Brunswick Town Hall NOT HAUNTED!

A breaking newsflash from back in 1894!

Town Hall Not Haunted.
A school boy running up Main Street Monday evening exclaimed to a friend that the town building was crazy or haunted, "You never in your life heard such a noise as there is going on in some part of the building," said he. The [Bath] Independent scribe heard and investigated and found that it was the comb orchestra rehearsing for "Mother Goose" which is to take place next Monday evening in Town Hall for the benefit of the public library.

The kazoo had already been in existence for several decades at this point, but apparently the budget only allowed for makeshift musical combs in lieu of their high-tech kazoo cousin.

Maine has a pretty good history of enthusiasm for noisemakers, and kazoos have been a favorite at festivals and musical events in our state for many, many years -- a proclivity which continues to this day.

EVENT: Waterboro paranormal site tours

Some of you may remember a couple of years ago when one of the cases taken on by the Paranormal State television show was a Maine property, in Waterboro. Well, this Halloween in a rare event, they are opening up the house to the ghost-seeking public as a fund-raiser for the local Animal Welfare Society.

WHAT: "Pet Cemetery" house guided tours
WHEN: Friday 10/29 through Sunday 10/31, 5:00-9:00pm
WHERE: 1226 West Road, East Waterboro, ME
COST: $5 donation
FMI: (207)985-3244

Visitors are welcome to bring their own audio and video equipment to document their visit to the site.

If you are unable to visit but do want to make a donation to the Animal Welfare Society anyways, please consider visiting their website which provides information on how to do so at: http://www.animalwelfaresociety.org/spt_donate.php

Our original post about the house, from the time of the episode's first airing, is here: http://strangemaine.blogspot.com/2008/01/pet-cemetery-haunting-on.html

Ghost bride emerges from gloom

Off all of Maine's urban legends and folklore, some of the most elusive and evocative tales are those of the ghost brides. The variety of these tales involving hitchhiking ghosts are particularly hard to track for researchers like myself who want to find the fact at the root of the story. There is a lot of rumor and hearsay associated with them, but rarely does the original witness get to give their own account and have it recorded. Thanks to Mark LaFlamme over at the Lewiston Sun Journal, we now have a gem of a recent story, intact, directly from the original witness. He too has been chasing these stories for years. Read on!

Spectral lady hitches ride, vanishes By Mark LaFlamme Published: Aug 06, 2009 12:00 am It happened like this: Shortly after midnight on July 11, a police officer in Mechanic Falls stopped to check on a teenage driver who was frantically flashing his headlights. When the cop approached the car, he found a 16-year-old named David who was badly shaken. The kid was in tears and babbling about something that happened moments ago in Poland. The story David told was a crazy one but not unique. For generations, travelers through this dark place have told tales of a young lady dressed in white hitchhiking along Route 26. Sometimes she's dressed in a prom dress and sits quietly in the passenger seat. Other times, she is a bride dressed in white or a morose young woman with a cautionary message to deliver. But our friend David had never heard those stories. He sat in his car stammering and trying to explain to the frowning policeman what had happened. Just before 2 a.m., David was driving on Route 26 bound for Oxford. In the midst of all the darkness that collects in the middle of the night in Poland, suddenly there was a gleam of light at the roadside. "She was standing on the side of the road, near the frozen custard place. At first, it was just a white glow," David said. "I drove up closer and saw that it was a woman. She looked to be between 20 and 24. I pulled over and she said, 'Can you bring me to the church on Route 11?'" [...] "She asked me if I could start driving faster, because she was late for her wedding," David said. Those of us who have been around a while know that when a woman found wandering the back roads starts babbling about going to meet her beloved, what you have on your hands is a ghost. We will take appropriate action, which may include flinging ourselves out the window. But David steeled up and drove on with the curious woman in the wedding gown. He turned onto Route 11, where even greater darkness gathers, and within a quarter of a mile, he found what appeared to be a church. He stopped between two posts out front and asked his eager rider if this was the right place. [...] "She said 'goodbye,'" David said. "When I turned to look at her, she was gone." I'll give you a moment to rub the chill from your skin. David is absolutely sure the passenger door of his Camaro was never opened. When he peered out into the night around him, he saw no sign of the woman in white. No brightly glowing gown in all of the blackness along Route 11. [...] The ghost hitchhiker of Route 26 comes with a variety of stories. In the most common, the woman wandering the dark roads is the murdered bride of George Knight, slashed to death in 1856 in her farmhouse on Route 11. The woman will deliver a warning, or perhaps a prediction, to the person who picks her up. Then she vanishes. In another version, the roaming woman is the ghost of a young girl killed on her way to the prom. She is said to wander near the Poland Spring Inn, waiting for a ride in her eternal quest to make it to the dance. Like the slain Mrs. Knight, the ghost of the prom girl is said to vanish before the ride is over. "I don't think it was either of them," David says of his spectral passenger. His research — there is plenty to be found on the Web regarding the ghost of Route 26 — has led him to believe that the lady who sat in his Camaro was a bride struck and killed by a car on the way to her wedding in the 1930s; a woman forever trying to reach the site of that long-ago blessed event and disappearing once she arrives. David was also told that the man who was to marry the young lady is still alive, an elderly man who lives in Oxford. The terrain of local legend is a labyrinth of falsehoods, misinformation and tiny kernels of truth that get built upon and built upon like papier-mache over decades of retelling. David relates his tale with excitement but without the kind of rhetorical battering you find in those who are trying to convince you of a lie. I sought him out for this story; he didn't come to me. He spoke to me only hesitantly once I explained what I was after. And at last, there is a police report on the matter. The prettily dressed lady may not have identified her killer, or made her way to the altar or the prom. But at the very least, she climbed her way up out of local lore and into the public record. It took a brave kid in a Camaro to get her there. Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can tell him about your sighting of the ghost of Route 26 at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

Illustration by Michelle Souliere, (c)2005.

Haunted Maine basement

Back in April, one of our readers emailed me the story of a haunting that he was familiar with, and offered to share it with our readers. Here it is, in Mike's own words. After originally sending me the ghost story, he wrote back with an update from S----- which you will find at the end of the story, including her corrections to Mike's written account. It's an interesting account, whether you find yourself agreeing with Mike's speculations or not. Please read on!

GHOST STORY

The names and places in this story have been de-identified to prevent any unwanted attention or grief to the persons involved in the incident or their family members.

S-----’s mother runs a daycare center in her basement in L-----, Maine. On May 4, 2005, a car accident occurred approximately 100 yards from her house. A local boy, J----- L-----, 19 years old, was killed at the scene.

In September 2007, while S-----’s mother was sorting through some Halloween coloring activities in her basement, a door separating the play area she was in from a newly made over reading area slammed shut. There was no reason for the door to have shut with such force. It had just been installed recently and there was no draft of air in the room. Out of curiosity, she went over to the door, opened it and tried to see what it would take to close the door so violently. After some experimentation, she was convinced that the door could not have accidentally swing shut.

One evening when S-----’s mother went into the basement to retrieve an item, she heard a noise. It was the sound of a toy piano’s keys being struck. She looked in the next room but there were no signs of a cat or other small animal in the room.

One morning while the daycare was open, the children who had been playing outside ran up to her, telling her that there was “a man in the playhouse”. The daycare has an enclosed yard so she was concerned that maybe a transient had spent the night in the small playhouse there. When she went to check there was no one there. The children insisted that a man had been huddled in the playhouse. They had even dared each other to go up and touch him, “to see if he was real…” When one child did touch him, “he got really mad…” and that is when the children ran inside.

S-----’s mother is a devout Catholic but does not particularly believe in supernatural entities like ghosts. Still, she was starting to feel a bit anxious especially since this recent “strangeness” was beginning to affect the kids in her daycare. Still, she put it out of her mind.

On another evening she went down to the basement to take pictures of the newly refurbished learning center. She was carrying her camera at about waist level, loosely in her hand, when the flash went off twice. Some days later when she downloaded the pictures, she saw two photos that she had not taken, intentionally or otherwise.

The first shot showed the suspended ceiling in the basement with her own face lit from beneath by the flash. She is the only person seen in that shot. The following shot shows the ceiling, S-----’s mother and a second person facing her from approximately 3 feet away. This person had not been there before the flash went off and was not there after the flash went off.

This person had not been there at all.

Looking at the photo, there are several things worth noting. First, the second person does not seem to resemble J----- L-----, the young man who died nearby in 2005. Secondly, the second person’s eyes look peculiarly flat or “dead”. Third, the shadow cast by the young man’s head and hair are projected forward. This would not be the way the shadow would normally be projected unless the lighting source were directly under the person’s chin. It appears as if the light illuminating the person is either coming from his chest area or is not playing by the usual laws of physics.

I would normally think this was a Halloween prank but S----- is adamant that the above story is true. If so, this would be the clearest portrait of a ghost that I have ever seen and since I first heard the story and seen the picture, I have looked. The question is: Whose ghost is it?

Here is S-----'s update, with corrections to Mike's text:

My Mom was specifically looking at GHOST-related Halloween books, preparing for her pre-school activities. Her granddaughter was there with her and witnessed the door slamming. She spent a half hour checking different positions of the door to see if she could get it to move on its own.

The playhouse incident was actually in the house. Everything happens in the basement. A little girl said she actually pinched him to see if he was real, and then he got “really mad”. To my mother’s horror, the kids started running around the room screaming “it’s a ghost!!” She was hoping that they wouldn’t mention it to their parents.

The toy that is in the basement plays the Star Spangled Banner by itself. My mother heard it once and my sister heard it a few times. They can’t figure out why it does it.

My sister and her boyfriend were spending the night. She stayed upstairs in her old room and he stayed on a couch in the daycare (in the basement). He heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the middle of the night and then they stopped outside the door. He thought it was her sneaking down to see him, but she never came in the room, and he never heard her walk back up the stairs. The next day he asked her why she didn’t come in, as he was awake. She told him that she didn’t know what he was talking about because she never tried to go down to see him.

The dog was found hunched behind the water heater (in the basement of course), shaking and staring at a spot above and beside my mother, eyes fixated on something.

A different dog she has now often runs to the top of the stairs at night (there isn’t a door to the basement, it is a split foyer house so the stairs are open to the basement), and will start barking and growling down there the way the dog does when a car drives in the yard. The dog won’t go down the stairs though like he would during the day.

The camera went off by itself another time a few days earlier before the pic was taken. So it went off twice by itself, the second time a clear pic came out which is the one shown. I think it is interesting that my mother doesn’t have a shadow. I mean this guy is right in front of her in the picture! So weird! She would have remembered meeting a guy like this in her basement 4 days before getting the film developed! Creepy! He looks weird.

My Mom doesn’t think the spirit is evil, just a lost soul. However, she won’t go into the basement at night. She isn’t petrified, but she does sprinkle holy water occasionally just in case. She is curious however, about who this spirit is, and would be interested in a medium of some sorts going to the house if someone was interested enough to do so. (She isn’t interested enough to pay money for it though). Being religious, she thinks the person is in some kind of purgatory and needs to be released to heaven.

So nothing new to report lately. Just the dog going mental now and again at the entrance to the basement.

A personal approach to haunting

Joshua Fisher e-mailed me back in December to say hi and to let me know about his blog, which is focused on his own exploration of a spirit he believes contacted him in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland. Throughout his investigation, and more recently through his blog, Sarah Haskell's Ghost, Josh has done a ton of research, and been contacted by some of Sarah's relatives with further information.

For those interested in doing their own independent historical research, whether as part of a ghost-hunting investigation or simply for genealogical purposes, reading Josh's posts will give you an idea of what is involved, and namely, how tenacity in research is your best resource. When one lead dead-ends, find another to move onto. In most cases, it is this technique that will be fruitful. Be patient, realize it may take a while, and settle in to get to know your research subject!

While some of you may find Joshua's paranormal pursuits a little stranger than standard research, the blog is worth a read regardless.

Photo is from Josh's blog.

Pet Cemetery haunting on A&E

First off, I apologize for not posting this info until after the airing of this show, but I only found out myself after the fact!

A&E is the latest station to pilot a ghost-hunting related series. Their series is called Paranormal State, and follows the investigations of the students who run the Penn State Paranormal Research Society.

This past week, on Monday, January 7th, they aired the "Pet Cemetery" episode, which takes place in Maine:

Ryan and his team investigate the bizarre haunting of a woman and her dog in isolated Waterboro, Maine. The Labrador was chewing at her own fur and standing on guard on the bed, growling at unseen figures. Her master, Sybil, began hearing strange noises. As PRS discovers, Lucy may not be the first canine to experience the phenomena--at least four other animals died violently on the property. PRS unravels the mystery culminating in a gruesome discovery deep in the woods.

For those who missed the show, the episode is available in three installments on YouTube (start here with Part 1).

Viewers may also be interested in reading the A&E message boards about the episode, where prior residents of the house and other locals are weighing in.

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.

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 ...

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