Ghosts on the Coast of Maine Page 6

  We all walked down to the lake and were immediately drawn to it. There was an old crypt lodged in a small incline, but we disregarded it because we were drawn to the lake itself. Terry said that when she was a kid, she was always afraid to skate on a certain part of the lake—not because of thin ice, but because that area creeped her. Amanda had come here twice before, in search of Sally.

  My attention focused on an area of the lake right in front of us, about fifty yards out. Every time I looked at that spot, thunder rolled. It was not cloudy, nor did it ever storm the rest of the day. Mandy drew agitated breaths. We threw a stick in the water. It pointed directly to the spot.

  Why would Sally be underwater? Convinced of our intuitions, we went back to the Historical Museum in town. On one of the old brown walls hung a map that described a cemetery where Silver Lake now stands. In 1930 the new Bucksport factory needed that tract of land for water supply. The plant hastily dug up whatever bodies it could, and placed them ashore in various crypts, before making its man-made reservoir. In the process, it must have overlooked Mrs. Weir.

  Today she cries out to have her body reunited with her imprisoned skull. Only a judge’s decision can release it. While driving past Silver Lake for the last time that day, we spied the most dominant gravestone in the cemetery on the hill overlooking the lake. It was inscribed with the name “Tom Bolder.” Perhaps and rightly so, it is also his fate to be witness to the haunting figure of Sally Weir stalking Silver Lake.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WILLIE CUNNINGHAM’S CAT

  It is scary enough for a human being to witness a forest fire racing down a mountain towards his home. Imagine a poor animal in this circumstance, its sharp instincts smelling nothing but smoke, fear, and confusion all about her. Such was the case of Willie Cunningham’s cat in the 1947 fire that devastated Bar Harbor.

  Bar Harbor, a summer resort of affluent rusticators since the 1890s, awoke the morning of October 21 to a column of smoke that had turned into a major conflagration. Having started in the area of the dump, it had jumped outside the fire line, its flames lapping the over-dry trees of the autumn drought. It snapped and crackled out of control to such an extent that the Parisian newspapers picked up the story.

  By the twenty-first, five fire departments and two hundred soldiers from the Bangor army base were working to stop the disaster. A crew of native residents added its strength to the effort. When they saw some stray sparks land on a barn roof, burst it into flames and shoot embers into the parched woods beyond, they felt grim. In that instant the fire had begun to move uphill, away from the sea.

  After lugging shovels, picks, and fire hoses to the scene, firefighters pumped water from a nearby lake. The heat kept moving them back. The soles of their feet burned and their hair and eyebrows were singed. Their toils didn’t amount to much. It was just like spitting into a furnace.

  These blackened men staggered back to the Bar Harbor firehouse for relief, but there were too few men for so much fire. Soon the blaze was moving south into Acadia Park, north toward Hull’s Cove, and east directly towards town.

  Millionaires’ Row was next. The mansion of J.P. Morgan burned right down to its massive stone arched foundation. The summer cottages of people in the same class as the Rockefellers, Kents, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers were totally destroyed. One “cottage” lost all eighty rooms, including doors with gold doorknobs, and twenty-six living rooms with marble fireplaces.

  Fortunately, most of these estates were vacant after summer, so loss of life was not a consideration. Lost, however, was the extensive grandeur and high life of a whirlwind social clique that thrived on gourmet dinner parties, sixty-foot yachts, and dancing balls with famous orchestras. Out of sixty-seven wealthy property owners, only a handful returned to Bar Harbor to restore their homes.

  It is not the woes of the super rich community, however, upon which this story focuses. As the fire moved nearer town, it threatened to become a death trap for twenty-five hundred year-round villagers. The thick yellow smoke formed a tidal wave of heat that blistered the paint off cars trying to escape. Men, women, and children fled screaming down the streets.

  In the area of the ball field, the most valiant town members, along with the National Guard, were going around in trucks, picking up the elderly, the disabled, and anyone who could not evacuate themselves. The plan was to round up everyone in the field and walk them to the municipal wharf, six blocks away. There rescue boats, Coast Guard, and fishing boats would transport them to safety. The exodus was compared to Dunkirk.

  To the right of the ball field was a modest one-story house with a comfy front porch and a wooden swing. Old Willie Cunningham was just stumbling out the front door with his black cat “Seawater,” when he heard something that sounded like a freight train roaring in the wind. The smoke caught his breath and doubled him over in a coughing fit, but he held on to his cat all the while.

  Willie was good with animals. He knew what made them tick—what they liked to eat, how they reacted to things, what they shied away from. This natural knowledge helped him a great deal out on the fishing waters by Gott’s Island. He was the best Bar Harbor fisherman of his day. Lately he hadn’t done much, being laid up with rheumatism, but he could tell colorful stories about the adventures he and Seawater had experienced out to sea. There was the time she had a gruesome fight with a giant crab that had escaped from a lobster trap Willie had just hauled. There was the time Seawater led them home through the fog with her head pointing the way.

  His hearing hadn’t been so good, so the whole scene taking place in front of his doorstep took him aback some. An olive green truck swerved around the corner and screeched to a halt. Two husky men hustled Willie and his cat to the back of the truck and lifted them on. They hadn’t gone but a block when the cat jumped out of Willie’s arms and panicked towards the house. Before anyone could stop him, Willie jumped out, too. That was the last anyone saw of the man and his animal.

  The fire continued on and torched the famous cancer research center, the Jackson Laboratory, wiping out one year of Pulitzer prizewinning work. That day it covered over five miles in three hours, devouring thirteen thousand acres—nine thousand more than it had traveled in the past two days. As it started to pour down on the town, the wind made a freak shift and turned it in another direction.

  A week passed before the blaze was dominated. It still glowed between cracks in the rocks until November 14, when the fire was officially declared “out,” and people were allowed to return. Many Bar Harbor residents came back to burnt rubble where their homes had once stood.

  Willie’s neighbors were checking what was left of his foundation when they discovered a pile of human bones sitting in the corner. One of the men looked up and spotted a black cat circling the ruins. He called it and it stopped; he went to chase it and it vanished into nothingness.

  For a while after that, people talked about seeing “Willie’s cat” looking around for her beloved master. Sometimes it kept children awake with its mournful meowing on moonlit nights. Other times it just prowled the spot where Willie had reached out for the last time to try to help his little pet.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JESUIT SPRING

  Acadia National Park’s Flying Mountain serves as a headstone for eight Jesuit missionaries murdered in October 1613. It stands tall above the spot where the victims, along with a small colony of settlers and lay brothers, were assaulted by a man on a fishing expedition. This man, in a brutal surprise attack, totally destroyed the Jesuit Mission, the first white settlement on Mt. Desert Island. The unmarked graves lie along the western shore of Somes Sound, a place not only haunted by the shades of the holy men, but also disturbed by the unceasing patter of a freshwater spring.

  Jesuit Spring is what the natives call it. Guarded by forest pines and sturdy boulders, it spills into the blue-green water that laps on the sand of a small beach. You won’t find many islanders walking this beach. They don’t like to tread on sacred ground. Some
even claim that spring changes to a different color every once in a while—an unmistakable blood red.

  The scene of the slaughter takes us back to the court of a French noblewoman, the Marquise de Boucherville, in March of 1613. This daughter of Catholicism counseled two Jesuits, Fathers Du-Pain and Rousseaux, to get on the next ship to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and tend to the spiritual needs of the French colony there. Why? Religious fervor is one answer. Also, because the French church and state were closely aligned, the marquise’s action strengthened France’s foothold in the New World. Religious principles aside, the possibility remains that a dashing sailor with a heartbreaking smile who had been frequenting the French court took off for Nova Scotia, and she wanted to keep tabs on him.

  Whatever the case, the two priests were not a big hit upon arrival at Port Royal. The rough and ready Nova Scotians told them to go back to Paris, where there was enough unholiness to attend to. The Jesuits wrote back to their sponsor to tell her the story. Not wishing her well-financed plan to go completely awry, she recommended that they gather their lay brothers, laborers, and animals and set their sights for Penobscot Bay. According to her, hoards of Indians were sitting there just waiting to receive the Catholic faith, and consequently, French politics. With this in mind, the missionary band of hopeful settlers said goodbye to Nova Scotia and sailed merrily upwind.

  Nature, that devious force so often overlooked by those not in tune with the earth, took a hand.

  The Maine fog, totally foreign to the Jesuit ship, enveloped the vessel and caused it to mistakenly land on Mt. Desert Island. The travelers chalked it up as part of God’s plan, and promptly set about establishing a mission. Little did they realize that in three short months the whole place would be ashes.

  The perpetrator of the disaster was just a guy doing his job, a policeman on duty. Arlan Seawall didn’t ask for the job, but the London merchants were so dazzled by his deeds of exploration in the New World, that they appointed him Admiral of Virginia. The letter from the Virginia Company stated that Captain Seawall was to patrol the coast and try to prevent any settlements by the French.

  England and France were not at war in 1613, so bloodshed was not expected. Mediation and peace talks were the tools of the day. Either Seawall’s instructions were misunderstood, or the captain overreacted to a non-threatening situation.

  One day, fishing down the coast, he spotted the little unprotected mission built on a flat, grassy peninsula. He yelled to his crew, who left their nets and wasted no time bombarding the building to pieces. The English artillery and expertise far outweighed that of the religious scholars, who tried unsuccessfully to shoot back with a lone cannon. The Jesuit “cannoneer” was so inept that the weapon backfired and helped destroy part of the mission.

  By the time the smoke had cleared, eight men lay dead, and the remaining hardy souls were taken aboard as slaves to be sold. Those not fit to sell would be set free in small boats in the middle of the ocean, where they would soon perish.

  Seawall’s men prowled the shore and scoured the ruins. When they came upon the spring, they refreshed their thirsty throats and decided that it was a place good enough for a cemetery. They wanted to get going, but they were God-fearing enough to supply Christian burial to the priests. Besides, these Puritan Englishmen regarded Papists with such absolute horror that they considered them nigh instruments of the Devil.

  Devil’s advocates or not, a place spirited by men of the cloth is a formidable place to be. The children of the area will tell you that they have been warned as such. Many tales have they heard about night fishermen seeing white shapes flitting about Jesuit Spring. One kid said that last year his father was out rowing when he saw a man in brown holding a cross to his chest. He took in his oars and grabbed his glasses to get a better look, but the “man” was nowhere to be seen.

  Boats do not dock on the shore by Jesuit Spring, especially since the summer of 1975. It was then the Colby family loaded their sixteen-foot skiff with swimsuits, towels, and a picnic lunch. The water was without a ripple as they cruised along the shore. They spotted the pretty little beach with a freshwater stream pouring onto it and decided to land. Mr. Colby tightly wedged the anchor between two rocks. The tide was not quite in so they put the picnic stuff under a tree and looked up to Flying Mountain. A nice day for a hike, not too warm and no breeze.

  The family climbed the mountain in about twenty minutes. When they came back down, there was no boat, no anchor, no snipped line, and no picnic basket—just the still clear water. Not a sound, not a movement. None of the nearby households had witnessed anyone else in the area although they had noticed the Colbys and all their doings.

  The incident might have gone unnoticed or been passed off as robbery if two more boats hadn’t met the same fate within a year. Besides, stealing is rare in coastal Maine, and when it does occur, everyone knows who did it and why.

  The people of Mt. Desert know “who” took the boats, and they’re not interested in talking about the why.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JEWELL’S ISLAND

  The subterranean caves of Jewell’s Island have not served savory purposes. Not only have they been conductors of smuggled goods, but they have also housed the secrets surrounding a lurid tale of buried treasure and coldblooded murder.

  Now a wild, uninhabited island, the place was once a quiet shelter for those who wished to live without constant fear of Indian attack. One has to think past the overhanging trees and jagged rocks to a time when people farmed the inland slopes and drew clear water from island springs. The eighteenth century had just begun.

  Captain Elijah Jones was one of the first settlers to set the tone for this peaceful hideaway. When he wasn’t shipping goods, he was tending his vegetable garden and two cows. He did not have a family, but like most islanders, he did not mind fending for himself.

  If he had done more farming and less shipping, he might not have fallen prey to the greediness of the world outside Jewell’s Island. While traveling to places like the West Indies, Spain, or Jamaica, Jones saw millions of dollars worth of luxury goods exchange hands, but he, the humble farmer, was on the outside looking in. Oh, how he’d love to be comfortably rich and be able to go anywhere he wanted anytime he pleased. There was even the chance that a wealthier lifestyle might attract a good woman who could breed him some descendants.

  Jones shifted from shipping to smuggling. It was the only way he could break into the big time. Instead of patching up his barn, he threw his energies into rigging his house with secret compartments and passageways. Underground tunnels led to inconspicuous coves where crates of illegal goods passed hands. Barrels of Jamaican rum were stowed away in the night by men of foul language and filthy breath.

  Outwardly, the captain posed a respectable image, and the islanders knew none the worse. They wondered why he neglected his farm, but they figured that business at sea was keeping him busy. Also occupying his mind at the time was the story of buried treasure that had begun circulating while he was away on one of his trips. It seems that a man from a foreign land had been poking about the island, pick and shovel in hand. He had not stated his purpose.

  The captain’s imagination tingled at the thought of a chest laden with coins and jewels, right there under his nose. He did some digging on his own but came up empty-handed. Years passed, Elijah remained satisfied with his illegal trade and had forgotten all about the visitor with pick and shovel—until one day coming into port he found a man waiting for him on the shore.

  The man hailed from St. John’s, Canada, and he had recently been given a treasure map by a dying black man who had serviced the captain of a pirate ship. This time the stranger, Mr. George Vigny, had come prepared, but he still needed a mariner’s compass. Elijah Jones was the only islander who owned one. When he realized that between him and the stranger they had a good chance of locating the treasure, he lustily invited Vigny to visit his farmhouse. There they spent hours planning, conversing, and drinking some of Jone
s’s best liquor. In the dark of the night they stole away, unnoticed by anyone.

  The next day found Captain Jones puttering about his garden and milking his cows. Soon afterwards he went to sea and came back with a sizable sum of money, which started him on the road to being the richest inhabitant of the island. No one ever saw the stranger again, but it was presumed that he had sailed back home after his meeting with Jones.

  Elijah died the most prominent citizen of Jewell’s Island and was buried in grand style. By this time everyone had put the Canadian stranger out of their minds. Two months after Jones’s funeral, things changed.

  A farmer was plowing his acres down by the southeastern shore of the island, when he came across a skeleton on the edge of the woods. It was wedged between two rocks. The years of ice and snow and weather had disintegrated all identifiable clothing, but a silver ring lying with the bones carried a clue. The ring bore the initials “G.V.” From all appearances, the Canadian had never made it home because a treasure had been found—and he had been murdered upon discovery of it! No wonder Jones had become rich so quickly; his wealth had not been acquired at sea, it had been acquired from the sands of Jewell’s Island.

  Vigny’s murder began to make sense. That was the reason people had been witnessing weird visions in that area, the ghastly shape of a man with blazing green eyes and blood running out of his mouth and chest. Islanders thought perhaps they were seeing the spirit summoned to guard the buried treasure. They had poured fresh lamb’s blood over the spot in an effort to quell the devilish haunt. Now they were beginning to suspect it was the spirit of the Canadian stranger.

  The skeleton find also gave rise to an explanation for the paranormal activities around Elijah Jones’s old place. A voice screaming out in the darkness, and the sight of chairs furiously moving about the kitchen had been experienced. One night a chair actually blew about the room and then burst through a window.