I know you don’t tell other people that you’ve had that experience, that one singular time when you were alone in your house and it happened: something inexplicable. Maybe it was when your parents first thought you were old enough to be left alone without a babysitter and told you that they would only be out for a little while. You’d had the drill – don’t open the door to strangers, don’t try to use the stove, keep the door locked and just be good – everything would be okay and they would be...

John Bowman sat inside his mansion as evening fell and the light between the Vermont hills faded into dusk as he had done hundreds of times before. He had finished his dinner early and the servants had all gone their respective ways, back to their own homes in the village. He was alone in the house. As the light dimmed and the colors began to disappear, he couldn’t help but look out his parlor window toward the cemetery across the road. He lingered there for a long while, wondering,...

John Bowman sat inside his mansion as evening fell and the light between the Vermont hills faded into dusk as he had done hundreds of times before. He had finished his dinner early and the servants had all gone their respective ways, back to their own homes in the village. He was alone in the house. As the light dimmed and the colors began to disappear, he couldn’t help but look out his parlor window toward the cemetery across the road. He lingered there for a long while, wondering,...

Ten thousand warplanes flew from or over Maine during World War II. Over the course of the war, a total of 48 aircraft crashed in the state accounting for 143 deaths. The vast majority of those planes made it safely to their destinations, but it was certainly not unheard of for one of the thousands of planes in the sky to fall to earth before they crossed the ocean for the war. But there was a day, a single day, where two bombers crashed within four hours of each other, claiming the lives of...

Ten thousand warplanes flew from or over Maine during World War II. Over the course of the war, a total of 48 aircraft crashed in the state accounting for 143 deaths. The vast majority of those planes made it safely to their destinations, but it was certainly not unheard of for one of the thousands of planes in the sky to fall to earth before they crossed the ocean for the war. But there was a day, a single day, where two bombers crashed within four hours of each other, claiming the lives of...

If you live in New England, sooner or later you’ll have this experience: you’ll find yourself driving down a road you’ve driven a hundred times before and you’ll notice something is different. At first, you might shrug it off, but the idea will dog you until you realize something is wrong: something is there that wasn’t there before, a small detail like a sign or a tree, or perhaps it’s something bigger, like a house or perhaps a road that branches off the main drag which you can’t believe...

If you live in New England, sooner or later you’ll have this experience: you’ll find yourself driving down a road you’ve driven a hundred times before and you’ll notice something is different. At first, you might shrug it off, but the idea will dog you until you realize something is wrong: something is there that wasn’t there before, a small detail like a sign or a tree, or perhaps it’s something bigger, like a house or perhaps a road that branches off the main drag which you can’t believe...

The cold wind blows across the empty fields. The trees have shed their rusted leaves and the moon plays hide and go seek with the thin and wispy clouds. It’s the time of year when night falls soon and you need an extra blanket on the bed to get you through the dark hours till morning. October is here and with it, the New England landscape dons a different coat, as though it too is bundling itself up against winter. If you’re easily startled, you might want to pull the curtains before going to...

The cold wind blows across the empty fields. The trees have shed their rusted leaves and the moon plays hide and go seek with the thin and wispy clouds. It’s the time of year when night falls soon and you need an extra blanket on the bed to get you through the dark hours till morning. October is here and with it, the New England landscape dons a different coat, as though it too is bundling itself up against winter. If you’re easily startled, you might want to pull the curtains before going to...

It is September 11, 1976. You are sitting quietly in a living room near Maine’s Old Orchard Beach. The sea air is strangely balmy as you settle down for a quiet evening. Your wife and children are out for a few hours and for once, you have the house to yourself. You are 58 years old and your name is Dr. Herbert Hopkins and your quiet life is about to encounter a road block that will send you careening into an area you’ve glimpsed but never visited before. Though you are a renowned...

It won’t be long now. The night winds begin to gather the chill that will eventually drill into our bones once the damp, grey skies of November gather overhead, anchoring us to the sunset and the dark. Trees are explosions of color and then nothing but skeletons, their gnarled hands reaching for the sliver of moon left to us – the only light left in the dark. October is a country full of spirits and innuendos of the unknown and we are no strangers to its paths. Some of us even enjoy the...

How do we knew when a body is truly dead? Modern science shows us that the body dies slowly, not all at once as we used to suppose. It takes time. The body is a rather vast and complex ecosystem of enzymes, processes and functions that rarely, if ever, stop all at once. With our modern sensors and advanced medical knowledge, we usually determine the moment of death as the time when the brain ceases to show any sign of activity. However, if the heart stops beating and breathing ceases, there’s...

The great 19th century American poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, composed a strange poem entitled “The Garrison of Cape Ann” that tells one of the strangest tales ever to come from colonial New England. The event he recounts for us is supposed to relate actual events that occurred during the same year that the Salem Witch Trials occurred – 1692. Whittier’s poem isn’t very long and relates the tale of a garrison of soldiers inside the Fort at Cape Ann, Massachusetts. What is so bizarre about...

The three men made their way down the lonely trail that skirted the fields outside of Machiasport, Maine. These hills were wide open and bare, but the trees in the distance belied a deep forest toward the west and if they listened intently, they might have heard the waves in Machias Bay.  It was dusk and the last light of the setting sun burned a bright red gash across last grey light of day. One of the three was a skeptic, certain that the events which had been occurring for the past six...

Gold forms in the heart of dying stars and as a result of their explosions, or novas, it is spread throughout the cosmos as one of the heavier elements. All the gold on earth no doubt came from such an explosion, just as all of the matter for all of the planets and the sun did, too. Maine does, in fact, have some gold in its ground, the first being struck in 1854 in Madrid and later, gold and silver were found in Acton, too. Gold can be found in deposits in the earth, but also dissolved in...

We are visual creatures linked to the world through images, taking in most of our knowledge through our vision. The poets speak of the eyes as being the windows of the soul. Religious folk will speak of the eye as proof of a divine creation for surely, they claim, blind Nature could not have haphazardly produced such amazing and sophisticated sensors. We live in a world inundated with visual imagery in print, on screen, and to some extent, in our dreams. We have documented most of our world...

Boundary Pond is a small, unassuming body of water in the northeastern corner of Maine. It is almost touching Quebec, earning the pond it’s name sake. It has an outlet called “Boundary Brook” that meanders from the pond and into Maine, where it fades off into land. It is ideal for “cold-water fish” according to The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department, whose website displays a map of this and many more lakes and ponds carved out from ice-age glaciers. According to the...