Regarding a possible U.F.O. in the sky on Saturday night (June 16) at 9:45 -- I saw a very bright light overhead moving slowly west to east over Vassalboro.
The light lit up the sky enough to catch our eyes and then, as we followed it moving slowly, it suddenly took off at an amazing rate of speed, faster then anything we've ever seen.
Did anyone else, curious or crazy, report this?
Robert Bryson
Vassalboro
maine02465[at]msn.com
Our last photo was of factory workers coming out of the old Calderwood Bakery on Pleasant Street in Portland, changing shifts way back in 1937. The Boothbay Opera HouseOther mention of this haunted location online include a 2004 mention on a chatboard by member Gislebertus of an EVP from an investigation there: "The best EVP I ever heard was a tape I heard while we were investigating the Boothbay Opera House. The guy was from the New England Paranormal Assoc. played it and in the background you could hear everyone in the background talking about things that had been going on in the house... It was very informal and the people were sitting about 10 feet from the recorder. All of a sudden you hear this male voice go "HEY" clear as a bell and louder than the other people in the room. They didn't hear it at the time, it needed no enhancement as it was clearer than the other voices. When he played it, it freaked out one of my students so badly she had to leave."
Boothbay Harbor, Maine
The Boothbay Opera House building was originally constructed back in 1894 and for many years, it housed the local headquarters for the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order in line with the Freemasons. Later on, the building was turned into a theater and has hosted every story of entertainment imaginable for this small Maine town, including minstrel shows; plays; movies; town meetings and basketball games.... and if you believe the stories, it has also played host to a ghost.
No one knows who this resident spirit may be, although some have an idea, but he is said to haunt the second floor room that was the meeting place of the Knights of Pythias. Since 1949, visitors to the building have spoken of a strange presence in the room. It is usually said that the piano that is located here will play by itself, as if some spectral piano player is manipulating the keys. Different witnesses also recounted the same thing happening in 1957, during a town celebration and again in 1977.
Some believe that the ghost may be that of a man named Earl Cliff, who played the instrument for programs in the theater in the early 1900’s, but no one really knows for sure.
Boothbay Harbor is located east of Brunswick, Maine on the southwestern coast.
© Copyright 1998 by Troy Taylor
[Source]
(Remember: Big Indians appear closer in mirrors.)Killings of sheep blamed on dogsAnd here is the second article, from this morning:
A coastal Maine farmer puts his losses at $10,000, saying several ewes were intended for breeding.
By ELBERT AULL, Staff Writer
June 4, 2007
Police said they believe a group of dogs is to blame for an overnight attack that killed more than a dozen sheep this weekend in Wiscasset.
...
Farmer Lee Straw left the carcasses out near the road Sunday while he waited for an insurance company official to photograph his losses.
"It's kind of too bad that people have to look at them, but if they'd keep control of their dogs, they wouldn't," said Straw, who runs Straw's Farm in Newcastle.
The sheep were part of a flock of around 30 at a pasture on West Alna Road.
Straw said he got a call around 5:30 a.m. Sunday from a West Alna Road resident who said the sheep were loose on his property.
He drove to Wiscasset from his farm in Newcastle and discovered the rest of his sheep running loose, along with several carcasses.
Only a couple of the 15 dead sheep showed signs of having been eaten, usually a telltale sign of a coyote attack, Straw said.
"These were just chewed up and left," he said.
The attacks were the worst for Straw in three years. He said he lost 17 sheep to a group of dogs in 2004, but police never found the dogs.
Police, along with Straw and the pasture's owner, said they believe a group of area dogs either jumped or pushed over the farmer's electric fence and went after the sheep. They said they do not believe the attack was the work of coyotes because few of the sheep were eaten.
"It has to be dogs, and more than one, because one wouldn't do that much damage," Officer Kathy S. Williams said.
Williams said no one in the neighborhood reported hearing the overnight attack, and police have no suspects.
She said the dogs probably toppled the fence, which delivers an electric shock on contact, to enter the pasture. She said the sheep were valued at around $2,000.
Straw said he believes the canines jumped his 4-foot fence. He said because about two-thirds of those killed were intended for birthing lambs, they would have been worth $10,000 over the course of several years.
...
[Click here to read full article: Source]
Farmer loses 14 more sheep to dog attacks in Wiscasset
Police and game wardens try to discover whose dogs are responsible.
June 5, 2007
By ELBERT AULL, Staff Writer
The second dog attack in as many days decimated a flock of sheep in a pasture in Wiscasset on Monday, said police and game wardens.
West Alna Road residents found carcasses scattered throughout the neighborhood after the attack, which killed 14 sheep in the same pasture where more than a dozen sheep died the night before.
"Somebody has to know whose dog it is," said Lee Straw, 52, of Newcastle, a farmer who owns hundreds of sheep.
Police and game wardens spent much of Monday searching for clues to help find the dogs that are suspected of killing 29 sheep since Saturday night.
Investigators took hair samples and sent one carcass to a lab to measure bite marks.
Jeff Hunter, who lives about 50 yards from the sheep pasture, discovered the carcasses during a morning walk.
"I was having my coffee and cigar and I found another sheep dead next to my driveway, in a ditch," Hunter said.
He looked toward the fenced-in pasture on Bob Horne's property on West Alna Road and saw another carcass.
Hunter called Horne and the warden service. "What I saw was ugly," he said.
Investigators believe that a group of dogs, not coyotes, are to blame for the killings, said Mark Latti, a spokesman for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Few sheep were eaten, and coyotes attack prey for food, police said.
Straw, who runs a farm in Newcastle, has kept a flock of ewes on Horne's property for the past five years.
The flock trimmed and fertilized Horne's 30-acre field in return for the free stay.
It was an arrangement that ran smoothly until this weekend.
"We've never had this kind of kill on my fields," he said.
Horne said he checked on the flock after Sunday's Red Sox-Yankees game, which ended around midnight. The sheep looked fine, he said.
When morning came, Horne said, he and Hunter found carcasses "all over the neighborhood."
Straw said he believes that the same group of dogs was involved in both attacks.
He said that if investigators identify the dogs, his insurance company will likely seek damages from their owners.
Straw lost 15 sheep in the first attack and 14 in the second. The attacks whittled his flock on West Alna Road from 30 to just one.
Many of the sheep were pregnant ewes. Straw said they could have produced offspring and goods worth $20,000 during their lives.
Straw buried most of the carcasses on Monday, except two that had not been found and another that was sent to a laboratory.
On Sunday, he left a group of carcasses from the first attack near the road while he waited for an insurance official to catalog his losses.
Straw and Horne covered those carcasses with a tarp on Sunday night. He said he regrets not watching the flock overnight, with rifle in hand. He and Horne thought foul weather would deter predators.
"It was raining, and we thought we had them in a tight area," Horne said.
[Source]
"Rest milady!" wrote A. Baillargeon, in a 1983 response to Dyer. His letter was postmarked from the Vatican. "This semantic usage is impenetrable to all but long-bearded (Indians) who have toiled a lifetime in deciphering these languages."
Baillargeon told Dyer an archivist identified the flowing lettering as an obscure Indian dialect. Since his response, however, other scholars have said it's derivative of ancient Greek or perhaps a Slavic tongue.
Pere Raymond Giguere, a Dominican priest in Montreal, analyzed the text in 1980. His correspondence included conclusions the text is possibly Russian, but with the additional possibility of African origin.
Giguere's experts, to no avail, analyzed the book against 576 languages in which the British and French Bible Societies publish, he wrote. Its symbols seem to be derived mostly from Latin characters, the experts said, but with an apparent alphabet of 31 unique letters, as opposed to Latin's 26. [Source]
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]
Well, I made it to Zombie Kickball this year. And boy, I am soooo glad I did. It was a hoot. Click on any photo here to see a larger version. Here your intrepid reporter finds herself face to face with a terrifying creature clearly wearing a bathrobe and slippers. Imagine my relief that I escaped -- I heard that earlier in the afternoon she had been documented chewing on some of the spectators' dogs, a rare variation of zombie appetite I have never seen before.
When I arrived, there were many people gathered, some zombie, more not, an ice cream truck, and some police. The police were there, it turned out, because some irate Little League parents had called them, fretting that their children would be terrorized. The cops came, surveyed the scene, including the small children who were participating in the zombie kickball teams (who were certainly not scared at all), and came to the very intelligent conclusion that there was no reason for them to do anything to stop the event -- and the fun commenced.
The teams shambled and lurched their way about the playing field. The zombies ran the gamut from not-very-zombie-at-all to terrifying. There was a woman with blue hair, crazy sunglasses and purple boots who "Arrrrrr!!!!"ed ferociously in a very pirate-like manner. There was a ballerina in a wheelchair. There was a fellow with his face all wrapped up and his legs draggling behind him. There was another fellow who was lying facedown at the corner of the chainlink fence outside the field when I arrived. Later he dragged himself onto the playing field, where he lay facedown until after the game, when two attendants hauled him bodily to the site where the group photo was being taken.
Throughout the game, a brave band of the undead rattled along on their instruments alongside each play, with surprising skill.
One problem: she says her chow was female, but DNA tests showed that the beast was male.Madden said she took Woolfie to visit friends in Maine and left her there while she made a quick trip back to Florida. The dog, left with a family at Worthley Pond, northwest of Turner, ran off. Madden was unable to find it when she returned to Maine.
She placed an ad in a newspaper and on Craigslist, hoping to be reunited with her pet. But Woolfie was never found, and Madden returned to Florida.
Later, she heard about the media frenzy back in Maine when the strange animal was found along Route 4. She learned that DNA tests had revealed the animal was a dog, after speculation by some who suggested it might be something more exotic.
“It is without a doubt in my mind my dog,” Madden said. “A friend of mine had seen her picture in the paper and said it was her.” [Source]
Are the Knights Who Say "NI!" here in Maine? Either that, or one stingy tree thief made off with a bunch of plants that were destined to be sold to support local educational programming in Farmington. Story from the Lewiston Sun Journal.Plants, trees disappear from soil, water district
By Ann Bryant , Staff Writer
Friday, May 18, 2007
FARMINGTON - A variety of plants and trees were taken from the Franklin County Soil & Water Conservation District on Park Street sometime Monday night.
...
Thompson inventoried the items Monday night before leaving around 6 p.m., but did not notice anything unusual until Tuesday afternoon, when she thought there should be more plants, she said.
"Someone took their time doing it as it did not seem to be a random grab or vandalism," Thompson said. "Pear trees were rearranged and moved around very neatly so that it wouldn't be noticed and whomever took the plants did it in a proportionate way as only certain amounts of different items were taken," Thompson added.
The total items taken, she said, included 20 blueberry bushes, 50-plus high-bush cranberry bushes, three Bartlett pear trees, 23 gray dogwood and a small pot of chives.
"There is a security light in the area," she said, "and the odd part is there is a utility pole across from the office that has been run into very recently and has a fresh wound. Someone may have damaged their vehicle while they were taking the plants," she said.
...
[click here to read full article: Source]
Alleged burglar nabbed twice in 24 hours
The Associated Press
Monday, May 14, 2007
BANGOR, Maine (AP) A 23-year-old man was arrested for burglary Friday night just 15 hours following his release from jail for two other burglaries, police said.
Edward Turner of Hermon and his roommate, Donald Searway, were arrested late Thursday after police found firearms and jewelry in their car and home that were reported stolen from homes in Levant earlier in the day, according to Maine State Police.
Turner was released on bail Friday morning, but it wasn't long before he was back in hot water.
Bangor police arrested Turner at 8:45 that night when he was spotted with a backpack that contained numerous pieces of jewelry that still had price tags on them and were attached to jewelry display boards.
Turner was charged with smashing a store window at Downeast Coins and Collectibles and snatching the jewelry from a display window. He is also accused of breaking a window at a pawn shop across the street, but police say he couldn't get into the store.
[Source]
Yeah, you thought it might never happen again. You glared into your mirror, pulling your hair out and grimacing, thinking to yourself, "God, how could I have missed it?! What is WRONG with me?!!" And then the unimaginable happens. The once in a lifetime event RETURNS. You, my dear friend and lover of all things zombie, are given a SECOND CHANCE.Zombie Kickball II - Details (READ THIS!)If you missed it last year's fun, you can see some of it online: Zombie Kickball 2006 on YouTube, or take a peek at Jeff Boulet's photos on Flickr.
Eastern Prom Kickball Field.
Portland, Maine
Be in costume or be consumed!
OK, imagine it . . . Memorial Day Weekend on the Eastern Prom, sailboats criss-crossing Casco Bay . . . young lovers, lazing on the grass . . . the smell of backyard BBQ's . . . the sound of children frolicking on the playground . . . and several dozen shambling, undead converging on the Prom for a knockdown, drag-out game of Zombie Kickball!
What better way to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer?
Sunday, May 27th, 1:00pm sharp, on the Eastern Prom kickball field!
If you don't feel like playing k-ball, you can still help fill the Zombie Bleachers. Last year we had about 30 folks show up, this year we're shootin' for 100. Sky's the limit, Zombie Cheerleaders, Zombie Drum Line, Zombie Hot Dog Vendor . . . bring it!
Now, forward this to anyone you know who might participate, the more zombies, the better ZKII will be.
Need inspiration? Read these tales of other recent Zombie gatherings around the continent:
• Zombies Mob Posh Vancouver Mall: http://flickr.com/groups/vancouver_zombiewalk_2005/
• San Fran Zombie Flash Mob: http://flickr.com/photos/ioerror/sets/685972/
• Zombies attack Austin Americal Idol auditions: http://www.tvsquad.com/2005/08/30/zombies-crash-american-idol-auditions/
• Zombies vs. D&D kids in Montreal: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pumpkin/sets/538104/
Need Zombie makeup help? Try here (or rent a George Romero movie):
• http://zombies.tomwalsham.com/costume.html
• http://www.zombiepubcrawl.com/makeup.php
• http://www.terror4fun.com
Letter carriers' risk of dog bites lower in Maine
By Associated Press
May 17, 2007 6:00 AM
WASHINGTON — For a mail carrier looking to escape dog bites, New York City is the place to go, and Maine isn't so bad, either. California, however, is the place to avoid.
The New York metropolitan area recorded no dog bites of letter carriers last year.
At the other end of the scale, the Santa Ana, Calif., area led the nation with 96 bitten carriers, and three of the top five spots for carriers to get bitten were in the Golden State.
...
"Every animal needs to be protective, but its up to the customers to keep them trained," he added. "Here in California they just seem not to do it."
Some customers try to introduce their dogs to the regular carrier, but that still leaves the substitute carrier vulnerable, he noted.
Carriers are trained in how to defend themselves, he said, and are discouraged from petting or getting close to dogs.
...
In 2006 some 3,184 letter carriers were bitten by dogs, the agency said, down slightly from 3,273 the year before.
After the New York metro area, next safest was Alaska with 2 bites, followed by Honolulu, 3 and Maine and Montana with 9 each.
Following Santa Ana's 96 bites were Houston, 94; Sacramento, 82; Los Angeles, 77 and South Florida, 71.
[for full article click here: Source]
Some excitement occurred in San Francisco earlier this week, and it all goes back to Maine! Thanks to Telstar Logistics for highlighting this item:A historian for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area said the wreckage was surely that of the three-masted clipper ship King Philip, which was built in Maine in 1856. According to the records, which are frequently less romantic than the speculation, the ship spent much of its career carrying bird manure fertilizer around the world. In its last years, it carried lumber from the Pacific Northwest to San Francisco.Until now.
On Jan. 25, 1878, it was towed by a tug through the Golden Gate, then laid anchor to allow the tug to assist a nearby vessel in distress, according to historian Stephen Haller. The anchor didn't hold, however, and the King Philip drifted onto the sand at Ocean Beach, where it foundered.
Fortunately, everyone got off safely, which could be why the King Philip never got the fuss made over it as did a certain other vessel that hit an iceberg 34 years later.
The King Philip made a brief appearance in 1980, Haller said, when El Niño currents washed away an unusually large amount of sand. But no one had seen the ship since.
The King Philip -- named for the Indian chief who was involved in King Philip's war in 1675 -- was not as fast as the fastest clipper. It was launched in 1856, in Alna, Maine, and was advertised as "a strictly first-class clipper ship with quick dispatch.''
However the King Philip was advertised, it seemed to have been a hard-luck ship. There were at least two mutinies -- one in Honolulu in 1869 and one off Annapolis, Md, five years later. In both cases, the mutinous sailors set the ship on fire, seriously damaging it twice.
Our last photo was of the installation of cobblestones on Cross Street in Portland, where they remain to this very day, one of the few streets in Portland's Old Port area that has not been paved over with asphalt. Here is another photo, courtesy of Abraham Schechter, who runs the Portland Public Library's Portland Room.
WHEN: July 21st and 22nd, Saturday and Sunday, 9:00am to Sunset (normal operating hours)
Our last photo was of the installation of sewer pipes on Forest Avenue in Portland, with the camera facing towards Woodfords Street. Here is another photo, courtesy of Abraham Schechter, who runs the Portland Public Library's Portland Room.
