In Episode 458, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger row among the islands of Casco Bay, searching for a merman who was attacked by a local named Mr. Mittin back in 1639. The event was chronicled in a book. Could this sighting have been something from Abenaki legends?
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CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[ROWING IN CANOE]
[OCEAN SOUNDS IN THE BACKGROUND]
RAY: I’m not a big fan of rowing in such a small boat… especially on the ocean.
JEFF: I get that, Ray. We’re in a canoe in Casco Bay, just off the coast of Falmouth, Maine. The water is pretty calm because of the bay and all of the many small islands around us.
RAY: Still, I’m not that good in a canoe on a small pond. It still makes me nervous.
JEFF: We’ll take it slow and steady, Ray. Let’s get a little closer to that island over there.
RAY: Okay. The island is pretty small. Maybe a few hundred feet long, a clump of trees on it, but I don’t see any buildings or anything.
JEFF: Nope, there aren’t too many human eyes out this way. Something could go through the water completely unseen.
RAY: Sooooo we’re looking for something in the water?
JEFF: We are… Ray, we’re rowing through Casco Bay, Maine, searching the waters for an almost murdered merman.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Welcome to Episode 458 of the New England Legends podcast. Thank you for joining us on our mission to chronicle every wicked strange legend in New England, from monster to ghosts, UFOs and aliens, roadside oddities, and the just plain weird. So many of our story leads come from you! Reach out to us anytime with your story leads or to file a field report and be part of our Street Team.
JEFF: We’ll go searching for the Casco Bay Merman right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
[ROWING ON WATER]
[OCEAN SOUNDS]
RAY: Okay… a Merman?
JEFF: That’s right. Also known as a Triton.
RAY: We’ve searched for mermaids before.
JEFF: That’s right! We did.
RAY: We covered the Lordship Mermaid off the coast of Stratford, Connecticut, back in Episode 146.
JEFF: A strange tale…
RAY:AND a strange tail…
JEFF: I get it. The mermaid’s tail.
RAY: This has to be the first merman story we’ve covered.
JEFF: I believe it is.
RAY: It makes sense if there are mermaids then there must also be mermen, but we don’t usually hear about those.
JEFF: Nope. From Walt Disney down through the ages of legends and lore, mermen don’t get a lot of ink in the story books. But off the coast of Maine, this strange account caught our attention. To find out what happened, let’s head way back to the year 1639.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s June of 1639 here on Casco Bay. King Charles I is on the throne, closer to home, this year has been big for these new American colonies. Back in January, Connecticut filed its first constitution, paving the way for self-governance throughout the region. It’s an exciting time. Many people are coming over from England to settle in these new lands.
JEFF: One of the early settlers already here is Mr. Mittin, who makes Casco Bay his home. He is an avid outdoorsman. A crack shot, and expert fowler… or bird hunter. He’s been known to take his canoe out to the islands in Casco Bay to search for game to shoot.
[OCEAN SOUNDS]
JEFF: Today is one of those days that’s perfecting for hunting birds.
RAY: Mittin sets his canoe in the water…
[ROWING CANOE]
RAY: And begins paddling out to an island a little ways from shore.
JEFF: It’s a cloudy day. Overcast, but warm enough. The sky doesn’t look threatening, it’s bright enough. But it’s cloudy. Mittin’s rifle rests across the seats of his canoe. He’s brought along a hatchet to cut his way through the underbrush to get further inland if he needs to, and he’s packed a lunch.
RAY: As he rows, Mittin keeps his eyes pealed skyward. He’s looking for Ospreys and other shore birds.
[SEAGULLS IN DISTANCE]
RAY: Slowly, Mittin rows his canoe a little closer to one of the many small islands in Casco Bay.
JEFF: There’s a few birds circling up ahead. I think I see some kind of nest in that tree over there.
RAY: Yeah, I see it. Mittin thinks he’s found his spot…. He’s reaching for his rifle.
[QUICK SWISH IN THE WATER]
JEFF: What was that?!
RAY: I don’t know. Did a dolphin just buzz the canoe?
JEFF: I’m not sure. I don’t see anything. Mittin is looking around his canoe, but doesn’t see anything either. He…
[QUICK SWISH IN THE WATER OTHER DIRECTION]
JEFF: There it is again!
RAY: I saw something in the water! Could it be a shark?!
JEFF: I don’t know, but I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.
[LIGHT SPASH HAND COMING OUT OF THE WATER]
RAY: Look! It’s a man!
JEFF: A merman! He just grabbed the side of the canoe. He’s got a grip on us!
RAY: He’s going to flip the boat!
JEFF: Mittin is grabbing his hatchet.
[SWING] [CRUNCH OF WOOD]
[MAN SCREAMS IN AGONY BEFORE GOING UNDERWATER]
JEFF: Mittin just chopped off the hand of the merman!
RAY: Look at the water! It’s turning purple as the merman sinks below.
JEFF: Purple blood? I’ve never seen anything like that!
RAY: The merman’s hand is still twitching on the floor of the canoe.
[SPLASH]
RAY: Mittin just tossed the severed hand back into the water.
[ROWING FAST]
JEFF: I don’t think Mittin wants to stick around to find out what happened to the rest of the merman. He’s paddling for shore as fast as he can.
[ROWING FADES]
JEFF: Once back on shore, Mittin pulls his canoe back on land…
[RUNNING ON ROAD]
JEFF: And races back into town to report what just happened.
[DOOR OPENS]
[TAVERN CROWD SOUND]
RAY: Inside the local tavern, most find Mittin’s story to be a tall tale. But one or two others don’t laugh. They too have seen things in the water they can’t explain. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: Okay, there’s more to say here.
RAY: I hope so!
JEFF: Everything we know about this story we got from John Josselyn’s 1674 book: An Account of Two Voyages to New England. The books reads like diary entries of stories Josselyn’s either witnessed or heard from others.
RAY: This story is one of those second-hand tales.
JEFF: It is. Josselyn was born to English nobility. His first book was titled: New England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents and Plants of That Country. He chronicled all the strange critters he could find in this new world. The book was a hit, so he wrote his second book, An Account of Two Voyages to New England.
RAY: Both books are full of strange tales of serpents, monsters, ghosts, and pretty much all of the other types of stories we love on New England Legends.
JEFF: If only Josselyn had a podcast in 1674.
RAY: Right?!
JEFF: Tales of mermaids, or half fish, half humans, go back about 3000 years. The Greek Sirens were often depicted as mermaids. They call out to sailors to lure them to their doom. But mermen, or Tritons named for the Greek God of the sea, are more rare.
RAY: I guess mermen aren’t as interesting or alluring as their female counterparts.
JEFF: Maybe not. It’s worth noting that Abenaki legends from the people who occupied the region that would become known as Maine, also mention stories of the N-dam-keno-wet, a half-fish, half human creature with a small, child-like face that’s been known to go after women bathing in the ocean. By all accounts, this is basically a merman. The witness here, Mr. Mittin, may not have heard of the Abenaki version, so he used the term he knew: merman.
RAY: It’s interesting that the half-human, half-fish story pops up in multiple cultures. Even Africa and Japan have their stories about water spirits that look part human and part fish.
JEFF: As far as we know, there was never another sighting of a merman off the coast of Maine. Still, thanks to Josselyn’s book, and the popularity of the mermaids over the centuries from P.T. Barnum’s obsession with mermaids in the early 1840s, to Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 hit book, The Little Mermaid, to the Disney movies, mermaids never really left our psyches. As we stroll the shores of Maine today, you can’t blame us for looking out for a very angry one-handed merman.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes swim off course.
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To see some pictures related to this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 458.
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Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.