Sure, it’s not as famous as the legend of the bloody hook swinging from a door handle, but just try beating the story about the Maine witch who forever cursed Manhattan clam chowder.
(Fair warning: It’s a killer of men and libidos.)
Try beating the story about Catherine, Down East’s vindictive, hitchhiking ghost.
Or, the one about the southern Maine attorney who kept a murder victim’s head … and … maybe … lost it.
All true — or true-ish — according to the authors of recent books on the bizarre, curious and ridiculously haunted.
Bone up for Halloween on a half-dozen nonfiction works based, at least in part, in Maine, and read the authors’ takes on the unusual, in their own words.
The Turner Beast and other tales
“Strange Maine” by Michelle Souliere
Published: May 2010, The History Press ($17.99)
Some places don’t need a ghost. Phantom lights. Chilling sounds.
Battery Steele, the old World War II-era bunker on Peaks Island, Souliere says, is one such place.
“The main hallways form sort of an ‘I’ shape: There are two short entrance hallways on either end and then a long hallway that stretches between those,” she said. “You don’t think you’re going to need a flashlight, but as you get to the center of the very long part of the ‘I’, it’s actually incredibly dark and kind of terrifying. The light at either end of the tunnel becomes very appealing and you start to move a little more quickly.”
It’s so good, so naturally creepy, it doesn’t have any ancillary legends and doesn’t need them, Souliere said. “Battery Steele itself is a presence.”
And, unusual enough to fit into “Strange Maine.” The material for her book, arranged in chapters by themes like things in the woods and spooky spots, comes partly from pieces researched for her “Strange Maine Gazette” and ideas in newspaper clips, books and word of mouth.
Some are straight stories of the weird (the Specter Moose, an allegedly giant moose roaming the woods, and Turner’s mystery beast — less mystery, more dog), some of unusual places (Houlton’s Hubcap Heaven, Brian Read’s Recycle Zoo in Washington) and some are spots the reader can visit, like Fort Knox.
“There’s just something about all the tunnels and stairways that wind through the fort that really sparks my imagination,” Souliere said. “There are stories of hauntings there, but in and of itself, it has a spooky feel to it.”
(Spookiness egged along by the annual “Fright at the Fort” Halloween benefit.)
“I think those of us who live in the state don’t necessarily visit (places like Battery Steele, Fort Knox) as much as tourists from outside the state,” she said. “I think we miss out on some of the fun we could be having here at home.”
Souliere, who lives in Portland, is working on a Maine Bigfoot book with cryptozoologist Loren Coleman for the next year. After that, it’s a “Strange Maine” followup, which will include the story of the Phantom House of Northport, something that didn’t fit in the first edition.
Maine’s fearless phantom hunters
“Ghost Hunters of New England” by Alan Brown
Published: September 2008, UPNE ($19.95)
Part how-to, part profiles, Brown started this book after finishing “Ghost Hunters of the South.”
A publisher suggested it “because the South and New England are the most haunted regions in the United States,” said Brown, an English professor at the University of West Alabama.
He wasn’t disappointed.
Making initial contact over the Web, he found groups in each state and quizzed them on how they got into the hunt, when, why, and memorable cases. Four are featured from Maine: Bangor Maine Ghost Hunters Association, Northeast Paranormal Society, Maine Supernatural and Central Maine Researchers and Investigators of the Paranormal
“Most of them were very serious about trying to answer some of the seminal questions of life,” Brown said. “Of course the big one is, what happens after death?”
He estimated that 90 percent of groups take a science-based approach, pouring thousands of dollars into meters, monitors and equipment, and largely offering services for free.
“Most of them seem to have formed around 2005, around the time of the ‘Ghost Hunters’ TV show. I think that had a lot to do with it,” Brown said.
He spotted a few regional differences. In the South, groups seem to come and go a little more quickly. (“Personalities get involved, egos get involved.”) Southern ghost hunters are a little more cautious, too, to get involved with the demonic than New England groups.
“I will say you’ve got to admire their dedication,” Brown said. “Most of these ghost hunters try to be objective, but you can tell that their enthusiasm gets the best of them. They just really, really want to capture a full-bodied apparition, that’s the Holy Grail. And if they can get some good, clear EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), that’s good, too.”
Kennebunkport and the devil’s chowda’
“Haunted Maine” by Charles A. Stansfield Jr.
Published: February 2007, Stackpole Books ($9.95)
Stansfield, a retired Rowan University professor, had a colleague who hated, hated Manhattan clam chowder.
“We’d go out to diners and he would rant,” Stansfield said. “It was just one of his things that this was not a proper chowder and he went to great lengths to explain what New England clam chowder was all about.”
That colleague happened to be Vermont born and bred. His disdain almost made sense when Stansfield discovered the Kennebunkport witch, Edith Tibbett.
When Tibbett learned of the devil’s preference for Manhattan clam chowder — the tomato base hid the taste of bad clams, getting people sick, to his delight — Edith cursed it.
Vile chowder eaters would lose their hair, lose their sex drives and lose their lives.
Stansfield included the tale in his book, as well as Tibbett’s New England clam chowder recipe.
“I try to find some sort of light-hearted stories,” said Stansfield, from New Jersey. “You don’t want to have everything kind of grim and horrific, and frankly, a lot of ghost stories are kind of funny.”
“Haunted Maine” is the third in Stansfield’s haunted states series, at eight and counting.
“I’ve had some great times in Maine and that’s why I wanted to do that state,” he said.
A retired geography professor of 41 years, Stansfield says he got tired of writing textbooks. In researching his first non-academic work, “Vacationing on the Jersey Shore,” Jersey ghost stories piqued his interest.
“They’re cultural geography,” he said. “Ghosts, almost in every story that you hear, are very territorial, they’re sort of like dogs. They don’t go next door, they stay put. They don’t go down the block to 7-11.”
Stansfield weaves a series of quick-hit legends and tales, organized by region. One Maine story from up north is of a Dyer Brook logger named Jack the Ripper who conjured up the devil for a chat.
“I think this was a case where that would have been a little bit after Jack the Ripper disappeared from London,” Stansfield said. “One theory is that Jack escaped to America.”
So, the Jack the Ripper taking refuge in our North Woods?
“Well, that would certainly be a change of venue, wouldn’t it?” Stansfield said.
Headless in Lebanon
“Haunted York County” by Roxie Zwicker
Published: September 2010, The History Press ($17.99)
Isaac Sawtell butchered his brother Hiram, strewn him through the woods and, apparently, hid the head extra well.
“It was a grisly murder that rocked Lebanon, Maine,” said Zwicker.
When Hiram’s parts were gathered and laid out in a one-room schoolhouse for the 19th-century townspeople to pay respects, “the entire body wasn’t there.”
“(Later) the head was found in the woods and it was given to the attorney who was trying the case,” she said. “The attorney wanted to have the head re-buried with the body and the cemetery wouldn’t allow them to dig up the grave. So, the attorney ended up keeping the head and no one knows what happened to the head.”
The true crime story is one of Zwicker’s favorites from her new book, “Haunted York County.”
She says that schoolhouse (now a home) and those woods are still haunted to this today.
Zwicker, from Kittery, has led ghost tours in southern Maine and New Hampshire for years. Her fourth book grew from that. She’s been approached by people on the York Village tour, “Did you hear the one about…?” She’s gotten leads from police officers, Coast Guardsmen and people in some unlikely places.
Zwicker was at a Staples store in Newington, N.H., making copies of her tour brochure once when the clerk asked if she believed in ghosts.
The clerk had lived in South Berwick on Oldfields Road. One night he’d put his 8-year-old daughter to bed, settled down to watch TV and suddenly heard screams coming from her room.
“(His daughter) said she heard banging on the window and she saw a little boy with a blue face looking right at her,” Zwicker said. “She described seeing the boy, he was 5 or 6 years old, he was wearing dark clothes.”
And he was saying, “I’m hungry.”
“The thing that’s really most surprising is her bedroom’s on the second floor,” Zwicker said. “They ended up moving out about a year or so later.”
She has chapters on colonial witchcraft, sea stories and haunted cemeteries. Zwicker said she likes to include plenty of backstory — the more details, the better the scare.
“I think people really have a thirst to know what happened in their backyard, a little bit of the history around them, too. Between the history and the ghost stories, you get a pretty good feel for some of these lonely roads,” Zwicker said.
She’ll be in Lebanon for a signing at “Destination Haunt” on Oct. 17 from 5 to 8 p.m.
Lewiston, Auburn and Turner tales
“New England Ghosts” by David J. Pitkin
Published: September 2010, Aurora Publications ($24.95)
Coast ghosts have been about written to death.
Pitkin says he undertook his eighth book knowing he wanted to include Maine and knowing he wanted to go inland.
“I decided there’s so much you never hear about,” he said.
Friends in Bridgton seemed a natural jumping off point and their farmhouse opens “New England Ghosts.” Doors in the Crabtrees’ place lock without notice. A bearded gent seems to haunt the hayloft.
The book includes a handful of stories from Lewiston, Auburn and Turner. Pitkin, from New York, put an ad in the Sun Journal four years ago looking for fodder. That’s how he met Libby Footer’s grandson. Footer grew up in the old Herrick House at 901 Main St. in Lewiston.
In the 1920s, as a little girl, Libby claimed to have been trapped in the attic by a ghost. She heard tales, too, suspicious deaths, an invisible, bone-breaking push down the stairs — all on the side of the house that the family rented out.
“It’s a fairly common phenomenon to have just part of a structure (haunted). Sometimes just one bedroom, sometimes just the kitchen,” Pitkin said. “It helps a writer to focus, on, ‘OK, what happened in this room?’”
His best guess: Energy left from plague or disease.
Over in Lisbon Falls, a local historian helped Pitkin find stories about a ghost named Basil, spotted for decades at 4 Winter St. Many sightings included the same odd detail:
The ghost wore a rose-colored shirt.
Pitkin, a former history teacher with a grief counseling degree, believes personalities and memories linger after death.
“(Popular thinking goes) some time I’m going to die, the lights are going to go out and it’s going to be all over — of course, that’s not true in my estimate,” he said.
But that’s not the scary part:
“The scary thing about ghosts is having a barn full of 20,000 books and hoping I’m going to sell them.”
Franklin’s headless hitchhiker
“Dark Woods, Chill Waters” by Marcus LiBrizzi
Published: September 2007, Down East Books ($10.95)
In his world lit class, LiBrizzi teaches ghost stories from all over.
The University of Maine at Machias English professor says it wasn’t too long before he noticed something special about stories coming out of Maine.
Something extra intriguing, extra dark.
“There’s a lot of frightening ghost stories from around the world, but the ones from here are just in another whole category,” LiBrizzi said. “The most frightening thing is it’s something tied to the land itself.”
He opens and closes “Dark Woods, Chill Woods” with two particularly spooky haunts.
The first is the story of Catherine, a sometimes-headless hitchhiker spotted on Route 182 near Franklin.
“What’s unusual about it is you have to let her in or she curses you,” LiBrizzi said. “That’s such a keynote of the ghost stories from around here. The ghosts cause harm or even death.”
He looked and found a shifting backstory. Maybe Catherine died in the 1970s coming home from prom. Maybe she died in the 1920s when a Model T drove into Fox Pond.
“Kind of inspired by Catherine’s Hill (off Route 182), some (video production class) students a few years ago went out there, camped,” LiBrizzi said.
They used a Ouija board to talk to the ghost and filmed strange lights in the woods.
“What was even more disturbing, it was almost like it was getting under the skin of the students,” he said. “They were beginning to almost bond with whatever they were conjuring up. They were beginning to create this close tie and friendship with her to the point the instructor was getting freaked. She was almost pulling them in.”
That instructor made a new rule: No more filming ghost stories.
His last short tale inspired a new book, due out in 2011, called “The Nelly Butler Hauntings: A Documentary History.”
Butler died in childbirth more than 200 years ago and appeared in the basement of the Blaisdel family’s house in Sullivan in 1800. In sightings witnessed by dozens of people over months, she was reported to have talked, floated and glowed.
Butler’s also supposed to have advocated for the marriage of the young Blaisdel daughter to Butler’s widower husband. They married and that woman, too, died in childbirth. Butler’s ghost predicted the death.
“No one can get a hold of the original sources, they’re just so obscure,” LiBrizzi said. “So what I did was edited all of the primary documents” — court depositions, church records — “and put a big introduction and overview on this unsolved mystery.”
He was surprised to find the original coverage had a decidedly positive bent.
“Abraham Cummings was intent on proving it was not just a ghost but a benevolent ghost or even an angel. What he really kind of covered up was that a lot of the villagers at the time were pretty much convinced it was a demonic apparition,” LiBrizzi said.
“Was it a ghost, was it an angel, was it a demon, was it a mass hallucination, was it fraud, was it an alien encounter?”
He’s not sure. Read the original details later this winter and decide for yourself.
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