Episode 46: The Heart Beggar

We investigate the strange case of a mysterious woman who approaches deer hunters, begging for the heart of their recent kill. She returns a few days later with an offering of her own. Who is she? What does she want? And why is she targeting Maine hunters?

Content Warning:  hunting, gun sounds, animal organs, blood, mysterious presences, apparitions, eating of raw organs

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

Transcript

 Malevolent Maine

Episode 46: The Heart Beggar 

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

INTRO: 

TOM: An occult artifact discovered in an abandoned wax museum. A dilapidated shack said to be the home of a real-life killer clown. And a robbery that goes horribly wrong.

Hi guys. It’s Tom. These are just some of the stories we’ve got for you in the coming weeks. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to follow us on social media for updates and information. We’ve got new episodes of both Cardinal Sins and Witch’s Mark available to our Patreon supporters, so if you’d like to join our Malevolent Mob, head over to patreon/com/malevolentmaine and sign up. 

Lastly, our friends over at the Killing 15 Minutes podcast are doing an amazing job bringing you stories of some of the most famous…or infamous serial killers. They graciously sent us a trailer for their show that we’re going to play for you now.

KILLING 15 MINUTES TRAILER

So if you’ve got 15 minutes and need your true crime/serial killer fix, we suggest you give them a listen.

The woman emerges from the woods silently. She’s beside you before you even notice. Her black hair hangs limply in her face, but dark, almost feral eyes watch you greedily. Her blackened and dirty feet seem to barely touch the ground as she glides silently towards you. Her hands, stained with dried blood, reach out towards you. Then she begins to speak.

This is Malevolent Maine.

TITLE SEQUENCE

I beg you, MMers, pay attention to this one. This story is actually from last November. We received emails from three different people asking us to look into this. Like many of our stories it involves the Maine woods. This time in particular it revolves around one of Maine’s favorite pastimes: hunting.

Maine has long been known to outdoor enthusiasts for its incredible hunting. Everything from waterfowl and game birds to deer, moose, and even bears are plentiful in the state. In fact, there are very few places in the world with more 200 pound deer per square mile than Maine. 

Deer hunting season typically begins during the first week of November and runs through the end of the month. Last year, some 38,000 deer were harvested by hunters. Every year, thousands of hunters spend countless hours prowling the Maine woods, and an entire industry has come to rely on the hunting season - from cabin rentals, gear and equipment sales, and even guided hunting expeditions.

At Malevolent Maine we’ve covered many stories of things hunters have experienced while out in the Maine woods. All manner of strange creatures and encounters have been reported while out hunting. Today’s story isn’t any different.

What is different is that we got three different reports, all mere days apart. The sheer number of encounters in such a short period of time piqued our interest.

We’ll start with Declan Murphy.

Murphy is thirty-six years old and lives in Hermon, just outside Bangor in Penobscot County. He works for a large construction company in Bangor, doing mostly commercial builds. He’s been hunting since he was a kid and says he’s managed to get a buck nearly every year, though he’s only got three of them mounted in his garage, or as he referred to it, his man cave. 

He said this year he was hoping for more of the same. Hunting for Maine residents began on October 28th, 2023. Opening Day for deer hunting is a big deal in Maine. Hunters are only allowed to shoot and tag one antlered deer per year, though many hunters apply for or purchase an antlerless permit which allows for the hunting of doe in designated areas. Opening Day means nearly every hunter is out in the Maine woods. Many will get their deer that first day, and while some will continue to go out into the woods each Saturday with friends who may not have gotten a deer yet, as the season goes on more and more hunters have bagged their quarry and no longer go out. 

Declan Murphy says he was out in the woods of Garland, Maine, about thirty minutes from his home. He says a friend of his has some family land out there and they typically hunt that area with much success. 

This past October was no different. Murphy had been out in the woods for a few hours when he spied a five point buck. He squeezed the trigger and killed the deer cleanly.

A common practice once a deer has been killed is to field dress it. For those who do not know, and we apologize to our audience who may find this sensitive, field dressing involves removing the internal organs of the hunted game, typically as soon as possible after the killing to rapidly cool the meat and stave off bacterial growth. It also drastically reduces the weight of the animal carcass, which makes it easier for the hunter to carry the deer out of the woods.

Declan Murphy was in the process of dressing his kill, when he heard footsteps approaching him.

Murphy said a woman came out of the woods. She had dark or black hair that hung long and straight all around her face. She was pale and thin. She wore some sort of dress, but it was too dirty and stained for Murphy to get a closer look at it. As she walked towards him she held out her cupped hands.

According to his story, the woman asked Murphy if he could have the heart of his recently killed deer. “Seriously,” he wrote to us in an email. “The deer had been dead for just a few minutes and I was just beginning to cut it open when she started begging me for the heart.”

Deer heart is considered a delicacy by some hunters, and enough tv shows, movies, and yes, even Native American traditions, have imparted the importance of eating the heart raw. It’s said to bestow the strength and attributes of the slain animal. Still, Murphy said he doesn’t often eat the heart raw. Most times, he says, he doesn’t have the chance. He often aims for the heart and it is destroyed in the hunting process. He has taken a raw bite before, he says. It wasn’t his first kill, but very early on in his hunting experience, something his uncle talked him into. Instead, he says, he usually pan fries it in thin slices.

Still, it was an odd request from the woman in the woods. Most hunters are protective of their kill. They may offer friends and family some of the processed meat, and a group of close associates may dress a kill together, but there’s something uniquely personal about the hunting experience.

Declan Murphy told us that it was his father, who had learned from his own father, that taught him about that personal connection between the hunter and his game. “Knowing that you hunted your prey, that you killed it, cleaned it, and prepared it so that its meat can sustain you…it really brings you in touch with nature,” he wrote us.

The woman continued to approach and as she got nearer, Murphy saw that her hands and her chin and neck were stained black, with what looked like ink. She asked again for the heart, offering her hands in a bowl-like shape, the near universal symbol for begging.

Murphy says he isn’t scared by much. He says the woman wasn’t armed and didn’t seem outwardly threatening, but there was something …off about her. He made a split second decision to give in to her request. He used his knife to remove the deer’s heart and with bloody hands, offered it to the woman.

She took the heart, cupping it in her two hands, then brought it close to her face before taking a large bite of the heart. Murphy says the woman thanked him, the animal’s blood smeared across her chin, and backed away into the forest, moving slowly, but not looking at anything but the dripping heart in her hands. 

Declan Murphy said he watched her retreat, not sure what he should do. In only a few moments, she was gone, swallowed up by the forest. He thought he could make out the sound of her footsteps for a few more seconds, but he admits that could have been just his imagination. He said he didn’t know what to do, he was so unnerved by the experience. He stood there, taking in the silence that had fallen over the forest. Then he texted his friend to come and find him. He heard him coming several minutes before the other man arrived, dressed in his hunting oranges, but Murphy says for those few minutes before the man came into his line of sight, he was convinced it was the woman coming back.

“There was something so weird about her,” he wrote to us. “Like she was there, but…she wasn’t, you know? I don’t know if it was drugs or what, but she seemed so disconnected from reality.”

The two men quickly finished dressing the deer and hauled it out of the woods back to their truck. Murphy says his friend wanted to go back out and continue hunting, but he had no desire to go back into the woods alone. The entire episode with the woman had spooked him. In the end, he convinced his friend to leave for the day, with the promise they’d come back later.

This story is odd, for sure. It may not be unexplainable, however. To put it honestly, in this line of work you encounter lots of people suffering from mental health issues. There’s also the issue of drug use that Declan Murphy brings up. People under the influence of substances can come to believe things they normally otherwise wouldn’t. It’s entirely possible the woman seriously just wanted a useful piece of food that many hunters leave behind. We also can’t rule out the possibility that this was some sort of stunt or performance. In today’s age of internet stardom and content creation, we’ve run into more than one story that turns out to be an internet hoax for clickbait purposes. There are any number of possible, even plausible, scenarios for the woman in the woods begging for a deer heart, and we might be inclined to believe some of them if that was the entire encounter.

But according to Murphy, the story doesn’t end there. 

He says he did his best to move on, and by the next weekend, he had chalked it up to, in his words, “just a crazy lady.” He says the following Sunday, he and his friend were back out in the woods. Murphy couldn’t shoot another deer, but he said it was more of a hobby to be out in the woods, to help his friend spot, to just be doing something special. 

The two men were together when the woman returned. 

The strange woman came out of the woods and approached the two men. They weren’t in the same exact spot where Murphy had shot his deer the previous week, but were in the same general area. Murphy says he doesn’t know how she found them, and that his friend almost shot her before he realized it was a woman and not an animal. 

This time, she didn’t come empty-handed. Murphy says she was carrying a heart in her hands, and her hands were bright red, stained with blood. She offered the fresh heart out to them, or more specifically to Declan Murphy. 

“It wasn’t the same heart,” Murphy told us. He said he didn’t really know how he knew. He hadn’t studied the heart he had handed the woman a week before, but this one looked different. It was smaller and looked a paler shade of red. That being said, he made it a point to say that it was less what the heart looked like and just a gut feeling. This wasn’t the same heart he had given the begging woman, but a second one.

Declan Murphy says he refused the heart. She offered it to him three times, but each time he stammered out a negative. Eventually the woman receded back into the trees, much like she had when Murphy had given her the original heart.

“It freaked me out,” he told us. “I don’t know how she found me. I don’t know why she had another heart. But the whole thing was just weird.”

Weird is pretty accurate, but Declan Murphy wasn’t the only one to have an encounter with this Heart Beggar. Here’s Tom with  more.

TOM: We were also contacted by Aiden Sinclair, who lives in Durham. He says he didn’t go out on opening weekend of hunting season, largely in part because of the events that happened in Lewiston the week prior.

For those who may not know or remember, on October 25, a mass shooting took place in Lewiston. Out of respect for our listeners we don’t want to rehash those tragic events. Our thoughts are with all those who suffered because of this terrible event. Because of the timing, however, many towns, specifically in the area where the active investigation took place, were considering postponing the start of hunting season to give law enforcement time to complete their investigation. Aiden Sinclair made the decision on his own to stay away when in fact, hunting was allowed that first weekend after all .

TOM: Aiden said he went the following weekend. There are a few good spots near his home that he’s hunted before, though he’s only ever gotten a deer a few times in his life, and not one in the last five years. He had been out all day, and it was sometime around 2:30 in the afternoon when he spotted a buck. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger.

What happened next was eerily similar to Declan Murphy’s story. As he was cleaning his kill, Sinclair was approached by a woman who begged him for the heart. When he relented and gave it to her, she thanked him, took a bite and retreated into the woods.

TOM: Aiden added a few details to the story missing from Declan Murphy’s version. For one, he noted the woman was wearing a dirty dress. It was plain, likely homemade, and he said it looked historical, like something from Colonial times. He thought it might have been a costume. He also told me what the woman actually said. When she approached him, Aiden told me she said, “Please sir, I am so hungry, so alone, I beg you, may I have the heart of your kill to sustain me?” He said the tone was incredibly formal, and again gave him the feeling of some sort of period piece, like the woman was acting in a movie about the 1700s. When he gave her the heart, just after she bit into it, she said, “My hunger has been sated for now, but the scales must be balanced.”

Like Murphy, Aiden Sinclair said he believed the woman was probably on drugs. Either that or some sort of character actor trying to make some sort of viral video or experience. He didn’t think too much of it and he didn’t care for deer heart anyways. He did think it was odd and dangerous that she would be out in the woods not wearing bright orange, but after she left he turned his attention back to the fallen game.

TOM: Three days later, Aiden was out for a walk. He told us he tries to walk as much as he can to stay in shape. He was walking back to his house, when the woman emerged from a dense thicket of trees. Her hands were outstretched and cupping something dripping. “A return offering,” she said and held the bleeding heart out to him. “Will you partake of what I proffer?” Aiden said he refused. She asked again and he shook his head. She asked a third time, using the same exact question. This time he shouted at her to leave him alone, and ran back towards his house.

Sinclair claims that the woman frightened him. Or perhaps, disturbed is a better word. The way her black hair hung in her face, the grayish tint to her skin, contrasted by the bright red blood on her face and hands, it made him feel uncomfortable, and he said he kept looking over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t following him. He told us that every time he left his house for the next few days, he expected to see her on the edge of his driveway or peering around a tree at the edge of his lawn. 

TOM: Aiden hasn’t seen the heart beggar since the day she made her return offering. He doesn’t know who she is or what she was doing in his area. He doesn’t know how she found him the second time. But he does know one thing. The heart she offered him wasn’t a deer heart. It was smaller, much smaller. He told me he thought it looked like those drawings of a human heart you see in medical studies but it was tiny. It was the size of a walnut, maybe a little bigger. Aiden told me he still has nightmares about that heart. In his dreams, the woman is holding it out to him, her hands stained so red it looks like she’s wearing gloves. He thinks for a minute the heart beats, just once, but he tells himself it was his imagination. Then, in the dream, Aiden reaches out and takes the tiny heart from her, before raising it to his lips, and taking a bite.

Two sightings of this mysterious heart beggar, both too similar to not be the same. And yet, the second time Declan Murphy encountered the woman, when she offered him a heart in return, the second Saturday of deer hunting season, she was in Garland. That same day, Aiden Sinclair claimed to see her in the woods of Durham, some hundred miles south. It would take nearly two hours by car to drive from Garland to Durham, so while technically possible that the beggar could have offered the heart to Murphy, gotten in a car, drove the two hours south, found Sinclair and begged one from him…it does seem highly unlikely.

The tiny heart is an odd detail. A deer heart weighs about two pounds and is much larger than the walnut sized one Sinclair described. It’s not simply a case of the heart being a little different in size than a typical deer heart. This is radically different. We reached out to Declan Murphy to see if he remembered the offered heart being this small. He wouldn’t commit to walnut size, but definitely thought it was, “considerably smaller than the one he had given her.”

Of course there’s the question of where this woman is getting the hearts. It is possible the smaller ones she offered to Murphy and Sinclair are the same one. It could be some sort of prop meant to fool or intimidate the hunters. At least, that was our theory until we spoke with Cole Harrington.

Cole Harrington is twenty-two. He’s from the small town of Ashland, in Aroostook County. He’s tall and skinny, maybe wiry is the better word. He keeps his short hair hidden under a Carhart ball cap most of the time and a thin layer of fuzz covers his cheeks. His dark gray hoodie is stained with oil and grease and his work boots are well worn. 

He told us he likes to hunt and tries to go every weekend in November, but this year everything seemed to go wrong. His truck broke down and he had to spend one Saturday fixing it. Another weekend he had to work and couldn’t get out of it, and a third he was so sick he didn’t leave his bed for three days. It wasn’t until the last weekend of the season that Harrington finally got out to the woods.

He said he wasn’t expecting much. He was happy to finally get out and was content to walk around in the woods. A few of his buddies had already gotten their deer, so he was alone.

Harrinton spotted a deer sometime around ten in the morning. He shot it in the neck, but it wasn’t a clean kill. He trailed the deer for almost an hour before catching up to it. The deer had bled out, and Harrington got to work dressing his kill. 

That’s when he was approached by the heart beggar. His scenarios played out exactly the same as our first two stories. The woman begged for the heart of his kill, took a bite, then retreated into the woods. Again, for geographic purposes, Ashland is a hundred and forty miles from Declan Murphy’s Garland, and two hundred and fifty miles from where Aiden Sinclair encountered the heart beggar. The possibility that this is some sort of performance piece seems far fetched when you consider the sheer distance this person would be traveling. 

Like our other two hunters, Cole Harrington said a few days later - he couldn’t remember exactly how many - he was approached by the same woman. He was out with some of his friends riding four-wheelers on the trails in the area, when he came upon her. She offered him the heart. Harrington said he doesn’t know why, but unlike our other two, he actually took the heart she held out to him. Maybe he was trying to look tough or trying to gross out his friends, but Harrington took a bite of the small heart.

He told us the woman smiled. Her teeth were stained and yellow but they stood out through the dark hair that hung in her face. She whispered something that he thought was, “Good,” then began retreating into the woods. Harrington said he held onto the heart until he was sure the woman was gone. Then he kicked a small hole in the ground, dropped the heart into it, and buried it. He said it didn’t feel right to leave it exposed there on the side of the trail for some reason.

We asked Harrington if anything else stood out to him, or if he recalled anything else happening. He was quiet for a minute, like he was thinking. Then he said, “She had black feet. Not like her hands. That was old blood, I’m pretty sure. But her feet…they were black like… like the skin had turned all black.”

Cole Harrington didn’t really want to be interviewed for this story. In fact, it was one of his friends, who also asked to remain anonymous, who reported it to us. Harrington answered our questions briefly, but declined a follow up.

His story, of course, is unique because unlike our other two, he actually ate the heart. When we asked him what it tasted like, he was noncommittal. “Like heart,” he said at length. 

So…what exactly is this heart beggar? Is it a spirit or ghost? Some deranged woman? Or simply an internet prank? 

TOM: We feel like we can rule out the idea of a prank. The logistics make it incredibly inconvenient. Plus we haven’t seen any clips or footage - not even a mention of it - anywhere on the internet. 

The most improbable part of these stories is the way the woman finds her - victims? Guests, visitors? - days after their initial encounter. If this woman is randomly encountering hunters in the woods, how is she able to find them days later, sometimes in very different locations from their initial encounter?

And what exactly is this heart business? When she first comes into contact with the hunters, she begs them for the heart of a fresh kill. According to the story, she claims the heart is needed for sustenance. Yet, a few days later she returns with another heart, albeit a smaller one. A return offering she calls it. But that begs the question, if the heart beggar is capable of procuring her own hearts - presumably from some smaller game, maybe a rabbit or other creature - then why does she need the deer hearts in the first place?

While she says she needs the heart for food, this seems more like a transaction. She begs for the heart, eats it, then retreats. When she returns she offers another heart in exchange and expects the hunter to partake in her offering. Is it a test of some sort? The idea of a beggar asking for something from more privileged individuals is nothing new. It’s an old tale, one often repeated in modern literature. In these stories, the beggar is usually someone more powerful in disguise. If a person is kind and generous they are rewarded, and if they refuse the beggar they are punished. The tale of Beauty and the Beast is a classic example of this, where the prince refuses to aid the poor woman, who is actually a sorceress in disguise and curses him with his beastly form. It’s a simple deal, a test for basic human kindness.

But these specific requests, however, come with a follow up. Not only is the hunter supposed to willingly give the heart to the woman, but they must then take one back a few days later. This appears to be a two point bargain. It also seemingly implies that there are people who refused to offer the beggar the heart. There are those like Declan Murphy and Aiden Sinclair who offered her their heart but didn’t take hers in return. And then, of course, there’s Cole Harrington who ate the heart that was offered to him. 

But what is she testing for? It’s obvious she is hoping the hunter will eat the tiny heart she offers, but unlike the witches and enchantresses in the fairytales, nothing bad seems to befall those who refuse her offering. Neither Murphy or Sinclair report any sort of negative symptoms even several months after their encounter. 

If she is testing people, it appears she’s looking for a specific person or type, not just judging everyone she encounters. 

Which brings us back to Cole Harrington. Despite his relative reluctance to speak with us again, as near as we can ascertain, he appears to also be doing well. According to several of his peers who would speak to us, he’s regularly attending work, appears to be in good health, and is behaving like his usual self. 

This could imply that whatever the Heart Beggar is testing for hasn’t come to fruition yet, or that she may be more benign than she appears.

Speaking of her appearance: strange women dressed in clothing from a bygone era, covered in various degrees of dried and then fresh blood aren’t exactly a regular occurrence in Maine, despite what some out of staters might think. However, those are more difficult to analyze. Is the dress a costume? An actual artifact? A physical manifestation of how this spirit wants to appear? Same with the blood. Is the blackened, dried blood on her hands and chin remnants of her last heart offering, while the fresher liquid comes from more recent hearts? Is it even real blood at all?

No, what is far more interesting and perhaps more easy to explain, is the fact that Cole Harrington told us: namely the heart beggar had black feet. Not the same black as her hands, but like the skin itself had turned black.

There are several reasons skin can turn black. Prolonged lack of circulation causes the skin to die and turn black. Severe frostbite can also cause this discoloration. It’s important to note that Novembers in Maine, the month that comprises the entire deer hunting season, can be quite cold, sometimes cold enough to cause frostbite.

If this deer beggar is not an actual flesh and blood woman, a person no different than you or I, if she is in fact some sort of supernatural being, then the dates of her appearances could correlate to a time when she died or suffered some other tragedy. If she is a restless spirit, it’s possible she was a victim of extreme cold. 

It’s definitely something we’re going to look into. It may be difficult to pinpoint who this woman is. But if she was someone who died from hypothermia, perhaps during the Colonial period, we may be able to use that to determine her identity. Unlike many spirits or ghosts, she does not seem to be tied down to one geographic area so that may make identifying her more difficult. Compound that with the spotty record keeping of earlier times, and the truth is, we may never know exactly who this woman is.

Our goal At Malevolent Maine is to provide complete investigations of the unexplained phenomenon the people of Maine encounter. We are known for looking under every rock, studying every historical text, and speaking with a wide variety of witnesses and experts. 

Unfortunately, we’re not always able to provide the definitive answers people want. Despite talking to all three hunters, at this time we don’t have any answers. It seems like we’re being pulled in a variety of different directions and being a man down, we find ourselves looking for answers just as much as we are providing them.

But rest assured, we’re not giving up on this heart beggar. Every year there are thousands of hunters who prowl the Maine woods. There are thousands of hunters who harvest deer, and we’d bet our hats that there are more than three hunters who encountered this puzzling woman in the woods. 

If you encountered the heart beggar, whether or not you gave her the heart of your recent kill, whether you accepted her gift in return, we want to hear from you. The more information we can gather, the better we can determine just exactly who or what this creature is. 

TOM: Even if you believe you may have seen her, reach out to us. We’ve got one of those big maps of the state and we’re placing pins in it, trying to find any sort of pattern we can. We don’t know what this woman is or what her goal is, but we’re going to find out.

Tom’s right. We want to solve this case. Whatever information you have, we can definitely use. As of now, with our limited serving size, we believe the Heart Beggar only appeared during deer hunting season. That was nearly six months ago, but we’re hoping someone out there has the information we need to crack this case open. 

Until then…

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.