Az'azouzis

 It's been a wild couple of weeks here at Malevolent Maine, MMers! A lot has been happening behind the scenes, and a lot of it has to do with our encounter with the Midnight Magician, Malachai Blackstone. There's a lot of moving pieces when it comes to running an investigative blog and often times these things take some time. As you'll see, we also weren't able to talk about this until now because of police involvement. 

After our discussion with Professor Carter Derwent, a history and linguistics professor from Bowdoin College, about Az'azouzis, a word we first encountered when we investigated the six people in Crannog's Field with no memory of who they were or why they were there. We heard the word again from Malachai Blackstone when we "interviewed" him last month. Blackstone claimed the word meant, "the end is not the end." Professor Derwent discredited this and translated it instead as, "dark watcher from beyond the stars."  

Derwent did a little more digging for us, reaching out to several colleagues from different universities. He was able to piece together a pretty clear description of Az'azouzis. Here's Derwent:

Az'azouzis, the dark watcher

Az'azouzis is a creature from beyond our plane of existence. Some call him a god, others refer to him as a beyonder - a being outside the known world. He is said to be watching the world, waiting for a way into this world. Over the centuries there have been various cults and groups dedicated to finding a way to open a doorway or portal for Az'azouzis to enter the world. One group, the Order of the End, was active in Europe from 1800 until about 1840. And here's the interesting thing, one of the high ranking members emigrated to America, specifically the New England area.

We also heard from one of our contacts in the local occult scene. He didn't want us to reveal his real name, so we'll call him Desmond. He's been a practitioner of occultism for several years and has been one of our sources for all things paranormal. Here's a transcript of a voice mail call we got from Desmond:

Hey, guys. It's [Desmond]. I have to tell you about a session I just came from. There's been some talk in the past few months about that guy Blackstone, the magician. He's been coming around to different groups, mostly doing lecture stuff, but he's been leading some ceremonies too. He's deep into the occult stuff. So the other night, I catch wind about a ceremony happening on Frye Island, in the middle of Sebago Lake. I decide to go, and when I get there, it's him, Blackstone, clearly running the ceremony. There were probably twenty of us there, no names. This was a black robes and hoods kind of event. We're all standing in a circle and that's when things start to go crazy.

Blackstone starts chanting, pretty typical occult stuff at first, but then he gets going. He starts talking about how the end is not the end. "There are tremendous and treacherous things beyond." All this kind of stuff. He starts talking about Az'azouzis, and I recognize that from your blog, right? That's when we hear this great roaring sound. It sounds like the sky is splitting open and some big angry animal is coming through. You know that long rumble of thunder you hear sometimes? It was like that times a thousand. The ground starts shaking, like an earthquake. Out of the ground comes this big stone pillar, like the one from your site. 

Occult ritual

It grows out of the ground, rising up, and then the air around us goes red. Not the light, like from the fire, but the air itself. I can't really explain that, but it's what happened. Then this rip opens up, like in the air itself, this big black void, and through it walks three naked people, two men and a woman. The whole time Blackstone is chanting something, I can't make out the words, but then I realize everyone is chanting along with him. I mean everyone, me included. I don't even understand what I'm saying, but the words keep coming out as that portal opens and those three people walk out.

And then it's done. Everything goes back to normal. The air, the sound, everything. Blackstone is standing there, looking down on those three naked people and he says to us, "The end is not the end. We will bring them, one by one, then thousands by thousands. The Army of Az'azouzis, his Chosen People, the ones who will usher in his everlasting darkness. We send you, brothers and sisters out into our world, Beyonders. Tremendous beings. Treacherous beings. Go and bring about your master's will."

It was right around this time that we were contacted by the Maine State Police. It seems that Kerri Delong had gone missing. You'll recall she was in the second batch of Black Tarot cards. She was the only person we could to receive the cards who had not gone missing. That wasn't the only reason the police contacted us, however. You'll also remember we received another set of cards from a reader going by EroDemon96. It turns out EroDemon96 is a woman named Rebecca Wentworth, aged 29, from Porter, Maine. She too had gone missing. When the family went through Rebecca's emails they found her messages to us.

We went out of our way to prove to the police that we were not involved. That included turning over lots of our emails, as well as the details of our meeting with Malachai Blackstone. In the end, the police dismissed us from any suspicion.

We find it interesting though that after the disappearance of the original four recipients of the Black Tarot, four people appeared in Crannog's Field. After the disappearance of  Brenda Williams, Kerri Delong, and now Rebecca Wentworth, three more people appeared during the ritual Desmond witnessed. Could Malachai Blackstone be the heir of the Order of the End, obsessed with summoning the being Az'azouzis to our world? Could he be somehow marking people by sending them a spread of Black Tarot cards? Could he be using their lives to open a portal to... Beyond and bringing forth new people-looking things, minions of Az'azouzis? 

We told the police everything we knew about Malachai Blackstone and everything we suspected. They were skeptical, of course, but in the end they agreed to at least talk with Blackstone. At the time of this writing, we believe Malachai Blackstone is on the run. He has not performed any magic shows in several weeks, nor any occult rituals. His whereabouts, as well as the whereabouts of the three "Beyonders" who walked through the portal remain unknown, though Blackstone's picture has been distributed among law enforcement agencies. 

Desmond believes that Blackstone was harnessing the energy of the people who visited his shows. He thinks that the password system, combined with the timing of Blackstone's performances, was a ritual derived to funnel the aether from the audience to create his Black Tarot. These marked members were somehow sacrificed to power the portals beyond. Desmond believes that after a certain number of these "Beyonders" had been summoned then they would be able to open the door for Az'azouzis, himself. 

We hope that we have disrupted Blackstone's rituals. We believe that now on the run from authorities, Blackstone will not be able to perform his ceremonies. Since the police began searching for Malachai Blackstone no new sets of Black Tarot cards have arrived and no new missing persons reports have been filed. We believe it's finally over.

Stay safe out there, Maine.

---

UPDATE - 10/23/20: 

Since we originally posted this on 10/21/20, we received a black envelope in the mail. There was no stamp, no return address, something that will be familiar to our readers. We were hesitant to open it at first, but after much discussion, we decided we were not going to let Malachai Blackstone control our lives, and that we would not live in fear of him.

Inside the envelope was just a single card of the deck we're calling the Black Tarot:

Unanswered Questions - October 2020

 We've got a new feature for you, MMers. In Unanswered Questions we pose a series of questions we don't have answers to. There's a lot of spooky and unexplained out there, and we'll highlight as many as we can. So without further ado...

• What's up with that factory in Rumford that only seems to be operating after midnight? There's never any cars in the parking lot or people on the grounds and yet the smokestacks keep firing between 12 and 3 AM. What could they possibly be making there?

• Who are the bodies at the bottom of Silver Lake? How did they get there and how come no one's taken them out?

• What crept into Lori Connor's barn and slaughtered all of her sheep while she slept? She didn't hear a sound and they were torn to shreds. A wolf can't do that, right?
• Whatever happened to Perry Madison? He hiked down of Cadillac Mountain and no one ever saw him again. Where did he go?

• Why doesn't the Air Force base in Fort Kent shoot down the UFOs seen flying overhead? What do they know about these visitors that we don't?

• When did Larry Crendall come from? He's claimed 1897 and 2042. When is he really from? Head to Madawaska and ask him yourself!

• How do we shake the feeling that someone is watching us when we go to the library in Gray? We've heard rumors that three kids died in the building in the 50s' and 60s. Any truth to this? Let us know.

Houlton Wild Man

MMer Jim and his buddy Carl from Houlton, were out bear hunting in early November last year when they encountered something that wasn’t a bear at all. Jim walked us through what happened, “We are pretty close to this lady who owns a bakery, she lets us take the day old donuts and other pastries for real cheap. We take those out into the woods, find a nice little clearing and spread ‘em out, then all we have to do is wait for the bears to find the pile.” As they sat in their blind, something covered in thick matted black hair stumbled through the underbrush and investigated their bait.  

Woods near Houlton

“Carl raised his rifle right away, he ain’t never got a bear before and was eager. But I waved him off and pushed his barrel down as quietly as I could. This was one scraggly bear, it was real thin and small, and had a funny walk to it. It took me a minute to realize it was some really hairy guy running around on all fours.”

Jim quickly got out of the blind and approached the man who was stuffing his face with the day old pastries. At the noise Jim caused shuffling through the leaves and bushes the wild man quickly turned and faced Jim head on. “As I got closer to him I didn’t know how we ever thought it could be a bear, but he was covered all over with this long black matted hair. His eyes were big, and so brown they were almost black. He growled at me, real low and deep, and bared his teeth which were all chipped and sharp.”  The wild man scurried towards Jim and from the blind there was a shot as Carl tried to protect his friend.  The man ran off into the woods, “There were a few drops of blood on day old pastries” Jim said.  “But we don’t know if we hit him, or if he was already injured. Either way we ain’t going back to that spot again.”  

Wild Men have been a common sighting around
the world for hundreds of years

If you are ever in the woods near Houlton, make sure you watch out for the wild man, from the encounter reported by Jim it seems he can be aggressive or at the very least territorial. Whether this is a small Sasquatch, or simply a mentally ill man it should be avoided, stay safe out there, Maine!

Deep Dive: The Grey Fool

We here at Malevolent Maine try our best to limit the scope of our investigations to the border of our great state, but sometimes we aren’t always able to do that. We have become obsessed with this figure of the Grey Fool that has been appearing in the dreams of people around the state. And while it is affecting people in the state, the history of this figure has roots outside the state, even outside the country. We promise not to delve into this kind of content too often, but we wanted to take this opportunity to share our research with you in a new feature called a… Deep Dive!

Let’s start with a baseline on what a jester or fool really was back in the day. Contrary to popular culture’s portrayal of the role of the jester, it was actually a fairly prestigious position often occupied by nobles. They often took on the role of advisors to the monarch they served in addition to being entertaining at parties. They were one of the few people in the court who were allowed to speak freely and frankly to the king and as such they were treated respectfully. Even when kings dismissed fools they were never overtly punished, some were ex-communicated but it is rare to find evidence of a king physically punishing a jester, or executing them. 

King Louis the IX

This is where the Grey Fool comes in, we here at Malevolent Maine suspect that the Grey Fool is actually an apparition or residual psychic image of a man named Sanson de Craon. Sanson was the third son of an aristocratic French family and came to notability during the seventh crusade when he followed Louis the IX into battle. After they all returned from the crusade, Sanson was tapped to be Louis' court jester. For a few years Sanson fulfilled the role dutifully, always providing sage advice to the king, and entertaining the king’s guests with songs and long bawdy tales. However one winter in the court records we see Sanson begin complaining of strange dreams. Dreams of him walking through a desert. 

Sanson became erratic and irritable, often talking nonsense as opposed to the sharp wit he had exhibited before. His last conversation before he was removed from his role with King Louis is strange to say the least. He rambles about the end of days, the need for humanity to submit to something. He urges King Louis to kneel before the King Beyond the Desert, and this is when as expected King Louis releases Sanson from his service. Oddly enough that wasn’t the end of Sanson’s days as a jester, he relocated to Scotland and was quickly taken into the court of the King there, who appreciated his manic and crazy behavior. His term there lasted an even shorter amount of time before he was kicked out, a few months if that. Sanson then found himself in a role as a Jester in Poland. This appointment lasted only a few days.

What lies beyond the Dream Desert?

The Duke of Greater Poland was Boleslaw the Pious, and Sanson like in his previous two positions suggested he should kneel before this King Beyond the Desert figure. Bolesław took this very poorly and turned Sanson out into the street and urged the crowd gathered there to turn him into a proper fool, the crowd tore off his clothes and forced him to wear quickly patched together grey clothes. Then things turned even more violent as they dunked him repeatedly in water until he was gasping for air. They then threw him wet through foundry ashes and dragged him through the street. It all culminated in him being hanged in the town square. Sanson’s luck had finally run out. 

What drove this former soldier and nobleman to throw away his position and his life, what about this dream drove him insane? Who is the King Beyond the Desert, can he be reached in the dreams? Is everyone who has these dreams doomed to the same fate as Sanson de Craon? 

These dreams seem to pose a huge threat to those who experience them, please reach out to us if you or anyone you know has experienced them or seen the Grey Fool in their Dreams. 

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!

Lady in the Closet

There is no sweeter story than a young couple buying a new home to fix it up and make it a wonderful place to raise a family. Until they find out that the house has an unwelcome presence within it! This is what happened to Jessica and David Smith when they bought what they thought would be their forever home, up in Caribou. 

Jess and David were high school sweethearts, both are very religious, and before dealing with the being in their house they didn’t believe in the supernatural at all! It started simply enough with their dog Barney, a great pyrenees being uneasy with the closet in their spare bedroom. First he would just stare at the door, then eventually he would begin growling, and it got to the point he would bark at it almost constantly. 

“It was super weird,” Jess said. “Barney was always such a sweet dog, before we moved he never barked at all. Now he wouldn’t stop barking, until the day he came limping up to David with a bloody paw. We don’t know how it happened but he avoided the closet from then on and would not make a peep when he was near it.”  

But the weirdness doesn’t stop there. Eventually Jess would walk by the spare bedroom and she would hear scratching noises from within the closet. “I went in there, flung the door open and all over the inside there were little crosses scratched into the drywall. I called David and asked if he was pranking me, but he was just as shocked as I was. I avoided the spare room from then on, but sometimes I would wake up at night and David wouldn’t be in bed, so I began to get suspicious. I bought a little baby monitor camera and set it up across from the closet, to see what was going on. On certain nights David would go into the room and stand in front of the closet door, then the door would slowly open on its own and I would catch just a brief glimpse of a young girl with long dark hair. David would go into the closet and stay there almost until dawn.”

Eventually Jess tells us that David started acting even more strangely, his normal talkative self gave way to a quiet and serious person that Jess hardly recognized. She decided that it was the Lady in the Closet affecting David in some way. She contacted the pastor at her church who put her in touch with a priest who specialized in exorcisms. Jess didn’t want to talk about the exorcism too much but she said as the Lady in the Closet was forced out in the open she saw a figure with long dark hair in a white dress with long claws on her fingers. David recovered after the exorcism and the couple quickly put the house on the market, and moved away before the house even sold. 

Whatever this phenomenon was, a ghost, a demon, a crazy woman, the fact remains that this couple went through hell, but came out alive, and that is all that matters. If you are up in Caribou and notice a house for sale, maybe give that one a pass. Stay safe out there, Maine!

The Auditor

We naturally get nervous around those people who have control over our careers, managers, CEOs, supervisors. Rachel works for a large insurance company in Portland, it's a branch of a major national brand. Every year they have an auditor from the parent company come in to make sure they are following best practices and to see if they can tighten up any processes. Well this auditor is the same one every year and Rachel tells us that the amount of nervousness and stress he causes every year is unnatural. 

Portland Maine

By all accounts this man is extremely nice, “I’m not sure why he makes us all so nervous,” Rachel said. “He brings in coffee and a big box of munchkins every morning for the week or so he is here. He never raises his voice, and is respectful of our personal spaces. He cracks jokes and yet we all feel this existential dread when he is around.” You might be able to chalk this up to nervousness about losing one’s job, but Rachel’s branch is never recommended for restructuring or layoffs, in fact they are often upheld as a national exemplar. “He never suggests changes and often even takes extensive notes on how we do things so they can replicate it elsewhere. But still no one feels comfortable around him.”

He can't be that bad if he brings donuts right?

Rachel told us of a time that a younger employee, a new hire, was alone in the break room with this auditor. “Stevie couldn’t even look him in the eye, he had a cup of coffee but he couldn’t even drink from it his hand was shaking so bad. The whole time the auditor just stood there smiling at him and drinking his coffee in small sips. After he is gone we all just feel so drained, management who get just as nervous as we do, relaxes the dress code and lowers quotas, so we can relax a bit. I’ve worked for other insurance companies and there is stress when one of the higher ups comes around, but never to this degree, it's crazy and weird.”

We reached out to others at this company that Rachel has asked us not to name here. Other employees at this branch and others all over the country opened up to us about this auditor. Everyone confirmed that he seems like a nice guy never getting angry or confrontational, always telling silly jokes and bringing in treats. He should be well liked but everyone is glad when he leaves and reports feelings of terror and anxiety in his presence. No one can explain why. 

Is he using some kind of psychic field to make people afraid?

Is this auditor human? Does he have some kind of psychic power or field around him that causes others to cower in fear? Could he be an emotional vampire? It is hard to tell, if you have experiences with this individual or another like him please reach out to us. 

Stay safe out there, Maine!