For Fans of Acadia After Dark: Humanoid Encounters

I’ve spent most of my life in Maine, and if there’s one thing you learn here, it’s that stories are as much a part of the landscape as the granite coast or the endless pines. Some are harmless yarns—an old-timer bragging about the fish that got away, or a fourteen-point buck that slipped past a hunter’s bullet. Others are tales of storms that left towns in the dark for weeks, or of friends who could drink enough Allen’s Coffee Brandy to stagger a moose. Storytelling isn’t just pastime here—it’s identity.

But every so often, the stories turn strange. Along the rocky shoreline or deep in the tree-shadowed mountains, the unusual has a way of showing itself. Everyone seems to have a moment they can’t explain: a light that moved wrong in the sky, a figure glimpsed at the edge of vision, a howl that didn’t belong to any known creature. Maine is full of mysteries that live in the dark between the pines.

That’s the terrain Nomar Slevik has made his life’s work. A paranormal researcher and ufologist, he’s been collecting these uncanny accounts for years. I first came across his UFOs Over Maine, a book that hooked me with its mix of rigor and easy, conversational storytelling. Because he grew up here, Nomar writes with a familiarity that makes the strange feel close to home. His passion for the paranormal and for Maine’s folklore is unmistakable.

His latest, Humanoid Encounters, feels like a natural continuation—even with a decade between the two books. Where UFOs Over Maine leaned on deep-dive investigation, this one takes a broader, more thematic approach. Each chapter gathers stories of beings both familiar and unclassifiable: aliens, pale crawlers, bigfoot, and things that don’t even have names. The structure makes it easy to dip in and out, but the sheer variety keeps you turning pages. It’s both a sampler for the curious and a feast for the devoted.

As someone who also researches the paranormal, I found many of these accounts to be among the most distinctive I’ve ever heard from the Pine Tree State. Some are entirely new to me; others add fresh layers of mystery to phenomena I thought I knew. A few will stay lodged in my mind for good.

Humanoid Encounters is more than a collection of stories—it’s a field guide to the uncanny, a reminder that Maine’s greatest export might just be its mysteries. It’s earned a permanent place in my desk drawer, close at hand, because it’s the kind of book you return to again and again, each time finding something new in the shadows.