Monsters!

The state of Maine sits at the top northeastern point of the U.S. One of the smaller states (thirty-ninth), and also one of the least populated (forty-first), Maine is considered the safest state in the country in relation to crime. Maine is home to earmuffs (they were invented there), the world’s largest rotating globe (Eartha is more than forty-one feet in diameter), and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Filled with forested parks, low mountains, picturesque lakes, and lined by rocky coastlines, it is not only one of the most beautiful states in the union, it’s also home to quite a few monsters.
Cassie, Maine’s sea serpent

The monster nicknamed Cassie was first seen off the coast of Maine in 1779 in Penobscot Bay, when future U.S. Navy hero Edward Preble (just an ensign at the time) aboard the ship the Protector saw a sea serpent on the surface of the water. On closer examination, the creature stirred, and raised its head about ten feet out of the water before diving into the depths and disappearing, according to a story in The Bangor Daily News. A similar sighting was reported the next year in Broad Bay when sailors observed a serpent about 45 feet long raise its head out of the water on a long skinny neck before diving out of sight.

Cassie has been seen all along the coast of Maine, many times from 1912 to the 1940s. In 1958, fisherman Ole Mikkelsen, saw a 100-foot long serpent with a large head, and tail like a fish. The creature seemed to watch Mikkelsen and a fellow fisherman as they spread their fishing nets before it swam away.

The last reported sighting was in 2002 by a woman who wished to remain anonymous. She called a science museum claiming to have seen something near Biddeford that looked like the Loch Ness Monster.
The Pocomoonshine Lake Monster.

Pocomoonshine Lake Monster

The Algonquin Indians of Maine have seen a monster in Pocomoonshine Lake for centuries. Legend has it the monster is a result of a disagreement between an Algonquin shaman, and a chef of the Micmac. The Micmac chief turned into an enormous serpent, which the shaman vanquished and tied to a tree next to the lake. Since then a serpent-like creature nearly sixty-feet long has been seen swimming in the lake.

However, unlike Cassie, this monster isn’t confined to the water. The Pocomoonshine Lake Monster has been reported to be able to leave the lake, and drag its gigantic body across land to nearby lakes. A sawmill owner claimed to have seen the Pocomoonshine Lake Monster’s trail in 1882. The man said the monster’s track was four feet wide, and three feet deep.

The White Monkey

First seen in the 1500s, the White Monkey (as Europeans called it) of Saco River has lurked in the areas around the river for centuries. Described as a white-skinned man with webbed fingers, the White Monkey may be the result of a curse laid upon Europeans when a group of drunks kidnapped an Indian woman and her child, and threw them off Saco Falls. The tribe shaman cursed the waters, and the White Monkey reportedly killed three white men each year. Although the White Monkey was last seen in the 1970s, the most famous sighting was by a twelve-year-old Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church in the 1800s, according to etravelmain.com.
Hunters have sought an enormous white moose near Bangor, Maine, for more than a century.

Hunters have sought an enormous white moose near Bangor, Maine, for more than a century.

Specter Moose

A giant white moose weighing nearly 2,500 pounds, standing fifteen feet tall, and having antlers that stretch ten feet, has been sighted around Bangor, Maine, for more than 100 years. In comparison, an average male moose can weigh about 990 pounds, stand around six feet tall, and have an antler span of around six feet.

Called the Specter Moose because of its color, hunters have sought this enormous moose since the 1890s. Sightings of the Specter Moose were reported in 1917, and again in 1999.
Maine Bigfoot encounters stretch back to the 1800s.

Maine Bigfoot encounters stretch back to the 1800s.

Bigfoot

Although I’ve tried to limit “Exploring American Monsters” to creatures unique to each state, I have occasionally allowed Bigfoot in this series if the big friendly fellow is important to a state. Bigfoot sightings in Maine stretch back to the 1800s. The first account in the early 1800s published in the book “Camping Out” by C.A. Stevens, involves a trapper who was “ripped apart” by a creature. Although some people suspected a mountain lion, the trapper’s body had been beaten against a tree.

According to a story in The Bangor Daily News,” in 1895, two women and three boys picking blueberries saw a bipedal creature that “looked like an immense African monkey.” In 1942, two sisters who were fishing in Meddybemps Lake when two “hair-covered giants” stole their fish. Sightings of the “Durham Gorilla” began in July 1973, and lasted until mid-August. The sightings began with a group of boys riding bicycles saw something they thought looked like a giant chimpanzee.

Wendigo

This creature is an Algonquian Indian legend that involves a malevolent spirit that possesses a human body, and gives the person a taste for human flesh. Depicted as everything from a hairy human with sharp teeth and bulging eyes, to an emaciated human-like creature with antlers, to an ice giant that moves in a whirlwind, the one constant in all Wendigo legends is that it is a cannibal. People are susceptible to Wendigo possession if they are cursed, or have resorted to cannibalism during a famine.

The Werewolf of Bedburg

The true story of a monster that terrorized a German village for years with unspeakably cruel crimes and murders

In the late 16th century, the town of Bedburg, Germany was terrorized by a diabolical creature that slaughtered its cattle and snatched away its women and children, killing them with unspeakable morbidity. The shocked and horrified townspeople feared that they were being victimized by a raving demon from Hell or, just as bad, a bloodthirsty werewolf who lived among them.

This is the true story of Peter Stubbe – the Werewolf of Bedburg – whose crimes plunged a German town already beset by political and religious turmoil into an unimaginable nightmare, and whose heinous murders rival the bloody viciousness of any of today’s most gruesome slasher movies.

WARNING: The extreme cruelty of the crimes in this case, detailed below, are highly disturbing and not for the squeamish, faint-of-heart or young children.

BEDBURG, 1582

Peter Stubbe (also documented as Peter Stube, Peeter Stubbe, Peter Stübbe and Peter Stumpf, as well as the aliases Abal Griswold, Abil Griswold, and Ubel Griswold) was a wealthy farmer in the rural community of Bedburg, located in the electorate of Cologne, Germany. The community knew him as a pleasant enough widower and father of two adolescent children, whose wealth insured him a measure of respect and influence. But this was Peter Stubbe’s public face. His true nature erupted through some black scar in his soul to satisfy a bloodlust when he donned the skin of a wolf.

At the time, Catholicism and Protestantism were at war for the hearts and minds of the populace, which brought invading armies from both faiths to Bedburg. There were also outbreaks of the dreaded Black Plague. So conflict and death were no strangers to the people of the region, which perhaps provided fertile ground for the awakening of Stubbe’s foul deeds.

CATTLE MUTILATIONS

For many years, farmers around Bedburg were mystified by the strange deaths of some of their cows. Day after day for many weeks, they would find cattle dead in the pastures, ripped open as if by some savage animal.

The farmers naturally suspected wolves, but this was actually the beginning of Peter Stubbe’s unnatural compulsion to mutilate and kill. This insatiable drive would soon escalate into attacks on his neighboring villagers.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Children began to disappear from their farms and homes. Young women vanished from the paths they traveled daily. Some were found dead, horribly mutilated. Others were never found. The community was thrown into a panic. Hungry wolves were again suspected and the villagers armed themselves against the animals.

Some even feared a more devious creature – a werewolf, who could walk among them unsuspected as a man, then transform into a wolf to satisfy its hunger.

This was the case. Although he did not literally transform into a wolf, Peter Stubbe would cloak himself with the skin of a wolf when seeking his victims. At his trial Stubbe confessed that the Devil himself gave him a magic belt of wolf fur at age twelve that, when he put it on, transformed him into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like brands of fire; a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth; a huge body and mighty paws.” When he took the belt off, he believed, he returned to his human state.

UNTHINKABLE MURDERS

Peter Stubbe was a deranged serial killer, and over the course of his murderous career, he was responsible for the deaths of 13 children, two pregnant women and numerous livestock. And these were no ordinary murders:

• The young women among his victims were sexually assaulted before he tore them apart.
• With the pregnant women, he ripped the fetuses from their wombs and “ate their hearts panting hot and raw,” which he later described as “dainty morsels.”
• Small children were strangled, bludgeoned and throats ripped open with his bare hands. Some were disemboweled and partially eaten.
• Lambs and calves were ripped apart and devoured raw.

In one instance of a triple murder, Stubbe saw two men and a woman taking a walk just outside the city walls of Bedburg and he crouched hidden out of sight behind some brush. He called out to one of the men by name with the pretense that he needed help with some lumber. When the young man joined him out of sight of the others, Stubbe bashed his head in. When the man didn’t return, the second young man went looking for him, and was likewise killed. Fearing danger, the woman began to flee, but Stubbe managed to catch her. The men’s battered bodies were later found, but the woman’s never was, and it was thought that Stubbe, after raping and killing her, might have eaten her completely.

Monsters, Mutants and Other Mysteries

Mysterious animals seem to be popping up all over the place. And not just in remote jungles or seldom-traveled tropical waters. They are allegedly appearing in such unlikely places as Harford County, Maryland and San Antonio, Texas. Rural villages of Chile also continue to be harassed by strange creatures, some of which fit the description and modus operandi of the dreaded Chupacabras.

Scientists are routinely discovering new species of animals. An exploration of a large ice-covered pool in the Yukon Territory of the Canada Basin is finding several new species in what is believed to be the world’s oldest seawater. In May, 2004, a new species of orange-colored, mouse-like mammal was discovered in the mountains of the Philippines. A bird that researchers believe is new to science was recently found on the Indonesian island of Wangi Wangi. In August, 2004, a new kind of animal was found in Australia that an expert with the National Parks and Wildlife Service said resembled a rock wallaby, but wasn’t.

It’s quite another thing, however, when an unknown creature wanders into your backyard. But we must be cautious about jumping to the conclusion that an unidentified animal is truly unidentifiable. Such is the case with the so-called Glyndon Mystery Monster that made news in July, 2004. A strange-looking dog-like creature was spotted by several residents around Glyndon, Maryland. Jay Wroe even managed to photograph the animal in his backyard. Animal experts were unable to identify it, some saying it looked like a cross between a dog and a hyena. So they set a trap for the creature in Wroe’s yard – and actually caught the poor animal, which turned out to be a red fox with a bad case of mange.

Likewise, reports of dinosaur-like creatures reported by people driving near Arica, Chile turned out to be misidentified ostriches.

So if a fox can be labeled a monster and an ostrich can be seen as a dinosaur, we must be open-mindedly skeptical when we read about some of the other interesting sightings taking place around the globe. Maybe they are bizarre new creatures, maybe not:

• The Asheboro panther. In January, 2004 in Asheboro, North Carolina, Denise Williams was dressing her kids to go outside and play in the snow when she glanced out her window and saw a large, black, cat-like creature. She managed to videotape what she described as a panther-like animal, and representatives of the North Carolina zoo estimated that the tracks in the snow they found were made by a feline weighing 35 to 40 pounds. The videotape was too fuzzy to provide definitive identification. It was rumored that the animal might have been responsible for the death of a pet dog in the area. There were no reports of an escaped panther from any zoo, and the mystery animal was never captured.

• The Lancashire blobster. There is a rich history in the annals of Forteana of mysterious “things” washing up on shores around the world. They are often unidentifiable because they are in various stages of decomposition or have provided lunch for other sea creatures. One such unidentified “blobster” was stumbled upon by a cameraman on the Lancashire, U.K. coast while he was walking his dog in late July, 2004. The rotting carcass, which featured a long beak, puzzled park rangers, zoologists, marine and other wildlife experts. Finally, as if to get the mystery over with, the manager of an aquarium declared he was 99 percent certain it was a squid. Other “experts” weren’t so sure and offered such other possibilities as a walrus pup, a dolphin, a penguin, seal or even a platypus.

• The hairless dogoyote. Rancher Devin Macanally shot and killed an unknown animal that he says was attacking his livestock on his ranch in Elmendorf, Texas in July, 2004. Despite good photos and the actual body of the animal, it has yet to be identified. Because it was killing smaller farm animals, some wondered if this was the legendary Chupacabras. The hairless, blue-gray, 20-pound creature, which somewhat resembles a dog, may have been responsible for the disappearance of more than 40 of the rancher’s chickens. The bones of the unknown animal have been sent for DNA testing, but meanwhile, experts at the San Antonio Zoo could not identify it. The mammal curator at the zoo theorized it was “a mix between a dog and a coyote,” and admitted that its lower jaw was “not normal for any mammal.”

• The PNG Dinosaur. A formal hunt was organized by police in Papua New Guinea when several locals reported seeing a large dinosaur-like creature lumbering about in March, 2004. The villagers described the creature as being about three metres (nine feet) tall, gray in color, with a head like a dog’s and a crocodile-like tail. The hunt did not find the mysterious animal (or any ostriches).

• Dog-eating Chupacabras. In January, 2004, a 40-year-old man was scared out of his wits by a monster he encountered while driving on the road around 5 a.m. at Santa Filomena, Chile. Juan Berríos described it to reporter Scott Corrales as “a bipedal animal standing 1.50 meters tall, with hind legs like those of a kangaroo, small, curved hands ending in talons, a sharp mane like that of a porcupine running along its back, a tail with a rattle, a muzzle like that of a fierce wolf, several rows of teeth and voracious red eyes.” Most terrifying, this monster was carrying the bleeding body of what may have been a dog in its mouth.

• Chupacabras’ cousin. In August, Corrales reported on the discovery of an unidentified animal inside a doghouse belonging to Manuel Otazo in Valparaiso, Chile. According to Corrales, “Manuel Otazo explained that the animal had a small head and red fur, with large fangs, claws and hands resembling wings, different from any rodent or known domestic animal.” Otazo believed it could have been a relative of the Chupacabras.

Other Recent Animal Anomalies and Oddities:

• Fertile mules. Ask any veterinarian or zoologist and they will tell you that it is impossible for a mule to give birth. By definition, a mule (a cross between a female horse and a male donkey) is an animal bread to be sterile. Yet on June 7, 2004, in the Bhutan village of Dorikha, a golden yellow mule gave birth to a black foal. This “impossibility” is not an isolated case. In October, 2002, a mule gave birth in rural Morocco.

• Giant hog. They dubbed it “Hogzilla” – a gigantic feral hog that stretched 12 feet long and weighed in at a whopping 1,000 pounds. Chris Griffin killed the monstrous pig on his plantation in Alapaha, Georgia in July, 2004.

• Seagull attack. A retired man in Falkirk, Scotland became the victim of a flock of seagulls that seemed to really have it out for him. “James McNeish said the gulls would swoop and peck at him when he walked out of the door,” reported the Daily Record on July 13, 2004. “He also said they would stare at him through his windows.” The strange incident became more and more like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds when the gulls began to go after children as they played in a nearby park.