FIELD FILE · SPECTER-MOOSEOTHERREGIONAL LEGEND

Specter Moose

Also known as Spectre Moose, Ghost Moose of Lobster Lake, Great White Moose of Maine

A giant, ghostly white moose said to roam northern Maine since 1891, shrugging off hunters’ bullets and chasing sportsmen up trees, as old papers told it.

The Specter Moose is a legend of Maine’s great north woods: a pale gray or dirty-white bull moose of impossible size, said to stand ten feet or more at the shoulder and carry antlers wider than a car. Hunters who fired at it, the stories say, watched their shots have no effect, and the animal had an unnerving habit of vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

The tale is usually traced to 1891, when hunting guides working around Lobster Lake, a remote lake east of Moosehead Lake in Piscataquis County, began reporting an enormous white moose. Accounts differ on who saw it first – one version names Clarence Duffy of Old Town, who was laughed at when he came back with the story – but by the 1890s it had become a staple of camp talk among guides and the wealthy “sports” they led.

Newspapers loved it. Reports passed from Maine papers to the New York Sun and then across the country by wire, describing near-misses, impervious hides and a cyclist near Sherman and Macwahoc who abandoned his bicycle and climbed a tree to escape. By 1900 one widely reprinted story put the animal at 2,500 pounds with antlers ten feet across. Fresh flurries of reports followed in 1901, 1917, 1932 and 1938, when a hunter near Chesuncook watched a huge white bull among a group of moose and lost sight of it in an instant.

Even in its heyday, the Specter Moose was treated half as a joke. Journalist Curtis MacDougall included it in his 1940 book Hoaxes, and skeptics of the time suggested everything from too much whiskey to an old gray work horse turned loose in the woods. The legend nonetheless sits on a real foundation: white and piebald moose do occur in Maine and neighboring Canada, and every few years a pale moose photographed in the woods sends the story around again.

Type

Other

Status

Regional legend

First reported

1891

Best-known location

Lobster Lake and the North Maine Woods

Also called

Spectre Moose, Ghost Moose of Lobster Lake, Great White Moose of Maine

Reported in

Maine

What witnesses describe

A bull moose described as white, whitish-gray or “dirty white,” far larger than any known moose – 10 to 15 feet tall, up to 2,500 pounds, with antlers spanning 10 to 12 feet and, in one account, 22 points on one side. Some tellers give it a faint glow and the ability to disappear; most early newspaper accounts simply describe an oversized, aggressive, bullet-proof animal.

Where and when it’s seen

Remote spruce-fir forest, lakes and logging country of northern Maine, especially Lobster Lake, the Roach River, Chesuncook Lake and the West Branch of the Penobscot, and the Katahdin region. Most reports come from hunting season in the fall.

Notable sightings

1. 1891Guides at Lobster Lake Lobster Lake, Piscataquis County, Maine

   Hunting guides reported a huge white moose near Lobster Lake, the starting point of the legend. The first witness, usually named as guide Clarence Duffy of Old Town, was reportedly too far away to shoot and was mocked for his story.

2. 1899Twenty-two points on the Roach River Roach River, Maine

   A hunter from West Newbury, Massachusetts, Gilman Brown, was said to have come close enough to count 22 points on one antler before firing five shots that had no visible effect. That year the story reached a national audience through big-city newspapers.

3. November 1900The cyclist in the tree Between Sherman and Macwahoc, Maine

   A story from the New York Sun, reprinted as far away as Minnesota, said a bicyclist had dropped his bike and climbed a tree to escape the charging moose. The same report estimated the animal at 2,500 pounds with ten-foot antlers.

4. March 1938The vanishing bull of Chesuncook Chesuncook region, West Branch of the Penobscot, Maine

   Wire reports said a hunter named Houston had seen a large herd of moose that included one huge white bull, which disappeared when he looked away. It is among the last sightings to make the newspapers.

What could explain it?

• White and piebald moose exist: leucism and piebaldism produce pale or patchy moose that are occasionally seen and photographed in Maine and Canada. A real white bull could easily start a legend.
• “Ghost moose”: heavy winter tick infestations make moose rub off their dark guard hair, leaving them looking pale gray or white in late winter and spring.
• Exaggeration: the largest moose ever recorded weighed roughly 1,700 pounds with antlers about 6.5 feet across, so the reported dimensions are far beyond any known moose and fit the hunter’s tall tale of “the one that got away.”
• Newspaper humor: the story spread in an era when papers happily reprinted woodsmen’s yarns, and it was listed as a press hoax by Curtis MacDougall in 1940.
• Missed shots at long range, in poor light, or with light rifles easily turn into stories of a bullet-proof animal.

Legend, culture and tourism

The Specter Moose is a favorite of Maine storytellers and guide lore, part of the same north-woods tradition as the tall tales told around sporting camps. It turns up in New England folklore collections, podcasts and art prints, and every new photograph of a genuinely white moose in Maine – or in northern Ontario, where pale “spirit moose” are well known – brings the old story back into the news.

Places to visit

Watch

▶ VIDEO

Partially white moose spotted in Maine, Part 1

Bangor Daily News

Real footage of a pale moose in the Maine woods, the kind of animal that may lie behind the legend.

Where it’s reported

Maine

Specter Moose in the news

No recent headlines about the Specter Moose. Our news desk checks every day — see all cryptid news.

First published October 13, 2026 · Updated October 14, 2026