From one angle, it looked like a pair of oversized garbage bags stuck high in a tree. 

A mysterious bundle up in a tree behind McGraw Park in Lewiston. Submitted photo

From another, it looked like a human body wrapped in a tarp. 

From a third view … Well, no. From this view, it still looked like a body to me. It probably wasn’t, but that’s what it looked like. 

All sorts of thoughts presented themselves in my imagination the day I was summoned to see the “weird thing in a tree.” 

Maybe it’s some prepper’s cache of weapons, ammunition and canned goods, I reasoned, stashed away for the day that the poo hits the fan for real. 

It could be some local homeless person’s alternative to expensive storage; just clothes, camping gear and a few personal items stashed away for later. 

Good theories, all, and yet they evaporated before I could explore them much because the real mystery here wasn’t what was in that strange, plump bundle. The real mystery to me is how it got up there in the first place. 

This enigmatic bundle, you see, was roughly 50 feet high in a tree at the edge of the woods that sprawl between McGraw Park at 156 East Ave. and Lewiston High School, also on East Avenue. More puzzling still is the fact that from the ground, one could easily see how meticulously the bundle had been secured with ropes that ran in all directions. In a disturbing way, the item looked like a massive, slug-like creature that’s been caught in an enormous spider web. 

It’s an unlikely thing to see, way up there where only squirrels dare tread. In a way, it seemed like an impossibility.

At the base of the tree that cradles this troubling pod, there are no branches for easy climbing. It would be exceedingly difficult to get a ladder in there because of the tricky terrain and the presence of other trees that crowd in. 

How a person could have gotten up there in the first place really claws at the mind. But when you think about the advanced maneuvering that would have been required to tie the thing down in such an efficient way, the imagination really starts to boogie. 

What mortal man has the ability to scale a tree with a clearly heavy bundle and then to lash it so expertly, all while balancing precariously 50 feet above the hard forest floor? 

Not to mention the “why” of it. Why go through all of the gymnastics required to secure this unwieldy item in an area that’s heavily traveled? This … thing is located just off the corner of heavily-used McGraw Park and just a few yards off a well-worn path through the woods. 

Other than the fact that the item is so impossibly high off the ground, the cache, cadaver or alien body wasn’t hidden well at all. 

It was a mystery, all right. And it had been right there just waiting to be discovered for at least four months. 

I only heard about it a week ago when a pair of ladies who live downtown wrote me to say they had a “good story” for me. What kind of story, I asked them?

“Something weird in a tree,” they answered. 

And so down I went, with that crazy little chill of anticipation buzzing through my bloodstream. Some of the best stories I’ve ever covered, after all, came from people who wanted to show me “something weird.” 

That mysterious animal in Turner that came to be known internationally as “The Maine Mutant” or “The Turner Beast?” That story was born of such a call from a stranger; a stranger who wanted to show me “something weird” she’d found at the roadside. 

I once got two weeks worth of stories after people started calling to tell me about “something weird” they had seen and heard in the skies all over our little corner of Androscoggin County. 

Weird is good, even if that strange animal in Turner proved to be just an ordinary dog. Weird is fun, even though those lights and sounds in the skies were later revealed to be some Navy guy buzzing his parent’s Auburn home in a military jet. 

And weird is what I found when I joined those two ladies in the woods behind McGraw Park. 

“What th …” I said when I first beheld it, standing at the base of the tree and staring straight up. 

“What the hell?” I expanded, when I tried viewing it from a few steps back. If you looked real close, you could probably see the big, cartoon question mark floating in the air above my head.

I asked one of the ladies outright what she thought it was. 

“A body,” she said.

Turns out these women had reported our Bundle of the Unknown to the police in June. Some cops came over, scratched their heads like the rest of us, and called for a drone. 

But with the leaves heavy on the trees by then, there wasn’t anything to be seen from above and so, as far as I know, the matter was passed along to another department for review. Since then, that bundle just hung there in its tree, rocking when the wind blew like the cradle of song.

It was a riddle, all right. With Halloween just two weeks away, that plump bundle of mystery just gnawed at my mind and the longer the mystery lingered, the more tantalizing it got — maybe it really WAS an off-planet pod of some kind and on a given night in the not-too-distant future, the thing would just burst open to release legions of multi-legged, ravenous space creatures with a taste for human flesh. 

I tell you, I was getting more excited by the minute about this mystery tarp business.

Alas, on Tuesday morning, just hours after I had dutifully sent this column along to my editors, killjoy cops and a tree-scaling public worker dashed my hopes for an ongoing mystery.

On Tuesday morning, city Arborist Steve Murch scaled that tree to dispel this mystery once and for all.

Lewiston Arborist Steve Murch dismantling a mysterious bundle spotted up in a tree behind McGraw Park. Submitted photo

From what I understand, Murch made climbing that tree look easy.

“It was legit lumberjack,” said a cop who had witnessed the feat.

And when Murch got to his target, he worked past all of those carefully knotted ropes and got to the source of this mystery one-on-one.

What was inside that misplaced tarp, you wonder after all of this speculation?

“Nothing exciting,” the cop said. “Just filled with leaves.”

Boy, I tell you — if I had a nickel for every time my dreams were dashed by a city arborist …

All day, since this revelation, I’ve been morose; a child whose new toy has been broken. I’ve had mysteries busted before, sure, but I usually get to enjoy them a day or two before prosaic truth comes along to bring my imagination to heel.

The tree-bound bundle of mystery was supposed to sustain me until Halloween at least, but now it’s over, just like that. And so, in gloom, I return to my boring desk to await the next mystery.

Something peculiar bobbing in the river. Odd lights in the sky over Greene or frightening sounds from some stranger’s attic.

I don’t need much, people, but if you can bring me something weird over the next week or two, I’ll sure be appreciative.

It just isn’t Halloween season without something weird happening somewhere.