LEWISTON – In the darkness before dawn on a cool autumn morning, Martha David and her husband were wakened by the scream of a beast. The shriek rose from outside their bedroom window, and all but paralyzed the couple in their bed.

“It sent a chill up my spine. There was a creature out there and it was making a sound I can’t describe as earthly,” said the 59-year-old David. “We were too terrified to get up and go see what it was.”

It was Litchfield in 1991. The Davids never found out what lurked outside their mobile home. They sold the place soon after and moved to Minot.

Thirteen years later, dozens of people say they have recently seen or heard an unidentifiable creature in area woods. It began in mid-August when a Wales man reported that an unknown animal crept out of the woods behind his house and mauled his Doberman pinscher.

The animal that killed Duchess the Doberman was never identified.

Since that attack, people from Wales, Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery creature.

What is it?

“I was out on the deck having a cigarette and coffee when this thing came up over the bank,” said 70-year-old Leo Doyon, who lives on Perkins Ridge Road in Auburn. “I said, What the hell is this?'”

Doyon has been hunting in the Maine woods for more than 50 years. He thought he had seen all animals great and small until the middle of August. The creature that emerged in his yard was nothing he could identify.

“It was no wolf. It sure as hell wasn’t a fisher and it wasn’t a coy dog,” Doyon said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what it was.”

An animal control officer spotted the creature along Sawyer Road in Greene. Despite his experience with critters, he could not identify it. He could only say that it looked like a hyena, just as more than a dozen others have described it.

The hyena is a scary animal capable of bringing down a zebra, say animal experts. But the beasts are also not found far beyond the African savanna south of the Sahara Desert.

But there is a Maine animal that could be mistaken for a hyena, according to animal trapper Cindy Johnson, who is half the team known as the Creature Catcher duo in Wales.

A theory

Johnson is quite sure she knows what has shocked, frightened and fascinated many in the River Valley region: a coyote with mange. Such an animal would resemble the descriptions given of the mystery creature.

“If they are losing their hair, they may drag their rear end when they walk. It will look odd,” Johnson said. “And coyotes are all different colors. They can be like the color of a hyena. It’s a natural camouflage color.”

Coyotes abound in this state and they also make a variety of noises, Johnson said. They howl, yelp, bark and huff to communicate or to threaten enemies. Mange, a skin disease caused by a burrowing mite, is common in coyotes and causes hair loss and disfigurements.

Johnson is not surprised that so many people have come forward to report sightings of a strange beast in area woods. She has talked to many people with similar claims in the past.

“We hear the strangest stories. Most people simply don’t live in the country and they don’t know the animals around them,” she said.

Johnson has a folder full of “mystery creatures” reported to her over the years. A strange, badger-like creature turned out to be an albino porcupine. An elusive, spry creature proved to be a sick fox.

Mystery’s appeal

Often, people would rather not know the identity of the beast they’ve seen, Johnson said. Those people embrace the unknown as a way of becoming part of something bigger than life.

“People love the mystery,” Johnson said. “They just love it. The more attention it gets, the bigger it becomes.”

Johnson is qualified to make an educated guess on the species of the enigmatic creature. But some are not convinced that a mere coyote is responsible for the near hysteria over the local creature. They know coyotes, some of them say. And this was no coyote.

Whatever it is creeping around the River Valley region, some people consider it a bona fide mystery. Lake Champlain has its Champy, New Jersey has its Devil. Until someone captures or kills it, the Androscoggin County creature may turn out to be just as elusive.

“We make fun of things like Sasquatch and all that,” said Martha David. “But there’s something out there and I heard it. I hope I never hear it again.”