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.

Alien Research Facility

Welcome back MMers! We were recently approached by a freelance journalist who said she had a scoop on something big going on up in Calais. This journalist who wanted to go by Nadia, said that she had been undercover at this secret government facility right on the border between Maine and Canada. She said that one of the things being investigated at this facility was alien life. 

Nadia recounted her experience to us, “Before I became a journalist I got my bachelors in Biomedical Engineering, sadly some family issues brought be back home to Calais, and I started working on my blog to pay the bills. I had heard rumors of this strange top secret government facility from the old timers in town. And after a few weeks of investigation I managed to get myself a position their based on my history in biomedical engineering.” 

“Security was tight, we couldn’t have personal phones, but I managed to sneak it in a few times. In order for it to seem less conspicuous I downloaded tiktok on it, and would do the popular dances in front of things I wanted to record. I felt like an idiot doing the renegade in front of tank full of weird tentacles, but I did it so that if they eventually caught me I could play it off as just being a dumb kid you know, someone who was a little airheaded and cared more about social media than keeping my job at a government lab.” 

What Nadia says the tanks looked like 

Nadia says that eventually her tiktoks were found out and she was forced to leave. “They took my phone, which sadly had all the evidence on it, because the lab is on a disconnected network and wouldn’t let me post to the internet from inside. They interrogated me for a week down there, kept me in a holding space until they were sure I wasn’t a foreign agent of some sort. They terminated me and then eventually let me go back to my home without my phone or any reasonable evidence.”

If we have a facility like this in our own backyard, I can’t imagine what other shady things the government is up to. We would like to thank Nadia for her dedication in discovering the truth. Watch out for big brother, and don’t let the aliens bite, stay safe out there, Maine!

The Meadow People

Stories of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and faeries have been spread by humans for thousands of years. What about small humanoid creatures fascinates us? This story comes to us from MMer Anna who wants to help her mother Alice share her story about the miniature people she has taken care of for years. 

Starks Maine, located in Somerset County

Alice lives in Stark Maine, a haven for people of a naturalistic mentality, it is a place best known for its steps to legalize marijuana before it was a popular stance. Alice and her husband Charlie built a homestead in the hills near Stark nearly fifty years ago, and their cozy home oversees a large lush meadow.  Alice and Charlie were always very conscientious about their impact on the natural world, they only took what they needed and they tried their best to be self-sufficient. They composted, recycled, reused, and if they cut down a tree they used every part of it, thanks to Charlie’s skill as a woodworker and carver. Charlie passed away around ten years ago and for many years Alice couldn’t bring herself to go into his workshop. 

One time after a heavy rain that flooded the meadow down the hill from their home, Alice heard strange almost musical noises coming from Charlie’s old workshop. She peeked her head in and saw among the cobwebs and old woodworking tools several creatures no more than 7 or 8 inches tall. They had oblong heads, long necks, and a spindly torso and limbs. They were gathered around even smaller figures and seemed to be keeping them warm in the chilly and moist morning air. When Alice pushed the door open to get a better look the hinges squeaked and the creatures scattered to the darkest corners of the workshop. 

Over the next few years Alice gradually built a rapport with the creatures, leaving food scraps in the shed, and leaving small pieces of fabric from her knitting projects in there. Alice is slowly losing the fight of aging, she is finding it hard to move around as much now due to arthritis, and her glaucoma grows worse month by month. She says soon her family is going to make her move from her idyllic Stark home, closer to her daughter so they can take better care of her. But all Alice worries about is the little meadow people who live near her. She doesn’t want to leave until she is sure they will be taken care of. 

Alice asks us to inform everyone we can about the existence of the meadow people and tell them to check sheds, outbuildings, barns, and workshops for them and to try to help them out whenever they can. 

Help save the meadow people, and 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!

Le Chatouilleur

 Bonjour, MMers! We come with you today with a story out of Belfast. Have you ever heard the tale of “Le Chatouilleur”? It’s a story that’s circulated around Belfast for decades, but recently has gained some serious traction.

Maurice Plumes was born in 1913 and even from a young age was a bit odd. He stared at things for too long, often going hours without moving or speaking. For the first four years of his life his parents thought he was suffering from a mental deficiency. That turned out not to be the case, but perhaps there was something to his parents' initial suspicions that something was off about their son.

In grade school Maurice would often get in trouble for tickling other students. In the middle of class he would reach forward and lightly brush his fingers across some unsuspecting student's neck, causing a gasp or a shiver. Other times he would dig his fingers into their rips or the small of their back, making them jump and howl. Teachers reminded Maurice to keep his hands to himself, but his tickling got so bad he was once sent home from school.

He eventually grew up and got a job in the Fanghorn Textile Mill, specializing in making quilts. He was still known for his tickling. He'd often sneak up behind a distracted co-worker and tickle the back of his knee or reach around and dig deep into the belly. He soon found that the feathers from the quilts made excellent tickling tools, and would always keep one or two in his pocket to tickle the ear of some caught off guard worker. It was mostly harmless, and those close to Maurice just assumed he was an eccentric guy.

We reached out to his granddaughter, Amelia Plumes, to see what she had to say about the story. “Pepere Maurice, well, he was always so nice to us. He would give us, me and my three siblings, a dollar apiece and send us down to the corner store to buy whatever we wanted. As kids we would sleep over their house a lot. Pepere and Memere had the most comfortable down blankets and pillows - I think he got them from when he worked in the factory. But You always had to be careful around Pepere Maurice though. If he caught you walking by, not paying attention he'd reach out and tickle you real quick. It was good fun when we were little, but it got more annoying as we grew up.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would wake up because something was tickling my feet, and there would be Pepre Maurice standing at the end of my bed with one of his big, white feathers, and a huge smile on his face. I know that sounds creepy, but it wasn't. I mean, it was just Pepere, you know? Grandfathers like to play silly games with their grandkids. Right?"

As he got older, Pepere Maurice (as he came to be known by all) would walk around the neighborhood, one feather tucked in his shirt pocket. If he saw anyone in the summer without their shoes on, he'd lean in and whisper. "Oooh, watch those tootsies and footsies or le chatouilleur will get them." Some kids played along, others were scared.

Ben Downs, who grew up three houses down from Pepere Maurice remembers those warnings clearly. "He was old, by then. This would have been 1990 or 91, so he had to be like almost eighty, right? He'd just come down the street. He walked like everyday, I remember that. He'd walk by and if you were out on the sidewalk or your lawn and he saw you didn't have shoes, he'd whisper that tootsies and footsies thing. He always had this smile, you know? At first it was like, oh he's just a kind old man - Pepere Maurice, right? But after awhile you noticed that it didn't look right. I don't know how to describe it, but it was like he wasn't really smiling, just wearing like a Halloween mask of a smile. Do you know what I mean? I started wearing shoes all the time in the 90s. Outside, inside, it didn't matter. I was convinced Le Chatouilleur would get me. I didn't even know what that was until I took French in high school. I thought it was some kind of monster."

Le Chatouilleur. The Tickler. 

Diane Lachance was Maurice's neighbor for thirty-five years. "They were nice people, Cindy and Maurice. At least, I thought so. I woke up one night and Maurice was in my room. I lived by myself ever since my Robert passed. He was standing there at the foot of my bed and he had this long white thing in his hand. It was a feather and he was running it up and down the soles of my feet. It was dark, and all I could see was that big smile. It stretched too far, like a clown. I didn't scream, but I sat up in bed and said, 'Maurice what are you doing here?' I think I was more confused than scared. He took a step backwards, blending in with the shadows so all I could see was that weird grin and the big feather. I heard him whisper, 'Tootsies and footsies,' real low. Then he was gone. The next morning I thought it must have been a dream because when I left the house to go to work, there was Maurice, watering the flowers. He waved and said good morning just like nothing had happened."

Le Chatouilleur made several more midnight appearances over the years. Several children reported boogey men and monsters in their rooms, with big teeth and a long white fingers who tried to grab their legs. Parents just assumed it was typical kid stuff. Said one man we talked to, who had small children back in the early 2000s, "I wish we had known, you know? We just thought it was normal boogeyman stuff. I used to be afraid of a monster under my bed, I assumed it was just that, you know? Looking back, knowing what I know now, yeah I would have done things differently."

Maurice Plumes died in 2011, two years shy of his 100th birthday. He is buried in the local cemetery. His grave reads, "Beloved Husband, Father, Pepere."

But the story of Le Chatouilleur doesn't end there. In 2015 a young woman renting her first apartment in the neighborhood awoke to a man standing at the foot of her bed. "The blankets were off," the woman, who wished not be identified told us. "I wasn't wearing... I mean, I was sleeping, so I had on a tank top and sleep shorts. It was hot, so I must have kicked all the blankets off. He was standing there, this big, huge smile on his face - like, I think they describe it in books as wolfish. He had this feather in his hand and he was tickling my feet. I don't know how long he was standing there before I woke up, but he was whispering, 'Tootsies and footsies. Tootsies and footsies.' Over and over again."

The woman screamed and jumped out of bed. She called the police but there was no sign of the man anywhere in her apartment, no sign anyone but the woman had been in the house at all. They did find one single white feather beneath her bed, but there was no indication that this had been brought in by an assailant.

Over the years reports of La Chatouilleur popped up from time to time. They were always unexplained, always accompanied by a single white feather left behind. They were written off as nightmares, but the long time locals knew. 

"Pepere Maurice," Ben Downs said. "I mena, I was all grown up and moved away by then, but I heard stories. My mom told me about some of them. I knew right away what it was. I mean, I'm not saying he ever tickled me, but I knew kids, right? I knew Pepere Maurice did that stuff. We all did. And no one did anything."

"My grandfather was a good man," Amelia Plumes told us. "He liked to tickle. It was fun and games, you know? My husband loves to play hide and seek with our kids. Some people like to sing songs or do puppet shows or whatever. Pepere Maurice was a tickler. He would never hurt anyone. He was just a tickler."

Stay safe out there, Maine. 

Watch those "tootsies and footsies"!

Rapid Fire - May 2020

 Eyes open, MMers!

This week, we've got a ton of smaller, one-hit stories, we've gathered from our loyal readers. We're coming at you rapid fire! Let's dive right in.

• Tina up near Presque Isle spotted a UFO flying over the Walmart on Route 163. It was a cluster of three lights, moving in erratic motions in the sky. It moved too fast to be a plane or a helicopter, darting first left, then right, then up. She  watched the craft for about five minutes before it suddenly stopped moving completely. It stayed for just a second before flying off. "It moved so fast it practically disappeared," Tina writes.  Definitely fits the mold of a typical Tri-clipper. Any else spot this space craft? Let us know.

What did Tina see?

• Bruce spotted a large, hairy creature in the woods around his camp in Whitneyville. He was out hunting when he heard some strange grunting and growling sounds that he couldn't identify. He followed a trail that led to a stream. There he saw the remains of an animal he identified as a deer. It had been ripped apart, as if by an animal. He spotted the creature he believed had killed the deer. It was "large, bigger than a man, and up on two feet." Sure sounds like Bigfoot to us. Keep your eyes on the woods up in Whitneyville!

• Clara, who only wanted to be identified as living in Franklin Country, sent us the story of the grave of an unknown soldier from the War of 1812. The grave is in a small family plot on Clara's property and every spring she heads out to clear up the little cemetery. For the past five years, she's talked about some sort of stain on the stone that is spreading. No matter what she does, how she scrubs it away, it always comes back a little bigger. Well, this year she was finally able to make out what shape the strange shape was forming. Turns out it's a gentleman's hat. The strange part? Clara tells us that int he early part of the Nineteeth Century, there was a haberdasher (that's a hat maker for you laymen) located on the property where she now lives. Connections? We'd say yes.

  

  How about a close up next time, Clara?

  
  

• We had another sighting of Saco River Sara. That's the fifth one this year. Maybe someone should head up Fryburg and burn some sage. 

• Have you ever heard of a ghost bridge? We hadn't either. That is until Don from Turner sent us this curious story. He claims he was driving along a stretch of Route 4 one foggy evening. Don tells us he's driven that stretch dozens, maybe hundreds of times, but this night was different. All of a sudden, Don felt like he had no clue where he was. "Nothing look familiar," Don writes. "It was like I was in some stretch of road I'd never been to before." Suddenly, Don drove over a bridge - and not just any bridge! He said it was wooden, an old fashioned style, he remember growing up as a kid in the 1950s. Don said he slowed down, suddenly unsure if the bridge was safe for his truck. He soon crossed the bridge, and though quite freaked out, kept driving. Soon the fog parted a little and he recognized the road again. He was home in no time. The next day he went out to check for the bridge, but it was nowhere to be found. He swears he never left Route 4 and in the weeks since, he can't find that stretch of road or that wooden bridge anywhere! Eerie!

  

  Artist's interpretation. NOT the actual bridge!
  
  

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

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Black Tarot Part II

Update, MMers! Back in March we ran a story about a series of disturbing tarot cards appearing in random people's mailboxes. We spoke to four individuals who received these cards with no explanation. You can read about it here. Well, since then we've heard from two more Mainers who have received these packages.

Up first is Brenda Williams. Brenda is the head librarian at the Madison Public Library. Three days ago she received the now familiar to our readers, black envelope addressed to her. Again there was no return address, no stamp. It was as if the envelope just appeared in her mailbox.

The envelope Brenda received

Inside were five cards from the deck we're calling the "Black Tarot." Brenda received The Shaman, the Queen of Wands, the II of Sigils, the V of Blades, and the Knight of Blades. Again, we're unsure of the meaning of these cards or the purpose. We don't know who is sending them or why, but state police have determined that these cards are indeed just paper cards. There are no harmful substances on them and no one has been harmed because of these cards. Still, they can be quite unsettling.

Brenda Williams' spread

"I don't like them," Brenda said. "I don't know who sent them or why they thought this was a good prank. It's not funny to terrorize people. These are disgusting and whoever is doing this is disturbed."

The other set of cards was sent to Kerri Delong in West Paris. Much like the other recipients, her cards showed up mysteriously in the mailbox over night. "I check my mail every day," Kerri told us. "One morning they were just in there, waiting for me." Kerri also sent us a picture of her cards:

Kerri Delong's spread

 "I don't like touching them," she said. "They're... they're not slimy, but they feel wrong. Like cold, somehow. But not paper. They feel like... like cold skin. I mean, I know they're not. It's obvious they're just paper, but still... something about them just creeps me out."

We also have an update on our original four recipients. To a person each of the original four - Larry Gilbert, Sharon Messina, Dominic Stoddard, and Sara Burgess - all of them now claim their cards have disappeared. 

"It's the craziest thing," Larry Gilbert said over the phone. "I left them right in the envelope in a drawer. When you contacted me about them, I went to check. The envelope is still there, but the cards are gone. No one would have taken them. I didn't throw them out. They're just gone, like they melted away."

The other three also confirmed similar stories. The cards are gone, but the envelope remains. We reached out to Brenda Williams about taking possession of her cards and she was more than willing to oblige.

"Get them out of my house," she said. "I never want to see them again."

We now have her set of Black Tarot cards in our possession here at our office. We will monitor them every day and give any updates we may find. For now, we'll keep you updated and stay safe out there, Maine.