A tour of Maine's weirdest cryptids — from the tree-dwelling Agropelter to the fish-slapping Billdad, the mimicking Tote Road Shagamaw, the ghostly Specter Moose, and the cursed Millinocket Devilfish.
Maine is home to the International Cryptozoology Museum — and after this episode, you’ll understand why. Kel takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the strangest, most uniquely Maine cryptids you’ve never heard of, drawing from William T. Cox’s 1910 book Fearsome Creatures of the Lumber Woods and Christopher Packard’s Mythical Creatures of Maine.
First up is the Agropelter, a territorial ape-like creature that lives in hollowed-out trees and hurls branches at unsuspecting lumberjacks — and only gives birth on leap day. Then there’s the Billdad, Maine’s very own marsupial found exclusively at Boundary Pond in Beattie Township: a beaver-bodied, hawk-beaked creature with kangaroo legs that launches itself 60 feet to slap fish with its tail. (Don’t eat one, though — just ask Bill Mervy, who allegedly launched himself into the lake and drowned after consuming Billdad meat.)
The Tote Road Shagamaw is a mimic with bear paws in front and moose hooves in back, switching which set it walks on every quarter mile — a habit it picked up from watching surveyors. It also steals clothes from lumber camps, with a particular fondness for wool. The Specter Moose is a massive, ghostly-white moose standing 15 feet tall with a 10-foot rack, spotted from the 1890s through 2002, that has been shot, killed, and bled out by hunters only to vanish overnight and reappear alive 60 miles away. And the Millinocket Devilfish is a cautionary fable about a curmudgeonly lumberjack who curses God, catches a demonic fish, and learns the hard way that you should always befriend your local witch.