The Mayor's demise

Three years ago, President Zachary Taylor's body was exhumed to determine if poisoning was the cause of his death 150 years past. The move prompted questions about other deaths and here in Lewiston, talk turned to a former Mayor.

Finally, after much legal red tape, forensic scientists gained permission to unearth former Mayor Charlie Hope, who had died suddenly in 1873. Modern science was to determine if he had passed from a cardiac arrest or if he had actually been murdered.

There was much speculation, but no one expected to learn what they did when they pulled the Mayor's rotting coffin from the ground. When the casket was opened, veteran officers and medical officials stumbled away from the grave in horror -- the interior lid of the coffin was streaked with bloody claw marks gouged deep into the wood. The honorable Mayor Charlie Hope had been buried alive.

Dead things

A Lewiston man two years ago angrily wrote to a national beer distributor to complain that he had found what appeared to be a shriveled rat body in a can of beer. With the letter, he sent along the can of brew and the offending matter for the distributor's inspection.

The beer company wrote him back and assured the man that their lab had examined the body found in the beer very carefully. The beer drinker had not come in contact with a body of a rat, as it turned out -- in was, in fact, a premature human fetus.

Bete Noir

A fellow I knew personally here in Lewiston was shocked to get a gift of aftershave lotion from his brother. The two had not talked for years and suddenly a black bottle of sweet smelling cologne arrived in the mail.

Thinking it was a goodwill gesture, the young man began splashing the fine smelling after shave on his face each day before work. Several people commented on the fragrance, but the fellow was unable to tell them what it was -- the bottle came with a label marked only with two words: Bete Noir.

After a week, the young man began to experience lesions on his face. Thinking it was an outbreak of acne, he ignored the problem until the blemishes grew larger and more inflamed. The rash began to develop around his neck and chest and more was crawling up his arms.

As the growths on his face and forehead began to get bigger and turn bright shades of angry red and purple, the young man went to a dermatologist with some urgency.

The doctor was initially stumped -- he's never seen such lesions before. Procuring a scalpel, he endeavored to split one of the growths open to see what sort of discharge came oozing out.

But when he cut into the first of the lesions, it wasn't blood or pus that seeped out -- one thin and hairy leg after another popped out until a fully developed spider crawled from the young man's skin. Seconds later, the hundreds of other blemishes began to twitch and ripple.

Cadavers

An unassuming employee at a Lewiston hospital, who was adored by all of the staff, was dismissed recently after twenty-three years of custodial service.

The fifty-year-old fellow was fired after he was caught having sex with a cadaver in the hospital's sub-level morgue by a night watchman.

The fired worker last week committed suicide. In his final note, he confessed to molesting over three hundred female corpses in his quarter century at the hospital.

More Delirium Tremens

In a tiny shanty on the outskirts of Sabattus, a lifelong drinker recently willed himself to give up his booze. Within hours of his abstinence, he began suffering acute symptoms of withdrawal. There was trembling and great excitement; anxiety, sweating and precordial pain.

After nearly a day had passed, these symptoms were accompanied by delirium and the fellow called friends raving from his hallucinations. He fancied that caterpillars were crawling along his body, growing numbers of hairy creatures consuming his flesh.

In his last phone call, the man was heard screaming that he could no longer move, that the sheer number of caterpillars on him weighted him down.

Familiar with the horrors of DTs and accompanying hallucinations, the friend on the phone called for an ambulance and paramedics were dispatched to care for the alcoholic.

He was found shortly after, barely alive in the heat drenched shack on the outskirts of town.... DTs or not, the man was found enwrapped in a cocoon.

All is well

Six years ago, a group of kids dared a pre-teen to explore an abandoned well behind an ancient barn in Sabattus. The well was at the far end of a long forgotten cemetery and it was reputed to be haunted.

The boy was eager to impress his friends, however. He agreed to be lowered into the well on a rubber tire attached to a sturdy rope. His friends, giddy with excitement, lowered the boy down and down and down into the dark hole until he disappeared into the blackness.

After there was no sound from below and no movement on the rope, they hastily decided to pull their friend back up.

But what they hoisted out of the well was not the young boy they knew as their friend -- the lad's hair had turned pure white, his eyes were dark and wild and he trembled with unimaginable terror. He babbled and cackled wildly and appeared to have aged decades in the few minutes down in the darkness of the well.

The boy never recovered from his madness. He is said to shriek sporadically from a padded room in the county mental institution and the 11-year-old looks like an old man.

The well was boarded up tight and cement was poured over the top, sealing it forever. They say no one knows what horrors down their drove the young man to madness. But I know.... I've seen it myself.

The Dead Writer

In nearby Durham, a talented young writer battled an incurable disease until it ended his life just six months ago. His body was found in a chair before his typewriter, hands still on the keyboard.

Teary-eyed friends and supporters commented that the young man had lost his fight with death before he had completed his greatest tales. They buried him with his typewriter in honor of his achievements.

A week after the funeral, the caretaker at Mount Hope Cemetery hung up his keys and quit. He later confessed to a friend that he was trimming a hedge near the young man's grave site when he heard a sound from below the hallowed ground -- clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack... like typewriter keys.

Many others, myself included, have heard the same sound since -- the sound of great tales being written from beyond the shadow of death.

The Infidel's Bullet

In the placid surroundings of Vaughn Woods in Hallowell twenty years ago, a man named Jacob Babbs attempted to shoot a man he knew was having an affair with his wife.

The bullet only grazed the victim, one Thomas Albany, and embedded itself in a giant pine tree behind him. Believing his shot had killed Mr. Albany, Babbs turned the gun on himself, taking his own life.

Albany survived the shooting and three weeks ago, he was once again in the quiet Woods of Vaughn just as a storm developed overhead. As he gazed on the area where he had once been shot, a bolt of lightening cracked down and struck the giant pine tree. The jolt of electricity heated the tree amazingly and the bullet imbedded in it years ago exploded, striking Mr. Albany in the neck and killing him. The bullet had found its mark after nearly two decades.

The Fishing Hole

Just recently, a man returned to Lake Auburn to fish at the spot where his father used to take him as a boy.

The man, reflecting with sadness that his dad had run out on the family early in his life, is deep in thought when he gets his first bite.

Reeling in the catch with the struggle and enthusiasm he remembered from childhood, the fellow is appalled at what he pulls from the water -- the long dead father of his drowned father.

Upset Stomach

After returning from a pleasure trip from the Cayman Islands, a man feels deathly ill for several days. His stomach is queasy and he is nauseous at all hours.

Feeling that the end is near, the man races to the bathroom to make an urgent bowel movement. To his horror and dismay following this natural act, the man witnesses a terrible sight -- swimming along with roiled excitement in the toilet water below him is a three inch, tropical fish.

Reading minds

There was a young man who became a marvel here in Lewiston a few years back when the city college announced  he possessed a confirmed form of extra sensory perception.

It seems the 18-year-old could routinely snatch the last few thoughts from a persons head like some kind of delayed audio.

He was studied extensively, but mostly the teen-ager said it was no more than a party trick of the mind. He could walk up to a stranger at a party and "hear" that person's very last thoughts.

He didn't abuse this gift and it was never understood how it developed. It looked as though the young man would have a long and fascinating life as he found new ways to use this ability.

But today, he is in the darkest halls of the state mental institution, where he is said to rave at all hours and to scream at night until his throat is bloody.

He's now 20 but his hair is pure white. He spends most of his time under heavy sedation and often in restraints. Those who have seen him say his eyes are black and they seem to be staring out of hell.

The people who have studied him say they have learned what horrors drove this talented young man into complete madness.

One afternoon after returning from the university, he took a trip through an historic cemetery in a nearby town. All was well apparently until he passed a small plot where was buried a group of people who died in a village plague in the late 1700s.

As the history goes, the victims fell from a rare sickness that induced in them what is known as loco motor ataxia. All their vital signs ceased, yet they were not dead -- a total of 26 men, women and children had been buried alive.

And our young man with the special gift heard their last thoughts as he passed their graves -- heard with insane clarity their last, terrified thoughts as they awoke to eternal darkness inside the tombs of their premature burials.

MLafl10050

Whispering Sister

There was a street lady named Cloris who was known to babble as she pushed her crammed shopping carts through the streets of Lewiston.

Occasionally, she would stop a stranger and begin to rave about her sister -- her horrible horrible sister who whispered hateful things to her at all hours.

The woman was wrinkled and her eyes were large and wild. She frightened and appalled many people, especially when she raved about her whispering sister.

A simple check of court documents showed that she had no siblings at all -- no evil sister to whisper into her ear and to drive her to madness.

The street lady froze to death in the streets one winter and because her death was unattended, an autopsy was ordered.

Forensic physicians made a shocking discovery. When Cloris was born some 58 years back, apparently she had developed inside her mother's womb with a twin. But as she neared birth, the infant Cloris apparently absorbed the twin fetus into her body and only one baby was born.

The autopsy revealed tiny fragments of that unborn twin in Cloris' brain -- one tiny hand attached to a tiny arm, an eye that never fully developed and just the beginnings of a fetal mouth.

Were the voices that drove Cloris to madness and left her raving in the streets whispered by her unborn twin sister after all?

MLafl10050

Delirium

There was a notorious drinker  right here in Lewiston who was known to go on serious benders that could last for weeks.

On his last one a few years ago, this slovenly 48-year-old holed up in his dingy apartment for days, drinking vodka and beer and stumbling around in his underwear.

Neighbors said they never saw him, but they heard him plenty. On the sixth day of his binge, he apparently went on a cleaning binge. Folks who lived nearby said the man cleaned and cleaned and cleaned right around the clock. They heard him clanging buckets and mops in the wee hours in the morning and he was occasionally heard screaming: "That stink! That goddamn stink, it won't go away!"

It went on for days before all the clamor suddenly stopped. Police went in soon after and they were in fact greeted with a sour, rancid aroma. The alcoholic was found near death and he was diagnosed with malnutrition, scurvy and an advancing state of leprosy.

What the drinker had been smelling in his delirium fed cleaning frenzy was his own rotting flesh.

MLafl10050

Ice

There was a quiet, frail man named Jacob Tiner who crashed his car through the ice of Lake Auburn here just last winter.

Tiner was rushing his wife to the hospital when he apparently slid out of control on a winding road and the car plunged through the ice and into the black, frigid water.

The way it was told to me, Tiner experienced something like inhuman strength as he pulled himself from the sinking car in the icy blackness. Struggling not to succumb to the numbing cold water, he reached back into the darkness of the car until he felt his wife inside.

The woman he so adored was unconscious inside the car as it sunk to the bottom. Jacob, exerting a power he'd never experienced before, wrapped his arms around his wife's waist and gave a mighty tug.

She was hung up on something, but Jacob couldn't see what it was in the consummate darkness. His strength sapped by the overwhelming cold, he pulled mightily until his wife came free with a jerk.

Clutching her around the waist, Jacob swam for shore, struggling up the icy rocks on the river bank and hoisting her up to land.

In the below freezing air, he laid his wife on the ground, gasping from the cold. Believing she might be near death, Jacob quickly lowered himself to her to breath air into her mouth and lungs.

Sadly, he was unable. His wife's head -- caught up in the seat belt when the car crashed through the ice -- had been ripped from her body when Jacob pulled her free with amazing strength inspired by love.

Home Cooking

Lila May often went without dinner at night so her three young children could have enough to keep their bellies full. There wasn't always enough macaroni and cheese or bologna to go around and things were tight.

Lila's husband was a hard drinker who spent most of his mill wages in the saloons. Louis sometimes disappeared with all his earnings for days, leaving only leftover chop suey or a small package of ham cuts for his family.

Lila almost never left the house and she cared for her children as best she could. Many men felt sorry for her and some offered to help. But she was old fashioned and too  proud to accept the assistant, even if it meant going hungry.

When her husband took off the last time, Lila cried and begged him to buy more food -- for the children at least. But Louis slapped her and told her it was his money and he would do whatever he wanted with it. Then he left their squalid home.

Two days after he had walked out, Lila awoke hungry and frightened. Her husband was nowhere to be found. But when she opened the refrigerator, she saw that he had been there and it appeared he had suffered an attack of conscience.

Inside the fridge were stacks of meat wrapped in white paper. They were in burger form, steak form and in cubes for stew. The meat (she assumed he had stolen it from one of his hunting buddies) would last the family for weeks.

It did last for weeks -- Lila made her children hamburgers, fine steaks and even some specialty dishes. They each gained weight and appeared to glow with health.

Her husband apparently was on a long bender -- he had not returned since storming out weeks ago. Maybe he would never come back, she thought distantly.

When Lila was half through the packages of meat, she sat the children down and told them she would cook extra special steaks for them. As they sat with grumbling stomachs. Lila opened the white paper that contained the thick slabs of meat.

She set the steaks in the oven and was about to throw the paper package away when she spotted handwriting on the inside. It was a note from the butcher who she knew briefly from the grocery store:

"Dearest Lila -- you are too good a woman to suffer while your husband takes food off your plate and runs in the bars. I knew you would never accept my help, so I gave it to you in a subtle way. Your husband was 195 pounds... After I killed him, I cut him up with the finest blades to ensure that the most meat would be available to you. I hope you enjoy it and that God blesses your family."

Lila read the note and threw it away. She continued seasoning the steaks as her children waited before empty plates. Her hard drinking, abusive husband at last was putting food on his families' table.

Mlafl10050

The Amazing Loki

The amazing hypnotist Loki came to Lewiston a few years ago to perform at our Independence Day festival. For a time, it looked like he might not make it for the festivities while he was recovering from bypass surgery.

But by the Fourth of July, the world-renowned hypnotist was feeling better and he was in good form on the stage. He had subjects clucking like chickens, dancing around like savages, and even disrobing at the mere utterance of one cue word from Loki.

As darkness was falling, Loki called to the stage Lewiston's most popular and animated character. Mayor Chuck Lunt, a spastic, wiry man who never stood still, took the stage and bowed before the cheering crowd.

Several times, the amazing Loki had to insist that the Mayor sit at the end of a cot which had been wheeled onto the stage. Finally seated, Mayor Lunt continued to kick his feet and wring his hands over his head, showing off before the thousands.

But the great hypnotist Loki leaned down and whispered briefly in Lunt's ear and a drastic change came over the mayor. He swiftly reclined so that he was lying prone on his back, arms motionless at his side.

"I have uttered a command to your good Mayor that he will remain fully conscious and alert, yet he may not move, speak or even blink," Loki explained to the cheering crowd. "Not until I whisper one single word into his ear, at which point he will resume his normal state of hyperactivity."

The crowd began to cheer this amazing feet. For never had they seen the lively Mayor so sedate and still.

Just then, the first round of fireworks was launched into the air. Following a bright flash of colorful light, the repercussions exploded in the air like thunder.

The great Loki looked up once, a look of shock and horror on his face. Startled by the firework's report, he clutched his hands to his chest, wincing in apparent pain. He staggered forward and fell to his knees, tottering briefly before falling face down. The great hypnotist was dead as he struck the stage.

There was a commotion all around, but the Mayor never moved. He lie motionless, arms at his side, as people swarmed about. Attempts to bring him around were unsuccessful then and they have been unsuccessful since.

For nearly a decade, the honorable Mayor Chuck Lunt has remained unmoved -- fully conscious and alert yet unable to move, speak or even blink without that one command from the long dead hypnotist Loki.

More info

Copyright ©1998 Mark LaFlamme. All rights rerserved