Gene Ang travels the globe teaching “Quantum Spoon Bending” classes. He’ll be in Maine in two weeks and in Switzerland after that. The 45-year-old from Thousand Oaks, Calif., is quick to point out that his class name is a bit of a misnomer. He prefers teaching people to bend forks. With their minds. “If kids […]
weird wicked weird
Weird Wicked Weird: Bugged by winter? Sounds about right
Right now in refrigerators across Maine, there are old mayonnaise jars filled with hundreds of lady bugs, caught and capped off by well-intentioned people who believe they’re saving the ladies by giving them temporary shelter. There are winter moths flying about and they’re up to no good. There are snow fleas that are not fleas. […]
Weird, Wicked Weird: Bigfoot, ghosts, a lake monster — 2014 had plenty of weird
On the strange scale, Maine rarely disappoints. As 2014 winds down, we revisit Weird, Wicked Weirds for the latest developments, including a new hunt for a popular medium who may have been buried alive here in 1882. A possible government-sponsored quest for a lake monster in Iceland. And more searching for things that go bump […]
Weird Wicked Weird: Lewiston man retells his life in ‘Monk to Bootlegger’
LEWISTON — Joseph “Jerry” Levesque was 7 years old, living on Blake Street, when he squirted red food coloring into moonshine and tried to pass it off as red wine to his Aunt Emily. Not unexpectedly, he got into trouble. Not so much, to hear him tell it, for being a 7-year-old who dipped into […]
Weird, Wicked Weird: Channeling Hank
Douglas Antreassian got hooked on spooky from annual trips to Salem, Mass., as a kid. In his 30s, he owned a popular haunted tour company and a hearse with dual flamethrowers. At 46, he’s channeling the spirit of an 18th-century York reverend, who for 15 years wore a black veil over his head and neck, even […]
Durham man’s monster-hunting TV show debuts Thursday
DURHAM — Bill Brock bought a house in the woods two years ago because of the Durham gorilla sightings, a local was-it-a-man-in-a-suit-or-was-it-Bigfoot mystery dating back to the 1970s. “My wife thought I was crazy, but that’s all right,” Brock joked. The property hasn’t disappointed; he’s seen weirdness in the woods. Brock met a visitor there […]
Weird, Wicked Weird: Lights in the sky, fictional and not
Cathie Pelletier left Allagash in August 1976, right before four campers claimed to have a close encounter that would become known as the Allagash Abductions. The author jokes that she was pretty wild back then. No one would have wanted to abduct her. But those stories, she’s sure, were in the back of her mind, […]
Weird, Wicked Weird: Ghost walk with ME
On the first date with her future husband, Sally Lobkowicz visited a Jefferson-area cemetery and the scene of an old sea serpent sighting in Boothbay Harbor. “When he called, he said, ‘I’m working on a book and have some research to do, I thought you might want to go with me,’” she said. “I don’t […]
Weird Wicked Weird: Nick Patterson, psychic artist
BANGOR — Nick Patterson paints and sculpts deja vu. It started as a teenager with sporadic visions in his dreams. Things about to happen — but only to him. And pretty simple things at that. His uncle pulling up in a new Ford Thunderbird. The copier breaking down at work. Now 44, he’s incorporating those […]
Weird Wicked Weird: Now you sea it, now you don’t; Maine’s long history of sea serpent sightings
A little more than 100 years ago, an enterprising Old Orchard Beach businessman charged curiosity-seekers 10 cents each to see the bones of a sea serpent that had washed ashore. The attraction spawned a short book and the not-immodest declaration that said serpent was the “Eighth Wonder of the World” with “eyes as large as […]