FARMINGTON — The home where Cathy McManus lived as a child has a bad reputation. Even today when McManus tells people where she grew up in Skowhegan, the reaction is consistent—“the Creepy House.” The house where people would find themselves running past when it was dark.

“People say the house is haunted, but no one in my family has ever had a conclusive experience with any spirits,” McManus said. She muses that the cemetery lining the back yard may be partly to blame. And she credits the combination of that cemetery and the notoriety of her childhood home with her lifelong fascination of the macabre.

“I’ve always loved ghost stories. I find old graveyards fascinating,” McManus explained. “One of my favorite things to do is explore cemeteries and photograph grave stones. The old, hand-cut stones, they are pieces of art. And my photography hobby actually led me to ghost hunting.”

While working for a school district along Maine’s midcoast region, McManus became friends with a colleague who had similar interests, Summer Paradis. The two joined a ghost-hunting group and from there inspiration for multiple books materialized.

“People would have us come into their homes that they felt were haunted. We would investigate, looking for a rational explanation for unexplainable occurrences. Sometimes they would also involve clergy, to cleanse the spirits they were troubled by,” said McManus. “I’m actually a bit of a skeptic. Sometimes the equipment we used would determine the presence of electromagnetic frequency—that’s pretty common.”

So did anything during McManus’ career as a ghost hunter ever spook her?

“Yes,” she admitted. “We were working in Stowe, Vermont. There is a covered bridge there known as Emily’s Bridge. Presumably a young woman named Emily hanged herself there. Strange things happen. Vehicles have been scratched driving over the bridge while not touching anything. People have reported noises, like their car is being kicked.

“We were using a spirit box, which is a piece of equipment that uses transistor frequency to pick up paranormal communications. The spirit box caught the phrase ‘go away’ several times. And I ended up with scratches on my hand that just appeared from nowhere.”

The ghost hunters were an eclectic group, including a psychic and a demonologist, that introduced McManus and Paradis to the prospect of writing about their hobbies.

“One of the hunters had a publishing contract,” McManus explained. “I queried the publisher about a book featuring the art of hand-cut grave stones. They felt that was too narrow a topic for them to carry, but they came back and asked if we’d be interested in writing ‘dark tourism’ books. So that’s what we did.”

McManus and Paradis partnered on two titles published by Schiffer Publishing of Atglen, Penn. “We wrote ‘New England’s Scariest Stories and Urban Legends’, which included our work on Emily’s Bridge. We also explored legends like Pigman, the Sea Serpent of Gloucester, the Dublin Lake Monster, and the Derry Fairy. We researched 22 sites throughout New England for that book. It’s a guide for people to explore these places as well as read about.”

The pair then wrote a second book, “Gone but Not Forgotten: New England’s Ghost Towns, Cemeteries, and Memorials”. Somewhat of a companion to their first, it captures the sagas surrounding 36 unusual places, including the Rhode Island grave of an accused vampire, Maine’s Malaga Island and a recently discovered ghost town in Connecticut.

“In ‘Gone but not Forgotten’, I was able to incorporate my passion for photographing grave stones into the book,” McManus said. “In particular, there is one spectacular cemetery in Vermont. The stone cutters had an amazing creativity to their work.”

Having explored the paranormal and some incredible legends, McManus turned to true crime for her next project. Her latest book, “Unsolved New England: 20 Cases that Rocked the Region”, was just released. She spent five years looking into crimes and reports that remain open investigations.

One involves the infamous Borden Ax Murders of 1892, in which Lizzie Borden was acquitted of her parents’ gruesome murder. Another, less-known crime occurred a few years later in Readfield, Maine, where Elsie Hobbs Raymond was acquitted of strangling young Mattie Hackett in a jealous fit. Most of the cases that McManus profiles in this book occurred during the 20th century, however.

McManus’ research took her to the actual scenes of the crimes. She stayed at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts (McManus believes Lizzie was indeed innocent of murder).

“To understand what happened, it’s important to see each site,” McManus said. “Scenes change over the years, but much remains. A young woman from Providence, Rhode Island, was brutally murdered and one of the clues was an ax mark imprint on a nearby tree that matched her wounds. Seventy years later, that same tree still bears the scar.”

Not all the cases in “Unsolved New England” are actual crimes. McManus also explored other strange occurrences, including an incredible tale of a New Hampshire couple’s alien abduction and Mystery Hill, an archaeology site in Salem, New Hampshire billed as America’s Stonehenge.

“When I started working on ‘Unsolved New England’, it was at the time when Geraldine Largay disappeared along the Appalachian Trail here in Maine. She stayed with me as I was immersed in all these other cases,” said McManus. She didn’t include Largay in her book, but she was relieved when the hiker’s body was found.

Now that she’s put her 20 cases to rest in print, McManus looks forward to reading “When you Find my Body”, a recently published book detailing Largay’s trek and disappearance. McManus is also taking a break from paranormal legends and crimes, at least for now.

“I’m delving into fiction,” she said. The genre may not change, but in her case it will be like taking a staycation.

“I don’t have to travel, I won’t feel the heartbreak of these true crimes. I get to make up what I want to happen,” she said.

Of course, given her hobbies and background, McManus’ fiction may be stranger than the facts and legends she has chased for the past several years. And she can always visit her parents, who still live in the Creepy House in Skowhegan, if she needs inspiration.

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