A Mountain Lion in Brookline Massachusetts?

If you ever want to read strange things you should look through your town's police blotter. Many unusual occurrences happen every day and most people don't even notice - except for the police. For example, here are a few interesting things reported in the August 16, 2018 edition of The Brookline Tab, the local newspaper for Brookline, Massachusetts.

"Tuesday, Aug. 7 - Suspicious person on Harvard Street: At 7:28 p.m. a caller reported that a man wearing mask, aviator glasses, a skull head necklace and an American flag pin was harassing the caller's girlfriend.  

Wednesday, Aug. 8 - Assault and Battery on Beacon Street: At 5:31 a.m. a caller reported that at midnight  his roommate threw a jar of mayonnaise at the back of his head."

Those aren't the worst of it. Next to the list of police incidents is an article titled "Police: Man wearing nightgown and garter gropes woman." It describes how a "stocky man in his 20s wearing a black dress or nightgown with a lace garter belt" grabbed and groped a woman at the intersection of Washington Street and Salisbury Road early on the morning of August 6. Yikes!

Perhaps the summer heat is driving people to commit weird crimes. But I'm not sure what to make of this report:

"Wednesday, Aug. 8... Strange looking animal on Addington Road: At 10:01 p.m. a caller reported a strange looking animal walking back and forth in the area. The caller thought it might be a mountain lion as it was too big for a fox or coyote."

Brookline has a lot of wildlife (rabbits, geese, turkeys, coyotes) but as far as I know there aren't any large carnivorous cats roaming around. And to make things stranger, Addington Road is in the densely settled Aspinwall Hill area. It's only a few blocks away from the Green Line. It is definitely not a rural area. Could there really be a mountain lion in Brookline?

There are a few possible answers:

1. The caller was mistaken.
If you're a natural skeptic you'll find this the most appealing explanation. Ordinary things often look very different in the dark, and the caller probably really saw some other animal (a dog or coyote). Maybe they just saw a raccoon or skunk which looked bigger in the dark, or misperceived the shadows thrown by leaves and streetlights. 

Addington Road in Brookline

Humans have an innate tendency to see living beings in inanimate phenomena. For example, have you ever seen a stick in the grass and thought it was a snake? This psychological trait is called pareidolia and it seems to be an evolutionary survival from a time when humans always had to be on the lookout for predators. It's safer to think something is a mountain lion rather than assume it is just a shadow. You wouldn't want to blunder into a large hungry cougar!

2. It really was a mountain lion. 
Mountain lions were once common in New England but were exterminated by the European settlers. There are still mountain lions in the western parts of the country and in Florida, but none around here. Despite this New Englanders report seeing mountain lions to the present day. For example, in 2014 citizens of Winchester, Massachusetts reported seeing a large feline creature in town, as did people in Rhode Island, while in the 1980s a mountain lion reportedly terrorized parts of Cape Cod. There's even a bulletin board for New England mountain lion sightings.

However, local wildlife authorities claim there are no mountain lions in New England. Well, to clarify, they say there is "no evidence of a reproducing mountain lion population." To quote this official Commonwealth of Massachusetts site:

Mountain Lions became scarce in the East after a bounty system wiped out most predatory animals. Today, Mountain Lions are found in the mountainous regions of the West. There is also a small population in southern Florida. 

Despite this fact, Massachusetts residents continue to report Mountain Lion sightings. It is difficult to know if someone saw a Mountain Lion without any tangible evidence. 

Nowadays, many reports include photographic evidence, thanks to camera phones and trail cameras. There have been only two cases where evidence supports the presence of a Mountain Lion in Massachusetts. All other reports of Mountain Lions in Massachusetts have turned out to be other animals.

In April 199, a hunter found unusual animal scat near the Quabbin Reservoir; lab tests confirmed it came from a mountain lion. In March 2011, a forester photographed animal tracks in the snow near the Quabbin, which were again confirmed to be from a mountain lion. Those are the only two cases of authenticated mountain lion evidence in modern Massachusetts.

Totally excited for monster-hunting - just as long as I never find one!

However, in June 2011, a male mountain lion was struck by an SUV and killed in Milford, Connecticut. DNA testing showed that the animal had traveled all the way from South Dakota to Connecticut, a distance of 1,800 miles. Most mountain lions don't roam that far. Still, I suppose there is a very, very slim chance that a mountain lion made its way from a western state to New England and came into Brookline. 

3. Manitous, witches, phantom animals.
Maybe it was really a mountain lion. Or maybe the caller was totally wrong and mistook something ordinary for a large predator. It was either real or it was not. The answer is either yes or no, right?

I think there is a third possibility, though, somewhere in that weird realm where myth, folklore and psychology collide. People in New England have been seeing unusual (dare I say unnatural?) animals for centuries. For example, the Algonquins believed the forests were haunted by a black fox. The fox was often glimpsed by could never be captured or killed, even by the most skilled hunter. It was a manitou, or spirit-being. 

The Puritans saw equally strange creatures. Puritans didn't believe in manitous, so they associated these strange animals with witches and the Devil. Witches and their familiar spirits were said to assume the shapes of cats, pigs, birds and strange bestial hybrids. For example, on February 27, 1692 Elizabeth Hubbard was walking home from her uncle's house in Salem Village when she realized a large animal was stalking her. She thought it might be a wolf, although wolves were rare even in the 1690s. There was something unnatural about the creature and although it didn't harm her she thought it might be a witch in animal form.

On April 19 of that year, Abigail Hobbs mentioned unusual animals in her testimony before the Court of Oyer and Terminer:

"I will speak the truth," she said. "I have seen sights and been scared. I have been very wicked. I shall be better, if God will help me." 

"What sights did you see?" asked Hathorne.  

"I have seen dogs and many creatures." 

"What dogs do you mean? Ordinary dogs?" 

"I mean the Devil." 

(quoted in Marilynne Roach, The Salem Witch Trials. A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege, 2002)

Even in our modern, post-Puritan world people continue to see animals. Cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers often call them phantoms since they leave little evidence behind. For example, in 1976 a large black dog terrorized the town of Abington near Massachusetts's infamous Hockomock Swamp. A police officer shot at the beast after it killed two ponies but it ignored the bullets and walked off into the swamp. 

I didn't see a mountain lion, but there were a lot of wild turkeys down this path. I turned back!

Perhaps more relevant to the Brookline sighting, phantom animals of the feline variety have also terrorized towns near the Hockomock Swamp:

In 1972, in Rehoboth, Mass., a "lion hunt" was organized by local police. Residents of the area had been terrorized by what they said was a large cat or mountain lion. Cattle and sheep n the area had been mysteriously killed and carcasses were discovered raked with claw marks. Police took casts of the animal's tracks and used dog and helicopter in an attempt to track it down. Nothing was caught. But similar incidents involving phantom cats have occurred in other places throughout the Bridgewater Triangle and across the nation. None of these mysterious felines has yet been captured. (Loren Coleman, Mysterious America, 2007)

Spirits, witches, phantom cats - I don't know what these strange animals are, but New Englanders have seen them for a long, long time. I think they'll continue to see them in the future. Perhaps the caller who reported seeing the mountain lion on Addington Street was just part of this long tradition. Weird things happen in New England all the time, even close to the MBTA.

Animal graffito in Brookline

Little people and swamp spirits in Vermont

So we had beautiful summer weather this past weekend. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

I suppose I should have gone out roaming through the woods looking for monsters or exploring historic old cemeteries (or maybe just going to the beach), but instead I decided to update the blog. Hopefully those of you out roaming through New England will find this week's information helpful, particularly if you are in Vermont.

Over the last year or so I've been researching the various fairies that make their homes in New Enlgand, and I realized I didn't have much information about Vermont. With it's rounded Green Mountains and dense woods I knew there had to be some fairies living up there!

There is a little bit of information floating around on the web, but I found a decent written source in William Haviland and Marjory Power's The Original Vermonters (1981), a book which summarizes anthropological and historical information about the Abenaki. The Abenaki were the Indian groups who lived in Vermont before the Europeans came, and who still live there today.

Haviland and Power describe quite a few mythical beings, but two of them seem particularly fairy-like. One of them is called simply "the swamp spirit" or "swamp creature." The swamp spirit was seldom seen, but could often be heard crying from the swampy areas where it lived. Lone travelers were the most likely to hear the creature's cries.

The authors claim this being was "more mischievous than malevolent," but then go on to say it liked to lure children into swamps where it either kept them forever or just outright killed them. This sounds malevolent to me, and it did to Abenaki parents as well, who warned their children to stay away from swamps. I've tried to avoid swamps most of my life - too many mosquitoes - and now I have one more good reason!

Me looking at a swamp. Stay away!

The other fairy-like creature Haviland and Power discuss are the Manogemassak, a name which they translate simply as "Little People." Happily these beings are much less malevolent than the swamp spirit.

The Manogemassak live in rivers and tend to avoid humans as much as possible. This is easy for them to do because of their unique anatomy. The Manogemassak are incredibly narrow, and their faces are described as being as thin as an axe blade. They are so thin that they can only be viewed in profile, not when faced head on. This makes it quite hard for humans to see them.

The Manogemassak also travel in stone canoes, and when humans approach they will submerge under water like a submarine. Stone canoes don't sound practical, but they work just fine if you are a magical being, and they feature in several American Indian myths from New England. For example, the gigantic culture-hero Glooskap was said to travel by stone canoe.

Although the Manogemassak are quite hard to see their handiwork is easy to find, particularly near Button Bay on Lake Champlain. The shores of Button Bay are littered with small round stones which the Manogemassak allegedly make (and which give the bay its name).

The website Native Languages includes a little more information about the Manogemassak. For example, it notes that they sometimes make small clay sculptures that look like animals or people. Finding one of these is considered lucky. The site also claims that geometric markings on rocks indicate a dwelling of the Little People, and that curious humans should stay away.

So, in summary, stay away from swamps and away from rocks with odd markings. Helpful advice for safely enjoying summer outings in the New England woods!

Pamola, the Wandering Spirit of Mt. Katahdin

I've never climbed Mt. Katahdin, which is in Maine's Baxter State Park. It's the tallest mountain in the state, and the endpoint of the Appalachian Trail. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of folklore attached to this big mountain.

One of the most interesting stories is about a creature named Pamola. I don't know if any recent hikers or climbers have encountered him, but I'm sure they'd remember if they did.

According to the Penobscot Indians, Pamola was a wandering spirit, and Mt. Katahdin was one of his favorite hangouts.

Katahdin photo from here.

According to Frank Speck's 1935 article Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs, Pamola has no body, but is just a large head with arms and legs. (He sounds strangely like one of those animated M&Ms who show up in the commercials.) He has no settled home, but roams around from place to place wearing a backpack, which is very appropriate given Katahdin's location on the Appalachian Trail.

Other informants told Speck they had seen Pamola flying overhead, and that he was just a giant head with wings. See what I mean about him being memorable?

Despite his unusual appearance, Pamola was considered a beneficial spirit and would sometimes give aid to humans. However, if you needed his help you'd have to time it just right.

Once a year Pamola traveled across the entire sky. Beginning at the eastern horizon he'd let out a big shout, give another one at the sky's zenith directly overhead, and then one final one when he reached the western horizon. To gain his aid, the Penobscots would burn grease when they heard his first cry. If Pamola saw the smoke as he traveled overhead he would descend and listen to the Penobscot's request for help.

Unfortunately, Speck's article doesn't say what time of year Pamola made his journey. And please note, although I am writing about Pamola in the past tense he could still be hanging around Mt. Katahdin or flying across the sky. I don't want to offend a spirit by implying it's no longer active.

Pamola is still known in parts of Maine, and is the mascot of the Pamola Lodge of the Boy Scouts of America. Or maybe he adopted the Lodge as his mascots, I'm not quite sure. These scouts portray Pamola as a man with a the head of a moose and the wings and feet of an eagle. I guess the giant flying head was probably too terrifying!