Local Urban Legends

Some local urban legends collected by Mark LaFlamme are up on the Sun Journal website. Some, like "All is Well," might better be called "rural legends."

Six years ago, a group of kids dared a pre-teen to explore an abandoned well behind an ancient barn in Sabattus. The well was at the far end of a long-forgotten cemetery and it was reputed to be haunted. The boy was eager to impress his friends, however. He agreed to be lowered into the well on a rubber tire attached to a sturdy rope. His friends, giddy with excitement, lowered the boy down and down and down into the dark hole until he disappeared into the blackness.

After there was no sound from below and no movement on the rope, they hastily decided to pull their friend back up. But what they hoisted out of the well was not the young boy they knew as their friend - the lad's hair had turned pure white, his eyes were dark and wild, and he trembled with unimaginable terror. He babbled and cackled wildly and appeared to have aged decades in the few minutes down in the darkness of the well.

The boy never recovered from his madness. He is said to shriek sporadically from his padded room in the county mental institution. [Source]