Vacationland = Paranormaland?

My friend Rachel runs the great Smother of One blog, and just did a post which contains a couple of interesting things, not the least of which is the footage of strange curtain movements that occurred at the Empire club here in Portland and freaked a number of employees out, shown on their website as taken off their closed circuit taping system's monitor (see below).


Find more videos like this on Empire Dine and Dance

A different type of chill

Photo of SMCC's Hillside dorm from PRI-ME.org website.

While the cold has settled into the state in earnest, I'd like to throw some spooky chills into the mix as well.

I was talking to a friend of mine who has worked in SMCC's resident inn, and finds it a pretty creepy place to work through late nights at. But online, I found references to SMCC Hillside dorm as a home for haunts, which was new to me. I can't vouch for any of this information, but would definitely be interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced any of the Hillside phenomena mentioned here:

Southern Maine Technical College, South Portland: A Funeral Home

The Hillside Dorm has a long and strange history. This specific branch is now housing for students but at certain points in its career it has been not only a funeral home, but a brothel, and a nursing home. All this history makes it difficult to predict exactly what is haunting the halls of this college. There is a man who wanders the floors of the attic. There is also repeats of a creature up there who moves to and fro. Many times maintenance has tried to catch it, but as of yet it has eluded all traps. Strange dusty footprints have been reported around the traps. There is also an older lady and a young boy who are said to torment some of the students by messing with their blankets and windows at night. There is also a young woman in a nightgown who walks up and down the staircase in the evening hours. The validity of this sighting is that not only has she been seen by individuals, but also groups.

[Source

In searching for a photo of the dorm online, I found that Paranormal Researchers and Investigators of Maine (PRI-ME) has done a training session for paranormal investigations at the site. You can read about their investigation here -- lots of photos too!

Haunting Attack in Lewiston Cemetery

Photo of Riverside Cemetery by Dan Bernard, used by permission of the artist.

This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of the Strange Maine Gazette.

-----------------------
It’s not uncommon for me to collect new and interesting stories from friends and strangers as I make my rounds with fresh issues of the Gazette. Earlier this year, Matt told me of his terrifying experience in one of his hometown’s cemeteries. He was deadly serious when he told me this story, which is one of the reasons why, come Halloween time, it came to mind again. He was kind enough to take the time to sit down and record his account for me.

About a year ago (Saturday, October 20th, 2007, I believe), my brother Mike, his now ex-fiance, and I decided to take a walk in the Riverside cemetery near my old apartment in Lewiston. It was a crisp Autumn afternoon, sunny with a slight nip in the air -- nice walking weather.

We entered the cemetery at the Summer Street entrance and took the first right, down past the winter storage sheds, then took a left along the edge of the hill, toward the river. We stopped at a nice, quiet plot with a small stone bench. I picked up an empty 24-pack of Natural Ice beer that some bozo had no doubt dumped the night before, and put it in the trash.

After a minute or two, we continued on our way and turned right along the side of the river. A leashless dog came running toward us, followed a moment later by its owner. The owner caught up to her dog just as it started to squat down and relieve itself in front of someone’s tombstone.

As soon as the owner was out of earshot, I commented to Mike and Nikki about how disrespectful it was to let one’s dog defecate on a burial plot, and not even have the decency to clean it up. They agreed. This led me to mention the kicked-in stained glass windows on the doors to the Libby Mausoleum.

Neither Mike nor Nikki had ever seen the Mausoleum, so I decided to lead them up to the secluded glen where it lies. Almost immediately after we got there, I started to get the feeling that we weren’t welcome.

There was a tension building in the air, and I felt like someone was glaring at me. Nikki was picking up on it too, and decided to attempt to communicate with the presence. I started to get really cold, and told Mike and Nikki that I was getting some really bad vibes off the place. When Nikki lit up a cigarette, I felt a shift come over the air, like it had become charged, and I felt my stomach bottom out.

I had turned around and was actually walking away from the crypt when I heard Nikki yelp, followed by a loud cracking noise. I turned just in time to see Nikki running towards me as the top half of a birch tree snapped off and came crashing down where we had been standing. As the shock of what had just happened started to sink in, I became acutely aware that the presence I had felt at the mausoleum was now bearing down on the three of us.

I started to run as hard as I could, occasionally looking over my shoulder to see if Mike and Nikki were okay. I never actually saw anything tangible, but still got the sense that, whoever or whatever it was, was not very far behind me until I had passed the winter storage shed.

The chill I felt while at the crypt lingered with me for the next day or so. I couldn’t stay warm. Nikki also could not keep warm, and she claimed that she could still feel the presence lingering about her for a few hours after the encounter.

Ironically, when I went online to see if I could come up with any imagery of the Libby Mausoleum, the only thing I found was a photo on Flickr.com by an acquaintance of mine, which was accompanied by the tale of an injury she incurred while trying to take a photo of the mausoleum. Uncanny, you say to yourself, as did I.

She pulled something in her leg while climbing the short slope to the tomb’s entryway, and the self-timer on the camera snapped its shot as she grabbed at her leg in pain. She comments, “I heard, did not feel, heard, a huge crack and then snap. For a fraction of a second I though my calf had cramped up. Then the pain came!”

So is the Libby Mausoleum cursed? It seems more likely that perhaps it harbors a jealous and protective guardian spirit that is sick of vandals and even the most innocent gawkers intruding upon the peace of the mausoleum’s location.

The disrespect shown to Riverside Cemetery’s “guests” (as their website refers to the buried dead, see http://riverside.marshallsonline.org) is not uncommon in Maine’s graveyards, but to those who find solace in these quiet places, and to those like myself who use them as a source in field research, this behavior is effectively destroying connections with our history. Riverside’s caretakers have openly announced a $500 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the culprits of the latest wave of Riverside Cemetery vandalism.

Haunted Tours in Portland!

Hello all -- we are pleased to announce that Gordon Tweedie is once again running his excellent walking tours of Portland's Old Port and waterfront areas. You can find them online at Wicked Walking Tours. Tours depart nightly at 8:00pm from Bell Buoy Park in front of the ferry terminal (by Flatbread Pizza and RiRa's on Commercial Street), and are about an hour and a quarter in length. Call to find out details about other tour times and daytime tours in season.

For questions or to make reservations, call (207)730-0490, or check out www.wickedwalkingtours.com. As the flyer notes, “your credit is no good in the afterlife,” so tickets are cash only ($15; $13 for seniors and children under 12).

I wrote a review of the tours for The Bollard last fall, and was pleased to hear that Tweedie had started them up again for the summer season into the fall this year. Here's my review, for those of you who missed it:

A Wicked Treat for October Wanderers
By Michelle Souliere

The fog came curling in off Portland Harbor as I waited by the ferry terminal to meet the guide for Portland’s new Wicked Walking Tours. It was the perfect night for a tour of old Portland’s haunted waterfront streets. Ships moved in and out of the pier slips with their lights glowing softly as I sat on a wooden bench. Across the water came the mournful sound of fog horns.

Raising high a lantern, Gordon Tweedie introduced himself. His resume is impressive. Tweedie is an accomplished baritone, and has toured extensively in both Europe and the U.S. He currently teaches at the Portland Conservatory of Music. He created Wicked Walking Tours with a tiny start-up budget, spent entirely on printing full-color flyers and posters, which he has sown around Portland at hotels and other public spots. Like a spell cast wide, his colorful lures draw people in a few at a time. Like me, they are enticed by a unique chance to hear about a side of Portland’s history few among the living know about.

Tweedie's tale-telling is woven from a variety of sources. In addition to poking around at the Maine Historical Society, he has painstakingly collected scores of ghost stories from people who live and work downtown. The stories are many and varied, from office workers who have seen the Jolly Roger sailing past their third floor conference room windows, to spectral traces of escapees from one of Portland’s great fires, doomed to repeat their hurried exits over and over again.

Other tales are woven from documented historic events, or are retellings of lore about past Portland personalities. The flyer advertises such eerie delicacies as a disembodied diva, a ghostly pirate ship, a cursed society lady, and a minister who escaped Indian attacks only to be subsequently burned as a witch. (While no witches were actually burned down in Salem, it is true that in the late 1600s, during the witchcraft craze, onetime Portland resident and minister George Burroughs was hanged as one of the accused after being roughly hauled away from his Wells dinner table. These are the kind of facts you don’t find on plaques commemorating local history.)

The tour is well worth the hour-and-a-quarter spent in Tweedie’s company. He is an inventive entertainer who can pick up and drop an accent with ease, and he tells his tales with obvious enthusiasm. The walking tour provided good opportunities to check out the backsides of buildings one seldom sees in the course of everyday travels. It wends its way around the Old Port, focusing on the wharves, Commercial Street, Fore Street, Exchange Street, and their connecting lanes, stopping here and there for a little storytelling along the way.

[Source]

Photo by Michelle Souliere

Fairfield shop has lively ghost

Shown here: "Lori Higgins, owner of Jack & Jill Hair Fashions & Gnarly Nails, in the basement of her Main Street business in Fairfield on Thursday. Higgins and other employees have seen unexplained movement and heard noises throughout the building." Photo by David Leaming, Morning Sentinel, 2006.

From one of last week's issues of the Kennebec Journal comes an interesting tale of ghosthunting:

Fairfield shop impresses Gardiner ghost hunters
04/25/2008

FAIRFIELD -- Ghost hunters think there is indeed something funny going on at Lori Higgins' Jack & Jill Hair Fashions on Main Street.
...
While exploring the building, at the invitation of its owner, founders of the Maine Ghost Hunters Society say they found what they call "an extensive amount of evidence indicating high amounts of paranormal activity."

Digital photos exhibited by South Gardiner ghost hunters Julie Velez and Robin Coleman show what they call "orbs" floating in a room. They claim that digital-sound recordings taken from the salon, and posted on the group's Web site www.maineghosts.org (scroll about halfway down the page), capture an unearthly voice asking for help.
...
Unexplained activity began occurring at the 150 Main St. location in August 2004, Higgins said, when she began remodeling the store front in the brick Masonic building.
...
After seeing a 2006 Morning Sentinel article online about Higgins' claims, Velez and Colman contacted Higgins for permission to poke around. (See below for 2006 article)

The Society, currently with seven members, was founded last year. The group has posted its adventures in what they call haunted homes in Gardiner and in Monmouth, as well as the Fairfield location.

Society members said they used "electromagnetic field detectors" to reveal the presence of an entity perhaps trying to materialize for them. They also said they detected unexplained noises, movements and temperature drops.

As for the 1791 date, Mark McPheters of the Fairfield Historical Society said the brick structure where Jack & Jill is located on the ground floor -- the Masonic Building -- was constructed circa 1900.

"Before that, there were wooden stores side-by-side from when the town was built," McPheters said. "Fairfield was founded in 1788. Buildings were put along the street, shoe stores, harnesses and a hardware store at the corner, whatever people needed."
...
Read full article here: [Source]

Here is the 2006 Morning Sentinel article that made the Maine Ghost Hunters Society interested in exploring Jack & Jill Hair Fashions:

Ghost thinks flying objects in the spirit of things
Friday, September 01, 2006
By DOUG HARLOW, Staff Writer, Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

FAIRFIELD -- As far as anyone knows, this ghost does not go bump in the night -- it goes bump in broad daylight and has been known to toss a spoon and a beach ball across the room.

The specter at 150 Main St. even showed himself once to a little boy who was playing while his mother got her hair done.

Lori Higgins, owner of Jack & Jill Hair Fashions and Gnarly Nails on Main Street where the unexplained activity has been occurring, even has a name for it.

"We named him Harold," Higgins said. "I don't know why, it's just Harold."

Higgins said most of the creepy stuff began around August 2004, when she remodeled the store.

Loud, head-turning squeals, moving furniture and unintelligible mutterings since have become a frequent happening at the salon, not just for her, she said, but for her employees and customers alike.

"If this wasn't anybody but myself just experiencing this stuff, I probably would have gone, 'Well, who's going to believe me,'" Higgins said from the back room of the beauty parlor where most of the sounds and sights have been happening. "But it's not just myself, it's clients, it's past workers, present workers."

She said the loud sounds include the dragging of a chair across the floor, but nothing is moving and nothing is seen. There are sounds of someone banging their feet in the basement or on the stairs, but again, nothing is seen, Higgins said.

On another occasion, she and a another woman were sitting at the break table in the back room, when the darndest thing happened.

"We were sitting there finishing up lunch when a spoon just up and -- whoop -- flew right to the wall right there," Higgins said. "She saw it, she actually saw it, so ..."

Other happenings include low, unintelligible whispering, she said.

"You can hear garbled whispers sometimes, that happens from time to time," she said. "We can't tell what he's saying, it's jumbley. It's garbled. You can't tell."

Higgins said there also are cold breezes that sneak up on employees and customers, even in the summertime.

On another occasion, Lui Giordano, the Gnarly Nail man at Jack & Jill's, was finishing new tiles for the floor and went to a store room for more adhesive, when the darndest thing happened -- again.

"This was after hours in August and I was finishing up painting and we needed more materials out back," she recalled. "He went in first and went to reach for more glue and a beach ball came out of nowhere and hit him in the head.

"He was all set. He was done for that night. I had told him of all these weird happenings we couldn't explain and he was 'Ya, Yeah, whatever.' It happened to him and I said, there."

Giordano said the episode made his hair stand up.

Another time a client brought her little boy into the shop with her, Higgins said. The boy's toy truck skipped into the back room and the child retrieved it.

"He proceeded to come out front and ask us who the old man was out back, right at that stairway," she said. "If you don't experience something, then you're not going to believe."

Higgins said the building was built around 1907 as a five & dime store at one time and a ladies' clothing store, as well as a beauty parlor before she took over.

She said the presence is fun, not scary.

"He's playful. He's funny. He's not threatening, I talk to him," she said. "I just know it's a him, but I have not visually seen him here -- yet."
[Source]

Ongoing EVENT: Wicked Walking Tours

Gordan Tweedie is running a series of Wicked Walking Tours in Portland's Old Port and waterfront as the spooky season commences.

Tours are run daily, and are available in the daytime for more timid souls, at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., and at night for more stalwart adventurers, at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday evenings through Nov. 17. As the flyer notes, “your credit is no good in the afterlife,” so tickets are cash only ($15; $13 for seniors and children under 12). Look for your guide at Bell Buoy Park, on Commercial Street between Casco Bay Lines and Flatbread Company.

For questions or to make reservations, call 730-0490, or check out www.wickedwalkingtours.com.

You can catch my review of the tour online at The Bollard. (Click here to go straight to the review.)

Photo by Michelle Souliere.

Haunted Boothbay Opera House

The Ghosts of the Prairie has an interesting entry on the Boothbay Opera House:

The Boothbay Opera House
Boothbay Harbor, Maine

The Boothbay Opera House building was originally constructed back in 1894 and for many years, it housed the local headquarters for the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order in line with the Freemasons. Later on, the building was turned into a theater and has hosted every story of entertainment imaginable for this small Maine town, including minstrel shows; plays; movies; town meetings and basketball games.... and if you believe the stories, it has also played host to a ghost.

No one knows who this resident spirit may be, although some have an idea, but he is said to haunt the second floor room that was the meeting place of the Knights of Pythias. Since 1949, visitors to the building have spoken of a strange presence in the room. It is usually said that the piano that is located here will play by itself, as if some spectral piano player is manipulating the keys. Different witnesses also recounted the same thing happening in 1957, during a town celebration and again in 1977.

Some believe that the ghost may be that of a man named Earl Cliff, who played the instrument for programs in the theater in the early 1900’s, but no one really knows for sure.

Boothbay Harbor is located east of Brunswick, Maine on the southwestern coast.

© Copyright 1998 by Troy Taylor
[Source]

Other mention of this haunted location online include a 2004 mention on a chatboard by member Gislebertus of an EVP from an investigation there: "The best EVP I ever heard was a tape I heard while we were investigating the Boothbay Opera House. The guy was from the New England Paranormal Assoc. played it and in the background you could hear everyone in the background talking about things that had been going on in the house... It was very informal and the people were sitting about 10 feet from the recorder. All of a sudden you hear this male voice go "HEY" clear as a bell and louder than the other people in the room. They didn't hear it at the time, it needed no enhancement as it was clearer than the other voices. When he played it, it freaked out one of my students so badly she had to leave."

Portland Trainyard Ghost Rumor

I dug this one up on a Google cache of a currently offline ghost discussion board at circleinvestigations.com, from an October 2006 conversation.

Has anyone heard anything about the old railroad round house on Presumpscot Street in Portland? Someone told me the other day that it was supposed to be haunted by an engineer that got crushed working on a train. Worked in that building for almost 4 years all hours of day and night and on weekends. Never heard anything except pipes clanging.

The same poster (dlspauld) later remarks "of course, it can't be checked now because it's the DMV office for Portland. Why do we find these things too late?" I'm not sure if this accurately portrays the round brick offices now being used by the DMV, I'll have to do a little more research. But it was an interesting snippet I wanted to share, nonetheless.

Hunting Ghosts in Wilton, Maine

Join intrepid Lewiston Sun Journal reporter Kathryn Skelton as she tails two of Maine's paranormal investigation teams (CMPI and CMRIP) in a survey of the premises of the Wilton Farm and Home Museum.

View the full article for access to a photo slideshow and video clips from the event. Here's a tidbit to whet your appetite, and a Sun Journal photo to boot.

One soul-searching night
By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, March 3, 2007

It was cold, and dark, and I-swear-one-of-the-mannequins-in- the-room-is-going-to-move-any-second creepy.

Jim Wetherell asked if any spirits were with us, and at that moment something touched the tiny microphone clipped to his chest.

Three minutes into the ghost hunt.

Maybe it was nothing. But maybe ...

[Source]

Hiram Haunted Road Legend

I was in the Strange Maine store the other day, interviewing Brendan Evans, the owner, for Angioplasty Media's upcoming re-launch, when a very pleasant older man came up to the counter. He was very happy to have found yet another classic horror film on Brendan's shelves, and proceeded to tell us a rural legend from his younger days.

He told us about a road that runs between Hiram and Cornish, Maine, that is partially unpaved, near the old Durgintown area. He swore that the locals from either town avoid that road when they are alone late at night. He claimed it ran through a bog, and that strange things would happen on the road from time to time, including the sensation that something was holding down the back of your car as you drove along in the dark, and that you were not alone.

Two of his younger coworkers had taken him up on his stories and had driven down the road very late one night (or early in the morning, as I believe it was after midnight). They thought they saw something in the bog coming out at them, and took off without a second look, terrified.

Heck, sounds good to me!!!

Anyone else out there with any information about this location?