old enough to fend for themselves over the summer. Owen was still afraid fairly often, but being out of school and around his older brother and sister he seemed to be getting better, and braver. “We played outside a lot,” Bruce said. “We started to forget all about Owen’s fears, and he seemed to be happy. Every once in a while he would be following us and we would look back and he would be stopped or pick his next steps very carefully, but we didn’t think anything of it.”

Owen went missing on July 8th 2010, “We were going to go swimming in the pool,” Bruce said. “I was changing but I told Owen he could go out to the pool, but not get in until I was out there too. I went out to jump in, looked for Owen but he was nowhere in sight, the gate to the backyard was closed and the only thing out of place was a large spot of disturbed dirt like a big mole hill. I never saw him again.” The Avery house was pretty close to the road but the backyard and pool are completely enclosed by a fence. Could Owen have been abducted? Could he have been right all along, did the earth open up and swallow him whole, did he fall right through? Either way no one has seen Owen since that day in 2010. 

Computer render of what Owen would look like at 20

If you have any information about Owen, or the phenomenon he said he was experiencing please reach out to us at malevolentmaine@gmail.com. 

Watch your footing and stay safe out there Maine!