Fortean Forest: The Weird Wildlife and Phantom Phenomena of the Maine Woods

"The primeval woods of Maine still cover an extent seven times that of the famous Black Forest of Germany at its largest expanse in modern times. The States of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware could be lost together in our northern forests, and still have about each a margin of wilderness sufficiently wide to make its exploration without a compass a work of desperate adventure."

Thus wrote Walter Wells in his 1869 survey report on the State of Maine's resources. Today, at nearly 18 million acres, the Maine Woods is the largest unbroken and undeveloped forest east of the Mississippi, with even more trees now than existed when Wells made his assessment. Although lumberjacks have been heartily hewing away at Maine's evergreens and hardwoods for well over two centuries, the Pine Tree State remains 90% forested, the highest percentage of any state in the country.

One portion of this vast sylvan realm is the 12-million-acre Great North Woods, an archaean wilderness more than double the size of Massachusetts. It is so sparsely populated that each hermit who lives there possesses on average over 170,000 acres all to himself. Most of this wildwood has no official civil organization, a rarity in otherwise formal New England.

Yet for all its lack of human tenancy, the Maine Woods is richly inhabited. A diverse host of cryptid creatures and spectral species prowl the darkling wood in hunt of unwary prey; strange energies gather in gloom under mossy boughs while menacing mists drift past gray old trunks; an eerie environment of lost souls and ensnared spirits pervades the twilight timberland to the very heart of its inmost darkness, where reigns a bowered mystery.

Inside these pages you'll discover all manner of bizarre unknowns, from preternatural predators to elusive things that defy definition. After reading you'll have a better idea of what lies in wait for you in the paranormal pinelands above the northern periphery of New England civilization. And perhaps you'll then understand why the Maine Woods is so often called the Fortean Forest.