Episode 44: The Woods Whisperer

For years there have been rumors of a creature who lurks in the woods around Temple, Maine. This Woods Whisperer seeks to distract its victims and lure them to its grotto for some nefarious purpose. Tom looks into the stories of the Whisperer and interviews some of the people who have encountered this mysterious creature.

Content Warning:  cryptid, strange creatures, monsters, domestic violence/abuse, alcohol, blood

Host: Chris Estes
Writer: Chris Estes
Senior Investigator: Tom Wilson
Sound Design: Chris Estes
Producer: Megan Meadows

Transcript

 Malevolent Maine

Episode 44: The Woods Whisperer 

Malevolent Maine is a horror podcast, and may contain material not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

INTRO: 

TOM: An update on our investigation into the King Beyond the Desert. An encounter with an usual woman during a hunting trip. And the strange story of Maine’s only - and abandoned - wax museum. These are the stories coming up in future episodes.

Hey everyone, it’s Tom. We just want to take a minute to thank everyone for listening. You guys are awesome. Thanks for all of your support. We couldn’t do this without you. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out the new malevolentmaine.com and follow us on social media for news and updates. 

We’re excited to announce a new, Patreon-exclusive side story, Witch’s Mark. If you’ve been wondering what happened to Mark after the Ritual of Blood, this is the show for you. The first episode of Witch’s Mark drops real soon and it’s only available to members of our Malevolent Mob, which you can join for a small monthly fee at patreon.com/malevolentmaine. When you join, not only will you get access to Witch’s Mark, but also new episodes of Cardinal Sins - Lucas’s investigation into the mysterious group known as the H.B.C.C, and all six episodes of The Black Tarot. 

Don’t forget to rate and review our show and help us please the eldritch algorithm gods. And as always, if you have a story of the odd or unexplained, please reach out to us. We believe you.

The woods are still and silent with only the soft sounds of your feet crunching onto fallen leaves. Suddenly you hear a whisper over your shoulder. You turn, but there’s nothing there. You hear it again, now coming from the other direction. You can’t make out the words, but you know they’re saying something. All at once the forest comes alive with dozens, hundreds of whispered voices, coming at you from all directions, and a pair of brilliant green eyes stare out at you from behind a shadow.

This is Malevolent Maine.

TITLE SEQUENCE

Listen carefully, MMers. Maine has its fair share of strange creatures. Whether it’s classics like Bigfoot, the Specter Moose, and the Casco Bay Merman, or more insidious beings like the Downeast Lobsterman or Stridda Longbody, Maine is home to many unique cryptids. 

This episode was suggested to us by a listener, Noah Collins, who wrote in to suggest we look into the creature the locals of Temple, Maine call, the Woods Whisperer.

Temple is located in Franklin County, just west of Farmington. It is located at the end of Route 43, which terminates with the town limits. It’s a small town, home to about 500 people, and an area heavily invested in the logging business. Like much of Franklin County, and most of Maine, it’s covered in dense forests and thick woods.

Noah, who grew up in nearby Rumford, but now lives in Portland, told us that his grandfather used to tell him stories about the Woods Whisperer when they would go hunting in the woods behind his grandfather’s property. Noah said he used to believe the stories, but as he got older he believed his grandfather was just making things up just to scare him. It wasn’t until Noah started listening to our show, that he got thinking about those old stories. He said he did some research and found a newspaper article from 1961 that describes a logger’s encounter with a strange creature that sounded an awful lot like the stories he used to hear. It even used the same name: the Woods Whisperer.

For now, we’d like to focus on Noah’s grandfather’s stories.

Roger Collins is 83. He lives in Temple in the same house he built when he turned 18 and moved out of his parents’ home. His wife Teresea passed away in 2019, and despite the cigarettes he still smokes - down to half a pack from the two he used to smoke - Roger seems healthy. He said he doesn’t split his own firewood anymore, but he does mow his lawn and plows his own driveway and that of an older woman up the road.

We sent Tom to go talk with Roger.

TOM: It’s hard not to like Roger Collins as soon as you meet him. He’s a stereotypical Mainer. He’s blunt and direct, but kind. He doesn’t shy away from his opinions, but he was warm and inviting. He offered me a cup of coffee, then poured one for himself before splashing a drop of Bailey’s Irish Creme into it. When I asked him if he had made up the stories of the Woods Whisperer that he used to tell his grandson, I expected he’d need a few minutes to try to remember the stories; I mean, it was twenty years ago. But as soon as I said the name, his eyes sharpened and the smile faded from his face. “No, I did not,” he said. “Not for the life of me, but I wish I had.” Then he promptly lit a cigarette.

Roger Collins was born in 1941. He said growing up as a boy he had heard the same stories from his own father, a logger, who had traveled all over the region. 

According to the stories, men out in the woods would often hear a soft whispering. This wasn’t just in Temple, but in the surrounding area as well. Roger Collins claimed he’d once heard of a run-in with the Whisperer as far north as Monson from a guy who rented a cabin up there for a week’s vacation.

The stories continue that the whispers seem to come from all around, often disorienting the person in the woods. Anyone who has gotten turned around in the Maine woods knows how frightening that can be. Oftentimes, one wrong turn can lead to, at best, hours of trudging and backtracking to get back, and at worst, days of being lost. Many people, locals and tourists have gotten lost in a Maine forest and never found their way out.

One thing is consistent about the Woods Whisperer: at some point a path does emerge. Several stories have claimed that all other paths or directions simply become impassable - dense trees, thick, grasping shrubs and bushes, even massive fallen logs all seem to block the person’s progress. Only one direction seems like a safe track out. 

TOM: The stories are unclear or whether or not it is actually impossible to go in another direction, or if that one particular path just seems the most welcoming. Even Roger Collins didn’t know if the woods themselves had somehow changed so that only one clear exit remained or if it was all in the head of the person now suddenly lost. He did say that taking that path presented appeared to be the only option… but it was a dangerous one.

There aren’t many stories about people who hear the Whisperer taking the more difficult paths through the woods. Most stories involve them following the whispers, following the trail that is seemingly their only way out. 

Eventually the person would find themselves in an opening still covered by the tree canopy. This ring of trees formed a sort of room or grove. In all the stories - both those we heard from people and those we researched - there is a large tree stump in the center of the grove. The tree that was once attached is nowhere to be seen, but this moss covered stump is scattered with small items and trinkets, almost like an altar.

It’s here in this clearing that the person finally encounters the Woods Whisperer.

No one knows exactly what the Woods Whisperer is. According to various reports the creature is said to be over six feet tall, closer to seven. Enough to make a man feel inferior and weak. Others have reported a smaller creature, more similar in size to a large child. It is unknown if there are more than one of these creatures or just a single one. It is possible that different generations of this creature may account for the size discrepancies. Then again, it may have just been a misperception of the person seeing the Whisperer.

The creature looks roughly human-shaped, standing on two legs, two arms, etc. It is said to wear a robe or cloak of some kind that appears to either be made from or woven with tree leaves. Its head is often concealed by the hood of this cloak, but its piercing green eyes can be seen from beneath its shadows.

While researching the Woods Whisperer we found an unpublished interview with a man named Rodney Mcclure. This interview was conducted by Ken Gilbert for The Franklin Journal, the local newspaper in the Temple area. It’s from 1981 and while never published was kept in Gilbert’s records, which were later donated to the University of Maine at Farmington, just the next town over from where Rodney Mcclure lived. Ken Gilbert passed away in 2013, and while we have attempted to find Rodney Mcclure, we haven’t discovered any leads. He’s no longer living in Temple, nor the surrounding area.

According to the interview, Rodney was an avid mushroom collector. He would often go out into the woods to search for mushrooms. Many of these kept and ate himself, but he made his living selling these mushrooms to restaurants in the Portland area. It wasn’t the most lucrative job, but it supported his meager lifestyle.

One day while out collecting, somewhere off the Alder Brook Road, Mcclure started to hear whispers. He looked around but he was completely alone. He said at first he thought it might have just been the moving water of Alder Brook, and moved off in a different direction. In the interview Mcclure talked about how he was familiar with the area, but he always carried a map and his old Boy Scout compass with him just in case. He didn’t get lost easily and always kept landmarks set in his head when he went out looking for mushrooms.

He had gone some distance from the brook when he heard the whispers again. He said he couldn’t make out the words, but he was positive it was a voice this time. He said at first it came over his left shoulder. Then he heard it somewhere off to his right. He called out to whoever was out there with him, just to let them know he was around, but there was no reply.

It was at this point that Mcclure began to get nervous. The whispers began to increase, coming from all around Mcclure and he wheeled about, trying to see who was there. At one point, he admits, he got spooked enough that he took off running back in the direction he believed he had come. A few minutes later, when he stopped to catch his breath, the whispers started again. Mcclure says he realized that he didn’t recognize the area. He thought he had been running back towards Alder Brook, but the river was nowhere in sight. 

In the unpublished interview Mcclure told Ken Gilbert that he was surrounded by tightly packed trees, with twisted, gnarled trunks and sprawling limbs that seemed to block his way. “There were these bushes,” Mcclure said. “Like brambles with sharp, pointed thorns.” He said he had never seen anything like that in this part of the forest before. Everywhere he turned the thick undergrowth seemed to hedge him in.

Everywhere, except for one direction. There, the forest seemed to open up, almost like a neatly groomed trail. The whispers came again, and without hesitation, Mcclure took off down the trail.

The whispers grew louder and seemed to come from all directions at once, sometimes even overlapping. It didn’t sound like  someone in the woods, it sounded like dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Rodney Mcclure stumbled down the path that had appeared before him, terrified that something horrible was going to happen. That’s when he stumbled into the clearing with the tree trunk altar.

I’m going to read Rodney Mcclure’s exact words about what he saw next. “There was something standing there by that tree stump. It was taller than I was, and wore some kind of cloak with leaves all over it. It had long, clawed hands and grayish skin. It looked at me and its eyes were like when the spring sun hits the new green leaves. They seemed to pierce right through me.”

Mcclure says the whispers grew louder and that the creature seemed to study him for a moment. Then it reached up and cupped a low branch of a birch tree. Mcclure said it tilted its head toward the leaf, like it was saying something to it, but if there was a sound, Mcclure never heard it.

This is the part where many of the stories of the Woods Whisperer end. The person encounters the Whisperer, and seeing the creature, runs wildly back the direction they came. At some point, they realize they are back in a familiar part of the forest and the whispers have stopped. They leave with a harrowing tale, but little permanent harm.

Rodney Mcclure’s encounter ended much the same, but before it was over, he would be left with scars that lasted long after the day in the woods.

Mcclure says that instead of running, he froze in place. The creature continued to cup the birch leaf, which Mcclure says, seemed to curl down towards it, and even twine itself around the creature’s face, almost like a pet lovingly brushing up against its owner.

It was at this point that Rodney Mcclure felt something wrapping around his ankle. He looked down and a twisted root, about the thickness of a pencil, snaked around his leg, wrapping itself around and around several times.

Mcclure tried to pull his leg free, but the root had bound him tight. He was tethered in the small clearing. As he struggled to free himself, the Woods Whisperer turned its attention to him, its piercing green eyes locked onto his own. It took half a step towards Mcclure, then stopped and turned and whispered something else. Mcclure says he was sure it whispered this time, he saw its mouth move, and saw the sharp teeth that lay behind its gray lips. 

Quick as a lightning strike, a tree branch shot out and slashed him behind the left ear, drawing blood. Before Mcclure could react the Woods Whisperer had closed the distance between them. Mcclure said he was frozen with fear as the Whisperer appeared to sniff the line of blood the tree branch had drawn.

It muttered something in its breathless, hushed voice, and Mcclure said he saw other plants - saplings and shrubs, start to twist and writhe towards him, like a small army of snakes. The Whisperer reached up and wiped some Mcclure’s blood between its fingers, then gave a dismissive gesture with its hand before moving back towards its altar.

Rodney Mcclure says at that point he snapped. He began screaming and scrambling frantically, trying to remove his foot from the tangled root that held him fast.

“I ripped and pulled as hard as I could,” he told the Franklin Journal. “The whole time those branches were reaching for me. I kept trying to push them away. Finally, I heard a pop and my ankle started hurting. But I was free.”

Mcclure took off down the trail, crashing through branches and brambles that he said leapt into his path to try and stop him. He ran blindly, pain shooting up from his injured foot, blood mingling with sweat from a dozen slashes and scrapes. The whole forest seemed alive with whispers.

Finally, Mcclure crashed into Alder Brook, soaking himself in the process. He stood in the low river, and realized that the whispers had stopped; he was alone. He wasn’t far from the road where he parked his truck and slowly he made his way back, limping badly.

In the end, once he was able to get himself away from the forest and back to civilization, Rodney Mcclure discovered he had suffered a fairly severe sprain on his ankle where he had wrenched it free from the root. He also had multiple cuts and bruises, with the one behind his ear and a particularly nasty gash on his left calf that left residual scars. 

TOM: Roger Collins says he knew Rodney Mcclure, in a passing way. He also told me that almost all of the stories he’s heard about the Woods Whisperer are about the same. Someone gets lost and stumbles upon the Whisperer’s lair. The creature attempts to trap the person, usually by manipulating the plants and trees. They find a way to escape before anything too bad can happen. But he said there are other stories, darker ones. They are the kind that are swapped around late at night around the wood stove in a hunting cabin or sometimes after closing time when it’s only the old timers left at the local watering hole. They’re only speculation, but they’re always told with a knowing look in the eye of the storyteller. One of those was the story of Jimmy Dryden.

Jimmy Dryden lived off the Mitchell Brook Road in the 1990s. He was a logger, often clearing his own land for extra cash. He was married, and his wife, Carrie stayed at home and raised their two boys, Aiden and John. It was well known around town that Jimmy wasn’t the nicest man. He was known to get into arguments over little things, like the way another man looked at him or where he parked his truck. People said he had a way of short changing people for the lumber he hauled, and more than one good length of wood would “fall off the truck” somewhere only to wind up in Jimmy’s personal pile later on. He was hard on his boys, and they’d often have to stand during their lessons at school because of the round of “discipline” their father had given them.

For her part, Carrie Dryden, kept to herself mostly, staying away from town unless she absolutely had to go in for groceries and medicine. It was said she didn’t leave the house often on account of the bruises or black eyes Jimmy had given her.

People knew of Jimmy Dryden’s temper and did their best to stay out of his way. They still remembered Clint Shields, who had gotten into a scuffle with Dryden after the Homecoming Football game senior year. Clint still walked with a slight limp all those years later.

Jimmy Dryden’s one love was hunting. He’d go out on a Saturday just before dawn and stay out until it got dark. He didn’t often come back with anything, but during hunting season he made it clear that there was no expectation he would be around. Breakfast would be ready when he was, a lunch was to be packed, and a warm supper should be waiting for him when he got home. And if any of those things weren’t to his liking there was sure to be hell to pay.

TOM: Roger Collins told me he doesn’t know if Carrie Dryden knew the stories of the Woods Whisperer or not, but he said he wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Over the years lots of folks around these parts have heard the stories from an uncle or a friend of a friend. He said it seems unlikely she would have planned what happened next - you can’t really rely on the Whisperer. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to its appearances. Then again, Collins said, lighting another cigarette, it’s entirely possible Carrie Dryden knew exactly what she was doing.

It was on a Saturday about two weeks before Thanksgiving in 1993 when Carrie Dryden stumbled into Rand’s Market, the small grocery store on the edge of town. Both of her eyes were so swollen she could barely see out of them. Her lips were split and she was missing a tooth. One leg had gone nearly completely black with bruising and she seemed to be in a daze. As near as anyone could tell, she somehow walked the four and a half miles from her home to the store. The owner of Rand’s, Harry Vincent recognized Carrie and knew just what had happened. He gathered the few items she had scribbled down on a crumpled list for her while she sat in his back office. He didn’t charge her for any of it - including the big bottle of top shelf whiskey she had written in a shaky hand. Then Vincent had Tad Norton, the high school boy who bagged groceries three days a week drive her back home. Harry Vincent told the teenager not to get out of the car and that if he saw any sign of Carrie’s husband, he was to drive back to the store just as fast as he could and the two of them would call Sheriff Mosher together.

What happened next is difficult to prove, but old-timers like Roger Collins have their theories. What is known is that the following Saturday, her face still bruised, Carrie Dryden sent her husband off to hunt for the day with a smile, an extra sandwich, and the homemade oatmeal cookies he liked. His canteen, which usually filled the cold water from the tap, was instead full of the expensive whiskey Harry Vincent had sent Carrie home with.

No one knows when Jimmy Dryden realized he was walking around with half a bottle of $40 bourbon, but by the afternoon he was well on his way to blackout drunk. Later, when the Sheriff Mosher and his deputies recovered the canteen, they found the cap screwed on tight and less than a quarter full. 

They also found his hunting rifle and just one of his boots. There was no live ammunition in the gun, but the authorities did find several bullets embedded in several of the trees in the area. They appeared to have been fired wildly, and investigators concluded that he had been running while he fired at least two of the shots.

Of Jimmy Dryden himself, there was simply no trace.

TOM: Roger Collins believes the Woods Whisperer got him. So do a lot of the others who have lived in Temple for a long time. Collins told me he believes Carrie Dryden sent her husband out into the woods that Saturday with the hope that he’d get drunk enough to fall victim to the Whisperer. After the last assault, Collins believes she had finally had enough of her abusive husband, and prayed that the alcohol and the forest creature would solve her problem for her.

Of course, this story is almost impossible to prove. For one thing, Carrie Dryden never said anything publicly about her husband’s disappearance. She told police she kissed him goodbye and wished him luck. She claimed not to know anything about the canteen of whiskey.

It’s also unknown if Jimmy Dryden did, in fact, encounter the Woods Whisperer. It’s entirely possible that he was so intoxicated he had some sort of accident or stumbled off into the woods and got lost. It’s even possible he left his family and started a new life somewhere else, using a day of hunting as an excuse to leave. 

But Roger Collins believes Dryden fell victim to the Woods Whisperer, that at some point, the inebriated abuser heard the whispers and followed them to the strange forest shrine. There, like Rodney Mcclure, he was trapped by the creature But unlike Mcclure, Jimmy Dryden wasn’t able to escape. The Whisperer killed Dryden, either for his blood, or simply because he trespassed in the Whisperer’s private world. Collins believes the creature killed Jimmy Dryden and took his body to a place no one will ever find.

TOM: Roger told me three or four people he thought were probably taken by the Whisperer. While the vast majority of people who encounter the Woods Whisperer manage to escape, he believes every few years one unlucky victim doesn’t.  

What exactly the Whisperer is, we don’t know. It appears to be something more than human. Its taloned hands, gray skin, and striking chartreuse eyes all indicate this is a previously unknown being. Lots of cryptid sightings turn out to be wild animals. Often a diseased animal may look or act differently than expected and this can lead people to the conclusion that the thing they saw was something else entirely. It certainly is possible that the being Rodney Mcclure encountered was a bear with a bad case of mange, then again, The Whisperer displays an intelligence that suggests otherwise. 

Whatever it is whispering, it does not appear to be in English or any other recognizable language. Many animals can appear to mimic human language, but these seem more distinct and deliberate than that. Every person who has encountered the Whisperer claims that the words, for lack of a better term, change. This isn’t an animal’s growl that sounds like a specific phrase like those videos of people’s dogs or cats who appear to say, “I love you” or some other phrase.

These are words and phrases with specific meanings…even if we don’t know what those meanings are.

The Whisperer can also seemingly communicate with or control the plant life in the area, using the roots and branches to trap or attack its victims. This would imply a paranormal ability most known living things don’t possess. 

Lastly, is the shrine-like space those who follow the whispers end up at. This may be the creature’s home, but the broken tree stump that appears almost like an altar, suggests a deeper meaning. Might this be the creature’s place of worship or holyground? A place where it makes offerings, perhaps? This also begs the questions of whether or not this is a real, physical place that could be found on a map. 

Not everyone who encounters the Woods Whisperer is near Alder Brook as in Rodney Mcclure’s story. In fact, Roger Collins believes it’s several miles away, near Savage Mountain, that the Whisperer makes its home. And what about the man from Monson that encountered the Whisperer? That’s 70 miles from Temple.

Is it possible that the Whisperer’s shrine is some sort of location outside the bounds of space and time? A pocket dimension accessible from various locations by following the whispers? That seems like a more likely explanation to us, but without further research, we simply don’t know, but this theory might lend some explanation as to why no remains of Jimmy Dryden have ever been found.

TOM: Before we finished our interview, I asked Roger if he had ever seen the Woods Whisperer. No, he said, but it was a little too quick, like an automatic prepared answer. After a moment he sighed. “Well, maybe almost once,” he said and took a slow sip of coffee. He said he had been out hunting, sometime around 2007. He told me he thought he had heard something, like a voice whispering to him. I asked if he had followed the sound, but Roger shook his head. Roger said he ripped pieces of his flannel off and stuck them in his ears and left the forest as quickly as he could. “I knew the stories and I’m no dummy,” he told me. When I asked if he knew anyone else who might be able to tell me anything more, he thought for a minute before telling me I could check with “that hippie woman with all the rock sculptures.”

The “hippie woman” turned out to be Jordyn Ryan, a local artist who lived in nearby Farmington. Jordyn and her partner Rebecca live in an old farmhouse on High Street and their front yard is covered with various cairns and sculptures made from stones they collect. Some of these they sell, but most of them are just because they make the two happy.

Jordyn claims that she had an encounter with the Woods Whisperer, back in 2003. This was before she had met Rebecca and had just finished up her undergraduate work at the University of Maine at Farmington. Jordyn has always been an avid hiker. One summer day she went out to hike Savage Mountain. When she heard the tell-tale whispers, she at first didn’t think anything of them. She wasn’t originally from the area, and was unfamiliar with the stories.

But like Rodney Mcclure and presumably Jimmy Dryden, she soon found her path thick with undergrowth and nearly impassable except in one direction. In a story now familiar to our listeners, Jordyn found herself in a small clearing, face to face with the Woods Whisperer.

Unlike Mcclure, Jordyn immediately took off running back in the direction she came. To the best of her knowledge, the Whisperer never even saw her, or if it did, it never acknowledged her. 

Jordyn’s story is a fairly typical one when it comes to the Woods Whisperer, but the reason her story jumped out at us and we included it, is because she claims that before she turned to run, she got a good look at the altar in the middle of the clearing. The Whisperer was kneeling down beside, appearing to adjust something, so her view of the tall stump was unobstructed. 

Jordyn Ryan claims that she saw a work boot on the Whisperer’s altar. It was a left, black John Deere boot of a kind not really popular since the late 80s, early 90s. It also happened to be the exact style of boot Jimmy Dryden wore the day he disappeared. Only his right boot was ever recovered.

This doesn’t prove anything, of course. It’s possible this was a boot like the ones that Jimmy wore, but that doesn’t mean it was his. Jordyn claims it was the left boot she saw, but she could have been mistaken. She could have known the story of Jimmy Dryden and made up her story. There are any number of possible explanations that don’t involve any sort of paranormal explanation.

And yet…it’s hard to deny at least the possibility that something dangerous is prowling the woods near Temple, Maine. It could be this Whisperer is merely protecting its territory. Or perhaps it’s hunting , luring victims into a trap with its whispers. Either way, Roger Collins, Jordyn Ryan, and many others from the area are taking the threat of the Woods Whisperer seriously.

Maybe we should too.

Stay safe out there, Maine. 

Malevolent Maine is Lucas Knight, Tom Wilson, and myself, Chris Estes.

If you’d like to read more about our investigations check out our website at malevolentmaine.com

While there, don’t forget to check our merch store. And, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon at patreon.com/malevolentmaine

Thank you for listening to Malevolent Maine.

And as always, stay safe out there, Maine.