Cryptids of North America #4: Maine

Artwork by Monica Gallagher of Lipstick Kiss Press on Etsy

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for new cryptids! This time, we’re closing out our look at the upper New England region with Maine, a place that could be considered the headquarters of the entire subculture of cryptozoology itself. Portland, the largest city in the state, is the home of the International Cryptozoology Museum, established in 2003 by Loren Coleman, widely considered the most well-renowned expert in the field of unknown animals. Appropriately enough, the Pine Tree State is positively teeming with stories of monsters and strange creatures. So let’s talk about them.

But before we start, I should give credit once again to Monica Gallagher of Lipstick Kiss Press on Etsy, whose series of prints was a major inspiration to my own. She’s been absent for the last couple of entries, as she hasn’t done any for Vermont or New Hampshire, but she’s back for now. Additional inspiration was drawn from this graphic by artist Hunter Whitman, whose work I also drew on for the Vermont entry. Finally, I pulled information about one specific cryptid from the book Bigfoot in Maine by Michelle Souliere (three guesses as to which one).

Okay, now we can talk about cryptids.

Agropelter

This beast comes to us from the “fearsome critter” lore of lumberjacks, hunters, and other such woodsmen, hiding in hollow trees in evergreen forests spanning from Maine to Oregon. It allegedly moves so fast that hardly anyone has ever seen it. The few who have say it has the face of an ape or monkey, dark colored fur, and long, muscular arms that can hurl tree limbs as fast as a speeding bullet. Said tree limbs are often hurled at anyone who strays into their territory, causing swift death or severe injury.

They often form their hollow tree homes by eating all the rotten wood on the inside. Aside from that, they are mainly predators who feast on birds, especially woodpeckers and owls. Some suspect that they may also feast on the corpses of forest wanderers who fall victim to their projectiles. Another unusual factoid is that they only give birth every February 29th and always have odd-numbered litters.

The story of the Agropelter almost certainly developed to remind greenhorns about the dangers of broken limbs or tree tops, often referred to as “widowmakers” or “fool killers” in the business. It certainly couldn’t hurt to help emphasize the dangers of being too reckless around loose limbs.

Bigfoot

I’ve touched on the subject of Bigfoot sightings in Maine previously in my second paranormal triangles article, which touched upon an area in Aroostook County that local folklorist Michelle Souliere dubbed the “Aroostook Triangle” in her 2021 book Bigfoot in Maine. I documented how the area was known for wood knocks, broken trees, hurled boulders, roars, and other phenomena often associated with Bigfoot encounters, as well as the three encounters from Aroostook County that Souliere records in her book. But if you take Souliere’s word and that of the several locals she’s interviewed, Bigfoot’s history in Maine is just as rich as that of his cousins in the Pacific Northwest.

Not counting stories from the indigenous Wabanaki Confederacy (which Souliere declines to include in the book for fear of misrepresenting them), sightings of strange hominids in Maine date back to the Revolutionary War era. The earliest sighting Souliere could track down was a wave of encounters with “ragged human beings having long shaggy hair and beards” in Cumberland County just outside modern-day Portland in 1788, who were seen picking berries, corn and peas and ran away whenever they noticed someone watching them.

She also uncovered a story involving two skeletons discovered on Deer Isle after a large tree was topped by a storm in 1825. One was average human-sized, while the other was eight feet tall and had a copper dart stuck between its ribs. It was thus speculated that the two had perished in a duel.

However, most other encounters with ape-like creatures in Maine before the 1900s seem to amount to little more than escaped exotic pets brought in by sailors or feral humans. For example, Waldoboro resident J.W. McHenri captured a small, black ape-like creature in 1855 while chopping wood, which Souliere believes to have been nothing more than a black spider monkey (this is the “Waldoboro Little Wildman” mentioned in the Lipstick Kiss Press graphic, by the way).

Others are less explainable. For instance, the Moosehead Lake region was terrorized in October 1886 by “a terrible wild man” who was shot to death after a camper was killed in the area. The animal was described as “ten feet tall, with arms seven feet in length, covered in long, brown hair.”

As for sightings in the twentieth century and beyond, here are some of the most notable Souliere recounts in her book:

-Early 1940s onward (Meddybemps): Washington County, occupying the easternmost extremity of the entire United States, is haunted by a creature dubbed the “Meddybemps Howler.” The name seems to have been coined by a pair of elderly Native American women from the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation who were invited by the family of Jackson and Tulane Porter to attend Thanksgiving dinner in November 2006. There, they told of encounters with “black giants” covered with hair and standing “two-fathers high” who had a husky, howling call. One day, the two women were surprised to see a pair of Howlers sneak up to their favorite fishing spot and steal their catch before swimming away. The women admitted they were more amused than frightened by the encounter, partly because of the beasts’ lack of clothing. When their parents came by later to pick them up, they warned the girls that the Howlers not only liked to steal fish, but they also liked to steal little girls. They never fished at that spot again.

Tyler M. Smith directly responded to the account linked above, sharing his great-aunt’s story of an encounter from 1942 involving the Smith’s grandmother, who told stories of Howlers throwing rocks at fishermen and capsizing their canoes, swimming underneath bathing children, and throwing them around in the water.

The Howlers may still be hanging around the area if this account by J. Nette, author of the Tumbleweeds Tripod blog, is to be believed. She claims she was playing in her house when she was 6-7 years old and saw a large tan-colored creature standing outside their sliding glass door. She screamed, and her mother caught a glimpse of a hunched entity with long swinging arms disappearing around the house. It was gone by the time her father went out to investigate.

-Late 1940s (Mount Bigelow): A few sightings of strange creatures are recorded on one of Maine’s tallest mountains. In 1946, four dowsers had settled down for lunch when they were startled by a ten-foot-tall man covered in black hair and carrying a large rock. They immediately bolted.

A second encounter occurred near the mountain in 1949 when Burn White claimed to have seen a seven-foot creature standing beside a road at one in the morning. Another anonymous witness claims he saw the same creature sometime before that.

-c. 1963-70 (Kennebec County): A woman known only as Suzy appeared in a local documentary called Hairy Man: My Life with Bigfoot in 2017, in which she claimed to have befriended a Bigfoot family who lived in the lakeside woods behind her childhood home in the 1960s when she was 5-6 years old. The encounters began when she noticed a seven-foot-tall hairy man watching her from the woods while she played. She started communicating with the beast, whom she named Wabou, through wood knocks, calls, and grunts. Eventually, Wabou introduced Suzy to his mate and child, who was roughly the same size as her. She often played with them, and Wabou even taught Suzy how to swim.

The only person Suzy ever told about Wabou was her mother, who assumed she was making it up. Her stepfather was an abusive alcoholic whom she did not trust at all. One evening, her stepfather came outside yelling at her to get in the house. An enraged Wabou, watching from the woods, threw a tree limb with such force that it broke the back door, sending the humbled drunkard running back into the house.

Suzy and Wabou’s friendship continued until her mother took her away from the house when she was twelve, unable to stand her husband’s abuse any longer. As her parents’ final argument reached its apogee, Suzy fled to the woods, where Wabou and his mate embraced her and tried to calm her down while Wabou threw random objects at the house. She and her mother packed their things the next day and left, and she never saw Wabou again.

Suzy has offered detailed descriptions of the creatures’ behavior, appearance, and eating habits. She claims that they were especially fond of catfish, freshwater clams, lake algae, berries, and even cigarette butts. She also claims their hair changes color depending on the season, turning from a light brownish red in summer to darker mahogany in winter. They have dark brown skin, round eyes with no visible whites that glow red at night, and large hands with long fingers. They have various vocalizations (ranging from deep roars to conversational grunts) and can move surprisingly quickly and silently for their size.

Wabou and his descendants may still be living in the area to this day. When Suzy revisited her childhood home with author and blogger Linda Godfrey in 2017, the current owner claimed to have found piles of clam shells on the lakeshore.

July 25-31, 1973 (Durham/Brunswick Town Line): The tale of the “Durham Gorilla” is easily the most famous Bigfoot story to come out of Maine, making it somewhat frustrating that contemporary news accounts often lack details.

The story began with four witnesses: Lois Huntington (age 13), Tammy Sairio (age 12), George Huntington Jr. (age 10), and Scott Huntington (age 8). They told the Huntington’s father about a “monster” they saw on Durham Road near the Brunswick town line in the early afternoon of Wednesday, July 25th, who reported it to the police. Lois described it as a hairy, manlike creature walking through a nearby cemetery. The officers initially dismissed it as a case of mistaken identity after finding moose tracks in the area.

That is, until the next day at 7:15 p.m. when Neota Huntington saw an “ape” hiding in a clump of roadside bushes while driving home from a baseball game. She claimed to have seen it again after a search party was organized, spying on her through the fork of a tree. She later described it as 5’4”, 350 pounds, and covered in black, shaggy hair. Besides a tree stump torn apart by an animal likely looking for grubs, no trace of the beast was found.

Friday saw the discovery of tracks in a local cemetery, which one officer described as too big to belong to a bear. Photographs and plaster casts were taken. Meanwhile, Carlton L. Merrill, who owned a local exotic animal farm, revealed that an old male chimpanzee escaped from his station wagon.

The final sighting of the Durham Gorilla occurred on Monday, July 30th, when Alden Williams claimed to have seen an “ape-like figure” standing on Rossmore Road that ran into the woods like a man. Shortly afterward, Corrinne Drapeau, owner of Drapeau’s Costumes, came forward to say that a man had rented a gorilla costume earlier that month under an assumed name and had failed to return it. The authorities immediately ran with the story, proclaiming the Durham Gorilla to be a hoaxer running around in a gorilla costume.

This is how the Durham Gorilla has been remembered ever since, either as a hoax perpetrated by a man in a gorilla costume or a fugitive simian from Carlton Merrill’s Wildlife Center or Alice E. Simpson’s Animal Park on Old Bath Road. But Tammy Sairio, who claims to be the first of the four children to see the creature that Wednesday afternoon, is not so sure.

In her interview with Souliere, Sairio claims that she and the Huntingtons were biking down Durham Road when she noticed she had gotten a quarter mile ahead of the others and stopped by Jones Cemetery to let them catch up. She says she saw yellow-green eyes looking at her from about 30-40 feet into the forest to her right, attached to a hairy figure standing five feet tall and covered in dark hair. She stared transfixed at the strange animal until the Huntingtons caught up with her, and Lois scared it away by screaming at it. She fell off her bike and scraped her knee, and the creature fled the scene.

Nowadays, Sairio thinks that the creature she saw was a juvenile belonging to an unknown species. She insists it wasn’t an escaped ape or a man in a costume and even drew a crude picture that appears in Souliere’s book. She also admits feeling resentful toward Lois for her reaction to the creature, as she feels it helped fuel the over-the-top fearful response of the locals over the following days.

c. 1975-1978 (Brunswick): Mike Ledbury’s story is similar to Suzy’s in that he had an extended years-long relationship with a family unit of Bigfoot in the woods surrounding his house. Unlike Suzy, though, Lebury’s relationship was less of a familial bond and more of a scientific study.

It all began in 1975 when fifteen-year-old Mike stormed out of his house after an argument with his father. He retreated to a farm shack set back into the woods and set up a campfire, only to be chased away by something throwing rocks and wood at the shack. He fled to a knoll at the top of a nearby hill and fell asleep, only to be woken up two hours later by the sound of branches breaking. Mike tried yelling at the thing, only to be startled by a roar similar to that of an angry gorilla. The next day, as Mike and his friend Ben investigated the site, they were surprised by another roar and had objects thrown at them. They scared the creatures off by firing a shotgun shell and retreated to the safety of Mike’s house.

Later, while out on a weekend hike, Mike actually saw one of the beasts for the first time, standing at the bottom of a ravine by a lone pine tree. It was eight feet tall and covered in hair. He fled in terror but later decided to look through his mother’s National Geographic collection to learn how naturalists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey studied great apes up close so he could replicate their methods on the hairy hominids who were harassing him.

Ben stopped coming to the Ledbury residence when the creatures wouldn’t stop tailing him and Mike on their hikes. Mike kept pressing on, seeking answers.

Mike’s Bigfoot story climaxed in 1977 when he successfully lured an adult Sasquatch into a clearing using a pile of oranges and apples as bait. The creature shook a tree as if warning Mike not to try any funny moves lest he get throttled. He managed to calm the beast down by crouching in a submissive posture, only to be startled when a younger Squatch charged at him, teeth bared in anger, with others circling the clearing unseen in the undergrowth. He managed not to give in to his fight-or-flight response, even when one of the creatures laid a hand on his shoulder from behind. He kept calm as he retreated slowly from the clearing and followed the trail back home. From then until Mike joined the Navy straight out of high school in 1978, he decided it was best just to leave the animals alone.

He has since described the beast as 7-8 feet tall when fully grown, having a brownish-black coat, large feet and hands, and dark skin. He denies the familiar trope of Bigfoot having an offensive stench, describing their smell as no more or less smelly than an average wild animal. In addition to the normal roars, grunts, and whistles often associated with Sasquatch encounters, Mike even claims to have heard one laugh once after he startled a female deer by leaping out of the brush and going, “Boo!”

He laments how his Goodall/Fossey approach isn’t utilized more by other Bigfoot hunters, instead often descending on sighting locations in droves, dressed like hunters with searchlights shining and recorded calls blaring. As he remarked to Souliere, “If Bigfoot was anywhere there, he’s now fifty miles away.”

Spring 1977-Present Day (Skowhegan): Janelle Graf and her family and friends have had a long history with Bigfoot, dating back to 1977 when Janelle was ten years old.

It all began on a spring night when Janelle’s father, Fred Moody, woke her up to help him get rid of something that had broken into the pig pen. Fred yelled at the creature, which burst through the barn door, revealing a creature covered in brown hair running on its hind legs. Janelle was tasked with holding a flashlight on the thing while Fred shot at it, but it escaped. The pig was found dead the following day, having been savagely beaten against the walls.

Later that June, the creature appeared to Fred again, circling his skidder as he was cutting wood on a ridge behind his house. It stood 7-8 feet tall and was covered in dark hair. The creature became aggressive when Fred yelled at it to go away, roaring and throwing boulders at him. The beast chased the terrified Fred as he ran down the ridge and back to his house. Once he reached the safety of his house, he called his brothers to round up a search party. They found tracks, broken trees, and a seriously dented skidder. Janelle also found tracks in their garden later that summer.

She also saw the creature again that summer while playing with her cousins in the woods. It announced its presence with a smell like rotting meat, and Janelle noticed it standing no less than ten feet behind her. She immediately ran away screaming.

Other sightings reported in the region include:

-Her 80-year-old uncle and his wife were so shocked to see a Bigfoot eating dandelions in a field that the uncle thought he was having a heart attack and went to the hospital.

-A neighbor who saw a mother Bigfoot and her child cross the road.

-Fred and two friends of his witnessed one urinating in the middle of the road while they were out checking traps.

-Janelle’s college-age son came forward with a sighting in 2002 while he and a friend were camping. They caught sight of a red eyeshine in a spotlight, which was attached to an eight-foot creature standing in about 4-5 feet of water. It disappeared into the dark, and the pair barricaded themselves in their cabin for the rest of the night.

-Sometime after Thanksgiving in 2005, Janelle was out in the woods with her daughter and son-in-law looking for potential Christmas trees when wood knocks sounded and rocks were thrown at them. They tried answering with wood knocks of their own, only to flee in terror when the Bigfoots started throwing boulders instead.

-Janelle’s daughter saw one cross a road into a swamp in 2006.

Fred theorized that the creatures had been driven out of the deep woods of central Maine by wildfires that had ravaged the area in May and June of 1977 and had chosen the Skowhegan area as their new home despite the proximity to human dwellings. On the other hand, James Ross, the game warden serving Skowhegan at the time, believes that the sightings were the work of pranksters. He is quick to add that he knew Fred Moody as a very experienced forester who would have known a black bear when he saw it.

Janelle continues to document sightings from the Skowhegan area to this day, indicating that the refugee Bigfoot clan is still there and won’t be going away anytime soon.

August 1977 (Berwick): Local teenager Lynn Collett was babysitting one evening when one of the boys told her of a giant creature standing on two legs behind the house. The boy took her around the corner to reveal a creature covered in long, dark hair with long arms, one of which was clutching the tree it was standing next to. Lynn immediately ordered the kids inside as she locked eyes with the beast. She lied to her parents about mosquitos when they asked why she sent the kids in so early. Later that evening, she had one last scare when the creature suddenly let out a loud howl.

Lynn also recalls an earlier incident where the boys’ father got angry with her for taking the boys home through a shortcut in the woods during a biking trip. He warned her and the boys to avoid the woods because dangerous animals lurked in the forest. Nowadays, she wonders if there was something other than bears that he was concerned about…

1985 (Hudson): An anonymous witness remembers playing in his grandmother’s backyard when he was eight when he saw something walking across a clearing at the back of the yard. It was seven feet tall, covered in black hair, and walked on two legs. The creature stopped briefly to look at the young John Doe, who immediately ran into the house in terror.

Late summer 1996 (Camden Hills State Park): A woman going by the pseudonym “Hannah Holbrook” claims she was walking her dog Annie down Sky Blue Trail when the forest suddenly went silent. She was then assaulted by an overpowering odor reminiscent of rotten eggs or sulfur and was startled by wood knocks. She immediately turned and ran back to her car, with a terrified and trembling Annie not far behind. While she never saw the source of the smell and the knocks, she is almost certain she had a close encounter with a Bigfoot.

c. November 1997 (Northport): Stephen Lombardo Jr. was riding the bus home from his job at the local bank when he and the bus driver, a Pennsylvania native named Beth, came across the site of a strange accident. The scene was surrounded by unmarked vehicles and spotlights illuminating the field beyond, obscuring a good view of the victim. They did notice an unusual detail in the gap between the vehicles, however: a large foot covered in reddish-brown hair. Beth immediately exclaimed, “It’s a Bigfoot!” She even claimed to have seen something like this happen before in her home state as she and Stephen continued on their way, and that the unmarked vehicles hadn’t been there when she last drove by the spot half an hour before.

The next evening, Beth informed Steve that when she drove by the spot again after dropping him off about 25 minutes later, the cars and the strange carcass were gone, and the road had been pressure-washed for twenty feet in both directions.

Steve admits to still being haunted by this years later. The most rational explanation he can come up with is that he and Beth stumbled across a film shoot of some kind. The clumps of hair that lay around the carcass are also something he can’t forget, thanks to how well they illustrated the violent nature of the collision.

January 2000 (Augusta Road, Kennebec/Lincoln County): Matthew Maxcy was on his way home from work at around 10:30 in the evening when he and his passenger, Andy, stopped to gawk at what they at first thought was a moose. Said “moose” was standing on two legs, covered in reddish-brown hair, and crossed the road in a few long strides, but not before giving the fearful motorists a look like it could easily rip off the doors and dismember them before it left.

Almost exactly sixteen years later, Matt was hunting coyotes outside Warren with his nephew when they got a very un-coyote-like response from their amplified caller. The strange creature howled and roared and made a staccato whooping call like that of a large gibbon. Matt’s nephew begged him to get them out of there, especially when they heard something large approaching down a nearby slope.

April 2011 onward (Livermore Falls): Jeff Robertson and his son Seth were fiddleheading near the Androscoggin River when Jeff stepped into a large humanlike footprint that dwarfed his size-12 boot. He later noticed things like strange whoops being answered by wood knocks and breaking branches, usually around 2-3 in the morning. His birdfeeder also kept getting broken into.

He caught sight of the culprit one early morning while smoking a cigarette through an open window when he startled it by imitating the whoops he kept hearing in the woods out back. The creature that ran from his yard was six feet tall and covered in black hair, with dark eyes and a squashed nose.

Later that summer, while crossing a bridge across the Androscoggin on Route 219, he noticed two large black “boulders” in the water. When he drove past again, they were in a different spot. When he drove by a third and final time, they had disappeared entirely.

May 2016 (Berwick): Kathy and her husband were returning home from a camping trip with their daughter at around 6:30 in the morning when Kathy saw a strange figure while the car crossed over a bridge. It was covered in black hair, had long arms and large hands, and seemed to be standing up from a crouch. Her husband didn’t notice it.

February 2016 onward (Saco River Basin): The story started when Dave discovered footprints measuring 12 inches while out on a hike. When a Bigfoot Field Research Organization member named Jeff explored the area with him, they were greeted by odd sounds, like something was following them. Dave would find a strange structure similar to indigenous wigwams constructed out of several large trees. On another hike, he saw a black, hairy shape in a local swamp that did not move for 20 minutes.

Jeff returned with an assistant named Kate the following April, and while they were investigating a line of tracks found near the swamp, Dave was startled to see eyes shining in his flashlight. The group counted six pairs of reddish-orange glowing eyes. They noticed one had an apelike face. The creatures started howling and growling at them, and the trio decided to head back for their vehicles. The beasts followed them as they left, with the group capturing eyeshine and matted hair in their flashlight beams as they fled.

Dave has continued to investigate the area ever since and has woken up to the sounds of footsteps around his tent

The Billdad

Artist credit: Nashoba-Hostina on DeviantArt

This so-called “fearsome critter” hardly lives up to that title. It is said to live only around Boundary Pond in Franklin County, right next to the Canadian border. It resembles a bipedal beaver with long back legs, short front legs, a flat tail, and a hawk-like beak. It subsists mainly on fish, which it catches by slamming its tail on the water and stunning them when they come up to eat insects. They are said to be capable of jumping sixty yards in a single bound and can apparently pass this ability to anyone who kills it and eats its flesh. A lumberjack named Bill Murphy found this out the hard way when he tasted it and subsequently had to be rescued from Hurricane Lake when he jumped fifty yards out.

There has been some speculation that the Billdad stories may have originated in an errant kangaroo that escaped from an exotic pet owner. Its description certainly matches. Others have theorized that it may be America’s answer to the platypus, a creature of such outlandish appearance that the first European naturalists to see a preserved specimen in 1799 assumed it was a hoax sewn together from different animals. In all likelihood, it’s simply another tall tale from the loggers of the north woods.

The Casco Bay Merman

This cryptid seems to be known from only a single encounter by John Josselyn, an English explorer remembered for his books New England’s Rarities (published in 1671) and An Account of Two Voyages to New England (published in 1674). While historians consider the books valuable resources for their information on New England’s colonial-era flora and fauna, they also mention more fanciful elements like sea serpents (more on that in a bit), haunted islands, and pigs giving birth to lion cubs.

The merman is mentioned in Two Voyages. Josselyn recounts a story told to him by a local named Michael Mitton, who claimed to have seen what Josselyn calls a “triton,” likely referencing Posidon’s son in Greek mythology. The encounter occurred sometime in the 1630s in Casco Bay, on the shores of which Portland rests today. The creature emerged from the water and laid its hands on the side of his canoe. A startled Mitton chopped one of its hands off with a hatchet, and the triton retreated, staining the water purple with its blood. The hand itself, Mitton claimed, “was in all respects like the hand of a man.”

More sober-minded readers will usually assume that what Mitton (and others who have claimed to have seen real-life merpeople) actually encountered was a manatee that had wandered far out of its natural habitat. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, as the northernmost confirmed sighting of a West Indian manatee was near Dennis on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Of course, manatee flippers don’t resemble human hands in the slightest, but then again, who knows if Mitton was simply telling Josselyn an old fish story?

Cassie

Design is by Duncan Hopkins of Austin, Texas, for the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Merpeople aren’t the only sea monsters reported to be living in Casco Bay. The bay also has its own sea serpent, affectionately dubbed “Cassie” by locals, although several sightings have occurred in Penobscot Bay as well, where the creature is sometimes dubbed “Scotty.” Scotty apparently differs from Cassie in that he can breathe fire, at least according to the 1983 book Shipwrecks Around Maine by William P. Quinn.

Loren Coleman claims that the earliest sighting of Cassie was in 1779 by Edward Preble, the future U.S. Navy commodore famous for his exploits in the First Barbary War and the War of 1812. Preble, then an ensign on the Massachusetts State Navy ship Protector, spotted a serpentine beast in the bay and set out in a lifeboat to get a better look. The creature’s head rose fifteen feet from the water, and Preble shot at it and missed. The serpent slipped back under the waves.

The serpent has continued to resurface periodically:

-1818: A serpentine creature is spotted from Week’s Wharf in Portland Harbor.

-1836: Captain Black of the schooner Fox reports seeing a snakelike creature off Mount Desert Island.

-1905: Major General H. C. Merriam and his sons report seeing a “monster snake” circling their boat en route to the Wood Island Lighthouse.

-1910: Passengers of the steamship Bonita report seeing an 80-foot black creature with white spots swimming through the ocean.

-June 5, 1958: Ole Mikkelsen reports seeing a strange creature while fishing about five miles off Cape Elizabeth. He describes it as a snakelike creature colored like a flounder with a broad head, a thick neck, and a forked tail. It seemed of a curious disposition, as Mikkelsen theorizes that the nets trailing behind his boat attracted it, and it seemed fascinated by the sound of a nearby lightship’s horn going off.

As with other supposed sea serpent sightings, numerous more mundane explanations have been proposed, especially involving cetaceans. Some argue that the witnesses are mistaking a line of porpoises for a single creature, for instance, or misidentifying wave action. Then again, you probably don’t know for sure unless you see it yourself.

The Chain Lake Serpent

This lake monster seems to originate from somewhere in Washington County, where it is also known as the Pocomoonshine Lake Monster. Those who have seen it describe it as a water snake measuring 30-60 feet in length and 3-4 feet in width, judging by the trails it leaves through the mud.

The local indigenous populations seem to have been very familiar with the beast, as depictions of giant water serpents have been found in nearby petroglyphs dating as far back as 3000 BCE. The Passamaquoddy named the creature wiwiliamecq, which features in a legend involving a shaman named John Neptune who, in the form of a horned snail, battled a Mi’kmaq chief who had transformed himself into a 40-foot serpent. The Mi’kmaq was killed, and the lake became known to the Passamaquoddy as Neseik, meaning “muddy” or “roily.”

A similar legend (shared with the Maliseet) concerns a creature named Apotamkin, a sea monster from Passamaquoddy Bay with large fangs and long red hair that snatches people, particularly careless children, from the shore to eat them. Most scholars believe the legend was meant to teach children to never run off into the wilderness unsupervised, especially around water. Apotamkin is also briefly mentioned in the 2008 film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, where it is mistakenly called a vampire.

The only reference to the serpent I could find in the post-colonial era is from the March 21, 1882 issue of the Machias Union, where Sewell S. Quimby, a sawmill owner from Wesley, wrote a skeptical report of a recent sighting of the Chain Lake Serpent that had sent men from the area into a frenzy, setting up traps involving spears, barbs, and chain nets. Quimby was even convinced that a couple that claimed to have seen the serpent leaving the water and crawling on land had actually seen him docking his boat. The sightings had started in January when a Mr. Hunnewell of Alexander claimed to have seen a trail four feet wide, three feet deep, and a quarter of a mile long. Upon seeing the trail for himself, Quimby claimed it was merely the result of the natural freezing and thawing process.

As the article I linked above notes, people may also be mistaking a line of otters for a serpent, as their rolling backs could be mistaken for a single creature. I don’t know. What do you think?

The Cherryfield Goatman

Artist credit: Adam Frankenstein on DeviantArt

This is another single-encounter cryptid, this time hailing from the southwest corner of Washington County.

The story tells of a forester from Cherryfield driving through the woods on a lonely night in the 1950s when his truck suddenly broke down. This was perplexing, as he had just refilled the gas tank shortly before he left, yet the gauge said the tank was empty. He was further surprised to see no evidence of a leak when he checked the undercarriage. He was downright terrified by what was waiting for him on the side of the road when he emerged.

It was a humanoid creature with the legs of a goat, horns and pointed ears growing out of his head, and wearing a flannel shirt. Besides that single article of clothing, it was the spitting image of the satyr or the Greek nature god Pan.

The account describes the Goatman smiling at the witness and then “sauntering” into the woods. The man then leaped back into his truck and was surprised and relieved to have it start immediately, the gas gauge reading full.

There are a lot of interesting aspects to the story. The plaid shirt is an amusing feature (apparently, Bigfoot has been seen wearing one on occasion). There’s also the aspect of the truck mysteriously losing power, a trope that’s usually more common in UFO encounters.

The connection with Pan and satyrs is also interesting in light of an account given by T.M. Gray, the author of New England Graveside Tales, who lives in Birch Harbor, just across the Hancock-Washington county line from Cherryfield. Gray claims to have been hiking in the woods one day when she noticed what sounded like flute music lilting from the trees. She called out to whoever was playing, only to have the music stop and start again a short time later. She tried tracking the flute player down, but every time she got close, the source of the sound seemed to teleport away. Gray chose to flee to the safety of her car instead.

Was it a New England-dwelling group of satyrs indulging in their favorite pastime of music? You make the call.

The Ding-Ball

By Fearsome Critters, Written by Henry H. Tryon • Illustrated by Margaret R. Tryon(Cornwall, NY: Idlewild Press, 1939) - http://www.lumberwoods.com/fearsome_critters.htm, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69461581

This fearsome critter is also known as the ding maul, the silver cat, the ball-tailed cat, and the plunkus. It is similar to a mountain lion in appearance, except for a bulbous club at the end of its tail, which it uses to strike its prey unconscious. Some stories claim that the creature even sings like a bird to lure its prey close enough to bash its brains out (a method that Tumbleweeds Tripod author J. Nette amusingly refers to as the “sing and swing”).

The various subspecies of ball-tailed cats used to roam freely across the north woods but are now mainly limited to parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Califonia, and Oregon.

Kiwakwa

The name Kiwakwa or Giwakwa comes from the Penobscot word for “walks in the woods.” It is often bestowed upon a fearsome monster that seems to be the Wabanaki Confederacy’s answer to the Wendigo. It is also known to the Mi’kmaq as “Chenoo.” It is a fearsome ice giant with an icy heart in the shape of a human and an unending appetite for flesh of any kind, human or animal.

A Kiwakwa is usually created when a person commits a heinous crime like refusing to feed a starving tribesperson or cannibalism. A demonic spirit possesses them, filling them with such an insatiable that they often consume their lips or shoulders. It is said that some Kiwakwa are former shamans or sorcerers so powerful that they could rise from the grave.

Other morbidly fascinating quirks of Kiwakwa lore are that their shriek is so horrible that anyone who hears it immediately drops dead, that they sometimes camouflage themselves by rubbing pine resin on their bodies so they can cover themselves in dead leaves and fallen branches, and that female Kiwakwa are often much more vicious and unreasonable than males. They are even said to eat other Kiwakwa, usually to steal the other’s icy heart and gain the victim’s power.

There are stories involving Kiwakwa being cured of their horrible condition. One famous tale, “The Girl and the Chenoo,” involves a family confronted by one of the beasts while on a hunting trip. The mother confuses it by referring to the monster as “father” and inviting it to eat with them. After it drinks a large vat of animal fat, it vomits up the carcasses of all the humans and animals it ate during its tenure as a Chenoo, along with its icy heart. It then changes back into a human and lives the rest of its days as a kind and respected member of the tribe.

Sadly, though, most Kiwakwa can only be cured of their condition by being chopped into many pieces.

The Lunkasoose

The Lunkasoose is the Mainers’ name for a cryptid more widely known as the Maned American Lion. It is included among the broader category of cryptids known as “Alien Big Cats.” The word Lunkasoose itself comes from a Penobscot word, which is commonly understood today to refer to either mountain lions or wolverines. Lunksoos is also the common name of the region surrounding the East Branch Penobscot River, not far from where Baxter State Park and Mount Katahdin.

The Lunkasoose appears to have been a feared predator in its time, for its fearsome bellowing and vicious attacks against people and livestock as late as the 1800s. It has since receded from view, possibly due to hunting and habitat loss.

The Palmyra Wolves

A pack of werewolves has apparently stalked the small town of Palmyra in Somerset County since at least 1857. That year, a mailman known only as Mr. Mitchell was attacked by a pack of wolves while he was driving his horse-and-wagon team 20 miles outside Bangor. They kept pace with his horses as he tried to outrun them and was forced to fire his rifle at them to get them to back off. While Mitchell’s account never refers to the wolves running on their hind legs at any point, there was speculation at the time of them being somehow different from regular wolves due to the sudden and unprovoked nature of the attack.

The most famous story involving the Palmyra wolves is that of the Martin family, whose story was dramatized in an episode of the Syfy television series Paranormal Witness. The story began one day in May 2007 when the Martins noticed strange, pulsating lights drifting through the woods that would disappear whenever someone approached. The next day, Eric’s daughter Chelsea and her boyfriend Nathan were hiking in the woods with the family dogs when they discovered a den with an entrance too perfectly circular to look natural. Nathan wanted to investigate further, but Chelsea got cold feet and persuaded him to return to the house with her.

A few weeks later, on Memorial Day weekend, Eric and his wife Shelley were trying to get the dogs in their pens for the night, but they seemed frightened of something. The pair noticed strange noises coming from the unusually misty night air. Then their blood ran cold as five pairs of eyes suddenly appeared out of the fog. The creatures looked like wolves, except for one that seemed to rear up on its hind legs.

Eric thought about making a break for the barn to get his hunting rifles but thought better of it and told everyone to get inside and close all the windows. He tried to unlock his car, only to be startled when the motion sensor lights revealed one of the creatures standing right in front of him. Fortunately for him, though, the creature seemed afraid of the light, and Eric was able to make it back to the house.

The Martins tried for the police, who brushed them off and simply told them to lock the doors and windows. Eric tried one more time to reach the guns in the barn by triggering the motion-sensing light, only to give up again when he realized the pack had surrounded him. For the rest of the night, Eric, Shelley, Chelsea, and their son Sean huddled in the master bedroom, knives in hand, until the morning light chased the wolves away. They moved to Eric’s childhood home shortly after the incident.

Another story involving this strange wolf pack comes from Reddit user triston_asitfollows, posting on the subreddit for famous true crime/mystery YouTuber MrBallen. He claims to have been camping outside Palmyra with three friends in 2018 when one of his friends, Sarah, woke him up at 2:30 in the morning, terrified by something she saw in the woods. Triston calmed her down and convinced her that her eyes played tricks on her. Ten minutes later, however, the entire group was woken up by a horrible scream. They saw that they were surrounded by four pairs of eyes, one of which broke away from the group to reveal a 7-9 foot creature walking on two legs that growled at them. The group booked it out of there and into a hotel room for the night. They returned the next morning to find their tents and backpacks torn apart.

Pamola

Pamola (also known as Pamolai, P-mol-a, Pomola, or Bmola) is another being from indigenous mythology, originating from Penobscot folklore. He is a god of thunder said to dwell on Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in the state (the word Katahdin comes from the Penobscot word for “great mountain”). Modern depictions portray him as resembling a man with the head of a moose and the wings and feet of an eagle. The original legends, however, describe him as having a sharp beak and a violent temperament. He is fiercely territorial, lashing out violently at anyone who tries to climb the highest peak. As such, the Penobscot traditionally avoided the mountain’s 5,267-foot slopes.

The stories nowadays are thought to be warnings about the often unpredictable weather on the summit of Katahdin, as the conditions above the treeline are wont to change from sunshine to raging thunder or snowstorms in a matter of minutes. Charles Turner Jr., the first white man to scale the peak in 1804, was told by his indigenous guides that Pamola usually only inhabits the peak during winter, departing with fierce rumbling sounds every spring. When Henry David Thoreau tried to scale the peak in 1846, his guides became spooked by the poor weather conditions and abandoned him. Thoreau himself was forced to turn back when the fog became too thick. As he later wrote in his account of the failed hike, “Pamola is always angry with those who climb to the summit of K’taadn.”

Legends about this legendary thunderbird continue to this day. Penobscot historian Maria Girouard tells of how the legendary chief John Neptune kept Pamola off the mountain by shoving a boulder into the entrance of his cave. As late as 1989, a young Penobscot runner claimed that Pamola was responsible for injuries he suffered during an attempted ascent, as he ignored the deteriorating weather conditions. Another storyteller associated with Pamola legends is the famous guide Mark Leroy Dudley, who claimed to have befriended the thunder god and even healed him when he was sick.

Perhaps the whole point of the legends is best summarized by Girouard: “Instead of climbing the sacred mountain, the Wabanaki would only travel to K’taadn to become closer to the spirits that lived in the mountain, but avoided the wrath of the spirit most popular in K’taadn legends—Pamola. With proper respect, it will allow you to climb to the top. Disrespect will get you elsewhere.”

The Specter Moose

According to science, a total population of 29,000 moose live in Maine. They usually grow to around seven feet high at the shoulder and antlers spanning six feet with 16-24 points. There is one, however, that is said to stand 13-15 feet tall with a 10-foot antler span with 44 points and is said to have a hide so pure white that it glows. It is known as the Specter Moose.

It was first reported in the woods surrounding Lobster Lake in Piscataquis County in 1891 by a hunting guide named Clarence Duffy and then a few months later by Bangor lumberjack John Ross. That same year, a New Yorker hunting near Sourdnahunlt Lake angered the giant moose by shooting it, and he was forced to hide in a bear den for an hour until the animal walked off. Another New York sportsman, Howard Van Ness, was similarly forced to hide under a pile of fallen branches when he angered the moose by shooting at it while on a hunting trip thirty miles northeast of Norcross.

The moose didn’t always get angry, though. When Massachusetts resident Gilman Brown shot at it after spotting it along the shore of Roach River in 1899, it simply gave him a sour look and walked away. Sherman resident George Kneeland claims to have been attacked by the moose while riding a bike in 1906, who climbed a tree to escape the beast’s wrath.

One particularly ethereal encounter comes from the area around Chesuncook in 1938 when a hunter known only as Houston saw the Specter Moose towering above a herd of average-sized moose. The white moose then disappeared when Houston took his eyes off the thing for just a second.

An especially harrowing and bizarre story tells of a group of hunters who successfully managed to kill the Specter Moose along the shores of Molunkus Stream in Aroostook County, slitting its throat and hanging it from a tree to let the blood drain out overnight. The next morning, however, the carcass was gone. That night, the moose appeared again, with the wound in its throat still visible, and it reacted with nonchalance when the hunters tried to shoot it again. Soon after that incident, the Moose was seen again ninety miles north in Ashland, where Burt Peggins shot at it and ran inside when the Moose was unaffected. The Moose then picked his gun up with its mouth and somehow managed to fire off a shot before leaving.

Other strange stories involve the Moose saving a hiker named Harry Porter and his girlfriend after their horse died far away from civilization by carrying them back into town on its antlers and the Moose being a harbinger of bad luck, most notably when a restaurant in Franklin burned down in 2002 shortly after the Moose was seen nearby.

Whether the Specter Moose is a genuine ghostly spirit or simply a normal moose with a bad case of albinism and gigantism, it has certainly captured the imaginations of Mainers in the hundred-plus years since its first sighting.

The Tote Road Shagamaw

This fearsome critter is bizarre even by fearsome critter standards. It is a creature dwelling on the border between Maine and New Brunswick and is said to resemble a Greek satyr, except for bear-like clawed hands. It’s its method of locomotion that makes it truly bizarre, though. Every 440 paces, equalling about a quarter-mile, the Shagamaw would flip off its moose-like legs and walk another quarter-mile on its hands. This would cause arguments between loggers over whether they were looking at moose or bear tracks.

There is debate about why the Shagamaw switches limbs like this every quarter mile. Some speculate that it was copying surveyors tracing straight lines through the woods. It may have done the same with bears and moose before humans came along. Some have also speculated that it can only count to 440 and, therefore, has to switch to start again.

The Tree Squeak

Artist credit: Monstrum Americanum on DeviantArt

The name of this fearsome critter caught me off guard because I had encountered it before in one of my favorite fantasy novel series. In the Heritage of Shannara tetralogy by Terry Brooks, one of the main characters, Wren Ohmsford, has a pet tree squeak named Faun that she befriends while trying to rescue the elven city of Arborlon from a monster-infested island that’s about to be destroyed by a volcano.

On the other hand, the tree squeak of fearsome critter lore is a small mammal resembling a cross between a weasel and an opossum. It is usually quite friendly unless it’s gone too long without a mate. It can also camouflage itself by gripping a tree branch so tightly that it can blend into the bark. It prefers to build its nest in a forked tree or, failing that, where two trees rub against one another.

The tree squeak usually remains silent except on windy days, when it makes a call that is variously described as resembling a squeaky door, a squealing pig, a gunshot, or a pack of firecrackers. The squeak sometimes used this to prank nearby foresters, luring them deeper into the woods and getting them lost for their own amusement.

Nowadays, it’s more common for the term “tree squeak” to refer to the sound of tree trunks or branches rubbing against one another on a windy day. It’s perfectly normal, although regular squeaks can make a person uneasy if they’re alone in the woods.

The Turner Beast

Maine’s answer to the Montauk Monster (also known as the Maine Mutant and the Androscoggin Creature) was found on the side of Route 4 in Androscoggin County in August 2006. It immediately became an Internet sensation upon the first report of the beast in the Lewiston Sun Journal on the 10th, thanks to its unusual appearance. It seemed to be a strange combination of wolf and dog, with the beast’s snout seeming unusually flat for an animal of this type.

Sightings of strange feral canines in Androscoggin and Kennebec Counties had been reported for several years prior to the Turner Beast story. They were reported to attack livestock and pets, often fighting with domestic dogs when they saw them as a threat to their territory. Indeed, according to the Sun Journal article, the Turner Beast itself reportedly met its end by not looking where it was going while chasing a cat into oncoming traffic.

Several fantastical theories as to the beast’s origin accompanied its Internet fame. It was speculated to be anything from a chupacabra to a Tasmanian devil to a dire wolf. DNA testing, however, proved that the Turner Beast was nothing more than a dog. Several experts concurred, including state wildlife biologist Scott Lindway and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. Most agreed that it was a feral dog.

The following year, however, a Florida resident named Doreen Madden claimed that the beast was her dog, a yearling chow-chow named Wolfie. She had left the pup with some friends at Worthely Pond, just northwest of Turner, while she made a quick trip back to Florida. But the dog ran off, never to be seen again.

Doubts have been raised about the validity of Doreen’s story, mainly because Wolfie was female, while DNA testing proved the Turner Beast to be male. Still, if the Turner Beast was Wolfie, she certainly came to a tragic end, especially because she was initially a stray Doreen rescued from a St. Petersburg dumpster at five months of age. Whatever happened to the pup, I hope it found peace.

Wessie

Wessie is less of a cryptid and more of a misplaced python or boa constrictor that left plenty of physical evidence in its wake. It earned its name from its stomping (slithering?) grounds in Westbrook along the Presumpscot River. It quickly became a local media sensation, with locals writing songs about it, making beer named after it, opening an arcade/bar and grill named after it, and even giving it its own Twitter account, where it was named Wessie P. Thon.

The saga of Wessie began on June 23, 2016, when a woman informed the police of a creature she saw near the playground in Riverside Park, which she described as being as long as a truck with a head the size of a soccer ball. Devin Saunders reported seeing a snake as long as a bench coiled on a rock near the railroad bridge the next day. On June 29, a police officer saw the snake eating a large mammal, likely a beaver. When a second officer came to look, the snake swam across the river and disappeared into the underbrush. One of the officers caught the creature on film, but it only showed up as an indiscernible green mass.

The last significant event associated with the Wessie legend was a large snakeskin found near a boat launch outside the park in late August. Sadly, it seems unlikely the snake is still with us today, as a tropical species like Wessie most likely could never survive the harsh New England winter. Some, like Maine Herpetological Society president Rob Christian, have argued that the whole event was a hoax and that the snakeskin was staged. One local named Zach Giguere offered this humorous explanation toward the beginning of the event:

It wasn’t a snake. I had a few too many tall boys and had to rock a piss at the river. I didn’t think anyone could see me. Sorry to alarm anyone.
-Zach Giguere on Facebook

Then again, it probably doesn’t matter where Wessie came from, seeing as how it practically became Westbrook’s town mascot at this point.

The White Monkey

The last cryptid we will discuss today is this strange amphibious beast that is said to haunt the Saco River, which runs from Saco Lake in New Hampshire through Oxford and York Counties in Maine before terminating at its delta in Saco Bay. Unlike its more reptilian brethren, this river monster is said to resemble a muscular ape standing 5-6 feet tall with hair as white as snow.

The White Monkey is reportedly connected to a curse that was set on Saco Island after an atrocity was committed against the natives who lived there by a trio of white sailors in 1547. The drunken sailors thought it would be funny to take an indigenous mother and child and throw them over the nearby waterfall. They were somehow surprised when their captives died from the fall. The widowed father put a curse on the river, demanding the spirit that lived in the waters kill three white men every year.

Granted, the story seems pretty far-fetched when you realize that (aside from the Vikings) no white man has been confirmed to set foot in Maine until 1604. Equally dubious is the claim that Joseph Smith, the future founder of the Mormon Church, saw the creature when he was twelve years old, despite there being no evidence that he ever set foot in Maine.

Indeed, this extensive investigation by writer Ethan Quinsey has demonstrated that the so-called “legend” of the White Monkey only first appeared in this HubPages article from 2010. Granted, stories of the Saco River curse have been around since at least 1880, but those earlier sources never mentioned a river monster. The HubPages article does mention the Memegwesi, little people told about in stories from the Abenaki to the Cree of central Canada, but their description bears little resemblance to the White Monkey (incidentally, the Memwegisi have also been brought up in connection with Massachusetts’ Dover Demon; more on him in a future article).

In all, the White Monkey seems to have even less basis in reality than the Angola Pigman from the New York article.

And that’s all the cryptids of Maine! Join me on the next episode of this series, where I move into southern New England and look at some cryptids from Massachusetts. But before that, let’s finally talk about animation on this blog and see which animated films from 2023 were my favorite. Stay tuned for that next week!