Hello folks! If anyone is interested in a free Zoom talk about Bigfoot in New England (focusing on the New Hampshire/Maine region), I'll be regaling viewers for the North Hampton Public Library next week, on Thurs April 21 at 7:00pm. Please pre-register here so you are able to attend: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrcu2vrT8vHtCMX7GEXEjlui_EfFEfEw2y
Hi everyone! Well, the air is getting crisper, and with October my work schedule at the shop will settle down, and with any luck I'll be able to take some fieldtrips out into the Maine woods again. I haven't been out to hike and explore since last February (see my posts Maine Wildlife in the Snow Part 1 and Part 2). It's going to be great to get out there again after too many months of too many hours of retail work (ahhhh, the joys of Maine's seasonal economy).
But somehow along with all the rest of that nonsense, I've managed to squeeze in some awesome, fun interviews to talk about my book, and set aside time in October for some Zoom library talks. I've also continued to interview eyewitnesses for volume 2.
Here are some links to some of the stuff I've been doing and other events I will be doing soon. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvZnrDdgiAQ&t=1004s
UPCOMING EVENTS:
I'm sure there will be more, but I hope you all enjoy at least a few of these when you have the chance!
WHAT: TWISTED TALES FROM MAINE DVD RELEASE PARTY
Covered in Bees will be celebrating the release of their outrageous 24-Hour Album, as well as their participation in creating the soundtrack for the zombie film "2", included in the DVD 4-pack. Playing with them will be two other ever-rowdy and fun-loving bands, The Pubcrawlers and the Hand Me Downs. Top it all off by helping Knaughty Sarah celebrate her birthday!
On a quarterly basis, I put out a print version of this blog, in the form of the Strange Maine Gazette. Often the stories in it derive from material previously posted here on the blog, but occasionally the material is new and the print version is its first incarnation. I try to remember to post that material here as well, but sometimes I get distracted. Ha!Can a myth come into existence spontaneously? Can a story, utterly truthless, obtain widespread belief through hundreds of years, and thus become a tradition?Stephens stands out because he wrote repeatedly about the “injun devil” in his short stories, which are told with such realism that Bigfoot enthusiasts have even listed one of them among historical accounts of Maine Bigfoot, with the slight caveat that it is “possibly fiction.”
At the close of a five-years’ residence among the hunters, lumbermen and river-drivers of the Northern Maine forests, in connection with the lumbering business of my uncle’s firm, I find myself puzzling at these questions, as I recall the persistent and ever-recurring tales and accounts which everywhere come to my ears, of that strange being, or animal, which the Indians used to call “Pomoola,” and which the white woodsmen have translated “Indian Devil.”
...the moon was pouring down brightly; and I distinctly saw its shape, — the figure of a man, looking brown and naked, save where a hairy outline showed against the light. A feeling of sickness or of horror came over me.On getting up the next morning, Cluey tells the older trapper accompanying them about the sighting, to which he receives this response:
“It’s an Indian devil! It’s old Pomoola! That’s just as I’ve heard the Oldtown Indians describe it a hundred times; but I always thought it was all a lie. They always left a place as soon as they’d seen one of these things; and I reckon we’d better!”According to Stephens’ tales, Pomoola (more commonly known today as Pamola) would kill anyone who set foot on the peak of Mount Katahdin. This guardian spirit has become an amalgamation of both native and white men’s lore over the years, until today it is hard to figure out exactly what it is supposed to be. But around the turn of the century, it is plain to see that the old men of the woods had their own ideas of what Pamola was.
He’ll mock the fears of mystic and he’ll scorn the bookish talesWhere did all this material come from? Were there actual sightings reported by wilderness dwellers such as Cluey that never made it into the early newspapers of the region? Or was the idea of this manbeast extrapolated from tales told of the Yahoo, a “ten-foot hairy giant,” by pioneer hero Daniel Boone? He, in turn, may have taken liberties with Jonathan Swift’s own race of bestial bipeds, mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels, and called by that same name. Other potential sources include Native American folklore of the Wendigo, according to Loren Coleman.
Of the fearsome apparitions of the past, but courage fails
In the night when he awakens,
all a-shiver in his bunk,
And with ear against the logging
hears the steady, muffled thunk
Of the hairy fists of monsters,
beating there in grisly play,
--Horrid things that stroll o’ night-times,
never, never seen by day,
For he knows that though the spectres of the storied past are vain,
There is true and ghostly ravage in the forest depths of Maine.
Durham's 'gorilla'
Weird, Wicked Weird By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Was it really a bear? A hippie? A costumed hooligan? 35 years ago, something funky had this town talking.
Young bike-riding friends were the first to see it: something big, hairy, scary. After one mom saw it, too - she described an ape peeking out from behind bushes - 30 police cars circled Durham with orders to shoot.
Over several days, more townspeople would describe the animal as a black bear, a large dog, a chimpanzee, an orangutan, a gorilla.
"George Huntington went to Brunswick and bought a bunch of bananas because he was just so sure he'd seen it," said Elaine Sears, a longtime resident of the area where the sightings centered.
...
On July 25, 1973, while Watergate investigators needled President Richard Nixon to hand over his secret tapes, kids out biking on Shiloh Road had a close, strange encounter. The next day, their mother, Meota Huntington, told police she was driving down that same road when she saw something like an ape peek out from a bush, according to the Sun Journal archives.
That set off the police manhunt and a slew of new sightings. Faced with the variety of conflicting descriptions - bear, chimp, gorilla - Auburn Dog Officer Louis Pinette joked with a reporter that it could be "a hippie out looking for a free meal."
Adding to the intrigue, days after that first encounter the owner of Drapeau's Costume Shop in Lewiston told police a gorilla suit rented there in early July hadn't been returned. The man with the suit gave a fictitious name and address. Police warned that if it was someone in a costume, quit messing around.
...
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, featured on the History Channel's "MonsterQuest" and shows such as "Weird Travels," was in Illinois in 1973, but heard about the strange sightings a dozen states away. He collected newspaper clippings. "I found it an intriguing case because you don't have any gorillas in Maine."
Coleman looked into it and, with no reports of things such as zoo breaks, ruled out the idea of an escaped gorilla or ape. He's also ruled out Bigfoot and is skeptical of the costume theory.
"In rural areas, a lot of people have guns in Maine. It would be absolutely stupid to walk around during trigger-happy (times)," Coleman said.
...
Casts were made of footprints found behind Jones Cemetery. An Androscoggin County Sheriff deputy at the time said they might be chimpanzee.
The elusive critter - if there was a critter - earned the nickname Osgood the Ape in town.
...
Read the full article here: [Source]
It was 35 years ago this year that the Durham, Maine, area was flooded with sighting reports of a gorilla-like creature. Loren Coleman has the scoop on Cryptomundo! 
Imagine a movie by "Sixth Sense" creator M. Night Shyamalan, only with laughs, he said.
Raymond came up with the idea for his story, set on Buckfield's Streaked Mountain, last year.
He wrote a short screenplay and immediately began imagining whole scenes, using his mountaintop home, barn and fields as the location.
He plans to shoot the film over four days this August or September. [Source]
The BFRO (Bigfoot Research Organization) site has a particularly enjoyable post on a mystery simian seen in Maine during the seventies. I remember the first time I read this, I had to giggle, especially when one of the young witnesses says, "I fell right down in front of him and all he did was look at me. I would have known if it were a hippie or something. But it had a regular monkey face. You have seen a monkey before, haven't you?"
