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Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Specter Moose- Maine

 


Among the pines, an apparition looms.  Towering twice the height of a man, the beast has the form of a moose, but is far bigger than any ordinary member of Alces alces.  Its coat is deathly white. Its antlers spread wide as outstretched arms, pronged with over two dozen sharp points. Is it a ghost? A spirit of the forest? Or perhaps it is merely an ordinary- if impressive- natural mutation.

The first recorded sighting of Maine’s spectral moose occurred in 1891 when hunting guide Clarence Duffy spotted the creature around Lobster Lake. A year later it was seen again by a sportsman from New York who shot at it, only to be chased down and nearly trampled by the vengeful beast.

Regular sightings occurred for several decades. Witnesses described the moose as being white or light gray, with some even claiming that it glowed dimly. It was said to be about 10-15 feet high at the shoulder, much taller than the 8-10 foot shoulder height of an average moose. Its antlers were said to be 10-12 feet wide and festooned with up to 22 prongs- much larger and more complex than the 4-6 foot spread of a regular moose. Some eyewitnesses claimed that the moose would actually vanish into thin air right in front of them.

Some have suggested that the animal was albino. Albino moose have indeed been documented many times, but their eyes are pink or violet, while the eyes of the spectral moose are said to be brown. Albinism would also not explain the creature’s tremendous size and enormous antlers.

Its possible the spectral moose had a condition similar to the Kermode Bears of British Columbia, also known as Spirit Bears or Moksgm’ol in the language of the Indigenous Kitasoo, a tribe of the Tsimshian people. Although these bears have white fur, their eyes and skin do have pigment. The white coloration is due to a recessive gene that stops melanin from being made only in the fur, a condition called leucism (as opposed to albinism, in which all pigmentation is lost in all tissues).

In fact, population of white moose are well-known to inhabit the woods around the town of Foleyet in Ontario. Like the Moksgm’al, these moose are not albino, instead possessing a recessive gene that makes their coats a grayish-white. Its quite possible that Maine’s spectral moose had a similar genetic condition, though again the creature’s alleged great size, and its seeming ability to disappear into thin air have not been fully explained. Perhaps eyewitnesses, startled by the sight of such an otherworldly-looking animal, exaggerated their descriptions.

SOURCES

An article from New England Folklore about the Spectral Moose

An article from Mysterious Universe about the Moose

An article from Lumberwoods.org

A Smithsonian article about the white Moksgm'ol Bear

Ontario's white moose

A 1911 article from the Sacramento Union about the Specter Moose

A post from legendsofamerica.com about the Specter Moose