Bigfoot Found in Maine, Lovecraft Discovered in Beer!

2015 is off to a great start if you like weird New England stuff. I hope it keeps up!

First off, a twelve-year old boy in Turner, Maine claims to have video footage of Bigfoot trekking through the woods. Is it really a giant hairy hominid? Is it a hoax? Is is something else altogether? Watch the video and decide for yourself:




The Bangor Daily News has coverage of the sighting. Bill Brock, a Maine Bigfoot hunter and host of "Monsters Underground" on Destination America, came out to investigate. In addition to the video there were footprints and mysterious howling noises. After looking at the evidence, Brock decided he was unable to conclude anything either way. I admire someone who is comfortable with ambiguity!

Here's a longer video where Brock and a friend evaluate the evidence they have:




Interestingly, Turner was home to another possible monster earlier in the 1990s and 2000s, when a mysterious canine creature roamed through the woods. It emitted high-pitched screams, had eyes that glowed in the dark, and was blamed for the death of a Doberman. A weird-looking dead dog-like animal was found in 2008 - was it the Turner monster?

Moving from creepy things found in the woods to creepy things found in can, Rhode Island's Narragansett Beer company is releasing an H.P. Lovecraft honey ale to the world on January 19.

Lovecraft, a Rhode Island native, was one of the seminal American horror writers and incorporated lots of local New England lore into his stories. But why a honey ale? Narragansett was inspired by a fictional elixir, known as space mead, that appears in some stories inspired by Lovecraft's own work. The space mead allows people to travel between the stars. The honey ale won't allow you to do that, but maybe it will make you feel as if you can. The company also promises another Lovecraft beer in spring, which will be inspired by his story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." I eagerly await tasting a beer based on a tale about evil fish-people!

Recent UFO Sightings in New Hampshire

It's easy for me to get lost in New England's old weird folklore. Every now and then I need to stick my head up from the old books and look at what's happening now - New England's new weird folklore.

A lot of people use the word paranormal when they are talking about strange modern phenomena. 'Paranormal' sounds more scientific than 'folklore,' and I suppose it suits the technological era that we live in. But I don't think it's dismissive to lump modern paranormal phenomena with older folklore. Both terms refer to the same thing: weird activity or stories that don't comfortably fit in other more reputable categories like history, science, or religion.

Anyway, regardless of terminology, on December 1, 2014 someone stopped at a traffic light in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and saw a UFO. They didn't see a metallic spaceship or anything of that sort, but instead some mysterious lights in the sky. Shining through the cloud cover they could see a large white circle of lights. Sometimes the lights had a bluish tinge, sometimes pinkish, but mostly they remained white.

There was an additional light that rotated around the circle of lights, but the circle itself stayed stationary.

It stayed in the same place with the bigger light just rotating around the circle of stationary light. I kept trying to see if there was a craft there, but could not make out any shape of a craft as this was just above the cloud cover. My first thought is that whoever it was must have thought they were hiding above the cloud, but the lights were clearly visible.

When the traffic light turned green the witness drive forward and pulled off the road, but when he looked back up the UFO had disappeared.

Carl Jung in 1910 (from Wikipedia)

It's a cool sighting! I don't know what UFOs are, but people have been seeing them for centuries. There are many theories about what they are, but the psychiatrist Carl Jung might be able to shed light (forgive the pun) on this particular incident. Jung claimed there were similarities between UFOs and the many circular holy symbols in world religions. For example, he drew connections between saints' halos, Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, the wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, and modern UFOs. Jung claimed all of these were mystical experiences, and that circular shapes symbolized spiritual wholeness.

I like that theory, but what would he say about the large number of triangular UFOs seen in New Hampshire? Mark Podell, an investigator with MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), investigates 5 - 10 New Hampshire UFO sightings each month. Many people see circular UFOs, but many others see triangular lights in the sky. If you want to see one yourself, you might want to visit Franconia Notch at night. Podell says that's where 80% of the reports come from. I've been up there many times myself, and it is very, very dark at night. It's probably a good place to witness strange phenomena.

You can hear more from Mark Podell, and see a video of a possible UFO seen in Derry, in the video below.


I found the information about the UFO in Portsmouth from the MUFON website, which is always interesting.

Weeping Turtles and Flying Souls: John Josselyn's World of Wonders

Sometimes when I read some weird old text or strange witchcraft narrative, I think, "Did the world operate by different rules in the past? This doesn't sound like the one I live in."

I first read about the concept of the past having different rules in John Crowley's book The Solitudes, the first in his fantasy fiction quartet Aegypt. The Solitudes tells how an unemployed historian named Pierce Moffet becomes stranded the small town of Blackbury Jambs. Moffet is hired by a wealthy resident to write a biography of a local writer of historical fiction. But as Pierce researches the writer's life, he begins to question whether the laws of physics and reality have been stable across time. Perhaps, he thinks, there was a time when magic really did work and the world was stranger than it is now.

The book that most recently brought this idea to my mind is non-fiction: John Josselyn's An Account of Two Voyages to New England (1674). Not much is known about Josselyn, an Englishman who traveled to New England in 1638 and 1663. His life story is unknown, but in addition to An Account, he also wrote New-England's Rarities Discovered (1672). Both books contain extensive lists of New England flora and fauna, and historians speculate that Josselyn may have been trained as a surgeon. But although he was interested in science, sometimes the New England he describes just doesn't sound like the one we live in.

For example, he describes a deer-like animal called a maccarib, which has two horns "growing backwards along their backs to their rumps" with "another horn in the middle of their forehead, about half a yard long, very straight but wreathed like a unicorn's horn..." I don't think there are any three-horned deer in North America, or ever were. He also tells how the local Indians would pick up a live rattlesnake with one hand, strip off the flesh with their teeth, and eat the snake whole. It sounds unbelievable, but then again he also claims the Indians spoke in rhymed verse and that his English neighbors in Maine encountered angry mermen, ghosts, and a ship crewed by female witches.

Josselyn makes our region sound like Narnia or Wonderland, and the ocean was just as strange as the land. Here's something Josselyn experienced on his trip across the Atlantic from England:

July the Sixth: Calm now for two or three days, our men went out to swim, some hoisted the shallop (a small boat) out and took diverse Turtles, there being an infinite number of them all over the Sea as far as we could ken, and a man may ken at sea in a clear air 20 miles. They floated upon the top of the water being asleep, and driving gently upon them with the Shallop, of a sudden they took hold of their hinder legs and lifted them into the boat... When they were brought aboard they sobbed and wept exceedingly, continuing to do so till the next day that we killed them, by chopping off their heads.

I do believe that animals feel emotions and fear, but I don't think that turtles can shed tears and sob. Maybe sometimes their eyes might get runny, but that's not what Josselyn is describing. He's describing a boat full of sad turtles crying because they know their going to be eaten. I'm reminded of the talking animals that fill fairy tales and children's books.

I don't find myself believing all Josselyn's tales, but they are still compelling. Did the world really operate by different rules in the 1600s? Maybe, but maybe he's just describing how the world should be, or how the world feels. After all, I'm sure turtles don't want to be eaten, and would probably cry if they could. I doubt there were any maccaribs wandering around, but it probably felt like there could be to an Englishman standing on the coast of a vast new continent.

Other stories are expressions of ancient metaphysical theories about the human soul, like the following:

Near upon twenty years since there lived an old planter at Black-point (now Scarborough, Maine), who on a sunshine day about one of the clock lying upon a green bank not far from his house, charged his son, a lad of 12 years of age, to awaken him when he had slept two hours. The old man falls asleep and lying upon his back gaped with his mouth wide enough for a hawk to shit into it. After a little while the lad sitting by spied a humble-bee (i.e. bumblebee) creeping out of his father's mouth, which taking wing flew quite out of sight. The hour as the lad guessed being come to awaken his father, he jogg'd him and called aloud "Father, Father, it is two o'clock!" but all would not rouse him. At last he sees the humble-bee returning, who lighted upon the sleeper's lip and walked down, as the lad conceived into his belly, and presently he awaked. 

After describing this Josselyn goes on to talk about how bad the mosquitoes are in Maine, as if the bee story were just an everyday occurrence like mosquitoes. But the bee story is really interesting, and not just because the sleeping farmer's mouth is open wide enough for a "hawk to shit into it."

As  Horace Beck points out in his book The Folklore of Maine (1957), the bee story is actually quite old and was well known in the Middle Ages. It was believed that the human soul could leave the body while a person was asleep, usually in the shape of an animal. In most stories mice or snakes emerge from the sleeper's mouth, but a German story tells how a bee flew from a king's mouth while he was asleep. The king's guard followed the bee as it flew to the king's secret treasure trove. The guard killed the bee, the king died, and the guard became a rich man. Happily, nothing so dramatic happened to the Maine farmer.

Beck claims this tale had disappeared from Europe by the seventeenth century, so it's interesting it shows up in Josselyn's book. Old beliefs about the human soul are behind a lot of New England witchcraft stories, and the bee soul appears again in a story from the late 1800s about a Cape Cod witch. For John Josselyn, New England was a land of wonders where an old farmer's soul could fly free during a sunny afternoon's nap. For the Puritans and their descendants, these wonders were exiled to the dark realm of witchcraft. The rules that ruled their world were different.

We still live in a world dominated by a Puritan worldview about the supernatural, not John Josselyn's. Our supernatural world is dark, not sunny. New England is ghost-haunted, witch-haunted, Devil-haunted, monster-haunted, etc. Name something spooky and we have it! We can't change history, and our region's eerie history is part of its charm. Most people, myself included, have affection for New England's residents of the dark.

But wouldn't it be nice to bring some of those spirits out into the sun now and then? Wouldn't it be nice to lie out in a sunny field and let your soul buzz around like a bee? Maybe just briefly the world could be a place of wonders instead of terrors.

And on that note: Happy New Year! Here's hoping 2015 is full of wonders for you, and only as much spookiness as you want. And if you do fall asleep in a field, don't open your mouth too wide.

America's First Christmas Tree?

The Christmas tree is an old, possibly even ancient, Germanic tradition. But how did it get to America?

Historians know that the wife of England's King George III brought the tradition to England. She was German nobility, and decorated the British royal home with fir trees at Christmas-time. Queen Victoria, who was George's granddaughter, popularized the tradition in England after she married Germany's Prince Albert. By the mid-nineteenth century Christmas trees were well-known throughout Britain.

It would make sense if the Christmas tree arrived in the United States from Victorian England, but that may not be the case. The tradition may have been brought here by a radical German reformer - who was also a gymnast.

Karl Follen was born in 1796 to well-off German family. Follen studied theology, but was also a political radical who supported the agenda of the French Revolution. After fleeing Germany (he was accused of assassinating a conservative politician) Follen went to France, where he met the Marquis de Lafayette. The Marquis, who pops up in so many surprising places, helped Follen move to America.

Charles Follen, 1796 - 1840.

Follen changed his first name from Karl to Charles, and in 1825 got a position teaching German at Harvard University. Oddly, Follen also introduced the sport of gymnastics to New England and supervised the first college gymnasium in the United States. The gymnasium was at Harvard.

Before we get to the Christmas tree, just a brief note about the whole gymnastics thing. The sport of gymnastics was created in Germany by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778 - 1852), who created it as a way of improving morale among German men after their defeat by Napoleon. At first Jahn was supported in his efforts by the German nobility, but they soon learned he was a radical political reformer who wanted a unified German state. Jahn fled Germany, but not before teaching gymnastics to a generation of German men, including Follen.

OK, now on to the Christmas tree. While teaching at Harvard, Follen met local Transcendentalist writers like Longfellow and married Eliza Cabot, a member of Boston's wealthy Cabot family. But despite his success Follen remained a political reformer at heart, and became involved in the movement to abolish slavery.

In 1835, an English journalist and fellow abolitionist named Harriet Martineau visited the Follen's Cambridge home on Christmas Eve. She had come to discuss politics with Charles Follen, but while there she witnessed the Follens set up a Christmas tree for their son Charley:

The tree was the top of a young fir, planted in a tub which was ornamented with moss. Smart dolls and other whimsies glittered on the evergreen and there was not a twig which had not something sparkling upon it... I mounted the steps behind the tree to see the effect of opening the doors. It was delightful. The children poured in, but in a moment every voice was hushed. Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested. Nobody spoke, only Charley leaped for joy....

I have little doubt that the Christmas tree will become one of the most flourishing exotics of New England. 

Martineau was right, but sadly Follen never lived to see the Christmas tree tradition spread widely. He was denied tenure at Harvard because of his radical views and moved to Lexington, Massachusetts where he became a Unitarian preacher. He also traveled to lecture about the abolitionist movement. On January 13, 1840 the ship carrying Follen back to Massachusetts from a New York lecture caught fire and sank. Follen was among the many passengers who drowned.

Follen Community Church in Lexington

I don't want to end a Christmas post on a sad note, so I'll note that Follen's church in Lexington still stands today. To carry on his work, each year the church sells Christmas trees and donates the profits to social outreach programs.

Was Charles Follen's tree really the first Christmas tree in America? It's hard to say. I suppose there may have been earlier trees that were undocumented, but Follen's story is an inspiring one, and sometimes that's what we need at Christmas.

I got the information for this post form Amy Whorf McGuiggan's Christmas in New England and Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas.

How to Predict Snow

The first official day of winter is coming up fast. With winter comes snow. Some people hate it, some people love it (like me), but we all want to know when the white stuff is going to fall from the sky.

Modern New Englanders have satellite technology and the Weather Channel to help us, but our regional forebears weren't so lucky. They had to rely on almanacs and their own senses to predict when snow was coming.

They also had a storehouse of folk knowledge to draw upon. For example, it was believed that you could predict snow by looking at the bottom of your tea kettle when you took it off the stove. Snow was on the way if the bottom was white. Similarly, you could be sure a snowstorm was coming if the wood in your fireplace hissed a certain way. Sadly, there's no record of what that certain way is.

The logic behind those two methods is a little murky to me, but these next three seem more practical:

1. When it starts to snow, look at the size of the snowflakes. Large flakes mean the storm will be over soon. Small, fine flakes mean the snow will continue for quite a while.

2. If the snow on your roof melts off, the next storm to come will be rain. If the snow on the roof blows off, the next storm will be more snow.

3. In the same vein, if the ice on the trees melts off, the next storm will be rain. If it is blown off by the wind, more snow is on the way. 

Unlike the kettle and firewood methods, these three seem like they're based on some empirical fact, which is the air temperature. If the air is warmer, the flakes will be bigger and the snow will melt off trees and roofs. It's still no guarantee the next storm will be rain, though, because a new cold front could always move in.

Of course, you can always throw practicality out the window and indulge your irrational side. It was believed that if you make a wish on the first snowflake your wish will come true. And if you're the betting type, writing down the date of the first snow storm will guarantee that you'll win a bet sometime that winter.

I culled this information from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England (1896) and Fanny Bergen's Current Superstitions (1896). It looks like 1896 was a good year for folklore books!