Weird facts of Maine cataloged

“THE SUPERNATURAL SIDE OF MAINE” by C.J. Stevens, John Wade, Publisher, Phillips, Maine, 2002, 276 pages, paperback, $12.

“I see stuff all the time but I never tell anyone,” the old Swanville man explained after hearing about a triangular-shaped object with white lights hovering over a driveway in Belfast.

“‘Yeah,’ his girlfriend replied sarcastically, ‘I suppose little green men will jump out at you.’

“‘That’s why I never tell anyone,’ he retorted.”

This exchange is about as close to Maine as you can get in words, and it’s as close as C.J. Stevens’ book, “The Supernatural Side of Maine,” gets to unveiling the actual experience of UFOs, ghosts, Bigfoot, past lives, and the other murky phenomena known as “the supernatural.” In this book are collected anecdotes, information and observations about the other side, most of it related to Maine, in no particular order.

There’s a section on Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, originally of Belfast, a faith healer who is said to have used his “mind cure” to treat Mary Baker Eddy, who then was inspired to found Christian Science. Another section unearths the life of Alex Tanous of Van Buren, whose father was told by Kahlil Gibran that the son would have great abilities, and sure enough the County boy became a world-renowned psychic.

A section on Bigfoot recounts reports of footprints 20 inches long found near Litchfield, and of a Kennebunk camper who thought a bear was outside his tent, when “‘whatever it was let out a scream that made every hair on my body stand straight out.'”

Yet another section compiles the versions of the mysterious legend of the boot on Jonathan Buck’s gravestone in Bucksport. Accounts of haunted houses materialize amid dematerializing observations on dowsing and ESP. The book gravitates off and on to UFOs, and its opening section tells of the famous Allagash abductions of 1976, when four men camping in a remote part of northern Maine were taken – so it was learned later through hypnosis – from a canoe into an alien spacecraft.

So many facts about the creepy and quirky are crammed into this book that one feels it must have been extensively researched; but at the same time, like the subject matter, it’s hard to tell where most of it came from. C.J. Stevens, a Maine native, has written books on Erskine Caldwell and D.H. Lawrence, and also on Maine gold mines and buried treasure. “The Supernatural Side of Maine” is, however, not a book so much as a massive collection of notes typeset and perfect-bound.

Through its mists, the book has its wry moments, and occasionally a tale is told with enough narrative flow – and completeness – that a mild chill creases your back. But readers seeking a good old-fashioned Stephen King-type scare will be disappointed – this book mainly just lists weird facts, and any actual experience of spookiness is left to the imagination. This is one of those books whose spines make excellent reading on the shelves of summer camps, and it should sell well during the time of year when tourists are jumping at the Maine/Regional section of the coastal bookshops.