Episode 54: Baked Brains

When Chris and Lucas get called away on important business, it's up to Tom to hold down the fort. He and Megan investigated the story of Ralph Leblanc and the mysterious objects floating in a can of baked beans. They can't possibly be chunks of brains...right? 

Content Warning: demonic/supernatural possession, death threats, contaminated food, mysterious packages, vomit, nefarious companies, conspiracies, possible cannibalism

Host: Tom Wilson
Writer: Tom Wilson & Chris Estes
Special Investigator: Chris Estes
Special Investigator: Megan Meadows
Sound Design: Chris Estes
Producer: Megan Meadows

Transcript

Malevolent Maine

Episode 54: Baked Brains

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

INTRO: The King Beyond the Desert’s so-called Hierophants, a possible alien attack right here in Maine. And a fiery crash of a very different kind at a local demolition derby. All of this and more in the coming weeks.

Hey everyone. It’s Tom. Thanks for listening. This story is near and dear to my heart. Just a quick reminder to follow us on social media. We love hearing from you guys, so if you’ve got your own stories you just can’t explain, be sure to share them with us. Remember, we believe you, and it could even make it into a future episode. Also, if you have the time and the means and want to support the show even further, consider joining our Malevolent Mob over on Patreon. We’re telling side stories there, including The Black Tarot, Cardinal Sins, and Witch’s Mark. Plus we’ve launched our new Malevolent Morsels - deleted and extended scenes which didn’t make it into the final cut of the episode. Oh, and behind the scenes stuff and extras as well. It’s a great way to support us and make sure we’re able to continue bringing you the kind of stories only we can tell. That’s patreon.com/malevolentmaine. Thanks.

The smell that wafts up as you open the can is thick and cloying. It smells a little like hot metal. Then you look down. The baked beans, usually a comforting sight with their rich, amber sauce and tender legumes, have taken on a grotesque and horrifying appearance. Suspended within the thick, syrupy pool are irregular, grayish-pink chunks. Their convoluted surfaces, resembling the twisted folds of a walnut, protruded ominously through the glossy bean stew. Each chunk seems to float with a lifeless buoyancy, bobbing slightly as if animated by a macabre dance.

This is Malevolent Maine.

TITLE SEQUENCE

[in scary Chris voice] The odd. The strange. [regular Tom voice]Okay, this is odd and strange. You’ve probably noticed that this isn’t Chris. It’s me, Tom. Chris and Lucas had to leave suddenly on a case and left me in charge of this week’s episode. It’s a little different, I know, but I’ve got Megan here with me.

MEGAN: Hello!

So things should be okay. 

MEGAN: You’ve got this.

Right. We’re going to get to today’s story in a minute, but I figured I should tell you what happened that led to Chris and Lucas leaving town for a few days.

As you know, we’ve been looking for Mark since he disappeared nine months ago. He’s been calling the office, leaving us weird messages, and we’re starting to think that the Mother Witch, the powerful being that five covens were trying to summon last October - which you can review in Episode 40 if you need to - is somehow inside Mark. 

I did some more research and spoke to some of our contacts in witchcraft. Almost a year removed from the activities of the Five Covens, the witches are starting to resume their normal - or what passes for normal for a witch - actions. They’re talking to us again. I asked several of them for more details on the Ritual of Blood, the final ritual, which we disrupted that night at the tree in Mooretown. Here’s what I found out.

The summoning spell that Mark interrupted was meant to pull the MOther Witch’s essence into a chosen vessel or person. The Five Covens had chosen the Betrothed of Spirit to be their vessel. You might remember that when Mark knocked her down, outside of the ring of skulls the witches had imbued with power, we saw her face. At the time she looked like any other fifty or sixty year old woman. We haven’t been able to identify her, and none of the witches I spoke with were willing or able to share her real name.

Still, the plan was that the Mother Witch would, I don’t know, teleport into the Betrothed. Her spirit, which was bound to the tree in the woods, would enter the woman’s body and take possession of her, transforming her into the physical embodiment of the Mother Witch.

To house this powerful spirit, the Betrothed had to go through several purifying rituals. One witch I spoke to said this could be an incredibly painful process, cleansing not just the mind but the body. There was a physical scouring process, using soap made from the rendered fat of a black calf. There were intense spiritual practices as well, meant to hollow out the Betrothed’s mind to make room for the Mother Witch.

In the end, the Betrothed of Spirit would be no more, and in her place the Mother Witch would have been reborn.

Mark messed that all up. By shoving her aside at the exact moment the spell reached its climax, Mark was standing there in the center of the summoning circle. Unlike the Betrothed, however, his mind and body hadn’t been prepared for the Mother Witch. At least, I don’t think he had. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s more of a body wash kinda guy instead of rendered calf fat.

So if Mark is now the vessel for the Mother Witch, he’s probably struggling with this new entity inside of him. Instead of rewriting his…I don’t know, spirit, I guess, we think the Mother Witch is sharing his space. She’s trapped inside of him, like a…like a parasite. They’re sharing one body, one brain, whatever, and at times… we don’t know. At times, maybe she takes over.

We still don’t know where he is, but a few days ago, Mark called us again. According to the call log it was at 3:13 in the morning on August 1st. I’ll play the call now.

TOM: You’ve reached the Malevolent Maine offices. Please leave a message after the beep.

MARK [small voice]: H-hello? Is someone there? Is anyone there? My name is… is… I can’t remember. I…I’m in North Freedom. Help me. Please help me. I..I want to come home. [Mother Witch takes over]

MOTHER WITCH MARK: Foolish mortals. Your pathetic friend is no more. He is my play thing and I will torture his soul for all eternity before I consume him completely. You dared to interfere with my will! You are nothing. Ants to a god! Your insolence comes with a price. I will have my revenge, I will destroy all you have ever loved. I will watch the light fade from your eyes as I wrap my hands around your neck. And I will eat your pathetic souls.

We believe that was the Mother Witch talking through Mark, but we also think the real Mark, our friend, was able to break through and give us important information. It’s like he’s trying to fight back, but the Mother Witch is too powerful. He’s lost and scared, and he needs our help.

As you probably noticed, Mark was able to say the name of a town: North Freedom. It’s located in Wisconsin, about a hundred and thirty miles from Milwaukee. It’s got a population of about 700 and like all of the towns Mark has been passing through, it’s a small out of the way place. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time Mark has told us his location in an actual call. It was enough for us. Lucas and Chris booked a flight to Wisconsin that day. Here’s Chris checking in just yesterday.

CHRIS: Hey, so, we’ve been staying in the AmericInn and Suites in nearby Baraboo. We’ve spent the past week asking everyone we can if they recognize Mark. Not just in North Freedom, but in a lot of the surrounding towns. We…uh…did some…”checking” let’s call it and Mark’s bank accounts haven’t been touched, nor his credit cards since last October. He’s not using his money, so unless he’s getting cash from somewhere else, we think he’s probably traveling on foot. At best that’s probably twenty miles a day, so we’ve spread our search out pretty wide. It’s hard to tell where he’s going, but we think he’s headed northeast, at least based on the locations from his recordings. That makes his next stop maybe Green Bay area? Maybe Canada. I don’t know. There haven't been any promising leads. A couple of people thought they might have recognized him, but nothing serious. I think…I think we’re probably going to head back in a day or two unless we find something. Hold down the fort until we get back, alright?

We’re still hoping the guys find something, but for now we’re going to turn back to our lead story.

Beans, beans, the magical fruit, MMers. Today’s story concerns one of Maine’s largest food staples, and we’re not talking about whoopie pies.

Baked beans have been a staple in Maine, and all of the Northeast since its colonization by the British, and perhaps even earlier. The traditional dish is prepared by soaking beans, usually kidney, pea, or Navy bean, usually overnight. Then you parboil them, add some things like brown sugar and bacon, then bake them for a long time - just how long depends on who you ask.

The story goes that Native Americans taught the Puritans how to cook baked beans in a large earthenware pot. The Puritans, who took the Sabbath very seriously and never worked on Sundays, would cook the beans on Saturday, along with brown bread, a wheat bread sweetened with molasses. On Sunday morning, the beans would still be warm for breakfast.

While Boston may be referred to as “Bean Town,” Maine has a long and rich history with the baked bean. Churches and Lion’s Clubs still regularly hold bean suppahs every week and lots of local fairs have baked bean cook-offs. 

In fact, one of the largest and best distributors of baked beans got its start, right here in Maine. B & M opened its first canned food plant on Franklin Street in Portland in 1867. George Burnham and Charles S. Morrill started canning meat like pork, roast beef, and mutton, as well as vegetables like corn and even seafood. By the 1920s and 30s, facing a decline in sales of their products, B & M began experimenting with baked beans and soon became one of the top baked bean distributors in the country. 

PET Foods - that’s P-E-T all caps, not like food for pets, bought B & M in the 70s and eventually sold the company to Pillsbury in the 90s. In March of 1999 B & G Foods, in turn, purchased it from Pillsbury. Finally, in 2021, B & M closed its historic factory in Portland after 150 years of producing quality food. The company still exists, and you can still find its product on the shelves of any grocery store, but the beans are now produced in the midwest.

That’s a long way of saying that baked beans are a way of life for Mainers and we take them very seriously. So two years ago, when we were contacted by a man named Ralph Leblanc who had a remarkable story about a can of baked beans, I knew I couldn’t let the story go.

For the past two years I’ve been looking into Ralph’s story, verifying what I can, and trying to find answers. It never felt like the right time to tell it. Now, after years of simmering on the backburner - just like a good pot of baked beans - and with the rest of the crew out of town, it seems like the perfect time to share it.

Ralph Leblanc contacted me in 2022. Ralph was seventy-two then, a widower whose wife had died of brain cancer. His two kids, a son named Steven and a daughter, Beth, had moved, “out west,” as he put it, though that meant Vermont in Beth’s case, and Utah in Steven’s. Ralph lived alone in Westbrook, and like many in his situation, he became accustomed to his routines. 

Every Saturday night Ralph liked to have his traditional bean suppah. When his wife, Linda, had been alive she used to make them from scratch, but since she had passed on, he had moved onto the canned variety. “Not as good as my Linda’s,” he told me, “but they’ll do in a pinch.” He cooked a couple of hot dogs to go along with the beans and had a couple of slices of brown bread, also from a can for those unfamiliar with it.

Now, Ralph was retired, and while he had a good pension, he was still on a fixed income. His wife had taught him to always look for the best deals on food and stretch his dollar just a little farther, so he often purchased generic or non-brand name items to get more “bang for his buck,” as he said.

It was one of these cans that Ralph opened in September of 2022 and made a terrible discovery. 

When he opened the can, he didn't smell the normal pleasant scent of bacon and onion he was accustomed to. He told me, "When I opened the can, even now I can't fully describe the scent. I guess it was a metallic smell mixed in with the scent of the beans. And it was mixed with...well, those chunks certainly weren't bacon..."

What Ralph Leblanc saw suspended in the thick syrupy sauce were chunks of some grayish-pink meat. At first he thought they were just overcooked pieces of meat, maybe chunks of bacon or ham, but the slimy, gelatinous lumps resembled a walnut shell. A closer inspection revealed they were actually a network of veins. 

That’s when Ralph knew.

Floating in his can of beans were chunks of brains!

MEGAN: For legal purposes here, we’re required to say all of this allegedly happened. While Mr. Leblanc was quite certain of what he saw, as were the others you’ll hear about in a moment, the company that produced the beans, Ten Ebrus Canning Company, could not be reached for a comment, as we’ll discuss later as well. For now, the following accounts should be considered hypothetical or unproven.

Right. Thanks, Megan.

Ralph said he knew that they were brains, or um, he thought that they were. His first thought was that something had contaminated the factory. Maybe some sort of animal brain had gotten mixed up with the beans. 

He got out his old camera and took several pictures of the can, then dumped the can into a large mixing bowl. There were six or seven chunks of brain mixed in with the beans, each one about the size of a dime. 

Ralph covered the entire thing in plastic wrap and put it in the back of his fridge after clearing space on the shelf. Needless to say his appetite was gone.

He told me that the next day he tried to call the company that made the beans. A company called the Ten Ebrus Canning Company. There was an 800 number on the back of the can, but when he called it there was only an error message saying the line had been disconnected.

He tried to find the company on the internet, but he admitted he wasn’t the most tech savvy guy and couldn’t find anything. There was nothing online related to a Ten Ebrus Canning Company. In the end he decided to call his neighbor, Shane O’Connor. 

Shane O’Connor is a retired member of the Westbrook police. He is a few years younger than Ralph, and at the time Ralph found the tainted beans, he still had plenty of connections on the police force. 

I exchanged a few emails with Shane after Ralph had contacted me about the supposed brains. He said he looked into it and was fairly certain that it was indeed brain matter in the can of beans. He told me he had the unfortunate experience to see some up close and personal over his tenure as an officer and that in his mind they were definitely brains. 

Shane also said he looked into Ten Ebrus and couldn’t find anything either. He even asked some of his friends still working for the police department to see what they could dig up, and nothing came back.

The two men opened Ralph’s remaining cans of beans to check to see if they were also contaminated, but didn’t find anything except regular old baked beans. They went back to the store where Ralph had purchased the beans, but there didn’t appear to be any more in stock. A few employees said they remembered seeing the Ten Ebrus beans, but hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. They stocked the shelves like normal. The manager said that distribution came from farther up the chain of command and that they weren’t always in charge of what they received. He suggested the two men reach out to the store’s corporate headquarters and offered Ralph a full discount on his purchase.

In the end, Shane suggested that Ralph send the brain matter to the Maine State Crime Lab in Augusta for testing. He also suggested Ralph put our some messages on social media asking if anyone else had any experience with tainted beans or the Ten Ebrus company.

You may remember the Facebook posts from a few years back if you live in the area. They popped up on many Maine town and community Facebook pages, and were probably shared by someone you know. I remember seeing them. That’s what got me interested in this case, and I was actually the one to reach out to Ralph first. 

We’ll get to the social media responses in a bit, but before we do, I want to follow up with the crime lab testing. 

MEGAN: Ralph packaged the beans carefully in a styrofoam cooler with ice packs that Shane was able to get from his police department contacts. He mailed off the can, the bowl, and all of its contents. But here’s where things get strange. The package never arrived.

Right. Ralph and Shane dropped it off at the post office together. They paid for the shipping there and filed the necessary paperwork. But the beans never arrived. Not only that, the post office had zero record of ever receiving such a package. There was no receipt of the package, no receipt of payment, not even any security footage of Ralph and Shane coming into the office. It was as if the entire experience never existed.

I found this all out when I actually spoke with Ralph on the phone. This would have been around the end of October 2022. This certainly piqued my interest and I knew we had to look further into this story.

So I did my own research. There is nothing anywhere on the internet even remotely related to the Ten Ebrus Canning Company. No websites, no email addresses, no social media, nothing. If you put the two words together you get a bastardization of the word tenebrous, t-e-n-e-b-r-o-u-s - the Company title is two words and Ebrus is spelled E-b-r-u-s. You’ll find a character from Harry Potter with a similar name, and the word itself means obscure or murky.

I couldn’t find a physical address for the company either, though the can clearly states their products are, “grown and processed right here in Maine!” 

MEGAN: There were no tax records, no payroll information, no deeds or corporate holdings. Nothing to indicate Ten Ebrus was a real company. Or, honestly, real at all.

How can a company that doesn’t exist get their product on the shelves of a major Maine supermarket, which we’ve also been advised not to mention? It seems impossible.

You’re probably thinking that maybe this was some sort of horrible prank. That someone put either real or fake brains in baked beans, canned them, printed their own labels and put them on the shelves. It’s elaborate, and awful, and someone would have to have access to quite a bit of resources to do this, but it was one of my first thoughts as well.

I was assured by not only the Westbrook store manager but the CFO of the company that this would be all but impossible. Stock is taken daily, anyone seen putting merchandise on the shelves would have to be a store employee, and even if someone did manage to, there is no way the item would ring up in their system.

And yet it did. In fact, the store was able to find a record for Ten Ebrus Baked Beans in three different stores: Westbrook, Brunswick, and Sanford, though strangely there was no purchase history for these products. Corporate had no idea where they had come from. These towns are relatively close to one another. Sanford and Brunswick are about sixty miles apart, and Westbrook is somewhere in the middle, for those unaware. 

Still, if this were a prank or at least an act perpetuated by an individual, it would be nearly impossible to pull off. 

But what other explanations could there be?

The most likely answer is that this was some sort of mistake. Ralph Leblanc and Shane O’Connor were wrong about their assumptions. The can of beans may have been contaminated with something, but it was a singular incident. Perhaps Ten Ebrus was a start up company or a subsidiary of another larger group that simply folded or was reabsorbed into the larger company.

But there should be a record of this somewhere, right?

And as you’ll see, this wasn’t a single, isolated incident.

Ralph Leblanc’s Facebook message reached quite a few people, and at least six of them had similar discoveries. I spoke with all of them.

Two of the people, unrelated and from different areas, both of whom asked not to be named in this podcast, said they too opened cans of Ten Ebrus Baked Beans to find what they thought looked like brains. In both cases they just assumed the beans had gone bad somehow and threw them out.

Natalie Donovan posted pictures to her Facebook reply to Ralph Leblanc. She too lived in Westbrook and purchased the beans around the same time. She said she opened three cans for a church dinner and that one of them had the wrinkled gray chunks floating in amongst the amber beans. She took pictures, hoping to get a refund, then threw the can away.

Her pictures look remarkably similar to Ralph’s: a can of beans with what appears to be rubbery nuggets of brain matter. She said she passed it on to her church leader who was going to seek a refund, but that she forgot all about it until seeing Ralph’s post.

Mark Jenkins opened two cans of Ten Ebrus Baked Beans for supper one night and discovered that both of them were contaminated. He told me, “I thought it was cauliflower or something at first. I had already dumped them into a pot, so I sorta poked around with a fork. I speared one of those chunks and smelled it… It smelled awful. Like… like hot metal sort of. But way worse. I threw the whole thing out in the compost.”

Ruby Foster said she nearly took a bite of her tainted beans until she looked down and saw the chunk in the middle of her bowl. She told me she had been reading a book, having a simple dinner of baked beans one Friday night. She said there was only one chunk, but it was large, almost the size of a golf ball. She said when she saw the wrinkles, which I learned the raised parts are called gyri and the valleys sulci, she dropped both her book and her fork and threw up all over her table. 

She told me she knew exactly what it was and that she thought she saw it pulse for a moment, sitting there in the steaming bowl of baked beans. She said in her attempt to clean up the mess she had made, she must have gotten rid of the contaminated bowl as well because she couldn’t find the chunk later when she went looking for proof. 

Now, it’s entirely possible that some of these people may be jumping on the bandwagon so to speak. They may have heard Ralph’s story and decided to play along. We’ve seen plenty of people do that, especially on the internet. We’ve also seen plenty of people misremember things. Perhaps Ruby’s beans contained a clump of congealed bacon or Mark Jenkins just saw some really strange looking onion chunks in his beans, and then later when they saw Ralph’s post they suddenly connected their experience to his own. It’s even possible that Ralph was lying, making up this story for fifteen minutes of internet fame or whatever. 

I don’t believe that, though. But if I had to guess at least one of the people I spoke with may have either been mistaken or outright lying about their beans. 

But there’s no denying Dale Higgins.

Dale Higgins is in his early fifties. He’s divorced and lives alone, though he has a steady girlfriend who comes over often. She lives out of state, but the two have found a way to make it work. This is a lot of information you probably didn’t think you needed to know, but that’s how Dale talks. He’s an open book, often sharing or oversharing at the drop of a hat. He’s a nice guy, though he can be intense. And it was when I finally sat down with him that I knew there was something real and possibly dangerous to this story.

Dale claims that when he saw Ralph’s social media post about the tainted beans he ran to his pantry. Sure enough there were six cans of Ten Ebrus baked beans. He opened all of them.

Before we go any further I should also explain that Dale is a bit of a… well, a conspiracy theorist, to put it nicely. As Dale would no doubt tell you within the first five minutes of meeting him, he believes the government has it out for us. He’s apolitical but told me he’s worried about 5G technology being used to control us, and that the government has definitely begun the process of installing us with microscopic chips. Though he did say that the idea that it was hidden in the Covid-19 vaccine is, quote, “preposterous! It’s already in the processed foods everyone eats.” He’s a big believer in chemtrails being used to seed clouds to affect the weather, that the government killed not only JFK, but also Malcolm X, Princess Diana, and John Lennon, and that the government has been regularly using alien tech it recovered from the crash at Roswell. 

Among other things.

Dale is extremely likable though. He’s got an honest face and a good sense of humor. He knows how crazy some of his theories sound, but he says that’s the point. The more ridiculous the idea, the more likely it flies under the radar of the general population.

Anyway, Dale said he opened all six cans of Ten Ebrus beans that day. An astounding four of them contained the supposed brain matter. I know because he took copious amounts of pictures, which he sent me both through email and printed in person. He said he would have mailed them to me but he had heard about Ralph Leblanc’s missing can and didn’t trust the post office, who he believes are in on “it.” We’ll get to what “it” is in a minute, but I want to go back to Dale’s four cans first.

In addition to taking pictures and a video recording, Dale also took measures to preserve the cans right away. He says once he saw the foreign matter in the cans he didn’t try to sift through them or look for more. He went right into preservation mode. One of the cans he put into a plastic freezer bag and froze in the chest freezer he keeps in the basement. Another, he put inside a large glass jar, like a big mason jar, and vacuum sealed. A third he vacuum sealed with one of those food saver type machines that encases food in plastic. The last he actually encased in a hard resin. It’s in a cube about six or seven inches high. It was this he brought to show me.

Dale wouldn’t tell me where he lives, but he did mention he’s off the grid, totally independent. He also didn’t want to lend his voice to this show. He said he was more than happy to talk with me about everything, to share his evidence with me, but he didn’t want his voice or any pictures of himself getting out there. He also asked that we use a fake name. He himself suggested Dale Higgins. 

The block of baked beans, still in the Ten Ebrus can, is heavy. The hard resin has completely contained it and is mostly transparent. There’s a little distortion looking through it, but it’s clear what’s encased inside.

I’ll be honest, it looked like chunks of brains.

MEGAN: Again, allegedly. Without doing proper testing on the encased food item, it is almost impossible to legally say what was mixed in with those baked beans… though, even I have to admit it looked an awful lot like brain.

There were two chunks visible on the surface of the can, half emerged from the now solid goo which the beans floated in. They looked a little like icebergs floating in that thick sauce. The lumps were gray with a pinkish tint to them, though this could have been because they had absorbed some of the bean sauce. There were clear wrinkles, those gyri and sulci I mentioned earlier. I am by no means an expert on brains, we all know that, but even a quick comparison to images on the internet and it’s clear that these substances are similar.

Then Dale pointed out something I hadn’t noticed. 

“See that black spot on it, right there?” he asked, pointing. 

I nodded.

“That’s a brain tumor.”

[Pause]

So, what do we know? A cancerous, diseased brain most likely found its way into cans of Ten Ebrus Baked Beans. There have been zero reports of other body parts or pieces of bone being found, which leads me to believe that this wasn’t an accident where a person fell into a vat of boiling baked beans and was processed with the rest of the food. It’s also clear that the brain matter was chopped up, something that doesn’t happen in the bean canning process. However these brains got into the beans, they were chopped up beforehand.

Dale Higgins thinks he knows what happened. “I think Ten Ebrus was just a cover for a government operation. Maybe just a test, maybe a full blown operation, it’s hard to say,” he told me as we sat at a picnic table out behind the Malevolent Maine office. “I think they’re sneaking brain matter into food so that we’re more susceptible to the telepathic brain transmissions they’re using to influence the population.”

Dale believes the government is attempting to read and control our thoughts and that by increasing the brain matter in our system we’ll be more susceptible to it. 

MEGAN: That’s not how it works, obviously. Eating something, even brains, won’t increase our brain mass or volume. The …the chunks would just be broken down and absorbed by our digestive system. But neither Tom nor I had the desire to get into that with “Dale.”

He thinks that either the experiment failed because of posts like Ralph Leblanc’s or that somehow the cancerous brain got mixed up into it and caused undesirable results. Either way, they shut down Ten Ebrus and erased it from the face of the planet so no one would be the wiser.

As for Ralph Leblanc, he didn’t know what had happened either, but he had his own theory. “I think maybe somebody just slipped up and added the wrong thing,” he told me. “Maybe it was human brains, maybe it was animal. Maybe someone had a big can of hog brains that got labeled bacon or whatever and by the time they realized what had happened it was too late. Maybe they never realized.”

That does seem more likely, but it doesn’t explain just where the Ten Ebrus Canning Company went and how they were able to disappear so completely. It doesn’t explain how their product got onto the shelves in the first place, or what happened to Ralph’s missing can. There are so many unanswered questions and until we can track down someone from Ten Ebrus, we are simply unable to answer any of them.

Ralph Leblanc passed away in early 2024. His son, the one who had moved to Utah, found my contact information in his dad’s home office and called to let me know. He said his father passed away in his sleep of an unexpected brain aneurysm. 

As for Dale Higgins, he said something to me right before he got back into his truck and headed back home. He was half in already and leaned out to share his final thought with me.

“How many people, do you think,” he said with a sad grin, “ate the stuff up without even realizing? Maybe they never even saw the chunks. Maybe they did and figured, screw it, it’s just how they make ‘em these days. But do you ever think about how many people actually ate the brains?”

I do now.

Well, that’s it for this week. Chris should be back for our next episode. Thanks for listening.

Oh, and stay safe out there, Maine.