MAINE
Monster of Fowler's Bog. Most people know that Maine is known for its lobsters, but it's also the home of horror writer Stephen King. Jason C. contends, however, that there are real horrors in the wilds of the Cascades. One day, Jason and some friends skipped school to explore the forest in an area of dense marshland. They had all grown up in the area and knew the bog and all of its many creatures quite well. Except, perhaps, for one. "It was the first and only time in my life I've ever been utterly helpless with fear," Jason reports. "It was quite big. It was very, very black. And it made the most terrifying sound I have ever heard in my life as it made its way through the underbrush not twenty feet away from where we stood." Whatever it was seemed to have plunged into the bog and disappeared. Full story.
MARYLAND
Green ghost. It's every child's nightmare: something under the bed. Cristina came face-to-face with an unknown something when she was about four and living in a townhouse in Maryland. Because her bedroom was very small, she had to keep most of her toys under her bed. Late one night, Cristina was having difficulty falling asleep and so decided to reach under her bed for a toy to play with until she became sleepy. "So I stuck my head under the bed," she remembers, "only to see what was a greenish male being - something like a green gnome - with wide-open, large, human-like eyes sitting, smiling and playing with one of the toys under my bed!" Even more frightening, the thing began to inch its way toward her! Full story.
MASSACHUSETTS
Ghost of the Seven Gables. Lisa, one of our regular readers, was touring the historic House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts in September, 2004 when she snapped a remarkable ghost photograph. The house was once the home of Nathanial Hawthorne, one of the most important and influential authors of early American literature. The photo clearly shows the image of an apparition peering over a fence, which we have good reason to believe may be the ghost of Nathanial Hawthorne or his son, Julian. A comparison of the photo and a portrait of Julian are rather compelling. Full story.
MICHIGAN
Legend of Morrow Road. The horrifying legends and haunting associated with Morrow Road in clay Township, Michigan are well known to that community. During a severe snowstorm in 1893, so the story goes, a woman went out searching for her small child, who had somehow wandered away from the house. She froze to death and neither body was ever found, but their ghosts, they say, still roam the area. Knowing that story, "magiccrafter" and some friends decided to challenge those old superstitions and drove out there after midnight. Go to the bridge, honk three times and you'll hear the baby cry, the legend says. The boys tried it, and sure enough they heard the baby! What's more, they heard a woman's voice cry, "Where is my baby?!" The boys hightailed it out of there. Full story.
MINNESOTA
Chatting angels. If dragons can be in Iowa and little people hide in Kentucky, then angels can certainly be in Minnesota, right? The cold weather shouldn't bother them. Perry says he saw two angels when he was about five years old. He was walking by the woods near his home in Dresbach, Minnesota sometime in the 1960s. "At the northwest edge of a clearing, I looked up to see two angels floating by," says Perry. "They seemed completely oblivious to me, as they were chatting with each other in what seemed to me to be gibberish." Full story.
MISSISSIPPI
Kemper County creature. Evan's father grew up in the rural counties of Lauderdale and Kemper in Mississippi, where he had heard many stories from hunters about the strange and elusive Kemper County Creature. Whatever it was, their hunting dogs were terrified of it, and it even stole their hunted rabbits. "The old Cherokees on the reservation used to share stories of a spirit that took the form of a large cat," Evan tells us. "According to them, it would hover off the ground and stalk travelers who were alone at night." Full story.
MISSOURI
Black-eyed freak. Meanwhile, in Eureka, Missouri, black-eyed weirdoes are hanging around the Wal-Mart. "Tilted Halo" and her mom saw one in the summer of 2009. "We had been shopping and heading for the front to check out when this spectacularly tall man passed us going the other way. I looked at his face and freaked out because his eyes were all black and he was just creepy." Now, all kinds of strange people can be seen at Wal-Mart, but Tilted Halo suspects her sighting of the black-eyed man might have a connection to a subsequent encounter with a strange government car in which she saw "people" with faces that looked like melted plastic. Full story.
Next week, Part 2: Montanta - Wyoming
