Portland railyard ghosts?

Back in 2007, I came across a query about a Portland railyard ghost in a now-defunct online discussion board, and posted about it here on the blog:

Portland Trainyard Ghost Rumor

"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. [...] 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 have yet to nail down the various defunct railyard locations in Portland, but I did just come across an old newspaper article from 1894 that had an interesting railyard "spook" placed at the Boston & Maine railyard here in town:

The ghost of the shanty who has been haunting brakemen and switchmen in the Boston & Maine yard at Portland has been laid-out. Lights have been flashed before the windows, unaccountable rappings, tappings, and all sorts of other uncanny sounds have been heard, much to the disquiet of the railroad men. The other night they resolved to lie in wait to corral if possible one of the visitors from Hades, and one turned up on schedule time -- and was seen to approach the window of the shanty carrying a lighted torch. The unterrified ghost hunters immediately charged upon the spectre. The spectre made a bold sprint but stubbed his toe and was captured. He was flesh and blood and was a real Irish "spook" by the name of Paddy.

Pranking it up in the 1890s! I wonder why he went to all that effort, all those nights in a row...?

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]

Ethereal Company in Portland

Back in January, we posted about Josh Fisher's search for a spirit's history here in Portland's Evergreen Cemetery. We are pleased to note that the article led to an interview with the Portland Phoenix, which brought Josh right into their print issue with his story. Hooray!

Finding company in Evergreen Cemetery: Ghost buster
By DEIRDRE FULTON
January 23, 2008 3:01:12 PM

In October 2007, Portlander Joshua Fisher, 33, was walking through Evergreen Cemetery when he felt a “swirling energy sensation, like a bird flapping around my head.” Most of us would dismiss it as a weird hangover, or some otherwise-explained dizzy spell. But not Josh Fisher.

The following day, the amateur ghost-hunter — he’d been involved in paranormal investigations in his previous hometown of Philadelphia — went back to the cemetery to try to identify the source of the strange feeling. “I ended up at this one stone,” he recalls, “and I can’t explain why.”

That headstone marked the grave of Sarah Haskell, who was born in New Gloucester in 1822, and died in 1848 at the young age of 26.
...
And so began Fisher’s relationship with this spirit. He’s discovered a lot about her past through municipal records, old newspaper articles, and communication with Haskell’s distant relatives (her husband’s name was Alfred Woodard, and her descendents looked like regular 19th-century stiffs), but one fact remains elusive: how Haskell died. It could have been during childbirth, but there’s no mention of a baby. It could have been the result of one of the many diseases of the day, but that’s not noted either. Or it could be something juicier — “we may never know,” Fisher admits.

He employs several tools and techniques to help solve the mystery, including digital voice recordings that can capture faint, unidentifiable voices, and an infrared camera. (The best of these are posted on Fisher’s blog.) The untrained ear or eye may remain skeptical, but these electronic voice phenomena (EVPs) and images are just what trained ghost-hunters hope for when they start an investigation.

Fisher — a married graphic designer who otherwise comes off as totally ordinary — has been into the paranormal for years.

... “It’s the kind of thing I always thought I’d be scared of — but the fascination kind of overrides the fear.”
...
The Sarah Haskell case is Fisher’s first since moving back to Maine about a year ago; he hopes to continue his paranormal research in the Old Port, and wants to eventually launch a ghost-hunting team of his own. One of the most intriguing potential investigation sites? Bull Feeney’s. We knew there was something eerie about that place.
Read full article here: [Source]

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."

Things in the House

Well, all this time we've been living in our Victorian duplex, we've wondered where all the ghosts are (it seemed reasonable, especially with the creepy basement and a full attic). Maybe they just waited until we'd been here a while, decided we weren't going anywhere, and announced themselves (it's now just over a year since both Kris and Salli moved in).

Salli just came hopping down the stairs after seeing a dark blue human shape come out of my open and lit studio door on the second floor, after which it disappeared.

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.