Ghosts on the Coast of Maine Read online

  According to one witness, Sarah wears the clothes of her era, and colors can be distinguished, although her form is translucent. Another woman, a teacher, relates that Sarah does not stay long, and only seems to appear in the spring and summer months. People have experienced her as a non-threatening presence, simply a warm glow of friendliness. The sightings have been on good weather days, not cloudy or foggy ones, and the frequency of Sarah’s visits was greatest during the 1930s and early ‘40s. The last reported appearance was in 1976.

  Sarah’s flowers might be tempting, too, but the locals warn not to pick anything atop that mountain. They consider it bad luck. They want to keep Sarah’s mountaintop a place of inspiration and light, a place that people will remember by name, “Maiden’s Cliff.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE COASTER MAKER

  The lucrative shipping era of 1864–1874 produced men with big personalities and derring-do. They were generous with their investments (they could afford to, no income tax), then turned around and socked most of their money into supporting the home town.

  Shipbuilding was the industry that allowed most of these men to live out their dreams, but it was also a risk because it dealt with the sea. These men didn’t mind the challenge; they welcomed it. Because ship merchants were not afraid to put their money to good use, small coastal towns boomed with business.

  Tenants Harbor was the best example of this. Every other dock was littered with loads of cargo headed for Boston; New York; or Savannah, Georgia. They were boarded on schooners called coasters, which were built in the shipyards of Tenants Harbor. The busiest shipyard was Armstrong & Keane.

  Gilbert Armstrong fit the description of a nineteenth-century shipping magnate. He was proud, healthy and bold. He loved to look out upon the harbor and see piles of lumber, coal, and stone, waiting to be loaded on the queenly coaster ships that belonged to him. In the other direction, toward town, he could see the general store that he owned, which was a good-sized contribution to the Tenants Harbor economy.

  Gilbert stuck to the commercial end of the shipping industry. A shrewd trader, he knew ships, shipmasters, and buying and selling of materials. He was the richest and most respected merchant in town. He had a good eye for quality, and that’s what he saw just west of his establishment, in the year 1872.

  Harry Keane, ship builder, had just moved to Tenants Harbor and had set up shop on the shore below Armstrong. Harry was an excellent craftsman, with much experience and ability to choose the best materials for the job. He worked alone, but when the product was finished, she was a firstrate ship.

  Harry was also a good talker. When he realized the success of Armstrong’s operation, he coupled that with his own artistry as a builder, and asked his neighbor to go into business with him. Together they would build the most, the finest, the lowest-priced vessels of any shipyard on the coast.

  In 1873 Armstrong agreed. The two partners successfully complemented one another. What Keane lacked in business sense was demonstrated by Armstrong; when Gilbert had a question about what wood to use, Harry supplied the answer.

  Their common denominator was guts. A large part of their business was shipping paving blocks, a rather heavy cargo, literally the cornerstones of Fifth Avenue buildings, before concrete came along. Armstrong & Keane soon added lime to their list of shipped products, which was risky because of its propensity to catch fire when wet.

  Seven strong vessels were launched out of the Armstrong & Keane shipyard. All were lost at sea. Nature was the one factor that Gilbert and Harry had not been able to predict.

  Also difficult to foresee was the faster pace of the world and the invention of steamers, then railroads, and today’s trucks. The age of the great three-masted sailing vessels began to wane in 1874.

  In that year stood the unfinished frame of the eighth coaster at Armstrong & Keane. Construction had been halted by a workmen’s strike and consequent lawsuits. The shipyard was forced to pay salaries by the company-store method. This broke the company. Armstrong & Keane dissolved. Harry moved to Camden to work in another yard, and Gilbert concentrated on running his store.

  Financial blows seem to be part of the human condition, but Gilbert took this one personally. He felt that he had disappointed the town as well as his family. He didn’t feel too kindly toward Harry at first, because his partner had deserted him for greener pastures, but as time passed, he simply missed the deep friendship that had highlighted their working relationship.

  The world had taken Armstrong by surprise and given him a whirl. He never came out of it. Once a sturdy and upright gentleman, he lived out his last days a thin and worried man, burdened by guilt and loneliness.

  Over the years, all the buildings of the Tenants Harbor shipyard have been transformed. The big white shoreline building became an inn.

  The East Wind Inn houses a ghost who has been seen climbing the main staircase, wending his way to the window overlooking the sea. He stops to gaze out across the waters that once harbored the likes of his grand fleet of ships.

  He manifests himself in several ways. The owner of the inn, who lives in the basement apartment, awoke one night to the sound of footsteps and the swinging doors that squeak upon entrance to the dining room. When the proprietor went to investigate, the only thing he noticed was the doors still swinging.

  An older middle-aged woman who had been a friend of the owner’s for quite some time and a faithful guest, eagerly called him on the interhouse phone one evening. “Tim, you’d better come up and take a look at this.”

  He went up to the second floor to see what was the matter. There was glass all over the floor. “Jenny,” he said, “didn’t you remove the stick that was under the window when you tried to shut it?”

  “Tim,” she replied, “I never touched the window.”

  Jenny then moved to another room. A couple of days later, Tim received another phone call. This time broken glass was scattered all over the room. It looked as though something had smashed through the window from the outside. This, of course, would have been impossible, because the storm window remained securely in place.

  The winter of 1987 a woman doctor and her husband were staying in one of the rooms on the third floor overlooking the ocean. She felt a sudden chill while in bed, so she decided to get up and get an extra blanket. She found that she couldn’t move. There was a pressure on her body that was holding her flat on the bed. The woman told the presence, “Please go, this is making me very uncomfortable. I can’t deal with this right now.”

  The pressure eased. In the morning she said to Tim, “So who’s the ghost?”

  The unfortunate soul that had been trying to break through his dimensional barrier in one way or another was someone who needed sympathy and understanding. He was the product of an unfinished journey. It was Gilbert Armstrong in a different time, a different place.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE HOUSE OF HEALING

  In the little town of Thomaston, I locked horns with a man who denounced my ghostly delvings. It was a friendly fight, nobody got hurt, but it was revealing. He stood talking to me with arms folded like a granite statue, while he berated me for pursuing what he considered the Devil’s playground. There are no ghosts because we have no consciousness when we are dead, he argued. We are “as if asleep,” he quoted from the Bible.

  The man had given me a great frame of reference. “As if asleep” closely defines my concept of ghosts. Upon entering the dream state, we experience a level of awareness that is quite different from our everyday consciousness. It might seem confusing or disconnected, but we deal with it in such a way that it helps us work out our problems or anxieties.

  Ghosts are spirits in a dream world. They are not at their final destination. Some need help in getting there; others have already been there and have returned to help us. Also, by their manifestations they are reminders of the spiritual world, so often forgotten in this strongly materialistic society of ours.

  The ghost in the “House of
Healing” is a returnee. He is present in a house built in 1830, a time of much unsettlement in the northern New England world. New Englanders were still recovering from fighting the English one last time, and they were on unsure ground with the surrounding Indians. Eighteen thirty was only seven years prior to the Atticus the Slave incident involving Thomaston, a typical prelude to the Civil War Era.

  Walter James had to survive in this kind of environment when he was alive. He had to keep the optimism of his fellow townspeople at a high level, so that they would not be disturbed by the uncontrollable forces around them. Walter’s job, as he saw it, was to soothe nerves and try to preserve peace.

  He accomplished this by throwing himself into as many town projects as he could. His energy level was high, but it was expressed in a modest, reticent way. Walter wasn’t one to boast about his achievements. Maybe for that reason today’s Thomastonians do not speak much about what he accomplished, which, upon inspection, seems to be a great deal.

  James built not only his own house, but many others as well. He was a person of business interests who bought and sold real estate. He was one of the founders of the Thomaston Bank, established an insurance company, and saw to it that the stately grove of elms that now lines Main Street was planted and maintained. Walter was the driving force behind the library, the school, and a church of his choice.

  Adults were not the only ones to benefit from his magnanimous personality. Walter, who remained childless, kept a swing in his stable barn for the neighborhood children. Many a Saturday afternoon he’d spend pushing kids on the swing or teaching them the basic skills of woodworking, his favorite pastime. The barn was Walter’s place.

  Just ask the two male photography students who resided in the loft of that barn during the winter of 1986. They weren’t exactly frightened and were never harmed, but they always felt that someone was watching them. Their cat appreciated the presence a little more than the boys. When the boys moved to another room in the house, the cat continued to live in the barn that has basically remained untouched since its construction.

  Another student, Virginia, who took a room in the winter of 1987, had no doubt about the presence of a ghost in the house. She came downstairs one morning to find a pair of candles still on the mantelpiece, but the candlesticks neatly placed on the floor below.

  Ginny was witness to other happenings that involved Betty, the present owner of the house. Betty was laid up with a broken foot, which restricted her to a wheelchair. She had a cane, but that was only for very short distances.

  One particular evening a storm was brewing. A person who had grown to hate storms from her Texas days, Betty sat in the living room worrying about the upstairs windows that were open. Her dog, Penny, who snarled at any intruder or threatening creature, was calmly keeping her company by the fireplace. All of a sudden Betty heard the windows slam upstairs. The dog never peeped. Shortly afterwards Ginny, the only tenant at the time, rushed in the door and hurried up the stairs. She came down just as quickly. “Did you walk up those stairs to close the windows?” she scolded. Betty said, “No. ‘Somebody else’ did it for me.”

  That “somebody else” must have been watching one night when Virginia locked the front door. Betty was with her, instructing her how to shut it, because it sticks. She saw Ginny lock the door. About 6:30 the next morning, as Betty walked down the stairs, she intuitively knew that the door was unlocked, even though it was still closed. She tried it. Sure enough, it was unlocked. When Ginny came down, Betty asked if she had been out earlier that morning. Virginia said, “No, I just woke up.”

  To get back to my original statement about Walter, how does he help those who have lived in his house? Throughout the years Walter has exuded a relaxing, welcoming feeling of warmth that creates a healthy state of mind for the occupants. Great stress therapy. One foot in the door can tell you that.

  He has especially carried out his tradition in his “choice” of owners. Since 1899, a most hospitable boardinghouse operator and three doctors have lived in and performed their occupational functions in his house. Many people today still talk about all the times they or their children or families were healed in that wonderful old place. One thing’s for sure, an inhabitant would never be lonely.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BURNT HEAD

  Suicide is a whole other trip. It produces the most bizarre and sometimes the most dangerous effects of any kind of ghost.

  Because of their deliberate choice to cut short their progression of spiritual growth, these souls are at the lowest stage of light beyond the material world. They are frustrated, they are regretful, and they are trying to make up for their mistake, but they need assistance. Their desperation makes for intense manifestations. They cannot harm you, but they might come close.

  Cathlin Warren did not realize any of this on Monhegan Island in June 1962. She did not believe or disbelieve in ghosts, and she had never given the matter much thought during her twenty-two year lifetime.

  Twenty-six years later, Cathlin is a successful professor of art at a prominent university, and enjoys much respect and popularity in her area as an artist-in-residence. Every once in a while she still ponders her Monhegan happening. It is only because I am not using her real name that I can in good conscience repeat what she had to tell me.

  This young girl of Irish descent was the daughter of two show business people. Her father was a saxophone player in a New York studio band, and her mother was a former Broadway dancer who operated her own dance studio in the city. Her dad was never home, so her childhood memories are mostly of her mother, Peg.

  Peggy Warren started to act differently when Cathlin was about twelve. She became very quiet and withdrew into herself. Her large blue eyes turned a dull gray, with darkened patches of skin underneath. Her mouth, so contoured for laughter, never smiled. Sometimes it was difficult for her to acknowledge her daughter when Cathlin was speaking to her. Other times, Peg never responded at all.

  One August Cathlin noticed that her mother had worn long-sleeved leotards to class all summer long. Later on she found out that it was to hide the razor-blade scars. Those horrible purplish marks did not belong on such slender, artistic arms, but they never went away, especially in Cathlin’s mind.

  Mrs. Warren did not perish from the self-inflicted wounds. She did become institutionalized, however, and finally died, leaving her daughter pretty much on her own. Cathlin’s path seemed to lean towards the arts, so she chose painting.

  In 1962 Cathlin was doing well as an artist one year out of college. The money situation was decent, she had a steady boyfriend whom she liked well enough, and she was pleased with her art work. For some inexplicable reason, she had started to dive into a deep depression. In an attempt to shake herself out of it, Cathlin had packed up her paints and headed for Monhegan Island. For years this out-to-sea island had provided the Warren family with wholesome, refreshing vacations. It was a natural choice.

  Cathy was not prepared for what would happen next. The second evening of her stay at one of the older inns on the island, she decided to take a walk. With nothing particular in mind, Cathy meandered towards town. She soon found herself on the trail to Burnt Head, one of the cliff heads located on the back of the island, facing the open ocean.

  It was a humid, muggy evening, but any walk on Monhegan at any time is such a visual uplift that Cathy continued over the rocky road lined with wild roses and trailing yew. No one else was around when she passed through the trees onto the bare ledges of Burnt Head. There was no wind.

  As Cathlin stood looking out over the sea, she felt herself being pushed towards the edge of the cliff by a pair of hands on her shoulders … step by step, slowly but perceptibly. Cathy turned to see who it was, but there was no one behind her. She started to run back toward town, but she was halted. Again the “hands” pushed her to within a three-foot distance from the edge of the cliff. “This is it,” Cathy thought. “I’m going to be pushed over the edge of the cliff by this invisible entit
y. No one will know what happened, and I’ll never get a chance to explain.”

  The “hands” stopped, but relief was not in sight. Cathy’s feet remained planted, but something overtook her feelings and sensations. All at once she was mentally falling through the air, out of control. Her body became numb, followed by a huge force of pain surging through her brain, traveling all the way down her spine, legs, arms. The broken body that had dashed itself on the rocks was now filling with fluid, filling and filling. There was a terrific tightening in the lungs which pushed up to the head and burst there.

  This took place in a matter of seconds. Then a distinctly female presence cried, “Help,” and departed.

  Cathy was too overwhelmed to be afraid. She walked back to town thinking, “I can’t tell anyone any part of this. No one will believe me. I will have to keep this one to myself. Besides,” she chuckled, “they’d start putting me away before I’d even get halfway through the explanation.”

  She did not sleep well that night. The next day Cathlin tried to sort it all out and came to the conclusion that she would have to find out the meaning of what had happened to her before she could be at peace. At least now she was out of her depression. That much had been accomplished.

  Between the libraries and local historians, Cathy discovered that one evening back in 1947 an eighty-year-old woman, living alone above the wharf gift shop, had jumped off Burnt Head and drowned. She had taken her cat to shore, had it put to sleep, settled her financial affairs, and come back to the island. Unbeknownst to anyone, she had walked the path to the cliff and ended her life. Her body was found the next day.

  Did Cathy relive the experience of the unfortunate elderly lady? Was Cathy chosen to receive this information because the young artist could have empathized, and thereby helped relieve the lady?